How the Soviet Union Seeded Antisemitism into The Nation
Changing minds is what Leninism and the Soviet empire were all about, and there is good reason to believe that The Nation became one of Leninism’s main tools for changing minds in the United States. In 1936, the Soviet espionage service was able to recruit one of the most important collaborators of The Nation, I.F. Stone, who was later eulogized as being on par with H.L. Mencken, Seymour Hersh, and William F. Buckley. According to recently revealed KGB documents in the Vassiliev Archive, Soviet espionage recruited Stone on ideological grounds and gave him the codename “Blin” (Russian for “pancake”).
In 1940, Soviet intelligence agent I.F. Stone became The Nation‘s Washington editor. Venona intercepts of Soviet espionage traffic in 1944 show that Stone was then given a new Soviet handler, Vladimir Pravdin, and that Stone told Pravdin that he would not be averse to having a “supplementary income.” Another top-secret NKVD cable to Moscow shows that Pravdin recommended to NKVD headquarters that if this “business” relationship were agreed upon, then Stone would have do his part and really produce.
Subsequent Venona intercepts show that by December 1944 the business relationship had worked out, and Stone was producing on subjects recommended to him by Moscow. Among those were condemning U.S. efforts to prevent communist expansion in Vietnam; belittling the FBI and embarrassing J. Edgar Hoover in the process; maligning Pope Pius XII and faulting the Catholic Church—the Kremlin’s archenemy—for the Nazi persecution of Jews; supporting the Kremlin’s efforts to persuade the world that there was no Soviet involvement in the JFK assassination; demonizing the Korean policies of John Foster Dulles, General MacArthur, and President Truman; and many, many similar issues. Even some of the issues Stone addressed for which he might today be hailed—including opposition to racial discrimination and McCarthyism—were at the time strictly in line with the Soviet position.
There exists compelling evidence showing that I.F. Stone’s efforts to transform The Nation into a Moscow mouthpiece were not only successful but also long-lasting. In a 1946 article published in The Nation, Walter Duranty (a former New York Times correspondent in Moscow, who in 1933 denied even the infamous famine in Russia that killed millions) “explained” to American readers that Stalin’s bloody purges of the 1930s, which had killed over seven million people, were just “a general cleaning out of the cobwebs [emphasis as in original] and mess which accumulate in any house.” The Nation represented Duranty’s laudatory view of Stalin mass assassinations as “the most enlightened, dispassionate dispatches from a great nation in the making which appeared in any newspaper in the world.”[vi]
During the Vietnam War, The Nation strongly supported U.S. enemies. For example The Nation‘s June 14, 1975, editorial read: ”The evidence is that in Cambodia the much-heralded blood bath that was supposed to follow the fall of Phnom Penh had not taken place. As for Vietnam, reports from Saigon indicate exemplary behavior. … There has been no evidence of a blood bath.”[vii]
I’ve never understood why the Jews are leftist inclined. Not only within the limits of the Democratic Party but out and out socialists. Why is that?
the Jews? All Jews?
What we call the Left today (and the Nation falls into that category) is an extension of the aristocratic radicalism of the 19th century, seeking to moderate and co-opt what looked like the red specter to them. They (the precursors to the welfare state) were all of them antisemitic, and blamed the Hebrew prophets of the Old Testament for stirring up the masses. I wrote about one instructive case here: http://clarespark.com/2012/10/07/christian-socialism-as-precursor-to-orwell/.
It is no accident that The Nation jumped all over Bibi’s speech as he cited the Hebrew prophets as the founders of civilization. That must have made Nation writers tear out their hair.
“What we call the Left today (and the Nation falls into that category) is an extension of the aristocratic radicalism of the 19th century, ”
Only a week ago, I would have dismissed that comment as so much pedantry or maybe just puzzled over it for a second and moved on. But just yesterday I finished chapter 4 of “Rise and Fall of the Third Reich on the influence of Houston Chamberlain and his writings on the shaping of Nazi anti-Semitism. I’d never heard of Chamberlain before. His book “Foundations of the 19th Century” shaped anti-Semitic thinking across the European aristocratic society, particularly in Germany, his adopted country. The very concept of the Aryan super-race that so enamored Hitler came from his pen. There was a reference in “Rise an Fall” to Houston being the cousin of a 19th century “Sir Neville Chamberlain,” a Royal Navy officer. I would find it historically eerie if the Neville Chamberlain of the 20th century turned out to be the aristocrat who set the match to the fuse that Houston Chamberlain fashioned with his psychotic theories.
