← Autodidact Archive · Original Dissent · il ragno
Thread ID: 13805 | Posts: 6 | Started: 2004-05-20
2004-05-20 14:53 | User Profile
All the hullabaloo over Gibson and THE PASSION seems an odd echo of the controversy over Solzhenitsyn's TWO HUNDRED YEARS TOGETHER (and, of course, David Irving's Goebbels biography). Note that it's over [I]three years later [/I] and this book still can't "find" an English-language publisher. Too bad for Solzhenitsyn PEOPLE MAGAZINE never voted him the "Sexiest Man Alive".
Here's 'conservative' publication NATIONAL REVIEW's "brave endorsement" of this anti-Communist icon's defining work (get ready to gag). One gets the impression that the first duty of the writer is not the pursuit of truth - wherever it may lead - but to arrive at the sort of conclusion that neither offends nor exposes Jews, no matter how many sudden and jarring detours the journey entails.
[QUOTE][url]http://articles.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1282/is_18_53/ai_77674956[/url]
Solzhenitsyn, Still: The writer and his latest challenge - Two Hundred Years Together -
Review National Review, Sept 17, 2001 by Jay Nordlinger
Because Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn is one of the great men of the 20th century, it is possible to overlook how prolific and varied he has been as a writer. In his 82 years, he has produced historical novels, "regular" novels, novellas, short stories, "two-part stories," poems, prose poems, plays, autobiographical memoirs, literary memoirs, political essays, philosophical essays, speeches, and that unique, world-shattering book called The Gulag Archipelago, which the author described as "an experiment in literary investigation." And now he has produced a history: Two Hundred Years Together, a chronicle of "Russian-Jewish interrelations" from 1795 to 1995. The first volume of this work has just appeared in Russia; more will come out in a matter of months. Thus does Solzhenitsyn continue to work, comfort, and incite.
It was in 1990, when he was still in his Vermont exile, that Solzhenitsyn completed The Red Wheel, his weighty cycle of novels on the Russian Revolution. While preparing these books, he found that he bumped up repeatedly against "the Jewish question," the role of Jews in Russian history and in what might be called the Russian mind. Yet he did not want to explore this question in The Red Wheel, because it is an incendiary one, and because he did not wish to give the cycle the wrong "accent" or "slant." If he had gone deeply into the Jewish question, this may well have engulfed the entire work, causing people to see or argue over nothing else. But he knew the importance of the question, and was reluctant to leave it unaddressed. So he devoted much of the time between 1990 and 2001-essentially the years of his seventies-to Two Hundred Years, to this business of the Russians and the Jews.
Which has puzzled more than a few people. Why, they ask, would Solzhenitsyn dabble in this, allotting precious time-twilight time-to this subject, of all the subjects under the sun? David Remnick, in a recent piece in The New Yorker, expressed his own puzzlement, saying that "there are books in Solzhenitsyn's uvre that are arguably dull or minor but never tangential." The new history, he wrote, "seems anomalous, not at all essential." Many others wish that Solzhenitsyn had never gone near this book for other reasons, which we will take up shortly. But we should at least consider that Solzhenitsyn himself is the best judge of how he ought to spend his time, of what his service should be, of what is important in his writing about Russia, and for Russia, and what is not. Puzzled-even annoyed-as some people may be, the mere fact that Solzhenitsyn thinks this work important should be enough to arrest us and make us think a little along with him.
The author has made abundantly clear that he did not wish to write this book-far from it. As he says in his Introduction, "I never lost hope that there would come before me a writer who might illumine for us all [the Russian-Jewish question], generously and equitably. . . . I would be glad not to test my strength in such a thorny thicket . . . For many years, I postponed this work and would even now be pleased to avert the burden of writing it. But my years are nearing their end, and I feel I must take up this task."
But why? Does "the Jewish question" in Russia burn across the landscape, requiring a quenching? Again, Solzhenitsyn speaks well for himself: "What leads me through this narrative . . . is a quest for points of common understanding, and for paths into the future, cleansed from the acrimony of the past. . . . Alas, mutual grievances have accumulated in both peoples' memories, but if we repress the past, how can we heal them? Until the collective psyche of a people finds its clear outlet in the written word, it can rumble indistinctly or, worse, menacingly."
