Michael Neumann's article on "anti-Semitism" and the response

http://www.counterpunch.com/neumann01072003.html

Response to Michael Neumann's "Blame Yourself: American Power and Jewish Power"
(An examination of Neumann's thesis which should be more correctly entitled "In Defense of the Jews")

By Chad Powers
January 2003

In modern times, the essence of pan-Jewish identity isn't religion, race, or ethnicity. It is communal self-defense, collective dissimulation, and apologetics. For many Jews there remains the traditional hostility to the non-Jew (sometimes personified as "Christians," "WASPs," etc., but increasingly turning into "Muslims" and "Arabs.") Look at Israel. The self-described "Jewish state" -- international emblem of Jewish legend -- embodies, and exemplifies, these characteristics. It really doesn't matter if one is an Orthodox Jew or a dedicated Marxist. Fear, shame, rage, and other psychic wounds emanating from the "Holocaust" are the base of modern Jewish identity, the ultimate chain that binds. Those of Jewish descent who don't subscribe to this fundamental tenet tend to leave the ethnocentric fold (these people are defined in Jewish terms as "self-haters," socialized by non-Jewish culture to loathe their roots.) Such self-critics make fast tracks away from the Jewish clan which, by traditional Orthodox law (and even secular dictate), literally refuses to let go of them.

Review modern self-appraisal in Jewish literature these days and you'll find that Jews don't really know what they are today as a community. All they can agree upon is the "anti-Semitic" threat (and, hence, an almost hysterical allegiance to Israel, its nuclear bombs, and institutional apartheid). Hitler, after all, followed Jewish racist form in checking genealogical pedigrees in rounding up -- to his criteria -- anyone "Jewish." This net of course caught Jews across the entire political spectrum. No Jew (at least those who define themselves as "Jewish") today has forgotten that. Because this is what a Jew means in modern Jewish consciousness. Victim. The Persecuted. (Of course, this conviction has always been pretty much so in Jewish history, but that's a religious story for another time).

Given that Jews only know themselves as victims, have successfully erased the more unpleasant parts of their collective history from public view, and have socialized everyone else to believe their convictions of chronic disadvantage even as they dominate vast portions of American culture, it follows that defense of the Jewish collective (however one defines it) is paramount in the Jewish psyche and that ANY seed of anti-Jewish hostility must be forbidden from ever taking root again. Who knows where it could lead to, this conviction holds, once let out of the box? That's why Jews are so vehement in resisting even the slightest criticism of their community, whether one focuses on Israel, the tenets of the Old Testament, the self-defined Jewish personality trait of aggressive "chutzpah," Jewish power and influence, or anything else. Criticize Jews in general? That's a stereotype. Criticize Christians in general. That's history.

And that's why the vast Thought Police web about all this has so deeply taken hold upon us all in America. Despite the fact that the Jewish community assails with regularity every group from WASPs to African-Americans (deemed to be the most "anti-Semitic" ethnic group in America by Jewish survey after survey), Jews institutionally refuse anyone the right to speak about them from the same critical perspective. And "Jews the Victims" have the enormous, unchallenged power -- as anyone can easily witness its censorial blanket around us -- to enforce this dual standard.

Michael Neumann, who is Jewish, has written some fine articles in recent months condemning the racist state of Israel. They are courageous. For this, going against the Zionist grain, all righteous people should thank him. But his firm reluctance to face the reasons for the state of Israel (i.e., Jews and massive Jewish influence throughout American culture in the formation of public opinion) is quite strange. But not really surprising. Because it is quite the norm among those who -- for whatever reason -- hold some sort of allegiance to what is known and understood as "Jewish."

The problem is that ethnocentric, dissimulating, apologetic Jews are everywhere -- in the right-wing movement, in the left-wing movement, neo-cons, Libertarians, Scientologists ... You name it. And what is the common denominator of a Zionist, a Jewish "neo-conservative," and the likes of a Jewish atheist? It is the defense of "being Jewish" (and there is no clear consensus about what exactly this means -- except mutual Jewish allegiance against what's called "anti-Semitism") and an activist deflection of collective responsibility for a history of Jewish chauvinism, exploitation, and ethnocentrism.