So much to absorb here, the most interesting and counter-intuitive being that the most virulent and deadly anti-Semitic period in modern history being planted and enthusiastically cultivated by the liberal bourgeois political establishment – the 19th century equivalent of today’s limousine liberal class.
Follow up note…. My reference to 20th century Neville was trying to get at the question of whether he was a relative to Houston. Such a link, which seems likely, would be the “eerie” historical fact.
They were cousins Harry.
Traditionally European left wing parties are less nationalistic, conservative parties more nationalistic.
Nationalist movements in Europe viewed the Jews as a foreign entity and passed laws preventing inhibiting their advancement. German medical schools set a quota for jewish students — only so many were allowed in.
I once spoke to a Ukrainian and told him I had a Ukrainian friend. He told me that my freind was not Ukrainian, he was a jew. This is a completely alien way of thinking for 99.99% of Americans, but not in Europe.
I am sure there are more ins and outs to this question, but that is how I understand it.
But don’t forget that Hitler’s rise to power was done on the back of a left wing socialist party and Hitler soon turned his party towards a fascist economic model. In my opinion, most fascists start out as left wingers. ABO2012
VERY few understand where the convergence of revolutionary leftism (which is really a hybrid of communism/Marxism and socialism)and Islamism morph. For if they did, they would know that the goals of both are the same-the destruction of the west. Therefore, the likes of communist leadership, dovetails with the likes of the Iranian Hitler, and his Muslim Mafia counterparts, whether Sunni or Shia. They heart one another, regardless that one disdains organized religion, the other wants religion to subdue the world.
It is intrinsic to note too – that anti-semitism is the rallying cry behind all of them, regardless of their inner tribal warfare.
That being said, one needn’t wonder any longer why communists are seeking to destroy both the US & Israel, both of them western outposts of liberty. To be sure, there is NO other ‘ism’ which whips up the crowds, more than anti-semitism. WHENEVER a scapegoat is needed, the Jews are trotted out.
Moreover, few realize that the godfather of suicide terrorism-Arafat-was schooled in the Soviet Union under the KGB! In other words, they taught him all the warfare tactics he needed to kill the Jews – the ultimate morphing of communist and Islamic goals. Ain’t a friendship of mutual hatred grand?
In any case, what makes the Radical/Islamist-in-Chief so dangerous to America- as well as to Israel-is his symbiotic relationship between revolutionary leftism -his red side-and Islamism-his green side.
See – http://adinakutnicki.com/2012/10/05/if-it-looks-like-a-socialistmarxistcommunist-plan-it-is-peekingpeeling-back-into-obamas-looking-glass-his-surrogates-too-their-bomblets-waiting-to-explode-commentary-by-adina-kutnicki/
Case closed.
Thank you, Adina Kutnicki, for re-inforcing my oft-stated thought that Islam [Muslims of whatever 'nationality'] and the communists’ [of whatever 'nationality'] penetration, subversion and gradual encroachment inside our America have very similar and parallel tactics and strategy.
And, as an extension of sorts, as the Muslims wore away and eventually caused the withdrawal of the Soviets from that part of Asia, so must we wear away and encourage the factions and centuries-old divisions within the Muslims’ Islam everywhere they have established themselves; and weaken the Muslims’ gradual encroachment into our everyday lives with such as that new mosque in Middle Tennessee, of all places. Exploit their internal divisions before they’re further successful in exploiting our divisions here inside America.
No easy task, and demands a strong unified Congress and Executive…..we need lots of luck establishing that now in light of the “lawfare” advances our Muslim enemy has already made in our interior. Just look at our Congress and Executive right now….we’re in trouble…and refuse to admit it.
We Americans refuse to admit the reality of Muslim encroachment into our society. That ugly parallel of us refusing to accept the extent of Soviet penetration into America starting, I’d guess, in the 1920′s and increasing during the Second World War with their “purchasing missions” over here should be evident, but our electronically truncated attentions spans make all of that “so very yesterday”.
