Tuesday 27 December 2011

NO POLITICAL SYSTEM CAN FUNCTION WITHOUT A FREE PRESS:



Interview with Mark Kingwell

By Kourosh Ziabari
December 26, 2011

Prof. Mark Kingwell is a world renowned Canadian author and philosopher. He is the associate chair at University of Toronto's Department of Philosophy. Kingwell is a fellow of Trinity College. He specializes in theories of politics and culture. Kingwell has published twelve books, most notably, A Civil Tongue: Justice, Dialogue, and the Politics of Pluralism, which was awarded the Spitz Prize for political theory in 1997. Spitz Prize is annually awarded by a panel based in the Department of Political Science of Columbia University to the author of the best book in liberal and/or democratic theory.

Kingwell is the contributing editor to Harper's Magazine. His articles on philosophy, culture, journalism, art and architecture have appeared on the New York Times, Utne Reader, Adbusters, Harvard Design Magazine, Toronto Life, the Globe and Mail and the National Post.

His main areas of interest are political philosophy, cultural criticism, philosophy of art and continental philosophy.

Mark has been the editor of "The Varsity," the second oldest student newspaper of Canada from 1983 to 1984 and the "University of Toronto Review" from 1984 to 1985.

Prof. Kingwell's works have been translated into ten languages and among his notable books are " Dreams of Millennium: Report from a Culture on the Brink," "Practical Judgments: Essays in Culture, Politics, and Interpretation" and "Nearest Thing to Heaven: The Empire State Building and American Dreams."

Prof. Kingwell kindly joined me in an exclusive interview and answered my questions about philosophy, popular culture, the Arab Spring, Occupy Wall Street Movement and ethics in journalism.

Kourosh Ziabari: Philosophy, journalism and architecture. How do you make a connection between these three? As to what I have noted, you were enthusiastically interested in journalism since you were very young. Please tell us about your journalistic experiences in the days of youth. Certainly, it's a fantastic opportunity to work with Globe and Mail. Am I right?

Mark Kingwell: I don't consider myself a journalist, just someone who writes for newspapers and magazines as well as academic journals and literary quarterlies. It's true that I edited my university's student newspaper, and worked as a city desk reporter and editorial writer at a big national paper, The Globe and Mail.

This was invaluable experience in how to write concisely and accessibly, and also a fast-track education in how cities work. I hung out at city hall and the harbour commissioner's office. I saw dead bodies, fires, and corrupt landlords. I interviewed the survivors of plane crashes. I called the police desk sergeant every night to get crime updates. It was exciting, and very illuminating.

But to be honest I liked the romance of it more than the reality, and enjoyed writing more than reporting.

I once had to choose between a fairly secure career in journalism and the uncertainty of a doctoral program. I chose the latter because I knew I could always write magazine or newspaper articles as a philosopher, but I could not philosophize ~ not, at least, with any rigor ~ as a journalist. I've never regretted the choice.

Philosophy and architecture is a more recent conjunction of interests, growing out of my work in political theory. Too many political philosophers write as if the subjects of their theories were not real people at all, living and working and raising families in actual places, but abstract bundles of interest, or of decision. At the same time, too many architects use philosophy as casual window-dressing for their work, without actually struggling with the details of the views in question.

I have written two books so far that try to address these related gaps: one about a single building, the Empire State in New York (Nearest Thing to Heaven, 2006) and one that is a sort of phenomenological meditation on the built environment and its social dimensions (Concrete Reveries, 2008). I have also edited a collection of essays (Rites of Way, 2009, with Patrick Turmel) which address the issue of public space ~ a key point of contact between political philosophy and architecture.

KZ: I know that you've focused on the questions of social obligation and the role of citizenship in sustaining a just and democratic society. In the developing societies, like Iran, the citizenship rights are not observed to the full and people have a long way to understand the principles of decent citizenship, neighborhood and social interaction.

Can we conclude that one of the reasons why democracy is not institutionalized in such countries is this lack of citizenship culture?

MK: I think we can. At least since Aristotle it has been argued that political institutions will function to foster justice if and only if there is some substantial bonds of ethical life between persons ~ what Hegel called Sittlichkeit. The focus on the virtues of citizenship in my book The World We Want (2000) was an attempt to join Aristotelian insights about virtue, character, friendship, and justice ~ the main topics of the Nicomachean Ethics ~ with a liberal-democratic idea that there could be a distinction between my obligations as a good citizen and my non-conflicting but separate obligations as a good person.

This attempt was perhaps only partially successful, but what remains clear to me is that citizenship is an essential category of political theory. Even the most elaborate theory of social justice or democratic procedure will need to address issues of motivation, fellow feeling, and shared vulnerability. There are numerous ways to do this ~ Adam Smith's sympathy, Herder's einfuhlen, Derrida's hospitality ~ but they all make a similar point.

Unless and until I see the other as someone to whom I am obliged in some profound way, there can be no political justice.

One form of trouble for this prospect lies in cultural differences concerning fellowship, neighborliness, civility, and the like. I have tried to write about these, especially civility, many times; but it can be very hard to deploy persuasive arguments when the issue comes down to differences in perception. Something I find offensive may not even raise your eyebrows. As philosophers, where do we go from there? Indeed, as members of political bodies ~ nation-states, regions ~ how can we forge minimal bonds of connection across such differences?

I am lately exercised by a sense of vulnerability, the shared capacity for suffering, as a start. But that, too, is always open to question. Maybe the pain you feel at the pain of another is just a socio-biological trick that your neurons play on you! Well, maybe. But even so, it creates opportunities to cooperate and coordinate our actions, such that even a confirmed Hobbesian can see the point.

KZ: You have surely taken note of the popular uprisings in the Middle East, instigated by the self-immolation of a young Tunisian vendor before the municipality office. What are the peoples of the region looking for? Are they after improved living conditions, social freedoms and civil liberties? If they're fed up with their authoritarian regimes, why hadn't they taken any step to bring down the autocratic despots in the past years?