These words were translated by Solzhenitsyn's son Stephan, who lives in Boston. (The book is not yet available in English; Stephan has translated key parts of it.) Another son, Ignat, lives in Philadelphia, and a third, Yermolai, is in Moscow. The sons, along with their mother, Natalia, have participated heavily in the making of the book, helping Solzhenitsyn with such chores as typing (he writes by hand), research, quote-checking, footnoting, and indexing. Rarely has a man been so lucky in his family as Solzhenitsyn has. All are touchingly devoted to him, committed to his work, understanding of his purposes, willing to make sacrifices. It was perhaps the circumstances of exile, and of Solzhenitsyn's unique position in the world, that forged such bonds. The family, like the author, would have preferred that this project not go forward, with all its sundry headaches, and perils-but each one accepted the need for it.
Elaborating on his father's words, Ignat says that the new history is meant to "bring us back to the past, make us care about it, and own up to it." National Review, he points out-particularly senior editor David Pryce-Jones-is always calling for an honest accounting of the past, if only for the sake of the present and future (in fact, only for that). This, says Ignat, is part of what Two Hundred Years should do. Ideally, it will occasion a kind of "collective repentance," or at least reflection. The Solzhenitsyn view goes essentially as follows: For ages, Russian nationalists have blamed Jews for all sorts of woes, chiefly the 75 years of Communist rule; others, meanwhile, have ignorantly or maliciously damned the (pre-Bolshevik) Russian state, the Russian people, and "Russianness" itself. Solzhenitsyn attempts to be an arbiter (and it is this very "evenhandedness" that will bother many critics). The new book is meant to be largely devoid of art or argument, presenting this history in a dispassionate, factual, even dry way. In a recent interview with Moscow News, Solzhenitsyn said, "I could not have written this book had I not absorbed myself in both sides."
Much has been made, over the years, of Solzhenitsyn's sense of "destiny," his "prophetic" mission to bring people, particularly Russians, to the truth, about any number of things. Ignat Solzhenitsyn, for one, believes that this portrait is overblown. His father, he says, is hardly the megalomaniac of myth, but a humble man, although with an acute sense of responsibility to others. We have seen that Solzhenitsyn says he was loath to write the Russian-Jewish book, hoping that someone else-such as someone younger and less precariously situated-would step up to the job. No less is true, according to Ignat, of The Gulag Archipelago and The Red Wheel. Solzhenitsyn, this artist, a man who has burned for literature ever since he was a child, would have preferred to be left with his stories and poems and so on. But he has always accepted the writer's duty to serve as a "second government," a duty especially important when the first government is a brutal and dishonest one. Solzhenitsyn has been left with political and historical work, his son insists, "by default."
Everyone-family, admirers, detractors-agrees on one point: A book treating "the Jewish question" was the last thing Solzhenitsyn needed. The author has been dogged for many years by charges of anti-Semitism, charges that have nibbled at his reputation, that have planted doubt even in those who, on the whole, revere the man. How did these charges come about? As Solzhenitsyn's books were published, certain critics thought they discerned in some of them one type of anti-Semitism or another. Most of the accusations, and doubts, are absurd. For example, it was said that the novel Cancer Ward (1968) had in it no Jewish doctors, and how could that be? Was Solzhenitsyn denying the Jewish role in Russian medicine? Had he concocted a little doctors plot of his own? The book, of course, includes a Jewish doctor, a prominent character named Lev Leonidovich, no less. The novel, like others by Solzhenitsyn, is based on the author's own experiences, and he has always told it "straight," say his defenders, even in his fiction. Solzhenitsyn has been attacked both for identifying his characters as Jewish and for not doing so.
David Remnick, in his New Yorker piece, wrote truthfully and piquantly when he said, "In the seventies, some third-rate critics seemed to encounter [Solzhenitsyn's] books with an accountant's pencil, tallying up 'positive' and 'negative' portraits of Jews . . ." He then said, "Solzhenitsyn, in fact, is not anti-Semitic; his books are not anti- Semitic, and he is not, in his personal relations, anti-Jewish . . ." (which is certainly incontestable). And yet, Solzhenitsyn has left a few openings for suspicion. His depiction of the historical Parvus, in the book Lenin in Zurich, recalls a hoary anti-Jewish stereotype: the "innate" drive for money. While this may have been true of Parvus as an individual, it gave many readers pangs. So did the writer's handling of the terrorist Bogrov, assassin of the prime minister, Stolypin, in August 1914. Not everyone who has muttered about Solzhenitsyn has been a leftist out to tarnish the world's indispensable anti-Communist.