Now,….what’s it going to take to jar us out of our cloud of fluttering ostrich feathers?
Thank you, Mr. Pacepa. Many think that the Soviet use of the KGB in the US to undermine it is just a fable. Non-story. Many think your ideas are just hogwash, that the KGB was just runned by drunken fools who did not know what they were doing. But of course men like yourself know otherwise. What the KGB did in this country for more than 6 decades was a calculated and precise operation that defies imagination. They knew exactly what they were doing and left very little trace of what they did. I have read the Mitrokhin Archives and I’m stunned with what they got away with. The KGB, now the FSB, is most definitely a force to be reckoned with. And I hope the US wakes up to what the KGB has done in the past and what they are doing now.
….so must we Americans wake up right now to what the Muslims’ have accomplished so far inside our America.
Hmmm… Do I get it right: criticizing Netanyahu = antisemitism?
“…but antisemitism, that devastating weapon of the emotions so successfully wielded by Stalin….” Ahem, are you sure? Perhaps reading “200 Years Together” would help? Well, my apologies, forgot that Solzhenitsyn was antisemitic in this book. Very complicated all this.
What was “criticized” by the Nation? What is the nature of the critique,
Netanyahu’s politics? Niyet! His person and supposed personality disorders (crazy etc.).
Frankly, attacking Netanyahu for his personality is being generous. Crazy people are not in principle fully responsible for their behavior. The antisemitism slander thrown on his critics is a stretch, to say the least.
Religion aside, Israel is a very right wing country that is going to take a lot of flak for it. Colorful self-promoting leaders, there or in its neighbors, aren’t helping. They generate a lot of cheap chum for the internationalists.
Just what substance are you “high” on, anyway.
I’d like some.
So, Netanyahu is crazy and deserves to be called a sliglty deranged grandfather while Ahmadinejad’s personality deserves no explanation? What is the difference?
Oh that’s right, Ahmadinejad railed against capitalism and the west, thus his speech is not worthy of criticism at the Nation. While antisemitism may be tossed around loosely, at the root of antisemitism is selective ingnorance. So in this case, the shoe fits.
Israel has the state and social policies of a northern European socialist democracy. If they weren’t surrounded by actually fascist states, they would fit nicely into the EU — if the EU weren’t so hellbent on siding with unfree dictatorships that want to destroy Israel, that is.
Do you think Iran is a right-wing state?
And who are these “internationalists” to whom you refer? Try a little less incoherent in your trolling.
The Communists hate Pacepa almost as much as they hated Whittaker Chambers. They basically hate anyone who can label a Communist for what he really is, eh?
They had to use Leftist Attack #3:they attack the person, clothes, color of skin, religion, etc. They are unable to address the case or present ideas, pros and cons of the issue like an adult.
They are incapable of arguing his perception of threat and his description of when they are taking action verus when the US might do something.
It was a very elegant and clear description. He had to resort to the lowest common denominator, a cartoon, so that some people would be able to comprehend. Comprende?
Casting Netanyahu the way Dreyfus does is either anti-Semitic or reveals a frothing personal animus toward Bibi. You can’t call it objective analysis. As for which of the two it is, anti-Semitism certainly segues with the Nation’s outlook, and with the nutjob perspective of Dreyfuss. From Dreyfuss’ Wikipedia page: “His 1981 book, Hostage to Khomeini, was commissioned by Lyndon LaRouche …The book discusses how various officials in the Carter administration believed that an Islamic Iran could export the Islamic revolution to the Soviet Muslims and cause a break-up of the Soviet Union.This did indeed happen with a rise in an Islamic insurgency inside the Soviet Union which led to its breakup.” There’s more: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Dreyfuss If anyone is “insane,” it’s Dreyfuss.
By a guy named “Dreyfuss”? Really”? WOW!
God’s Dep’t. of Irony is working overtime again, I see!
And the wonder of it all is that he (I.F. Stone) was born Isidor Feinstein.
Just one more example of how leftist dogma trumps all including religion, ethnicity, race, economic status, and sex.