So what is the common denominator of pan-Jewish unity? The details of the ideology of Zionism? No. Most Jews are not "card-carrying" Zionists. Is it religion? No. Modern Jewry is diverse in their religious beliefs, or lack of them. Rather, Jewish allegiance to each other today is founded upon the conviction that Jews in their Diaspora are always at risk to the periodic surfacing of Gentile "anti-Semitism." While this is certainly part of Zionist ideology, and Judaism too, a Jew does not have to buy all the rest of the Zionist package to believe in the state of Israel as a last defensive/offensive resort for world Jewry, a crucial buttress against hostility towards Jewish power and chauvinism.

Do Jews gather en masse in secret backrooms to decide the fate of the world? No. Of course not. But common Jewish conviction and communal political and social activism -- per intra-Jewish loyalty and collective designs for protection and prosperity -- is both real and measurable. Jewish organizations conduct surveys about Jewish allegiance and mutual support (financial and otherwise) for Israel and international Jewry all the time. And the endless Jewish declaration that Jewish ethnocentrism is as benign as any other ethnic American group's self-interest melts away at close inspection. It is not Armenian-Americans, nor French-Americans, nor Native Americans, nor African-Americans who dominate so much of popular American culture, nor is it these who are empowered with an intrinsic fear of the Ethnic Other (who might rise up against the dominant ethnic power) as its foundation of identity.

But, of course, there are exceptions to every rule, of course. Like Mr. Neumann, a few Jews here and there are active in the anti-Israel movement, but as measure of the strength of pan-Jewish ethnocentric power in American culture, and its omnipresence, it is CRUCIAL not to offend those going against the mainstream Jewish grain, lest they abandon the anti-Israel cause. To do so would bankrupt the pro-Palestinian movement, because credibility rests with Jews in Western culture, not with Arabs. Certainly per the Middle East. Hmmm. And why would that be? Jewish dominance of coal mines?

Mr. Neumann postulates that enormous Jewish power in American government is illusory because "A Zionist US government would have suppressed all anti-Israel material as 'hate literature' or terrorist propaganda." He concludes, then, that such powerful Zio-centrism is a fallacy. What he discretely neglects to mention, of course, is that the Jewish Lobby that's as weak as he'd like you to think is actually powerful enough to have evoked its defensive ethnocentrism one better. It has successfully suppressed not anti-Zionist material as "hate literature," but, rather, that which encompasses it: i.e., ALL and ANY "anti-Jewish" critical material is popularly held to be, categorically, the epitome of "hate." The Anti-Defamation League and Simon Wiesenthal Center are the best known agencies that have institutionalized this scenario. This is, in fact, amazing power: the Jewish community has the ability to stigmatize -- and thereby completely diffuse -- ANY criticism coming its way, without public forum whatsoever.

Look. You know and I know that there's a scam here. If you need to counter one of the many pro-Zionist Jews who own a newspaper, facts themselves about the Middle East won't really help you. Short of owning your own newspaper (or a subversive friend who'd risk his job in the editorial office), your only hope for even the smallest gain in this ideological war is to hold up your own Jew, even if you've only got a handful against the Other Side which lines the Star of David from horizon to horizon. As few Jews as you might have, at least this has the wonderful effect of countering -- at least in symbolic degree -- the inevitable charge of "anti-Semitism" which has for a long time now been used as a tool throughout modern society to silence dissent about anything Jewish and anything Israeli. Such is the dimension of Jewish power and influence. It is immense. It is so immense that a Jew is even necessary to afford the credibility to legitimately challenge Jewish hegemony. It's quite like the field of law (where Jews also, of course, have enormous influence): you get your psychiatrist to testify for the defense, and I'll get my psychiatrist to testify for the prosecution. In the debate before the judge and jury, lain before the altar of the socialized platitudes of Jewish victimology culture, ideological combatants must each have their own Jew to -- if not seize the higher moral ground -- at least make sure they don't lose it. The term for this, sometimes bantered about in Jewish circles, is Jewry's "moral capital." The gold mine for this, of course, is what's known by any socialized grade school kid in America as the "Holocaust," wherein Jewish victimization is supra-heroized as the embodiment of innocence and righteousness, a moral contagion that is publicly held to permeate all spheres of Jewish endeavor. And that has traditionally been held, however bizarrely, to be included in the justification for the racist state of Israel.