MK: It's not for me to say what people in the Middle East want, except that I see, as everyone must, that there is growing dissatisfaction with the very idea of authority, especially if it is suspected to be aligned with decadence, hereditary privilege, or corruption.
People will put up with a lot of hardship, and go about their business even in poverty, if they feel that things cannot be better. But if the hardships are perceived as unnecessary, or wedded to the privileges of others, they will resist. This was as true in 1776 and 1789 as it is now.
As for why it has taken this long, I would only suggest that we recall just how capacious is the human spirit. Most people just want to get on with their lives, to make do. It's only an assault on their basic dignity, as in the case of Mohamed Abouazizi that you mention, which can make someone adopt extreme measures of resistance.
This shows something essential about us: we mostly desire to be left in peace, but no peace is worth the cost of feeling debased, or degraded, or subject to contempt.
KZ: What are the features of an inclusive, effective and comprehensive democracy? Is democracy confined to holding elections and giving people the chance to elect president or parliament members?

MK: 'Democracy' is the opaque signifier of our political moment: it means everything and nothing at once. I'm rather with Derrida on this: democracy is always to come, not yet here.
One could articulate the basic features of a democratic system ~ free elections, independent media, strong participatory citizenship, and so on ~ and still fall short of democracy.
Some people, for instance Carl Schmitt, even think that democracy is only present when a being is united against a common enemy in a struggle for survival, and hence democracy is incompatible with liberalism.

Obviously I think is not only extreme, but mistaken. Let us suffice with two very basic points. In emerging democracies, such as those that might be burgeoning in your region, the most important thing is the public enactment of franchise, that is, free and fair elections.

In developed democracies, however, the most important thing is to try and minimize the corruption that attends our allegedly free elections, the way they are held hostage by large donors and other corporate interests. There is a cautionary tale in this contrast: one can have apparently open elections, with universal franchise, and still not have democracy.

KZ: What's your analysis of the Occupy Wall Street movement? Do you think that it was inspired by the Arab Spring? Why the American protesters call themselves the 99% of the population and question the authority and supremacy of the 1%? Is there anything wrong with capitalism and corporatism that has exhausted the people? What's your view about the police crackdown on the protesters?

MK: I'm certain there was some inspiration taken from the Arab Spring, yes. The very topic of OWS's connection to the Arab Spring became a contentious issue here, however. Critics of OWS ~ who grew more repressive and condescending by the day, until the parks were forcibly cleared ~ were vehement that no comparison with Arab Spring was valid, or even allowed.
It was if popular uprising were democratic, and wonderful, but only if they happened somewhere else. One particularly loathsome journalist labeled the OWS protesters as 'capitalism's spoiled children', as if they had no right to object to a system than does not work, that is grossly unjust, and that is sustained by only a sham politics of puppet candidates permanently indebted to the moneyed interest.

Shut up, and get back to shopping for gadgets! It was a disgusting spectacle of provincial, toy-time fascism.
I was especially upset about the police crackdown because of the cavalier way in which 'health and safety concerns' became a blanket justification for police action. The books in the OWS library ~ including a small volume I co-write, The Wage Slave's Glossary (2011, with Joshua Glenn) ~ were tossed in garbage containers.

In a strange way, this blithe trashing of books was worse than setting fire to them. For this neo-liberal police state, books are not even dangerous or important enough to burn. A depressing thought.

It remains to be seen what political upshot there is from OWS. My own feeling is that the objections to corporate capitalism will not be as easy to eradicate as were a few tents and bodies.

They used to say to us left-wingers,
when we were young,
that socialism is a nice idea,
only it doesn't work.

Here's an update: capitalism doesn't work either,
and it's not even a nice idea.

KZ: Would you please give us a gist of some of your important tips for better living which you proposed in your book "Better Living: In Pursuit of Happiness From Plato to Prozac"? Why are some people so unfriendly with the self-help books? Is it really possible to realize a better living by practicing what the self-help books prescribe? Some people argue that the lifestyle is something inherent and inborn and cannot be changed by practice and exercise, because it's related to one's mindset and ideology. Do you agree?

MK One of my favorite reviews of Better Living called it "the self-help books for people who hate self-help books." In one broad sense, all books of philosophy, at least in the so-called wisdom tradition, are self-help books: they offer a kind of therapy, in book form, whose basic message is that same as that found in Rilke's musing on the Archaic Torso of Apollo: You must change your life!

But the therapy is intellectual and ethical, often ironic and prickly, and not delivered in twelve easy or even twelve hard steps. So I wanted to criticize the recent fad of lifestyle guidance by, once again, revisiting some basically Aristotelian insights in a modern form. That's why I used personal narrative, some cultural criticism, and different forms of ironic discourse in the book.

I can't distill the book into tips, but the most obvious take-away is the old insight that a happiness worth having is not a matter of feeling good all the time, or achieving constant joy or bliss, but of cultivating personal virtue, contributing to causes and structures larger than yourself, and exploring human possibility. In a way, Book X of the Nicomachean Ethics makes the best version of the argument: contemplation is the most divine experience we know. The point of our striving, indeed of all our institutions, is finally to give us the space to enjoy the most amazing thing about us, namely that we can play, create art, have philosophical conversations, and enjoy each other's presence.

I have little patience with the idea that lifestyle is inherent, by the way. Most people simply take cues from the cultural surround, follow the herd, and try not to think too much ~ and then call this a lifestyle. It's always been the job of philosophers to knock them off-course a little, to shake things up. Self-help, maybe, but of a peculiarly challenging sort.