One must already favor control over freedom in order to be a socialist lap dog. The Nation was founded by Northeastern Whigs who had just recently used the Federal Government to smash the south and its slave owners. These were people who opposed slavery most certainly, but being descendents of old Puritan stock they were not opposed to the idea of “ordered liberty”, a trait shared by more than a few abolitionists. After the magazine was sold to Henry Villard in 1881 the guiding principle was not particularly different. In 1887, William Dean Howells, a writer for the nation, fought for the anarchists that were convicted of the infamous Haymarket bombing. Something “progressives” still get their panties in a knot over. Villard would be a founding member of the NAACP, would fight for womens suffrage and Trade union law reform. Yet he also gave voice to constant socialist Presidential candidate Norman Thomas, grandfather of Time magazine Editor Evan Thomas. Much like Horace Greeley of The New York Tribune, whose European correspondent was Karl Marx, Villard championed many freedoms we take for granted today BUT and this is the most important aspect to understanding where we are today, he did so under a socialist construct.
Many of the players from The Nation were also involved with The Atlantic, Harpers Weekly and more mainline papers like the Tribune. Edwin Godkin, who became editor of The Nation in 1865, announced that the magazine would advocate legislation that would support “equal distribution of the fruits of progress and civilization”.
Interestingly enough because of his oppostion to FDR, Villard is placed on the “Old Right” as are many other old left. They were pacifists who believed Roosevelt was deliberately leading the country to war and many of them participated in the America First Committee, as was both Villard and his Socialist friend Norman Thomas.
As Woodrow Wilson before him did, Roosevelt would split the various Progressives, Socialists and Communist groups into factions that didn’t agree with his war policy. That however did not change the fact that all three groups believed and continue to believe, that government is the purveyor of “ordered liberty”.
Never forget that while the Puritan’s came here for religious freedom, they did so ONLY for their own version, Quakers and other non English version Calvinists were not welcome in Massachusetts. Today the primary religion of the old Puritan stomping ground is liberalism, a cultural version of Puritanism without the bother of God. Having grown from both New England Transcendenalism and Abolitionists Barack Obama is their crowning glory.
And understanding the history of The Nation or The New Republic or The New York Tribune is essential to understanding the old media’s protection of Obama as well of its embrace of all branches of “ordered liberty”.
The KGB did not corrupt The Nation, the magazine embraced communism for the same reason it once embraced Progressivism and socialism. Because those who run it see those things as vehicles to “purify” a society in much the same way their intellectual ancestors believed their way was the ONLY way to purify a corrupted religion. Today we simply have non- ecclesiasticial Puritans fighting for control.
We would do well to recall what happened when Oliver Cromwell gained fontrol of England.
As a New Englander who grew up reading I.F. Stone’s Weekly I thank you for a deeper dive into the history of the American left. It is a perfect counterpoint to Pacepa’s European view of the American left. You are right there is a homegrown pre Marxist left that has some remarkably paternalistic notions of how society should be run. Roger Williams founding of Rhode Island as a colony that welcomed all religions puts Puritan intolerance in clear relief. While Obama’s Marxist roots are important I have read that his Hawaiian prep school was founded by New Englanders.! So was Harvard. I agree there is an older layer of ‘progressive’ American thinking at work in our president and those who enable him.
The myth of McCarthyism lives on, despite his vindication by the Kremlin files. It wasn’t Senator McCarthy, but the House Un-American Activities Committee that led investigations into communist infiltrators inside the US government. How long will it take before the truth replaces the old lies? (“Dupes” is a good place to start, as it combines the Russian files with FOI information from US archives.)
Leftists in the US have always sided with the latest anti-American, anti-freedom kooks in the world….Now it’s the jihadists who hate Christians and Jews. However, where would magazines be without a free market to peddle their ads and subscriptions? Most of them are now in sharp decline as the American people are overwhelmingly tolerant of other’s beliefs; otherwise, we wouldn’t still exist. They live in a safe place and have no concept of what life in Israel really is.
Look at the economies in the Muslim world to find the probable key to anti-Jewishism and anti-Americanism. Studies show the lack of a chance at a better life, ie, ultra-high unemployment for young people, for decades. Gallup’s International Polls show the #1 thing people want is a good job. The Heritage Foundation has an in-depth studies – the total lack of free markets and corruption are the main features of these countries’ economies. Perhaps it’s the same old trick by despots – blame someone else for your own failures. Unfortunately, Israel is in the geographical center of such.