One of the most remarkable and searching essays ever written about Solzhenitsyn was by Norman Podhoretz, "The Terrible Question of Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn" (Commentary, February 1985). William F. Rickenbacker, a late senior editor of National Review, wrote that this essay was simply "one of the finest things I've ever seen." The piece is not primarily about the Jewish issue, but it does touch on it, as when Podhoretz says, "I can well imagine that in his heart [Solzhenitsyn] holds it against the Jews that so many of the old Bolsheviks, the makers of the Revolution that brought the curse of Communism to Russia, were of Jewish origin . . ." Yet Podhoretz is ultimately a defender of Solzhenitsyn, on this question as on others. He has long stressed the fact that Solzhenitsyn is a powerful supporter of Israel, and that, in our times, anti-Semitism has characteristically found expression in hostility to the Jewish state. Indeed, Solzhenitsyn admires Israel not only "politically," but morally, holding it out as an example of the ability of human beings to resist evil.
There have been times-in the recent Moscow News interview, for instance-when Solzhenitsyn has sounded positively philo-Semitic. And it is true that, back in Soviet days, the authorities tried to discredit him by putting out the word that he was, in fact, a secret Jew: real name, "Solzhenitser." In addition, his middle name, or patronymic, Isayevich, looks to some people Jewish, though it is not. It is, of course, a measure of just what anti-Semitism is, or was, in Russia that a government desperate to defame its strongest opponent would call him a Jew. Many in the West, conditioned to hearing that Solzhenitsyn is a "Slavophile," a "right-wing nationalist," a "theocrat," and so on, would be surprised to learn that he has vicious enemies on the right in Russia, who regard him as a tool of Western, or CIA, or Jewish interests.
On this nettlesome question of Solzhenitsyn and the Jews, I myself cannot improve on something my colleague Pryce-Jones says: "Look, just read The Gulag Archipelago. In it we find a moral sense that is too strong to be adjustable on the Jewish question." Solzhenitsyn's apprehension of the dignity of man is not divisible.
We should remember, too, that Solzhenitsyn has never cared what his critics had to say about him. This is one of the qualities that make him a peculiar writer, and person. For many years, he did not read a single word that his critics wrote. As Ignat Solzhenitsyn puts it, he could have written The Red Wheel or kept up with his critics, but not both. One time, however, in 1983, he did sit down to his critics, reading their complaints and broadsides in one fell swoop. He then answered them in a biting essay published in a Paris-based Russian- language journal. He has done nothing like it since. Similarly, Solzhenitsyn has always disdained public relations. To the occasional exasperation of his admirers, he has never lifted a finger to make himself popular, never "minded" his language, never held the hands, so to speak, of those who misunderstood him. He never tried to win anyone over, except through the force of his work, and perhaps not even in that. He would rebuff leading journalists in the West because he found their questions immature. After all that he had seen, suffered, and sacrificed, he did not feel the need to justify himself.
While he is largely immune to personal criticism, he is very-extremely- sensitive to criticism of Russia and the Russians, meaning, to criticism that he regards as unfounded. In fact, it may be said that he takes such criticism personally. People will no doubt see in his new history a defensiveness about Russia and some of the historic accusations made against it. Because he is eager to clear his country and compatriots of what he considers slander against them-even as he holds them to account, in his usual unsparing way, for what he judges their wrongs-he will provide fodder for those prepared to believe that there is something ugly or resentful about him. Some of the book, from what I have been able to review, will ring disconsonantly in the Western, certainly in the American, ear. Solzhenitsyn, who has often been called an "ancient man"-and in a complimentary way-does not conform to modern sensitivities. But the honesty and honor of his effort should be undeniable.
Two Hundred Years has been fairly well received in Russia, prompting symposiums, numerous reviews, letters to the editor, and the like. Many have thanked the author for daring to tackle this theme, and for providing the basis for a reasoned public discussion. An editor at Izvestia may have been typical when he wrote, before reading the book, "I would have preferred that Solzhenitsyn had not undertaken this." Afterward, however, with some relief and gratitude, he pronounced the work "extremely important for the healing and normalization of Russian social thought."
Podhoretz, in his 1985 essay, said the following about The Gulag Archipelago and The Oak and the Calf (Solzhenitsyn's literary memoirs): "[The writer] is returning [to the Russian people] their stolen or 'amputated' national memory, reopening the forcibly blocked channels of communication between the generations, between the past and the present . . ." This serves beautifully as a description of what Solzhenitsyn believes himself doing in his latest, "thorny" (as he says) endeavor. Few appreciative people would dispute that the author has earned the right to any book he deems vital. Malcolm Muggeridge declared him to be "the noblest human being alive." I myself can only offer the conclusion that at the core of Solzhenitsyn's life's work is love. He is sometimes portrayed as a crabbed and angry hermit-and righteous anger he surely has-but his many writings over the decades have plainly been motivated by love: by love of mankind and a determination to lift it up. It is hard to do better than that.