KZ: What's your definition of media ethics? How should the mass media cling to the codes of morality in disseminating the news and publishing the reports? Are the media permitted to publish whatever they want, without having any restriction? From one hand, one may argue that restricting the media and defining limits for their performance is contrary to the freedom of speech which is a prominent value of the democratic societies; however, we should also take note of respecting the privacy of people, avoid directing ad hominem attacks against them and distinguishing between criticism and personality attack. What's your take on that?

MK: I'm one of those paranoid people who think there is already too much information, too much surveillance, and too much revelation of the personal in our world. I find most social media distasteful because it is predicated on a narcissistic trumpeting of the usually banal individual, but I fall on the individual's side when it comes to the media.

Short of some pressing political interest, there is no possible justification for an invasion of privacy, and even there the burden of proof must be overwhelming since it is so easily corrupted.

The Murdoch papers phone-tapping scandal was an appalling spectacle of media self-righteousness allowed to grow to a pathological level. I can't help thinking sometimes that the arrogance of newspaper and media people is in direct proportion to their slipping sense of actual influence.

They're not nearly as important as they think they are.

At the same time, no political system can function without a free press. What this means in practice, then, is that the media are not unlike other bodies of professional workers. They need to police themselves first, maintaining the strictest standards of fairness and respect; and then there must be recourse in the public forum for those whose privacy has been violated. This gets especially tricky under U.S. law where corporations are legally like persons, and have similar protections and abilities.

In an ideal world, those decisions would be repealed. Not only would it improve democratic oversight of corporate actions, now sometimes impossible to investigate; it would also limit the amount of corporate money spent, and hence influence bought, in the centers of political power.

KZ: What's your prediction for the future of television in the wake of the growing influence of web-based media and social networking websites? In your book the "Practical Judgments," you accurately pointed out that television is still the dominant medium of information and entertainment of the age. Don't you believe that with the growing penetration of internet in the families, television will be debased and lose its position? I think that internet, with its multimedia attractiveness and dynamic atmosphere will even eliminate the traditional newspapers and magazines. Don't you think so?

MK: The essays in Practical Judgments (2002) were gathered from work I published in the previous decade or so, and the claims about television must now be revised somewhat. In some important sense, television is over. People may still use the sets to watch programs, but the programs have been downloaded, or selected via pay-per-view, or recorded on Blu-Ray or DVD. Even cable television involves self-selection to the point where is no longer any such thing as a television audience. This is great in some ways, since we have more entertainment options; but it comes with the usual price imposed by the tyranny of choice, namely that feeling of ennui or boredom when there are so many options that, somehow, none of them seem worth committing to.

Beneath this, television of a certain sort (The Wire, Game of Thrones, Mad Men) now begins to function more like visual literature. You find yourself discussing it with someone who is also a devotee, the way you might discover another Pynchon or Updike enthusiast at a party or dinner. It helps that some of these programs are as narratively complex and emotionally satisfying as any first-rate novel.

Television news, meanwhile, is floundering in the contradictions of a medium whose primary purpose ~ entertainment ~ has always afflicted its attempts at seriousness. Political news shows, at least in North America, are a running joked of extreme positions, brain-dead rhetoric, and baggy oratory. The only good news here is that most people no longer look to television to gather their political views, or track current events. The bad news is that the places where they do so, because self-selected, may be even more polarized and worse!

KZ: What's your idea about using media for the purpose of black propaganda? Is it moral to demonize those who we consider enemies, especially at the level of governments, by publishing misinformation about them and blackening their public image? Do you consider state-sanctioned propaganda an intrinsic and natural function of the mass media?

MK: One word answer here: never. Propaganda is worse than falsehood; it is, as in the analysis of philosopher Harry Frankfurt, bullshit. That is, it does not even heed the norm of truth enough to violate it. Therefore, propaganda is even more dangerous than lies, which at least are violations whose existence confirms the idea of truth. (You can compare my earlier remark about why throwing books in dumpsters is actually worse than burning them.)

KZ: In your book "Concrete reveries: consciousness and the city," you analyzed the relationship between urbanism and personal identity. Do you believe that urban construction gives people certain identities and bestows upon them special characteristics? Then, is there any difference between the personal characteristics, demeanors and deportments of people in a city like New York in which the most prominent incarnations of modern architecture can be found, and a city like Tehran (the capital of Iran) which is actually an emerging city and is gradually embracing the new modes and styles of urban construction?

MK: Yes, the material environmental absolutely conditions the consciousness of a person. It can be as obvious as how one walks ~ how fast, with what demeanour, dodging or bumping into people, looking at a phone or not, and so on. But even less obvious things are quite central to how we experience ourselves. So large cities have many similarities but it is easy, when one travels, to see subtle differences in self-presentation: clothes, gestures, the way space is occupied. These in turn are symptoms of the experience of consciousness we call selfhood.

The aim of Concrete Reveries, as I mentioned earlier, was to bring political philosophy and architecture closer together, somewhat in the manner of Hannah Arendt. But it turned out that the common term between them was really phenomenology, especially in our aspects of embodied consciousness. They we inhabit rooms, cross thresholds, mount staircases ~ these are all forms of thought as well of physical deportment.

In the book I try to get at these somewhat abstract insights by contrasting the feeling evoked by two very different large cities, New York and Shanghai. The provided, as it were, phenomenological case studies for my larger argument. They also allowed me to re-introduce some of the first-person and second-person styles I had used in other writing.

I wanted to produce a book with something of the feeling (if not the grace!) of Bachelard's Poetics of Space. I was really happy that the publisher allowed me to include dozens of images that leaven the text, and make the book itself a kind of phenomenological flanerie, an intellectual stroll through the complex of ideas concerning what cities are, and how they work. In a very roundabout way, this actually ties me back to those days spent as a city-desk reporters, encountering the city's corners, margins, and undersides day after day. . .