“When Money Dies”, a history of Germany after WWI from archives of the era, written by a Scottish economist in the late 1970′s, documents what happened that led to Hitler’s demagoguery. In that case, Jewish bankers seem to have been in the wrong place at the wrong time.
The Cato Institute has an article on the hyperinflation that is happening in Iran, which apparently started with the sanctions on trade. How long before the place erupts? If I were living in Israel, I’d be very afraid.
How well I remember the aura & prestige that surrounded Stone, and from many of the “reputable” sources. A speaker to power, an independent mind, a must read, yes, & a communist stooge. A friend of mine always went to the Stone column, swore by it. I guess it shows the close ideological connections of general leftism to the nastier, more powerful thing. You didn’t hear much though when the truth came out.
Israel is hated, it is civilized, democratic, wishes only to be left alone. Maybe that’s the problem in some of the more tortured, destructive minds of the left. I’m 72 years old, a Roman Catholic, it is inexpressibly sad to have witnessed the gradual perversion in the attitudes towards this nation, not only anti-semetic but murderous.
And Obama isn’t helping.
What a well-spoken and honest sentiment. My father feels the same pain when reminded of how far Israel has been dragged down by her adversaries since her victory of 1967. After the 6-Day War, Israel went from the weak under-dog looked on fondly by the Left to “part of the military-industrial complex” and member of many other such evil-sounding cabals. Becoming a winner did not endear Israel to the Left.
My only conclusion is that many people are only happy to support Jews if and when they are lying & bleeding in the street (dying nobly). They prefer “their Jews” roll over and die, rather than, gasp, actually picking up arms to deliver a resounding victory — especially via a preemptive strike. The nerve of those stiff-necks!
The world has made Israel pay for that victory ever since.
– FF
Spread this, it is going to be a problem for Obama and his pals.
As Obama’s cover story comes down, the curtain goes up on the USAO’s cover-up of J.J., Jr.’s role in the Blago story
http://illinoispaytoplay.com/2012/10/05/as-obamas-cover-story-comes-down-the-curtain-goes-up-on-the-usaos-cover-up-of-j-j-jr-s-role-in-the-blago-story/
“Changing minds is what Leninism and the Soviet Empire were all about”–it is also what Obama’s education reforms are all about as well as what the UN is pushing globally. I worked this weekend on tracking this some more and was able to get an open declaration that both the education assault and the Sustainability assault and what would become Agenda 21 all tracked back to the 1972 Stockholm Conference on the Human Environment.
While we were celebrating our victory over Communism and the fall of the Berlin Wall, ecology and education and communitarianism all became means of gaining the long term victory over individualism, capitalism, and industrialization itself. Because control is apparently more important than widespread prosperity.
http://www.invisibleserfscollar.com/so-now-common-core-rejects-individual-thinking-to-embrace-soviet-psychology-ecology/ may be full of insights I have painstackingly researched and pulled together. I have no doubt that the implications of using Vygotsky’s socio-cultural theory and Bronfenbrenner Ecological Systems Theory in American and Western schools is well known in many circles. And that is apart from the desired emotional/psychological emphasis for the classroom coming in under absurd interpretations of federal civil rights laws and disabilities laws and the terms of those NCLB waivers on Positive School Climate.
Nothing that was going on in either the Soviet Union or Eastern Europe appears to be missing. I am not so certain freedom cannot be extinguished if the chains are mental and psychological and thus invisible. It’s not like we have the Disappeared and food lines and gulags to clue us in to the assault.
Raise your hand if you think it is coincidental that Peter Dreier of Occidental decided last week was a good time to eulogize Barry Commoner when his ecological dream is finally being actively pursued via Education for Sustainable Development and Peter Senge’s Systems Thinking in both Big Business and education and pushing computer modelling on schoolchildren based on Jay Forester’s systems dynamics and the notorious Club of Rome’s Limits to Growth assumptions.
http://www.thenation.com/print/article/170251/remembering-barry-commoner
I had never heard of Commoner until I realized educators were planning to use education to convince American schoolchildren of the need to implement his ecological and economic vision.