COPYRIGHT 2001 National Review, Inc.[/QUOTE]
2004-05-20 19:12 | User Profile
[QUOTE]All the hullabaloo over Gibson and THE PASSION seems an odd echo of the controversy over Solzhenitsyn's TWO HUNDRED YEARS TOGETHER (and, of course, David Irving's Goebbels biography). Note that it's over three years later and this book still can't "find" an English-language publisher. Too bad for Solzhenitsyn PEOPLE MAGAZINE never voted him the "Sexiest Man Alive".
Here's 'conservative' publication NATIONAL REVIEW's "brave endorsement" of this anti-Communist icon's defining work (get ready to gag). One gets the impression that the first duty of the writer is not the pursuit of truth - wherever it may lead - but to arrive at the sort of conclusion that neither offends nor exposes Jews, no matter how many sudden and jarring detours the journey entails. [/QUOTE]The great man of the past half century cannot be printed in the United States while drivel from slobbering Jews will always find an outlet. The fault is not entirely in the hands or power of Jews. The greatest sin is the lack of courage and integrity of the American Establishment, if indeed they are worthy of that description. Perhaps this nation does not deserve to survive.
2004-05-20 20:59 | User Profile
I'm glad you brought that up, EG, because it is underscored in this Henry Ford column I was looking for a reason to post. The date this was written was 1920, which presents a quandary to most WNs who comfortably blame everything on Hollywood and the media. Yet - if you accept Ford's take as accurate - what we bemoan today was well in force in an age that predated radio, television, Jewish domination of print media - and even the movies were too young a phenomenon to credibly be depicted as an omnipotent influence. (Sidebar - Apparently it was all Germany's fault even [I]then[/I] as well.) So if it wasn't the media back then, what was the secret - the lodestone - the key to Jewish power? Is it even some tangible talent or wisdom they possess at all...or are they only exploiting something which we [I]lack?[/I]
[QUOTE][SIZE=4][COLOR=DarkOliveGreen]The Historic Basis of Jewish Imperialism[/COLOR][/SIZE] By Henry Ford I[/I]
A great unloosening of speech with reference to the Jewish Question and the Jewish program for world power has occurred in this country since the beginning of this series of articles. [B]It is now possible to pronounce the word "Jew" in a perfectly serious discussion, without timidity, or without intimidation. Heretofore that has been regarded as the special prerogative of the Jewish publicists themselves and they have used the name exclusively in well-organized and favorable propaganda. [/B] They can oust portions of Shakespeare from the public schools on the ground that the Jews are offended; they can demand the removal of one of Sargent's paintings from the Boston Library because it represents the Synagogue in a decline. But when anything emanates from the Gentile side that indicates that the Gentile is also conscious of the Jew, then the charge of prejudice is instantly and strongly made. The effect of that in this country has been a ban on speech that has had few parallels in our history. Recently at a banquet a speaker used the term "Jews" in reference to the actions of a group of Jewish bankers. A Jewish guest leaped to his feet demanding to know if the speaker considered it "American" to single out a race that way. The speaker replied, "I do, sir," and received the approval of the audience. [B]In that particular part of the country, businessmen's tongues had been tied for years by the unwritten law that Jews must never by singled out as Jews.[/B]
No one would have predicted a year ago that a newspaper like the Chicago Tribune could have convinced itself that it was good newspaper policy to print in the first column of its first page a copyrighted article on the Jewish program for world rule, printing the word "Jew" in large letters in its headline, and abstaining from editorial retouching of the word "Jew" in the body of the article. [B]The usual plan is to do what an eastern newspaper did when dealing with the same subject: wherever the term "international Jew" occurred in the article that it printed, it was retouched to "financiers."[/B]
The Chicago Tribune, however, on Saturday, June 19, 1920, printed in the first column of the first page a cable dispatch from John Clayton, its special correspondent, under the heading: "Trotsky Leads Jew-Radicals to World Rule. Bolshevism Only a Tool for His Scheme."
The first paragraph reads as follows:
[I]"For the last two years army intelligence officers, members of the various secret service organizations of the Entente, have been bringing in reports of a world revolutionary movement other than Bolshevism. At first these reports confused the two, but latterly the lines they have taken have begun to be more and more clear."[/I]
As previously stated in THE DEARBORN INDEPENDENT, our own secret service is one of these, though there is reason to believe that because of the influence of Jews upon the government these investigations were not pursued with the persistency that might otherwise have been given them. However, we know from Jewish sources, not to mention any other, that the Department of Justice of the United States was at one time interested enough to make inquiries.