So it's kosher -- if barely, and precariously -- for a Jew to go against the Jewish grain and criticize Israel. Of course, on the other hand, if in defense of the Palestinian people a non-Jew decided to criticize the heart of the Palestinian problem -- Jewish identity, Jewish history, and enormous Jewish power which created, informs, and defines the existence of Zionism -- all is lost. Because then your few "good" Jews would feel alienated, offended even. Is it not unjust to include them within the category of "Jew" in the otherwise massive Jewish chain of allegiance to Israel? Must we not delineate, like seeds from the fruit, the "Jew" from the "Zionist?" And, hence, it will be inevitably declared, in the usual Catch-22 Doublethink, that criticizing the self-declared Jewish Chosen People notion -- the origin of Jewish identity, and the recurrent theme of Jewish justification for ideological existence, in one form or another -- is itself "racist." Without a Jew or two, then, the Palestinians would be left to their struggle on their own, Jewish-less, which -- against the massive Jewish/Zionist propaganda wall against them everywhere in America, and non-Jewish indifference -- means that, as little as their side of the story is ever heard with the few "good Jews," it would be heard EVEN LESS without them. Probably a public forum of about zero.

And, of course, the Palestinian war for human dignity and justice cannot be won by throwing stones at tanks in and around Israel. The war is here, in America. It is a grotesquely one-sided propaganda war, and those Jews who cluster throughout the institutions of public opinion-making have free reign to define the world for all, to their liking. Even a few token Jews once and a while on the Palestinian side, and their attendant "moral capital," is needed in maintaining any sort of ideological battle against what can be fairly described as chronic Jewish injustice.

This all informs Mr. Neumann's recent work about Jewish power throughout America, this power's centrality in the anti-Palestinian propaganda war, and his refusal to take (Jewish) responsibility for it. Jews are victims always, after all. Even the fact that they dominate so much of American society is -- to Mr. Neumann's taste -- not their fault. "Blame yourself" non-Jewish America. Indeed. And while you're at it, make sure you take responsibility for the entirety of the worst of Jewish history and identity too. Nazis killed Jews (and so did Christians, and Poles, and Russians, and on and on, and now Muslims) and Jews have always been innocent of everything. Nothing else matters in history but this innocence. Is that not so?

Neumann's own Jewish victimhood motif even goes so far to claim that Jews are not responsible for the creation of immoral Israel. No, no. Not the Jewish/Zionist lobbying group that had been incessantly lobbying American presidents for decades, buying off the Democratic Party (and now the Republicans), exploding today with pro-Israel fanatics bursting out from the Jewish crowd from the very White House windows.

Neumann's displacement goes this far: What is the reason for Israel? GENTILES are to blame, of course. American fears of communism built Israel. Egypt's Nasser built Israel. "The real culprits in the story of Jewish influence in America," says Neumann, "are the people who let it all happen. These are the non-Jewish Americans who, in their opposition to Israel, are so timid that a couple of words from Alan Dershowitz would send them all scuttling like cockroaches back to their dark corners."

Not only are Gentiles to blame for the quintessential expression of Jewish identity (Israel) in modern times, but Neumann offers up the usual Jewish dual moral standard in defense of his position. Non-Jews, he says, in a flare of poetic license, are like cockroaches. Oh, really? Can anyone imagine a Gentile author publicly calling generic Jews, whatever the context, whatever the rhapsodic flare, "scuttling cockroaches" hurrying "back to their dark corners," and have his career survive after it? Think about this. Again, it is an expression of power. Jewish power. Mr. Neumann, as a Jew, can say just about anything he'd like. Trent Lott says something nice about Strom Thurmond and gets crucified for it. Louis Farrakhan calls Judaism a "gutter religion" in some never-discussed context and gets tarred and feathered by the Jewish Lobby. Mr. Neumann can allude to non-Jews, categorically, as "scuttling cockroaches" (and a similar referral to "cockroaches in a bottle" about Palestinians was made by an Israeli general, Raphael Eitan, a few years ago and is now part of the pro-Palestinian folklore of articulated Israeli racism) and, despite the multicultural minefields where the slightest offense to Ethnic Others can ruin careers, Neumann hasn't a worry in the world. That, my friends, in our multicultural world, is power.