KZ: As my final question, I want to ask you about the course of globalization and the future of local, traditional cultures. Will the process of globalization abolish local cultures, vernacular languages and ancient customs and rituals of different peoples around the world? Do you see any chances for their survival in the wake of the domination of Western culture over the developing world?

MK: I suspect we have already witnessed the worst of the globalization cultural bulldozer. What is happening everywhere is the hybridization of culture, such that local traditions, practices, and vernaculars are folding in elements of global culture ~not really a culture at all, just an economic expansion program ~ and creating unique human customs that will continue to evolve. This is precisely what humans have always done with culture, especially in times and places with lots of mobility.

My main wish for these 'bottom-up' hybrids is that they include elements of the best in Western culture, especially the discourses of philosophical justification for human rights and social justice. The West has exported lots of awful things, but there are some good things too!

1 comment:

  1. What are we to think of those places that functioned just fine without a press of any kind? Mass media is not the historical norm, so it is nonsense to pretend some version of it is absolutely necessary for good governance, etc. Carry on...

    ReplyDelete

If your comment is not posted, it was deemed offensive.

QUOTES BY JEWS

QUOTES BY JEWS

In Russia there comes the hope of the world, not as that sometimes termed of the communistic, or Bolshevik, no; but freedom,freedom! That each man will live for his fellow man! The principle has been born. It will take years for it to be crystallized, but out of Russia comes again the hope of the world. ~ Edgar Cayce, 1944, No. 3976-29


**********
These pro-Israel people like pledges: they tried to force me to sign a pledge of loyalty to Israel. When I refused, it was trench warfare, hand to hand combat every day I was in the Congress, and the U.S. people never knew that I was fighting to remain independent for them. To make real peace and to find real justice. Here, they have the whole of the U.S. government making pledges to them!!! Unbelievable. ~ Cynthia McKinney, PhD
**********

“The Talmud is to this day the circulating heart’s blood of the Jewish religion. Whatever laws, customs or ceremonies we observe ~ whether we are Orthodox, Conservative, Reform or merely spasmodic sentimentalists ~ we follow the Talmud. It is our common law.” ~ Herman Wouk

**********

“Those who are incapable of attaining to supreme religious values include the black colored people and those who resemble them in their climates. Their nature is like the mute animals. Their level among existing things is below that of a man and above that of a monkey.” ~ Maimonides

**********

“All of the anxious sighing, longing and hoping of their hearts is directed to the time when some day they would like to deal with us heathen as they dealt with the heathen in Persia at the time of Esther”. ~ Martin Luther

**********

WORDS AND WARNINGS OF WICKEDNESS


"If [Jews] are as wise as they claim to be, they will labour to make Jews American, instead of labouring to make America Jewish. The genius of the United States of America is Christian in the broadest sense, and its destiny is to remain Christian. This carries no sectarian meaning with it, but relates to a basic principle which differs from other principles in that it provides for liberty with morality, and pledges society to a code of relations based on fundamental Christian conceptions of human rights and duties." ~ Henry Ford


**********

“It doesn’t even enter their heads to build up a Jewish state in Palestine for the purpose of living there; all they want is a central organization for their international world swindle, endowed with its own sovereign rights and removed from the intervention of other states: a haven for convicted scoundrels and a university for budding crooks.” ~ Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf, Chapter 11

**********

The real God of the Universe does not have “Chosen” in the first place because he is perfect as we understand and predilection is a human weakness. The Jews invented the OT to fool humanity as always. The real God of the Universe does not send any body to kill, destroy his own creation, to rape, to maim, to create misery and havoc on other people. Don’t you get it? the God in the OT is a monster, is another one of the many Gods in the dessert, those sacrifices offered to God are Satanic as their name and the Jews keep offering sacrifices to their God. Last year they immolated thousands of human beings in Gaza to their God Baal, Moloch, Azazel, Satan, Lucifer. ~Isaas, TUT

**********

"I had been asked to sign a pledge for Israel when I first became a candidate for Congress and after refusing to do so my congressional career became trench warfare, hand to hand combat just to remain in the congress.


Ever since my refusal to sign that pledge for Israel the pro-Israel lobby let me know that my political net was in the hangman's noose it was the pro-Israel lobby they decided to tighten that noose." ~ Cynthia McKinney

**********

"Himself a Jew, Marx has around him, in London and France, but especially in Germany, a multitude of more or less clever, scheming, agile, speculating Jews ~ such as Jews are everywhere: commercial or banking agents, writers, politicians, reporters for newspapers of all shades, with one foot in the bank and the other in the socialist movement, and with their arses sitted upon the German daily press ~ they have taken possession of all the newspapers ~ and you can imagine what kind of sickening literature they produce. Now, this entire Jewish world, which glut a single profiteering sect, a nation of blooksuckers, a single gluttonous parasite closely and intimately interlinked not only across national borders, but across all differences of political opinion ~ this Jewish world today stands for the most part at the disposal of Marx and, at the same time, at the disposal of Rothschild.

**********

This may seem strange. What can there be in common between Communism and the largest banks? Ho-ho! The Communism of Marx seeks an enormous centralization of the state, and where such exists, there must inevitably be a central state bank, and where such a bank exists, the parasitic Jewish nation, which profiteers from the labour of others, will always find a way to prevail. In reality, for the proletariat, this would be a barrack regime, under which the working men and the working women, converted into a uniform mass, would rise, fall asleep, work, and live at the beat of the drum." ~ Bakunin (1814-1876)

**********

“We entered the synagogue, which was packed with the greatest stinking bunch of humanity I have ever seen. When we got about halfway up, the head rabbi, who was dressed in a fur hat similar to that worn by Henry VIII of England and in a surplice heavily embroidered and very filthy, came down and met the General (Eisenhower)...The smell was so terrible that I almost fainted and actually about three hours later lost my lunch as the result remembering it." ~ General Patton in Germany, diary entry Sept 17, 1945
**********