What the Tribune writer does in the above paragraph is to show that [B]this interest has been sustained for two years by officials of the Entente, a fact that ought to be borne in mind by those who declare that the whole matter is of German instigation. The emergence of the Jewish Question into American thought was immediately met by a statement from Jewish sources that it was a German importation[/B], and that the anti-Semitism that flowed over Germany and resulted in cleaning out the overwhelming Jewish revolutionary influences from the new German Government, was only a trick to throw the blame for defeat of Germany on the Jews. American rabbis are even now unitedly preaching that history shows that every great war is followed by a new "attack" on the Jews. It is undoubtedly a fact that every war newly opens the people's eyes to the power that international Jewish financiers exert with reference to war - and it would seem that such a fact is worthy of a better explanation than that of "prejudice." However, as the Tribune article shows, and as well as the facts confirm, the interest is not confined to the German side; indeed, it is not even strongest there. It is "the various secret service organizations of the Entente" that have been most active in the matter.
The second paragraph further distinguishes between Bolshevism and Jewish imperialism:
[I]"Bolshevism aims at the overthrow of existing society and the establishment of an international brotherhood of men who work with their hands as rulers of the world. The second movement aims for the establishment of a new racial domination of the world. So far as the British, French and our own department's inquiry have been able to trace, the moving spirits in the second scheme are Jewish radicals."[/I]
Other statements in the article are:
[I]"Within the ranks of communism is a group of this party, but it does not stop there. To its leaders, communism is only an incident."[/I]
(This will recall the statement of Lord Eustace Percy, quoted last week from the Canadian Jewish Chronicle - "Not because the Jew cares for the positive side of radical philosophy, not because he desires to be a partaker in Gentile nationalism or Gentile democracy, but because no existing Gentile system of Government is anything but distasteful to him.")
[I]"They are ready to use the Islamic revolt, hatred by the central empires for England, Japan's design on India, and commercial rivalry between America and Japan."[/I]
[I]"As any movement of world revolution must be, this is primarily anti-Anglo-Saxon."
"The organization of the world Jewish-radical movement has been perfected in almost every land."
"The aims of the Jewish-radical party have nothing of altruism behind them beyond liberation of their own race."[/I]
It will be conceded that these are rather startling statements. If they were found in a propagandist publication of no responsibility, the average reader might pass them by as preposterous, [B]so little does the average reader know of the secret influences that shape his life and frame his problems[/B]. But appearing in a great newspaper, they must receive a different evaluation.
Nor did the Tribune stop at the news article. On June 21, 1920, an editorial appeared entitled "World Mischief." The editorial is evidently an effort to prevent possible misunderstanding of what the news article was driving at.
"The Jewish phase of the movement, he asserts, aims at a new racial domination of the world. . . ."
The Tribune also says that while it is perhaps natural for the Jews of other countries to be engaged in this "world mischief," the Jews of England and the United States "are loyal nationalists and conservative upholders of the national traditions." It were well if this were true. Perhaps it is true of tens of thousands of Jews as individuals; it certainly is not true of those internationalists who pull the strings of all the governments and who during the last six tragic years have been meddling with world affairs in a way that must soon be plainly told. The unfortunate circumstance is that all the American and English Jews must for a time feel a distress that no one desires them to feel, that everyone would do much to save them from, but that seems inevitable until the whole story is told and until the mass of the Jews themselves cut off from their name and support some who now receive their deepest homage.
[B]It is worth while observing the contrasts and similarities between the Gentile and Jewish reaction to this alleged movement to establish a Jewish imperialism over the world. Jewish publicists first deny it without qualification. It is all false, all a lie, all hatched up by enemies of the Jews in order to stir up hatred and murder. As the evidence accumulates, the Jewish tone changes: "Well, suppose it is true," the publicists say; "is it any wonder that the poor oppressed Jews, driven to madness through their sufferings, should dream dreams of overthrowing their enemies and placing themselves in the seat of authority?"[/B]
The Gentile mind, confronted with the statement, says: "Yes, but they are Russian Jews. Don't mind them. American Jews are all right. They would never be taken in by anything like that." Going a little deeper into the subject, the Gentile mind is forced to admit the existence of some kind of a subversive world movement, the power of which has shaken even this country, and that the moving spirits in it are revolutionary Jews. And then the tendency from that point forward is either to fall in with the theory that the movement is really Jewish in its origin, agitation, execution and purpose, or to set up the theory that it is a "world movement" undoubtedly, but only incidentally Jewish. The end of both Jewish and Gentile reaction is an admission that something answering to the movement charged actually exists.