This is an excellent piece, exposing matters that should not remain hidden in history. That said, I.F. Stone–for whom I harbor very few positive feelings of any kind–had a complicated relation with Israel; unlike his relation with the Communist International, which was one of unswerving support. At the beginning of Israel’s nationhood, Stone felt that Israel might turn out a socialist society and admired the kibbutz collective movement. He wrote two books sympathetic to the Jewish community, “Underground to Palestine” and “This Is Israel”. This was actually in line with Stalin’s policy. After the Six-Day War, Stone, who had never stopped towing the Soviet line, became one of Israel’s nastiest opponents. If anyone were interested, a “hidden history” of Stone’s relationship with Zionism and Israel would make good reading.
A particular kind of tree needs the right soil and climate to produce fruit. Stone was one kind of tree, the business enterprise, The Nation, another. It’s rare to find a tree or fruit that doesn’t do well somewhere in the US of A. In any case, EVEN IF Stone was in the employ of Moscow, so what? He was just a unregistered foreign agent in that case. Are you for free enterprise or for a fascist police state?
If Stone and Moscow found a ready market in the US, so what? What their market sought is a need unfulfilled domestically and WHY was that?
I’ll reply to you because you appear to be speaking earnestly:
According to this article, Stone was not speaking just for himself. Readers should know who is behind the Washington Editor of a political magazine with a large circulation, not just to be able to make informed decisions in a democracy, but more particularly, when there appears to be strong evidence that it is a hostile power that has the ability to obliterate us.
I doubt that the KGB, in the open, would have the circulation and the respect it would, allegedly, have had with a widely-read Washington Editor of a popular political magazine.
Well, I read the Dreyfuss article, and I don’t see how anybody can honestly describe it as “anti-semitic”. Not unless you equate any and all criticism of a specific israeli leader’s foreign-policy agenda as being evidence of anti-semitism, and I’m sure that nobody here would do that.
Maybe there are other articles in The Nation that really _are_ hateful toward jews, but that article right there isn’t one of them.
That netanyahu thought he needed to do his show-and-tell at the general assembly suggests that his arguments aren’t cutting any ice with the whitehouse. Judging from history, they never have. Bush never bombed iran either, despite the eager predictions in his last year. Romney is no more likely to go down that path than obama is – neither of them is insane, and neither of them regards iranian lives as inconsequential.
There might well come a time when iran does indeed pose a real existential threat to israel. Let’s hope that doesn’t happen. But if it does, I don’t think it will make a lot of difference who is in the whitehouse – the response from the US will be the same one. It will come to israel’s defense, just as it always has in the past. Nobody wants to attack iran without good cause, because (apart from it being just plain wrong) the consequences will be enormous. The possibility that maybe one day there’s a chance that iran might pose a direct threat to somebody is not sufficient cause.
Iran might be a potential, one-day nuclear power. But israel is an ACTUAL nuclear power, with the most capable conventional military in the region to boot. Iran will not start a nuclear exchange with israel – they’re not suicidal.
And conflating debate about israel’s politics with antisemitism isn’t as smart as folks seem to think. It ticks off people who would otherwise be supportive of israel by calling them antisemites, and it means that you dilute a word that you really do need to describe actual psychos who hate jews. When “antisemite” has become just a word to describe people who disagree with a certain set of israeli policies, what are you going to use to describe people who genuinely hate people just for being jewish? You’re going to have to come up with a new word, because the old one doesn’t mean anything any more.
When the whole world stands inert and deaf to the ever growing threats by the Teheran fanatic government , the left, the extreme-left and the mainstream media system will always focus on Israel rather than on the agressor.Turn your head to the other side, do not worry, everything will be cool, do not overreact, stay cool: All those nice medical prescriptions are directed at Israel and NEVER EVER at the Iranians fanatics. The same kind of pseudo-reasonning apply in the US presidential debate : Obama thinks before he acts vs.Romney shoots from the hip.This is a grotesque caricature very common in left wing circles. The culprit is the guy who does not accept to be a victim and the aggressor is at best described as unimportant. So when Netanyahu turns to graphic illustration of the iranian nuclear race he is too much explicit, since an image is worth a thousand words ? And when Ahmadinejad spit another venomous threat he is just excused and ignored ?. Would you tolerate Mr techno, that your condo floor’s neighbour tots a gun at your head, aims at you from his balcony but still you would ignore him because you know the gun is without bullets ? And when would you call the police ? When the gun would be loaded ? Or only when the lunatic neighbour would pull the trigger ? Or only when the bullet would travel to your head ?