Mr. Neumann also states that Jewish activism to create the Jewish state was not "decisive." American antagonism to Soviet communism was "decisive" in the creation of the Jewish state. By this kind of argument we can also "decisively" blame Hitler for Israel, as well as Goyim "anti-Semitism," the nice beach at Eilat, and the Good Tooth Fairy. Neumann's form of argument is standard in Jewish circles. Another version of it goes like this: Is the Jewish community in any way responsible for Jewish "self-hatred" (Jewish anti-Semitism), which has had so many adherents that it is a tradition in the Jewish community? No. Of course not. Jews who are disgusted with Jewish chauvinism and ethnocentrism have merely -- in their attempts to assimilate with non-Jewish society -- internalized irrational Gentile prejudices and bigotry. It is an echo of Gentile anti-Semitism, and Jewish self-hatred actually has nothing whatsoever to do with Jews. Hence, on all counts -- from the recognition among some self-critical Jews that their community is morally troubled to the very formation of the "Jewish state for Jews," Jews, like Mr. Neumann, hold their community to be immune from criticism.

In Neumann's topsy-turvy world, we must even drag in the inevitable Judeo-centric Freudian psychobabble. Of course. Neumann's Jewish power-mongers are -- after all -- declared by him to be "eunuchs." Is that also somehow a central motif to, say, Viacom's Sumner Redstone? Or warlord Ariel Sharon? (By the way, there's an entirely bizarre self-reflective Jewish Freudian literature about an alleged feminization of Jewish men in history.)

Neumann also implores the reader to believe that the LACK of Jewish power may be evidenced in "why you don't see Arnold Schwarzenegger playing the widowed, retired Israeli paratrooper" running around killing Palestinians onscreen in Jewish/Israeli service. Of course, in the REAL world, Schwarzenegger attends Simon Wisenthal Center banquets (a prerequisite these days to prosper in Hollywood) and he has donated millions of dollars to the SWC's Judeo-centric causes. Schwarzenegger faces ugly rumors in Jewish Hollywood, of course, about his (Nazi?) Austrian father and the burden on the actor to prove his philo-Semitic credentials to the Jews who oversee his Hollywood career is enormous.

Mr. Neumann's strange, schizophrenic article seems to attempt to convey two very incongruous things. On one hand, he very guardedly admits a kind of -- to his eyes -- speculatively inconclusive evidence of a Jewish takeover of parts of American culture, but then he argues that, gosh, dominating Hollywood and the mass media isn't really that big a deal and the locus of power in culture is really located elsewhere, and anyway, guilt for this power must be dumped on Gentiles who allowed this all to happen.

Gentiles are not slaves to the mass media, he argues, and are free to accept or deny the Judeo-centric slants on the world that permeate modern society, whether it's the continuing revolt against the remains of the former WASP power structure; the conscious destruction of ANY religious faith (but particularly the Jewish historical nemesis: Christianity) as something to be marginalized in daily society, and replaced by what increasingly appears as a nihilistic liberalism; sexual hedonism (Judaism celebrates sex, as so many Jewish authors decree) in rebellion against Christian prudery; the pseudo-religious celebration of America's omnipresent Freudianism; pervasive cultural obsessions with secularized Talmudic injunctions to a "this life" materialism; the Holocaust secularly embodied as Western society's defining moral sacrament; America itself as an appendage to expanding Israeli brutality; or merely accepting Jesus as a Jewish savior. Neumann's is the typical reactionary argument in denying the persuasive powers of mass media: if presented with Coke, coke, coke, coke, coke, or its echo Pepsi, the choice is truly yours.