For example, the Christian Science Monitor, whose standard as a newspaper no one will question, has this to say in a lengthy editorial on the subject:
"In spite of this, it would be a tremendous mistake to conclude that the Jewish peril, given another name and atmosphere, does not exist. It might be named, indeed, be renamed, out of one of the grandest books of the Old Testament, 'the terror by night,' for it is , essentially, the Psalmist's concept of the forces of mental evil at which, consciously or unconsciously, Professor Nilus is aiming. In other words, that a secret international political organization exists, working unremittingly by means of its Bureau of Psychology, through the world that should be awake to it is entirely asleep to it, is, to the man who can read the signs of the times, a thing unquestionable."
The Monitor gives warning against prejudice and disregard of the laws of evidence that is exceedingly timely and is, indeed, the desire of anyone who has ever undertaken to deal with this subject, but too often it is a disregard of facts and not of evidence that makes the difficulty. [B]It is safe to say that most of the prejudice today is against the facts, it has not been caused by them.[/B]
There are two preconceptions to be guarded against in making an approach to this question. One is that the Jewish imperialistic program, if such a thing exists, is of recent origin. Upon the mere mention of such a program, Gentiles are likely to think that it was formulated last week, or last year, or within recent time.
That need not be the case at all, and in Jewish matters it is very likely not to be the case. It is very easy to see how, if the program were to be formulated today, it would be wholly different from the one that is to be considered. The kind of program that would be made today indeed exists too, but it is not to be compared in extent and profundity with that which has existed for a very long time. Perfect constitutions of invisible governments are not the creations of secret conventions; they are the accumulated thought and experience of centuries. Moreover, no matter how prone a modern generation may be to disregard such things, the mere fact that they may have existed as a secret racial ideal for centuries is a powerful argument for their respectable acceptance, if not active execution, by the generation that now is. There is no idea deeper in Judaism than that Jews constitute a Chosen People and that their future is to be more glorious than their past. A large part of the Christian world accepts that, too, and it may well be true, but in a moral universe it cannot come to pass by the methods that have been and are being used.
But to mention the ancient lineage of the idea of the Chosen People is merely to suggest that of all the programs that may have gathered round it to assist its full historical realization, it is not strange that there should be one very old one to which the wisest minds of Israel have contributed their best of mind and heart to insure its success. That there is such a plan has been the belief of many deep delvers in the hidden things of the world, and that such a plan has at times had its dress rehearsals, so to speak, on a limited stage, as if in preparation for its grand finale on the universal stage, is another belief held by men at whose knowledge it is impossible to cavil.
So, then, it may be that we are dealing with something for which present-day Jews, even the more important internationalists, are not originally responsible. It may have come to them as part of their ancient Jewish inheritance. Certainly, if it were a mere modern thing, hastily conceived and thrown together after the modern fashion, it could be expected to disappear in the same era that saw it born.
[B]Another preconception to be guarded against is that every Jew one meets has secret knowledge of this program. That is not the case. With the general idea of the ultimate triumph of Israel every Jew who has retained contact with his people is familiar, but with the special plans that for centuries have existed in formulated from for the attainment of that triumph, the average Jew is no more familiar than anyone else - no more so than was the average German with the secret plans of the Pan-Germanic party whose ideas started and guided the recent war. The average Jew enters into the plans of the secret group just to this extent, except in specially selected cases: It is perfectly understood that the consummation of the Jewish triumph will not be distasteful to any Jew, and if the methods to be used toward the end are a bit violent, every Jew can be depended upon to see in that violence a very insufficient retribution visited upon the Gentile world for the sufferings that it has caused the sons of Judah throughout the centuries.[/B]
Still, with even the preconception guarded against, there is no escape from the conclusion that if such a program of Jewish world imperialism exists today, it must exist with the cognizance and active support of certain individuals, and that these groups of individuals must have somewhere an official head.
This is, perhaps the one point at which more investigators stop than at any other. The idea of a Jewish autocrat is too strange for the mind that has not been much in contact with the main question. And yet there is no race that more instinctively supports autocracy than does the Jewish race, no race that more craves and respects position. It is their sense of the value of position that explains the main course their activities take. The Jew is primarily a money-maker for the reason that up to this time money is the only means he know by which to gain position. The Jews who have gained position for any other reason are comparatively few. This is not a Gentile gibe; it is the position of a famous Anglo-Jewish physician, Dr. Barnard Von Oven, who wrote: "All other means of distinction are denied him; he must rise by wealth, or not at all. And [B]if, as he well knows, to insure wealth will be to insure rank, respect and attention in society, does the blame rest with him who endeavors to acquire wealth for the distinction that it will purchase, or with that society that so readily bows down to the shrine of Mammon?"[/B]
The Jew is not averse to kings, only to the state of things that prevents a Jewish king. The future autocrat of the world is to be a Jewish king, sitting upon the throne of David, so ancient prophecies and the documents of the imperialistic program agree.