The U.S. Congress officially recognized the Noahide Laws in legislation that was passed by both houses. Congress and the President of the U. S., George Bush, indicated in Public Law 102-14, 102nd Congress, that the United States of America was founded upon the Seven Universal Laws of Noah, and that these Laws have been the bedrock of society from the dawn of civilization. They also acknowledged that the Seven Laws of Noah are the foundation upon which civilization stands and that recent weakening of these principles threaten the fabric of civilized society, and that justified preoccupation in educating the Citizens of the U.S. of America and future generations is needed. For this purpose, this Public Law designated March 26, 1991 as Education Day.”
**********

Marxism, to which all branches of Socialism necessarily adhere, was originated by Jew Karl Marx, himself of rabbinical descent and has been dominated by them from the beginning. Marx did not actually originate anything; he merely “streamlined” Talmudism for Gentile consumption.” ~ Elizabeth Dilling

**********
Every time anyone says that Israel is our only friend in the Middle East, I can’t help but think that before Israel, we had no enemies in the Middle East.” ~ Fr. John Sheehan, S.J.

**********

The cruel canard ‘anti-Semitic’ does not apply for many reasons, not the least of which is the simple fact that the slanderous word itself is derived from language games for purposes of propaganda and in real world context has no validity. ~ Tom Valentine

**********

Follow the path of the unsafe, independent thinker.

Expose your ideas to the dangers of controversy.

Speak your mind and fear less the label of 'crackpot'

than the stigma of conformity.

And on issues that seem important to you,

Stand up and be counted at any cost.

~ Thomas J Watson (1874-1956)

**********

'There is no such thing, at this date of the world's history, in America, as an independent press. You know it and I know it. The business of the Journalist is to destroy truth; to lie outright; to pervert; to vilify; to fawn at the feet of mammon, and to sell his country and his race for his daily bread. You know it and I know it and what folly is this toasting an independent press? We are the tools and vassals for rich men behind the scenes. We are the jumping jacks, they pull the strings and we dance. Our talents, our possibilities and our lives are all the property of other men. We are intellectual prostitutes.' ~ John Swinton, former Chief of Staff, The New York Times, 1953

**********

WHAT TALMUDICS THINK

Historically, Jews had always thrived in nations and empires with multicultural, pluralistic and tolerant environments, while they fared badly in strong ethnic or nationalistic societies. European Jews have always been the emblematic stranger or ‘other’. Therefore, by definition, a society where the stranger is welcome is good for the Jews, although they have not always appreciated this link. The future of European Jewry is dependent on our ability to shape a multicultural, pluralistic and diverse society. ~ Göran Rosenberg, Jewish author and journalist

**********

American Jews are committed to cultural tolerance because of their belief ~ one firmly rooted in history ~ that Jews are safe only in a society acceptant of a wide range of attitudes and behaviors, as well as a diversity of religious and ethnic groups. It is this belief, for example, not approval of homosexuality, that leads an overwhelming majority of U.S. Jews to endorse ‘gay rights’ and to take a liberal stance on most other so-called ‘social’ issues. ~ Charles Silberman, Jewish writer and journalist

**********

The Jew … Judaizes … he provokes religious indifference, but he also imposes on those whose faith he destroys, his own concept of the world, of morality, and of human life. The Jews detests the spirit of the nation in the midst of which they live. ~ Bernard Lazare

**********

We will legally define the Talmud as the basis of the Israeli legal system. ~ Benjamin Netanyahu

**********

"Anti-Communism is Antisemitism." ~ Jewish Voice, July ~ August 1941.

**********

We Jews, we, the destroyers, will remain the destroyers forever. Nothing that you will do will meet our needs and demands. We will forever destroy because we need a world of our own. ~ Maurice Samuels, You Gentiles. 1942.

**********

According to the Talmud...."...When the serpent came unto Eve, he infused filthy lust in her (but) when Israel stood on Sinai, that lust was eliminated" ~ Talmud, Abodah Zarah 22b

**********

As monstrous as it may seem, we are engaged in close combat between Israel and the Nations ~ and it can only be genocidal and total because it is about our and their identities. ~ Yitzhak Attia, Israel Magazine, April 2003

**********

"Some may call it Communism, but I call it what it is: Judaism." ~ Rabbi Stephen Weiss.

**********

It was hard for Satan alone to mislead the whole world, so he appointed prominent rabbis in different localities. ~ A Chasidic saying attributed to Nahman of Bratzlav, early 19th century

**********

It is our duty to force all mankind to accept the seven Noahide laws, and if not ~ they will be killed." ~ Rabbi Yitzhak Ginsburg

**********

"The Jews are called human beings, but the non-Jews are not humans. They are beasts." ~ Talmud: Baba mezia, 114b
**********

"The Akum (non-Jew) is like a dog. Yes, the scripture teaches to honor the the dog more than the non-Jew." ~ Ereget Raschi Erod. 22 30
**********

"Even though God created the non-Jew they are still animals in human form. It is not becoming for a Jew to be served by an animal. Therefore he will be served by animals in human form." ~ Midrasch Talpioth, p. 255, Warsaw 1855
**********

Dear World, "I understand that you are upset by us here in Israel. Indeed, it appears you are very upset, even angry. So…it is because we became so upset over upsetting you, dear world, that we decided to leave you ~ and establish a Jewish State.” ~ Rabbi Meir Kahane, 1988

**********

"A pregnant non-Jew is no better than a pregnant animal." ~ Coschen hamischpat 405
**********

"The souls of non-Jews come from impure sprits and are called pigs." ~ Jalkut Rubeni gadol 12b
**********

"Although the non-Jew has the same body structure as the Jew, they compare with the Jew like a monkey to a human." ~ Schene luchoth haberith, p. 250 b
**********

"If you eat with a Gentile, it is the same as eating with a dog." ~ Tosapoth, Jebamoth 94b
**********

