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Thread ID: 5253 | Posts: 7 | Started: 2003-02-27
2003-02-27 20:20 | User Profile
Applauding falsehoods at a university James Kirchick
I was present at the Amiri Baraka affair at the Afro-American Cultural Center on Monday and I must say that it was one of the most disturbing events in my entire life.
It was not Baraka's ranting which upset me most. Having read his work, I was thoroughly prepared for whatever was bound to come out of his mouth. It was the response he received from my fellow Yalies that shocked me. Following a reading of his notorious poem "Somebody Blew Up America," the puerile verses of which are now well known to the Yale community, Baraka launched into a paranoid tirade. As he cited "evidence" of Israeli complicity in the World Trade Center attacks, many Yale students vigorously nodded their heads in approval and erupted into cheering. At the end of the event, the crowd leapt to its feet to give the former poet laureate of New Jersey a rousing standing ovation.
While Dean George wrote yesterday that "we do not endorse the extreme statements by Amiri Baraka that have occasioned concern in the Yale community" ("In defense of inviting Amiri Baraka," 2/25), nearly everyone at the event that day seemed to agree with Baraka's theories. His recent favorite is that on Sept. 11, 2001, the Jewish state warned its citizens working in New York to stay home.
Midway through his diatribe he singled me out upon viewing my skeptical expression, loudly announcing that I had "constipation of the face," and thus required a "brain enema." Baraka, an avowed Communist, got a laugh from the crowd when he affectionately quoted Mao Zedong on the topic of public integrity, chanting "No investigation, no right to speak." The audience loudly joined him in unison, repeating the words of a Chinese dictator responsible for the death of millions of his own people.
Baraka told the audience that it is "a pitiful thing to live in the world and not understand it," strange words from a man who is so hopelessly deluded about reality. After Baraka's talk, a Yale professor, who is also a Yale graduate, lamented the fact that so many students from his alma mater had just been "applauding falsehoods at a university." He said the Afro-American Cultural Center's encouragement of Baraka "reinforces bias and prejudice. It is confining rather than liberating for students. It is anti-educational."
continued here: [url=http://www.yaledailynews.com/article.asp?aid=21965]http://www.yaledailynews.com/article.asp?aid=21965[/url]
2003-02-28 06:33 | User Profile
Great find, thanks for posting this.
The Left's central IP-Black coalition is under increasing stress.
It's simple resource competition.
Keep in mind that both blacks and Jews supported the Great Society programs in the 1960's, which the Jews rightly hoped would take them up and in. The war in Vietnam competed for federal resources with those programs, and the young and ambitious, like David Horowitz and Ronald Radosh, fought the war tooth and nail. Their struggle for power on the Left culminated in the Chicago riots at the Democratic Convention in 1968, when the Southern Democrats were booted out of the party they ruled for over a century.
In stark contrast to the situation in the 1960's, Jews now support a powerful US military and foreign intervention in order to defend Israel from enemies real and imagined, and the continuing demands of blacks and their newer coalition partners are in direct competition with military funding.
This means, in my humble opinion, that we may be witnessing the unraveling of the IP-Black coalition that ruled the Democratic Party for over thirty years.
Jews are looking for a place to land. The Sanhedrin covered this eventuality with Neo-Conservatism, and thus I think that Jews will increasingly defect to the GOP. It won't happen suddenly, but I think that the pace will accelerate in proportion to the extent that the war goes badly and/or the economy heads south.
This article really illustrates the growing rift on the Left. Real anti-Semitism has long in fact been associated with the Left, but nobody will admit it in the media. Black elites have a lot of resentment in store from decades of working as Izzy's house negras, and every now and then that undercurrent spills out into the public square. Jesse's "Hymietown" comment was a classic. But consider also how all candidates for Democratic national office have to make a bow toward black anti-Semitism - Joe Lieberman or Al Koch making nice with Farrakhan, or Hillary hugging madame Arafat or her press-planted "Jew" comment from the 1970's. All of those things were beautifully staged media events aimed at black voters - the message was "yes, you're a full partner, and not just a house servant. You see that you can humiliate the Jews by making them acknowledge your contempt for them. You have real power." Even more bizarrely, think of how the IP-Black coalition in NYC survived the Crown Heights riots. I mean, this was an out-and-out pogrom, and it didn't affect their voting or funding or media patterns very much. Man, you have to hand it to the Jews. They really have organizational discipline.
We paleos are like the Southern Democrats back in the late 1960's. We've been expelled from our old home, and we're looking for a place to pitch our tents. I can't predict where that will be - all I expect is total surprise.
As I said to Il Ragno a while back, we may find ourselves wearing sea turtle outfits and marching with Anarchists.
What a life.
Walter
2003-02-28 15:12 | User Profile
**"poet laureate of New Jersey" **
That breaks me up.
:lol:
2003-02-28 16:45 | User Profile
We're on the same page, Walter.
I was impressed by one of the comments to the article at the Yale Daily News website, from an undergrad named Carmen Rosada:
"I am confused. Why are all these Israel sympathizers lashing out against African-Americans in these posts? These blacks may be anti-Israel, but African-Americans are your greatest allies - they vote in totally homogenous droves for the same leftists you support. Perhpas the dogma of cultural segregation, state dependence, hate, and moral relativism has come back to haunt you. Perhaps this anti-Israelism is just an offshoot of the anti-Americanism you have fostered for so long. You ought to recognize its source and take it like a man. After all, if you lose this voting block you will be very sorry."
My response:
An astute analysisi as far as it goes. What is going on here is a game of political "chicken". The Jewish community worked assiduously for Negro civil rights out of Jewish self-interest -- to obtain precisely the loyal and minipulable voting block you identified. Read Benjamin Ginsberg's "The Fatal Embrace: Jews and the State" for more on this point. But there has always been tension between the two allied groups, and what we see now is each ally threatening to abandon the other. Jewish opposition to the Vietnam was motivated largely by the realization that the tax dollars directed toward the military would not go to the welfare programs largely administered by Jews and largely directed to the Jewish group's new Negro allies. Now, the tables have turned as the Jewish group supports military imperialism that threatens to redirect funds from welfare programs to the military, which has been co-opted to serve the Jewish agenda. The Jewish group has made overtures to the Christian Right, an easily manipulated bunch. Against this backdrop, Negroes and the Jewish group each wonder -- What is the risk of terminating the relationship? Who needs the other more? Can we find a substitute ally?
2003-03-01 03:46 | User Profile
Black elites have a lot of resentment in store from decades of working as Izzy's house negras, and every now and then that undercurrent spills out into the public square. Jesse's "Hymietown" comment was a classic .
Iââ¬â¢m always surprised and impressed by the awe-inspiring contempt Blacks feel free to display publicly toward their so-called Jewish benefactors. And how meekly the Jews accept it--publicly. Privately they no doubt rage against the ungrateful, childlike schwartzers.
Imagine what would happen if White Yalies gave Farrakhan a standing ovation for that speech? Expulsion. Banishment. Imprisonment. Where in hell are the world-conquering White men of yesteryear?
2003-03-01 04:43 | User Profile
It's the same answer every time: too much beer.
2003-03-05 09:07 | User Profile
I've been on the road, sorry for the delay in my response.
That was a great reply to the undergrad's question.
The mere fact that the question is being asked is matter of great moment.
A civil war is brewing on the Left. So much depends on this war. The greater the stresses, the faster and nastier the break will be.
Walter