Is such a king in the world now? If not, the men who could choose a king are in the world. There has been no king of the Jews since before the Christian Era, but until about the eleventh century there were Princes of the Exile, those who represented the headship of the Jews who were dispersed through the nations. They were and still are called "exilarcs," or Princes of the Exile. They were attended by the wise men of Israel, they held court, they gave the law to their people. They lived abroad wherever their circumstances or convenience dictated, in Christian or Mohammedan countries. Whether the office was discontinued with the last publicly known exilarch or merely disappeared from the surface of history, whether today it is entirely abandoned or exists in another form, are questions that must wait. That there are offices of world jurisdiction held by Jews is well known. That there are world organizations of Jews - organizations, that is, within the very strong solidarity of the Jewish nation itself - is well known. That there is world unity on certain Jewish activities, defensive and offensive, is well known. There is nothing in the condition or thought of the Jews that would render the existence today of an exilarch distasteful to them; indeed, the thought would be very comfortable.
The Jewish Encyclopedia remarks: "Curiously enough, the exilarchs are still mentioned in the Sabbath services of the Ashkenazim ritual *** The Jews of the Sephardic ritual have not preserved this anachronism, nor was it retained in most of the Reform synagogues of the nineteenth century."
Is there, then, a Jewish Sanhedrin? - a governing or counseling body of Jews who take oversight of the affairs of their people throughout the world?
The Jewish 'Sanhedrin was a most interesting institution. Its origin and method of constitution are obscure. It consisted of 71 members, with the president, and performed the functions of a political senate. There is nothing to show whence the Sanhedrin derived its authority. [B]It was not an elective body. It was not democratic. It was not representative. It was not responsible to the people. In these qualities, it was typically Jewish. The Sanhedrin was chosen by the prince or priest, not with the purpose of safeguarding the people's interest, but to assist the ruler in the work of administration. It was thus assembled by call, or it was self-perpetuating, calling its own members. The arrangement seems to have been that well-known device by which an aristocracy can maintain itself in power whatever the political construction of the nation may be.[/B] The Jewish Encyclopedia says: "The Sanhedrin, which was entirely aristocratic in character, probably assumed its own authority, since it was composed of members of the most influential families of the nobility and priesthood."
This body was flanked by a similar body, which governed the religious interests of the nation, the members being drawn apparently from classes nearer the common people.
The Sanhedrin exercised authority not only over the Jews of Palestine, but wherever they were scattered throughout the world. As a senate exercising direct political authority, it ceased with the downfall of the Jewish State in the year 70, but there are indications of its continuance as an advisory body down to the fourth century.
In 1806, in order to satisfy the mind of Napoleon upon some questions that had arisen concerning the Jews, an Assembly of Notables was called, whose membership consisted of prominent Jews of France. They, in turn, to bring the sanction of all Jewry to the answers that they should give Napoleon, convoked the Sanhedrin. The Sanhedrin assembled in Paris on February 9, 1807. It followed the prescribed ancient forms; it was comprised of Jews from all parts of Europe; it was assembled to put the whole authority of Jewry behind any compact the French Jews may have been able to make with Napoleon.
In putting forth its decisions, this Sanhedrin of 1807 declared that it was in all respects like the ancient Sanhedrin, "a legal assembly vested with power of passing ordinances in order to promote the welfare of Israel."
The significants of these facts is this: Whatever the leaders of the Jews may do today in the way of maintaining the policy and constitution of Israel, would not constitute a new departure. It would not signify a new attitude. It would not be evidence of a new plan.
It would be entirely natural, Jewish solidarity being what it is, that the Sanhedrin should still be continued. The ancient Sanhedrin appears to have had a group of ten who were somewhat exalted in importance above the rest; it would be perfectly natural if the leaders of the Jews were today divided into committees, by countries or by objects.