"If a Jew has a non-Jewish servant or maid who dies, one should not express sympathy to the Jew. You should tell the Jew: "God will replace 'your loss', just as if one of his oxen or asses had died." ~ Jore dea 377, 1

**********

"Sexual intercourse between Gentiles is like intercourse between animals." ~ Talmud Sanhedrin 74b

**********

"It is permitted to take the body and the life of a Gentile." ~ Sepher ikkarim III c 25
**********

"It is the law to kill anyone who denies the Torah. The Christians belong to the denying ones of the Torah." ~ Coschen hamischpat 425 Hagah 425. 5
**********

"A heretic Gentile you may kill outright with your own hands." ~ Talmud, Abodah Zara, 4b
**********

"Every Jew, who spills the blood of the godless (non-Jews), is doing the same as making a sacrifice to God." ~ Talmud: Bammidber raba c 21 & Jalkut 772

**********

Treason to whiteness is loyalty to humanity. The goal of abolishing the white race is on its face so desirable that some may find it hard to believe that it could incur any opposition other than from committed white supremacists. ~ Noel Ignatiev, Harvard Magazine, Sep-Oct 2002

**********

We intend to keep bashing the dead white males, and the live ones, and the females too, until the social construct known as ‘the white race’ is destroyed, not ‘deconstructed’ but destroyed.

Even if reason tells us, even shouts with all its force the very absurdity of this confrontation between the small and insignificant people of Israel [i.e., all Jewry worldwide, not just “the State of Israel”] and the rest of humanity… as absurd, as incoherent and as monstrous as it may seem, we are engaged in close combat between Israel and the Nations ~ and it can only be genocidal and total because it is about our and their identities. ~ Yitzhak Attia, Israel Magazine, April 2003

**********

Any trial based on the assumption that Jews and goyim are equal is a total travesty of justice. ~ Rabbi Yitzhak Ginsburg, June 6, 1989:

**********

REVENGE OF THE JEWISH RABBIS OF SPAIN
In 1492 CE, Chemor, chief Rabbi of Spain, wrote to the Grand Sanhedrin, which had its seat in Constantinople, for advice, when a Spanish law threatened expulsion (after the fall of Muslim rule in spain).

This was the reply:

” Beloved brethren in Moses, we have received your letter in which you tell us of the anxieties and misfortunes which you are enduring. We are pierced by as great pain to hear it as yourselves. The advice of the Grand Satraps and Rabbis is the following:

1. As for what you say that the King of Spain obliges you to become Christians: do it, since you cannot do otherwise.
2. As for what you say about the command to despoil you of your property: make your sons merchants that they may despoil, little by little, the Christians of theirs.
3. As for what you say about making attempts on your lives: make your sons doctors and apothecaries, that they may take away Christians’ lives.
4. As for what you say of their destroying your synagogues: make your sons canons and clerics in order that they may destroy their churches. [Emphasis mine]
5. As for the many other vexations you complain of: arrange that your sons become advocates and lawyers, and see that they always mix in affairs of State, that by putting Christians under your yoke you may dominate the world and be avenged on them.
6. Do not swerve from this order that we give you, because you will find by experience that, humiliated as you are, you will reach the actuality of power.

(Signed) PRINCE OF THE JEWS OF CONSTANTINOPLE.”
------------ --------- --------- --------- --------- --------- --------- --------- ----
The reply is found in the sixteenth century Spanish book, La Silva Curiosa, by Julio-Iniguez de Medrano (Paris, Orry, 1608), on pages 156 and 157, with the following explanation: “This letter following was found in the archives of Toledo by the Hermit of Salamanca, (while) searching the ancient records of the kingdoms of Spain; and, as it is expressive and remarkable, I wish to write it here.” ~ vide, photostat facing page 80. ~ The above was quoted from Waters Flowing Eastward by Paquita de Shishmareff, pp. 73-74

**********

“[1] When the Lord your God brings you into the land that you are about to enter and occupy, and he clears away many nations before you ~ the Hittites, the Girgashites, the Amorites, the Canaanites, the Perizzites, the Hivites, and the Jebusites, seven nations mightier and more numerous than you ~ [2] and when the Lord your God gives them over to you and you defeat them, then you must utterly destroy them. Make no covenant with them and show them no mercy” (Deut 7:1-2).

**********

"Compassion towards the wicked is really wickedness. It is along these lines that Rabbi Levi opened his speech in honor of Purim: (Talmud, Megillah, 11a): "If you do not uproot the inhabitants of the Land, and allow them to remain - they will become thorns in your sides, and will cause trouble for you in the Land in which you dwell." (Bamidbar 33:55) The mitzvah, then of wiping out Amalek [Palestinians], actually stems from the value of compassion and kindness - compassion on all those whom Amalek threatens to exterminate. This mitzvah is an ongoing one, and valid even today. Today, too, there are those ~ driven by a deep-seeded anti-Semitism - who desperately wish to kill us. These are the people whom the Torah commanded us to obliterate, to leave no memory of them." ~ Rabbi Zalman Baruch Melamed

**********

Nachman Abramovic demonized Palestinian children stating: “They may look young to you, but these people are terrorists at heart. Don’t look at their deceptively innocent faces, try to think of the demons inside each of them. I am absolutely certain these people would grow to be evil terrorists if we allowed them to grow. Would you allow them to grow to kill your children or finish them off right now? Honest and moral people ought to differentiate between true humans and human animals. We do kill human animals and we do so unapologetically. Besides, who in the West is in a position to lecture us on killing human animals. After all, whose hands are clean?”

