I’ve thought long and hard about whether it makes sense to take this to the broader community, and I’ve decided that it does make sense to do so.
Here’s what’s going on: there’s a sizable progressive email group at Yahoo that has been running for some years. All posts to the group are moderated. A few weeks ago a long time list member posted an article he had written which smacked of holocaust revisionism. Soon another member, who is openly anti-Semitic, began bashing Jews and Judaism in general. Then the list owner began to post some things that smacked of anti-Semitism as well.
Several people in the group objected to this material, but they were ignored or silenced. A few people left the group because of the anti-Semitism, and the general attitude (at least from the list owner and whatever posts he let through) was: “Let ’em go, if they can’t handle the truth!”
Now the list owner is posting material on Jews and Judaism, using racist websites as source material. One of his pieces recently posted to the group on the subject is framed as a dialog between himself and a self-identified “progressive” webmaster:
(I’ve changed the names here to “List Owner A” and “Webmaster B”. Please note that I have no independent confirmation that this conversation actually took place as related by List Owner A, or accurately represents the views of Webmaster B. All I know with reasonable certainty is that the piece was posted by List Owner A.)
Corporate Media? Or Jewish Corporate Media?
A Dialogue
November 5, 2005
[Webmaster B] is a progressive. He founded and runs the
<http://www.______.org> website, along with maintaining his __ email list on Yahoo! Groups. [Webmaster B] is a former professional journalist and freelance writer living in __ VA. His work has been published in the range from the little-read English Honor Society’s “Rectangle” to the millions-of-readers USA Today. He’s won national writing awards for Poetry, fiction, and non-fiction work. He is the author of the 1995 book: ___, in which he describes an action by the peace activist group Good News Plowshares, their prosecution and subsequent conviction within the Newport News, VA “justice system.”*****
[List Owner A]: How come you never call it Jewish corporate media?
[Webmaster B] : There are a lot of prominent Jews in media, but a lot of good Jews in the progressive movement too (like Chomsky). I don’t want to turn people against all Jews. I agree with you though that there is a hard Israeli slant to it, like liberals Tom Friedman of the NY Times and Richard Cohen of the Washington Post both pushing administration lies leading up to the illegal invasion of Iraq.
The primary force behind mass media control is profit. They are in bed with others, such as zionist and the religious right because they need numbers behind what they do for various projects, but the bottom line is money. I value your views.
[List Owner A]: Well you know [Webmaster B] , for many years I’ve been studying all this progressive analysis of corporate media. I started out with one of Ben Bagdikian’s earlier versions of “Media Monopoly” then headed straight into Chomsky and Herman’s “Manufacturing Consent” along with “Necessary Illusions” and ‘The Myth of the Liberal Media” (an Edward Herman Reader) and of course Robert McChensney’s “Rich Media, Poor Democracy” among others. And of course, like you, I’ve also read quite a few “Project Censored” annuals. I think one of the more important books I’ve ever read is “Taking the Risk Out of Democracy” by the late Alex Carey. And more recently, Edward Herman wrote an excellent and lengthy article which compared Orwell’s system of mind control in “1984” to the present American indoctrination system which he calls “AmeriGood.”
So I am not unfamiliar with progressive analyses of media.
And in terms of identifying predominately Jewish ownership, leadership, management, opinion makers, Jewish-run press services (like AP), newspaper editors, producers, directors, writers, and other various media positions held predominately by Jews, one need only read a few articles from the white supremacist National Vanguard website. Just because those people are racists doesn’t mean they are unable to do research.
In fact, we’ve been having quite the discussion in the [List Owner A’s email group]group lately in which at least one member feels that Judaism is a racist religion, Israel is essentially a nation built on racist principles, and that proponents of Zionist objectives have not only taken over the U.S. congress but also the executive branch of the U.S. government and are presently dictating U.S. foreign policy toward the Middle East.
And there can be no denying that corporate media played a huge role in mobilizing the American people to support the invasion of Iraq.
But when you actually begin to examine this corporate media, you must eventually face the reality that most of it, if not practically all of it, are being run by Jews. We also have a situation where both major political parties in the U.S. (at least in terms of the leadership) support the continued occupation of Iraq, and it may be argued quite convincingly that the Democratic Party (at least since the murder of
JFK) has traditionally bent over backwards to do everything the American Jewish Congress, AIPAC, and major Jewish media interests have wanted, at least in terms of its unwavering support of Israel.And now, in September 11, 2001, we have another national disaster commensurate with the assassination of JFK, in which the American populace is once again completely traumatized, and when the dust clears it now appears that Jewish Zionists have also taken control of the Republican Party.
Of course we can always chalk anything up to capitalist interests and the pursuit of profits. That’s not a necessarily difficult or complex analysis to make. And once one gets through the fog of his or her own
indoctrination and arrives at the point where “American Exceptionalism” can be seen for the bogus myth that it really is, one begins to rapidly build the jigsaw puzzle we recognize in a progressive worldview.But it’s the uncomfortable truths that are beginning to bother me. You know, the truths that have never really been addressed by such progressive scholars as Chomsky: the type of truths which are undeniable, but which are uncomfortable to us because they do not easily fit into our familiar progressive worldview. To always think in terms of a capitalist, profit-maximizing, institutional analysis can in fact blind a person to the reality that “Good Old Boy” networks exist among Jewish Americans in much the same way they exist among rich, white, Yale-educated, Anglo-Saxon Protestant Americans.
Perhaps what I am really only talking about here is a merging of interests. But in much the same manner as the so-called “merging” of two gigantic corporations, eventually, the predominate and prevailing interests of the more powerful of those two corporations begin to
manifest themselves in policy. And what I’m suggesting, is that the more powerful partner in this particular merging of interests is Israel.[Webmaster B]: I can’t disagree, [List Owner A]. Leading up to the illegal invasion of Iraq, I listened to Scott Simon on NPR talking with Daniel Schorr(sp)
both spreading the lies for several Saturday mornings leading up to the invasion, Richard Cohen in the Washington Post and Tom Friedman in the NY Times doing ditto. Now, all of these people are Jewish, and all considered to be liberals, and they influence the liberal community in America more than just about anybody else. As I keep pointing out at [Webmaster B’s website], with story after story, those who spoke out against the invasion in corporate media have lost their jobs, even though they were right– we were fed lies. Those who spread the lies are all working. Your point is well taken.
What is really scary about this is that there are over 500 people in the group, and hardly anyone has apparently compained about this at all.
I find it profoundly disturbing that there are people out there who call themselves “progressive” who are writing this kind of material, and even more disturbing that so many people who belong to such a group seem to find it acceptable or even laudable to distribute this kind of thing. There have been various statements posted by group members in favor of the list owner and the direction he’s taking, praising him for being “open to dialog”, for resisting the temptation to be PC, and the like.
Obviously we can’t tell people what to think, but I think it is time to publicly state that anti-Semitism and a progressive political approach do not share a common territory.