“All those nice medical prescriptions are directed at Israel and NEVER EVER at the Iranians fanatics”
Erm … I assume you do realise that iran does have UN-mandated sanctions against it? The problem isn’t that nobody thinks they’re a problem. The problem is that there aren’t any easy solutions.
And iran is nowhere NEAR the point of pointing a gun at somebody. Try to remember that it doesn’t actually have the gun (where “gun” is obviously a metaphor for nuclear weapons – don’t go shifting the goalposts, please).
Iran currently doesn’t have a bomb. It doesn’t even have the fuel for a bomb. It sure as heck doesn’t have a delivery system for a bomb. When it gets a bomb (and I think we will know when that happens – not least because they’ll tell us), they will have to test it. At that point, it will not at all be “too late”. At THAT point, the world goes and shifts a few cruise missile launchers up to the border and says “it ends here”.
As I said – iran might get a bomb one day, but israel already has an arsenal and it has the backing of the US. In the staggeringly unlikely case that iran manages to get a bomb to israel and it goes off, that will be the end of tehran. The cost to the iranian people will be inconceivable. Israel doesn’t need the world’s backing to do that – it can just go ahead and do it. That’s the threat that iran faces if it ever tries to properly threaten israel. And that’s why they won’t do it.
The problem with a rational analysis is that is does not explain all of the data.
Iran is clearly not acting rationally in the way we want to understand it.
First, what does Iran get with its near daily threats to annihilate Israel? What is the motive for that? There is clearly a big downside for them as is attracts a lot of negative consequence around the world and has not won them support among muslims.
It is not like Israel has any desire to conquer or destroy Iran just for being who they are. Egypt and Lebanon have deep seated hatred of Israel and at least somewhat understandable fear and loathing towords it in addition to antisemitism yet they do not holler for its destruction every day like the Iranians do. Why?
The Iranians have been unique in pursuing their nuclear bomb right in front of everybody. Sure it made sense for Israel or Pakistan because they could do it in secret so the political cost was low. Iran has near destroyed their country for this.
They have left themselves as a result with a paper mache military and dramitically worsened their own security to get the bomb. Why? What do they want to do with it? If they wanted regional hegemony all they had to do was play nice, spend that oil money and have the best Russian equipped military in the region. Back in the day Israel and the US sold weapons to the Shah.
MAD is a game that requires rational players. Iran has sacrificed its own well being and defense for its pusuit of something which you think they can never use. What sane person or people would do that? They are not stupid even if they are irrational. When a human or animal harms itself for no good reason we call that ‘pathologic’ and understand that they are either sick or crazy. Side point, they do not need to test a weapon, Israel never has so far as we know.
The only explaination is that they have every intention of using those weapons and they have made it clear what they intend to do with that. It is logical if you understand deep religious faith. The leaders believe that destruction of the hated Jewish state will bring about a messianic era and so is worth any risk and sacrifice. It is not just for themselves or Iran it is for the benefit of all mankind forever.
“Iran is clearly not acting rationally in the way we want to understand it”
It looks rational enough to me. They’re downright predictable, actually.
“First, what does Iran get with its near daily threats to annihilate Israel?”
It isn’t actually “daily”, it generally happens at political events.
“What is the motive for that?”
Domestic politics. Pure and simple. They’ve built a political cult around being anti-west. Israel is seen as a proxy for the US and unfriendly western interests and, just as bashing muslims is popular in the US (although china’s making a come-back), bashing israel is popular in iran. Ahmedinejad says stupid crap about the west and israel, he gets votes.
“It is not like Israel has any desire to conquer or destroy Iran just for being who they are”
And vice versa. Iran’s history isn’t one of conquest or expansionism. They’re just using israel as a domestic political punching bag. As it happens … that’s what israel does as well.