**********

"Wars are the Jews’ harvest, for with them we wipe out the Christians and get control of their gold. We have already killed 100 million of them, and the end is not yet." ~ Chief Rabbi in France, in 1859, Rabbi Reichorn

**********

"The Communist soul is the soul of Judaism. Hence it follows that, just as in the Russian revolution the triumph of Communism was the triumph of Judaism, so also in the triumph of fascism will triumph Judaism." ~ Rabbi Harry Waton, A Program for the Jews and Humanity, p. 143-144

**********

If a Jew is tempted to do evil he should go to a city where he is not known and do the evil there. ~ Moed Kattan 17a

**********

The Jewish people as a whole will become its own Messiah. It will attain world domination by the dissolution of other races, by the abolition of frontiers, the annihilation of monarchy and by the establishment of a world republic in which the Jews will everywhere exercise the privilege of citizenship. In this New World Order, the “children of Israel” will furnish all the leaders without encountering opposition. The governments of the different peoples forming the world republic will fall without difficulty into the hands of the Jews. It will then be possible for the Jewish rulers to abolish private property and everywhere to make use of the resources of the state. Thus will the promise of the Talmud be fulfilled in which it is said that when the Messianic time is come, the Jews will have all the property of the whole world in their hands. ~ Baruch Levy in a letter to Karl Marx.

**********

"My opinion of Christian Zionists? They're scum, but don't tell them that. We need all the useful idiots we can get right now." ~ Bibi Netanyahu

**********

It was hard for Satan alone to mislead the whole world, so he appointed prominent rabbis in different localities. ~ A Chasidic saying attributed to Nahman of Bratzlav, early 19th century

**********

Gentiles exist only to serve Jews as slaves. Goyim were only born to serve us. Without that they have no place in the world. Only to serve the people of Israel. Why are gentiles needed? They are only here to work. They will work, they will plow. They will reap. We will sit like effendi and eat. That is why gentiles were created,” Rabbi Yosef, Sha Party, Jerusalem Post, 2011

**********

"An example of the use of the Jewish code words Esau and Jacob is found in a sermon preached by Rabbi Leon Spitz during the Purim observances in 1946 (quoted here from the American Hebrew of March 1, 1946) : "Let Esau whine and wail and protest to the civilized world, and let Jacob raise his hand to fight the good fight. The anti-Semite . . . understands but one language, and he must be dealt with on his own level. The Purim Jews stood up for their lives. American Jews, too. must come to grips with our contemporary anti-Semites. We must fill our jails with anti-Semitic gangsters. We must fill our insane asylums with anti-Semitic lunatics. We must combat every alien. Jew-hater. We must Harass and prosecute our Jew-baiters to the extreme limits of the laws. We must humble and shame our anti-Semitic hoodlums to such an extent that none will wish or dare to become (their) 'fellow-travelers'.

**********

This is what Trotsky, a Jew, was preparing for the Russians for the implementation of Communism, which Marx based on the Babylonian Talmud for Gentiles:

"We should turn Her (Russia) into a desert populated with white Niggers. We will impose upon them such a tyranny that was never dreamt by the most hideous despots of the East. The peculiar trait of that tyranny is that it will be enacted from the left rather than the right and it will be red rather than white in color.

Its color will be red literally because we would spill such torrents of blood that they will pale all human losses of the capitalist wars and make the survivors shudder.

**********

Remember my children, that all the earth must belong to us Jews, and that the gentiles, being mere excrements of animals, must possess nothing. ~ Mayer Amschel Rothschild on his deathbed, 1812

**********

The largest overseas banks will cooperate with us most closely. If we win the Revolution and squash Russia, on the funeral pyres of its remains we will strengthen the power of Zionism and become a power the whole world would drop in the face of on its knees. We will show the world what real power means.

By way of terror and blood baths we will bring the Russian intelligentsia into a state of total stupor, to idiocy, to the animal state of being. So far our young men dressed in leather ~ the sons of watch repair men from Odessa and Orsha, Gomel and Vinnitza ~ oh, how beautifully, how brilliantly do they master hatred of everything Russian! With what a great delight do they physically destroy the Russian intelligentsia ~ officers, engineers, teachers, priests, generals, agronomists, academicians, writers!" ~ Secret Forces in History of Russia. U.K. Begunov 1995, p 148

**********

One of the finest things ever done by the mob was the Crucifixion of Christ. Intellectually it was a splendid gesture. But trust the mob to bungle the job. If I’d had charge of executing Christ, I’d have handled it differently. You see, what I’d have done was had him shipped to Rome and fed him to the lions. They could never have made a saviour out of mincemeat!”~ Rabbi Ben Hecht

**********

The only reason that Jews are in pornography is that we think that Christ sucks. Catholicism sucks.”~ Al Goldstein (publisher of Screw Magazine).

**********

"The difference between a Jewish soul and souls of non-Jews ~ all of them in all different levels ~ is greater and deeper than the difference between a human soul and the souls of cattle." ~ Rabbi Kook, the Elder, father of the messianic tendency of Jewish fundamentalism, said

**********

"You have not begun to appreciate the depth of our guilt. We are intruders. We are subverters. We have taken your natural world, your ideals, your destiny, and played havoc with them. We have been at the bottom of not merely the latest Great War, but of every other major revolution in your history.

We have brought discord and confusion and frustration into your personal and public life. We are still doing it. No one can tell how long we shall go on doing it. Who knows what great and glorious destiny might have been yours if we had left you alone." ~ Marclis Eli Ravage, Century Magazine February, 1926.

**********

"The United Nations is nothing but a trap-door to the Red World's immense concentration camp. We pretty much control the U.N." ~ Harold Wallace Rosenthal, Zionist, The Hidden Tyranny

**********

Very soon, every American will be required to register their biological property (that’s you and your children) in a national system designed to keep track of the people and that will operate under the ancient system of pledging. By such methodology, we can compel people to submit to our agenda, which will affect our security as a charge back for our fiat paper currency.

