I’m sure readers are familiar with the idea of “Six degrees of separation”: the idea (quoting Wikipedia now) that all living things and everything else in the world is six or fewer steps away from each other so that a chain of “a friend of a friend” statements can be made to connect any two people in a maximum of six steps.
Well, sometimes I start clicking on links that other diarists and commenters here provide and within just a couple of clicks–two degrees of separation, not six–come up with some truly unsavory stuff. By “unsavory”, I don’t mean that I just happen to disagree with the perspective offered, but rather some really vile stuff. Following is an example:
A recent comment by Oui contained a link to a Canadian website and an article entitled Donald J Trump and the Deep State by one Peter Dale Scott. I hope I don’t need to comment on the notion of the “deep state”, which I believe is synonymous with what some commenters here called “The Powers That Be”, for example. Call it an accurate description or call it conspiracy mongering, your choice. Alright then…linked to the deep-state story, in a sidebar entitled “Latest News/Top Stories”, is an article on the same website entitled The Neocons and the `Deep State’ have neutered the Trump Presidency, It’s Over Folks! by someone who goes by “The Saker”. This last article makes reference to “the Neocon-run Ziomedia” as one of Trump’s enemies. Farther along is a reference to “the AngloZionist Empire” and a statement that “they, the Neocons, are an occupation regime which rules against the will of the American people.” But arguably taking the cake is this description of the allegedly neutered Trump: “From now on, Trump will become the proverbial Shabbos-goy, the errand boy of the Israeli lobby.”
Zionist Occupation Government, anyone?
I’m Jewish, and obviously dismayed and disgusted by blatantly antisemitic invective thinly disguised as political commentary. What makes this garbage all the more troubling is that it pops up so damn easily: start from a left-wing website or a right-wing one, and one is quickly down in the sewer of antisemitic ranting. And yes, of course, one can quickly find oneself in various other fetid swamps of intolerance and hatred.
To be clear, the antisemitic article I mentioned above was not directly linked by Oui, and I don’t hold him responsible for it.
We do have at least one regular who used to plug the Saker quite often. One visit to that website was enough to turn me off for a lifetime. There are, regrettably, quite a number of websites that traffic in anti-Semitism mixed with just enough anti-interventionist content to lure left-leaning readers. Noticed the same back in the relatively early days of W’s Iraq War. Sad.
I personally think that the Saker site at one time gave valuable information in opposition to the whole Nuland/NATO line regarding what was happening in the Ukraine. I also think…and thought then…that it was simply anti-propaganda propaganda, to neither be innocently believed nor necessarily relied upon as ultimate truth. Just more anti-hustle hustle.
Once the facts about Nuland and the whole push to buttress the Ukraine as an anti-Russian buffer state by allying with forces that were are essentially neo-Nazi became clear to a great number of people, I stopped going there. I do not remember any antisemitic statements on that site, nor even any anti-Israel/anti-Zionist statements. It was all about the situation in the Ukraine.
I do want to make one point clear…a point that I have been making for over a decade on various sites. Criticism of Israel and many Zionist organizations…and I include AIPAC in that group…is by no means “antisemitic.” Antisemitism groups all Jews into a bundle and throws them all under the bus…or into the concentration camps. Criticism of a state that has turned into not much more than a continuing U.S./NATO burr under the saddle of the Muslim states in the Middle East is not antisemitism, it is anti-economic imperialism.
My belief…if the U.S. had really wanted to help the Jewish people after WWII, which i do not believe for a minute…is that it should have opened its borders to all Jews who wanted to come here and given them open access and financial help until they were able to exist by themselves. I have in the past…only half-jokingly…suggested that the U.S. should offer to give West Virginia lock, stock and barrel to the people of Israel, including airfare. It would be cheaper than supporting Israel in its ultimately untenable position surrounded by hostile Muslim states, and given the success Israelis have had in making Israel strong and prosperous country, maybe they would be a able to pull West Virginia out of its post-coal doldrums as well.
But of course…this is a pipedream. The Deep State has a use for Israel, and it ain’t to grow oranges or give Jews a safe place to live..
Bet on it.
AG
AG–Thank you for your comments. I get the distinction between criticism of Israel and criticism of the Jewish people. I criticize Israel plenty. The verbiage in the piece by “The Saker” not only failed to make the distinction mentioned above, it used antisemitic dog whistles.
AG, apropos your suggestion about the post WW2 era, I assume you’re familiar with the so-called Jewish Autonomous Region that was set up in the Soviet Far East. Never was very successful.
Russia overall is probably more antisemitic than are the red states of the U.S.
No surprise.
AG
Probably not. But for now “red state” anti-Semitism is masked by their Zionism which is integral to their Armageddon.
This diary is indeed a curious piece of work. What is it’s purpose? You clicked a link in an article cited by Oui where you clicked another link which brought you to a site with what you consider anti-Jewish opinion. Subsequently you got the idea to reference the genetic concept that every person on earth is connected to each other through only six other people. The sequence sort of implies, doesn’t it, that Oui is only two steps of separation away from an anti-Jewish prejudice. It is very reassuring, however, that you go out of your way to prove your good faith by emphatically stating ‘I don’t hold him (Oui) responsible for it’, where the ‘it’ is not defined (anti-Jewish opinion, your conflation of a mental process with a biological one or this diary?) Blow me over: any possible suggestion of guilt by supposed association has been eradicated with a verbal sleight. But as they say, ‘It’s still out there.’
No, the offensive article is on the same site Oui linked to.
Who cares? If all one is ever allows oneself to be exposed to confirms one’s prejudices, biases, and often ignorance, how does one become well informed and rationally know one’s enemy?
If I hadn’t read an Ayn Rand book (just one because it was boring and her prose is turgid), how would I know that her acolytes are simple-minded greed-heads with delusions of personal grandeur?
Fine to say you should look at evil sites occasionally but why would you cite them as authorities? At the very least you need a disclaimer.
I’m already on record that we here need to be careful in our choice of sources that we link to. (Note: I didn’t read the original comment/diary of whatever generated this spat and therefore, am definitely not weighing in on whatever was linked to.) Even though truth does occasionally get through on generally non-reputable sources and nowhere else and all too often total garbage appears in “reputable” sources.
A recent example — have you seen the photo and story of Pompeo awarding the KSA Crown Prince the “George Tenet award” for fighting terrorism in the MSM?
Marie3, the fact is that I was (in the few minutes I had free) first reading a post by Oui and then following links that sounded intriguing. (Oui provides one hell of a lot of links, too.) If you want to characterize what I did as confirming my prejudices, well, I’d say you’re confused.
My Ayn Rand experience was seemingly akin to yours. I read The Fountainhead back in the summer of 1978, lying in my tent during rainy evenings of a geologic field season. Oh my. Somehow Ayn Rand managed to turn a rapist into a heroic figure…or at least that’s how some people read the book. I was just disgusted.
Gosh. I would have thought it was clear that my “it” referred to the article full of antisemitic dog whistles.
God, what does Gosh mean anyway but God in respectable disguise? I regard your diary as an anti-Oui dogwhistle? Even more: a dishonest smear under the guise of howling anti-Jewishness.