“The Iranians have been unique in pursuing their nuclear bomb right in front of everybody”
Let’s assume they’re actually aiming for a bomb (something that could still be untrue – I don’t completely trust anyone involved in that debate, including iran, but not all experts agree that iran has any interest in a bomb). The only reason they’re doing it out in the open is that they got caught. Their nuclear program USED to be in secret, like everyone else’s.
“They have left themselves as a result with a paper mache military and dramitically worsened their own security to get the bomb”
I don’t see that. They’ve always been corralled, and their dodgy military is a leftover from when their parts-supplier cut off ties.
“Why? What do they want to do with it? If they wanted regional hegemony all they had to do was play nice, spend that oil money and have the best Russian equipped military in the region”
But they’ve never shown any indication of wanting regional hegemony. Meddling, sure – but everyone meddles in the middle-east.
“Iran has sacrificed its own well being and defense for its pusuit of something which you think they can never use. What sane person or people would do that?”
That’s what pakistan did. You could argue that israel did that, to some extent. It cost a significant fraction of the US GDP to get its program off the ground. It cost the british enormous internal political strife. Nuclear weapons are difficult – which is why most countries figured they were better off agreeing not to go there.
“they do not need to test a weapon, Israel never has so far as we know”
Erm …
The rest of your post is standard “they’re just not like us” demonization. There’s nothing new about any of it.
I find myself totally disagreeing with the main point of the paper: neither Stone nor Chomsky, Dreyfus (the journalist), Naturey Karta, etc. are antisemitic. As well as the Obama-voting Jews are not antisemitic. They are active or passive anti-Israelis, sometimes unwillingly. Frankly speaking, they are collaborators of such people as Ahmadinejad in actively preparing the murder of my children (I live in Israel).
Though generally I more than agree with the statement that Russia/USSR propagated antisemitism in its most monstrous forms (the proof list is infinite), this definition does not fit here.
“In 2004, The Nation heavily advertised a book, Unmasking Israel’s Most Dangerous Myths, which loudly proclaimed the Holocaust to be fictional. The book labeled the Holocaust a ‘historical myth cited to justify Zionist aggression and repression.’”
This is gotcha-ism. The Nation did not advertise Unmasking Israel’s … Myths at all, much less heavily. The Nation accepted an advertisement from the notorious Institute for Historical Review, touting the book, which they had published.
I have very little use for The Nation, but I’d be extremely surprised if that advertisement ran more than once. That it got in once was probably carelessness by an employee in the advertising sales department.
Scum like the IHR work constantly to gain association with respectable entities. When they succeed, the target should be spanked for carelessness, but not perpetually condemned – unless the target doesn’t clean its house.
I’m fully on board with the anti-Israel = anti-Semitic argument. Israel is a European style coalition democracy who’s only apparent crimes are unlucky geography and cultural incompatibility with the medieval Muslim
states surrounding it. If through some evil crack in the space-time continuum Israel were to instantaneously transform into a Muslim state, is anyone dumb enough to think the surrounding Muslim countries would still be calling for its annihilation? Well, that’s what progressives would have us believe.
IM Pacepa & IF Stone seem to share a curious facial resemblance.
Then again, I only hate Jews who actually commit the heinous acts of international corruption, high-level financial chicanery, and slow native genocide through the undermining of national institutions and support of massive foreign immigration.
Obviously, the different life choices of two similar faces teaches you not to judge books by their cover, or even the jacket blurb.
But maybe the real story is something like this:
Just as liberals see 1984 as more of an instruction manual than a warning, so the Soviets saw the International Jew as more of a useful tactic and unassailable ally in undermining America than a reprehensible life outcome that should be shunned by patriotic citizens. Therefore they fully funded and participated with leftist international Jews in America, and had the chutzpah to accuse innocent Jews of their own crimes.
Thus their sin redounds back on them, for now it is the apparatus of the US government, filled with those educated under the US public school system they corrupted, which supports the Pussy Riots of the world, corrupts ‘pro-democracy’ NGOs with its socially liberal and economically demanding agenda, and will be beholden to China’s interests above Russia.
Those who refuse to confess will be devoured by the evil they sowed.