There are always being held, year by year, world meetings of the principal Jews of all lands. They come together whenever called, to the disregard of everything else. Great judges from the high courts of the various countries, international financiers, Jewish orators of the "liberal type" who have the ear of the Gentiles, political maneuverers from all the parties represented in the world, they assemble wherever they will, and the subjects of their deliberations are made known only to the extent they will. It is not to be supposed that all of the attendants on these conventions are members of the inner circle. The list of delegates will show scores of persons with whom no one would associate Lord Reading and Judge Brandies. If the modern Sanhedrin meets, and it would be the most natural thing in the world if it should, we may be sure it meets within the closed circle of those persons that the Jewish aristocracy of money, intellect and power approves.
[B]The machinery of a Jewish world government exists ready-made. The Jew is convinced that he has the best religion, the best morality, the best method of education, the best social standards, the best ideal of government. He would not have to go outside the circle of that which he considers best to get anything that he may need to advance the welfare of his people, or to execute any program that may have to do with the outside world.[/B]
It is the ancient machinery that the international Jew uses in all those activities that he permits the world to see in part. There are gatherings of the financial, political and intellectual chief rulers of the Jews. These gatherings are announced for one or another thing - sometimes. Sometimes there is a gathering of Jews in a world capitol, with no announced purpose. They all appear in one city, confer, and depart.
Whether there is a recognized head to all of this is yet to be disclosed. There can be little doubt, however, as to the existence of what may be called a "foreign policy," that is, a definite point of view and plan of action with reference to the Gentile world. The Jew feels that he is in the midst of enemies, but he also feels that he is a member of a people - "one people." He must have some policy with regard to the outer world. He cannot help but consider present conditions, he cannot consider them without being stirred to speculate upon what the outcome must be, and he cannot speculate on the outcome without in some manner endeavoring to make it as he would like it to be.
The invisible government of the Jews, its attitude toward the Gentile world, its policy with regard to the future, are not, then, the abnormal things that some would make them to appear. Given the Jewish position, they are of all things most natural. [B]Jewish existence in this world is not such as woos the Jew into sleepy contentment; it is such as stirs him into organization against future contingencies and into programs that may shape those contingencies to the benefit of his race[/B]. That there should be a Sanhedrin of the Jews, a world body of leading men of all countries; that there should even be an exilarch, a visible and recognized head of the Sanhedrin, mystically foreshadowing the autocrat to come; that there should even be a world program, just as every government has its foreign policy, are not strange, uncanny suppositions. They grow normally out of the situation itself.
And [B]it is also natural that not every Jew should know this. The Sanhedrin always was the aristocracy, and would be today. When rabbis cry from their pulpits that they know nothing about this thing, they are doubtless telling the truth. What the international Jew depends upon is the likelihood of every Jew approving that which brings power and prestige to his people. [/B] At any rate, it is well enough known that however little the ordinary Jewish leader may have been told about world programs, he regards with greatest respect and confidence the very men who must put these programs through, if these exist at all.
The twenty-fourth Protocol of the Learned Elders of Zion has this to say:
[I]"Now I will discuss the manner in which the roots of the house of King David will penetrate to the deepest strata of the earth. This dynasty, even to this day, has given power of controlling world affairs to our wise men, the educational directors of all human thought."[/I]
This would indicate, if reliable, that, as the Protocol goes on to recite, the Autocrat himself has not appeared, but the dynasty, or the Davidic line in which he must appear, have entrusted the work of preparing for him to the Wise Men of Zion. These wise men are represented not only as preparing those who exercise rulership over Judaism's affairs, but also as framing and influencing the world's thought toward ends that shall be propitious to these plans. Whatever may be hidden in the program, it is certain that its execution or the effects of its execution cannot be hidden. Therefore, it may be possible to find in the outer world the clues that, traced back to their source, reveal the existence of a program, whose promise for the world, good or bad, ought to be widely known.[/QUOTE]
2004-05-21 02:52 | User Profile
So if it wasn't the media back then, what was the secret - the lodestone - the key to Jewish power? Is it even some tangible talent or wisdom they possess at all...or are they only exploiting something which we lack?
Money (power), and the lack of inhibition in methods of obtaining it?
2004-05-21 03:53 | User Profile
No doubt he appreciates Israel for its affects on Russian demographics over the last few decades. His 'support' sounds like we wish you well from afar. Piety and all that, you know.
2004-05-21 08:42 | User Profile
[QUOTE]Most likely Solzhenitsyn's recent pro-Israelism stems from the fact that Sharon and Netanyahu (unlike Barak and the neocons) came out in favor of the Russians against the Chechens, who are now perceived by many on the Russian Right as a more immediate danger than the Khazars.[/QUOTE]
Don't underestimate the percentage [I]better there - in their own country - than here, in mine [/I] plays in this.