Every American will be forced to register or suffer being able to work and earn a living. They will be our chattels (property) and we will hold the security interest over them forever, by operation of the law merchant under the scheme of secured transactions. Americans, by unknowingly or unwittingly delivering the bills of lading (Birth Certificate) to us will be rendered bankrupt and insolvent, secured by their pledges.

They will be stripped of their rights and given a commercial value designed to make us a profit and they will be none the wiser, for not one man in a million could ever figure our plans and, if by accident one or two should figure it out, we have in our arsenal plausible deniability.

After all, this is the only logical way to fund government, by floating liens and debts to the registrants in the form of benefits and privileges. This will inevitably reap us huge profits beyond our wildest expectations and leave every American a contributor to this fraud, which we will call “Social Insurance.”

Without realizing it, every American will unknowingly be our servant, however begrudgingly. The people will become helpless and without any hope for their redemption and we will employ the high office (presidency) of our dummy corporation (USA) to foment this plot against America.” ~ American traitor, the Jew Edward Mandell House giving a very detailed outline of the New World Order plans that were to be implemented gradually over time to enslave the American people ... A PLAN THAT HAS BEEN REPEATED IN CANADA, AUSTRALIA, BRITAIN AND ELSEWHERE.

*******

"You throw a little Jewish on top of that, you got trouble. You got a bunch of wild, crazy energy.

"Sorry that doesn't sound hippie. Sorry that doesn't sound like communal jubilant fun. Sorry I'm not a Pepper. Sorry I didn't pop out of a soda-pop ad, and life is just one big fucking cabaret, because a lot of what propelled Van Halen, what compels me and propels me is precisely this element. It's fury. If you approach me with anti-Semetic preconceptions, I'm not here to re-educate. I come from a whole different school of thought. If you don't get it on the first try, fuck you.

"I once heard somebody say to the Van Halens, "You guys play the music; the Jew sells it." Well, you're fucking right. And now that I'm gone, Van Halen stinks. Okay?

"Want to know why some of my contributions to Van Halen sound like they do? Didn't come from a smiling place in my soul. Not at all.

"Nobody ever said to Mick Jagger, "So, Mick, you're Episcopalian, aren't you?" Nobody ever took Jimi Hendrix aside and said, "So, Jimi, you're a Baptist, aren't you?" Much less start off the interview that way.

"Every step I took on that stage was smashing some Jew-hating, lousy punk ever deeper into the deck. Every step. I jumped higher 'cause I knew there was going to be more impact when I hit those boards. And if you were even vaguely anti-Semetic, you were under my wheels, motherfucker. That's where the lyrics came from, that's where the body language came from, that's where the humor came from, and where the fuck you came from. All equally as important. You want to know the ingredients? Don't ask if you don't want to know.

"What you get from repression and what you get from hatred is fury, and fury was one of the main trigger points for the great Van Halen. What you see now is a bunch of buffoons waddling around at the family barbecue, and their wives admonishing the children saying, "Don't worry, Daddy's just had a few too many Coors Lights and he's imitating what he used to do for a living when he played music, honey."

"What's missing is the testosterone. What's missing is the fury. What's missing is the passionate convicted commitment. And I got a lot of mine from my religious background. So y'all best stop imagining the way Dr. Zorba looked, or some defenseless Hasidic Jew with a little yarmulke on his head, 'cause that ain't here for you." ~ David Lee Roth

**********

Rabbi Isaac Wise, in The Israelite of America writes, “Masonry is a Jewish institution whose history, degrees, charges, passwords, and explanations are Jewish from beginning to end

**********

“We infiltrated the Roman Catholic Church right from the very beginning. Why do you think the Pope, the Cardinals and all the Bishops wear yarlmulkahs? (skullcaps) The white race never figures this out. A thousand years later the white race began to wake up ... we had to come up with a plan B ... so we formed the Jesuits. There was a nice boy, Ignatius Loyola. He started the Jesuits.” (Loyola was Jewish. Research/read the Jesuit Extreme Oath) Regarding the Jesuits, quoting Rabbi Finkelstein

**********

Does worship of the Talmud pervade Judaism globally? Herman Wouk, Orthodox Jew and famed author of The Cain Mutiny, affirms, “The Talmud is to this day the circulating heart’s blood of the Jewish religion. Whatever laws, customs, ceremonies we observe ~ whether we are Orthodox, Reform,Conservative, or merely spasmodic sentimentalists ~ we follow the Talmud. It is our common law.”

**********
From Jews Must Liveby Samuel Roth, pg. 22. “The organ is diseased. This disease is a sort of moral gonorrhea known as Judaism, which, alas, seems to be incurable. If you have any doubts, look at any Jew ridden country in Europe. If you need to be further convinced, take a look at what is happening in the United States.”

*******

“Every synagogue we Jews build in a Christian country is a finger of scorn we point at our hosts; a sore finger we stick into their eyes, like the leering of a senile old woman who does all sorts of foul mischief before you, and feels safe in the knowledge that you will not lay hands on her for fear of contamination.” ibid., pg.

*******

Sen. Al Franken: One of the widely disseminated stories was that no Jews died in the collapse of the Trade Towers because they had received calls telling them not to go to work that day.

To tell you the truth, I got the Jew call. I had an office in the Trade Center where I used to do most of my writing. The call came from former New York mayor Ed Koch. “Al,” he told me, “don’t go to work on the twenty-third day of Elul [September 11, 2001.].”


*******

Tell me, do the evil men of this world have a bad time? They hunt and catch whatever they feel like eating. They don’t suffer from indigestion and are not punished by Heaven. I want Israel to join that club. Maybe the world will then at last begin to fear us…Maybe they will start to tremble, to fear our madness instead of admiring our nobility. Let them tremble, let them call us a mad state. Let them understand that we are a wild country, dangerous to our surroundings, not normal, that we might go crazy, that we might go wild and burn all the oil fields in the Middle East, or that we might start World War Three just like that. ~ Ariel Sharon