But ultimately, he seems to argue, forget the mass media. Whoever owns coal mines and asbestos dumps really controls society, right? Watch out for the logging industry. And those who run roads. Would that be those people in uniforms who take your fifty cents at kiosks on toll thoroughfares? It seems like a clumsy attempt by Mr. Neumann to point the finger away from Jews at the heart of the American brain and nerve center as the lifeblood of social and political decison-making (mass media, government, the arts, publishing, the intelligentsia) to society's dumb trunk. In Mr. Neumann's odd view, the essence of social power is not in its interlinked ideological network sources, but in America's industrial infrastructure.

Although his argument about the location of real cultural and political influence is absurd, let's look at Jews and the realms he chooses as the locus of true American power (the areas he calls "reality.") Even here, Neumann implicitly portrays Jews as victims, inferring that they are not adequately represented in these fields. He names the following as the sources of "reality": "armies," "oil," "auto plants," "farms," "mines," "forests," "oceans," "roads," "airports," and lastly -- very cautiously, with apologetic qualification-- the "media."

Is he serious? Save for the mass media, is this list a joke?

Although it should be clear to any social thinker that the heart of power in any culture is in the realm of the apparatus that invents "public opinion," and, indeed -- as religious values corrode -- defines reality itself, let's briefly examine the realms that Mr. Neumann implies to be devoid of Jewish influence. Subtly, this is an assertion of Jewish victimhood in these fields.

The core of Neumann's analysis is here: "The notion that Jews control America stems from a couch-potato school of political analysis. If your world is the TV screen, the Jewish-control theory makes some sense, because Jews really do pervade the entire range of your remote. And if you should look at the newspaper during commercials, you may find something similar. But contrary to popular belief, the sinews of reality are not found in the media. They reside in armies, oil fields, auto plants, factories, farms, mines, forests, oceans, roads and airports. Here the Jews do not prevail, nor do they prevail even in the financial world. Even in the media, their power is exaggerated."

OK. Let's see. Let's go down the list of Neumann's area list of a lack of Jewish power. Again, Jews represent 2.5% of the American population:

1) "ARMIES." Is the locus of power in armies, or is it located with those who tell armies what to do? Is the foundation of power to be found among the likes of African-American and Latino soldiers crawling under barbed wire, or the Jewish coterie of warmongering White House/Pentagon individuals who NEVER SERVED IN THE MILITARY, like Wolfowitz, Perle, Feith, and other obsessive Israelists throughout the White House, Pentagon, and State Department? By 1996, 4 of 7 CIA directorates were also Jewish, as well as the head of the CIA, John Deutch who was pardoned by Bill Clinton before an investigation into Deutch's classified CIA documents at home could be finished.
[See extensive examination of Jewish power in government here].

2) "OIL." No Jews in "oil fields?" If Mr. Neumann means actually dropping sweat at oil rigs, he's probably right. If he means CONTROLLING and DIRECTING oil rigs, it's another story. Shell Oil isn't "oil" enough for Mr. Neumann? Marcus Bearsted, who was Jewish, founded the firm that became Shell Oil and his son "became chairman of the Shell Oil Company after his father." [GREENBERG, M. p. 68]

Baltimore's Jacob Blaustein founded Amoco (American Oil Company.) By 1957 the Blaustein's were the eleventh richest family in the United States. "One of the family's favorites philanthropies is the American Jewish Committee, and for many years Jacob was its honorary chairman." [KREFETZ, p. 83] Blaustein, said World Zionist Organization president Nahum Goldmann, was "a big oilman and notorious anti-Zionist who later became a friend of mine and a great friend of Israel." [GOLDMANN, N., 1978, p. 36]

In Detroit, by the 1980s Max Fisher was "one of the richest and most influential men in the country." [FLAX, p. 64] His millions began with the Marathon Oil company and spread to other investments, including United Brands and real estate ventures. "His prodigious funding for Jewish causes has put Fisher on a first name basis with every prime minister of Israel ... Fisher's annual gifts to Jewish causes alone have amounted to more than $500,000 [a year]." [FLAX, p. 64]

John Schiff, also Jewish, "served through the 1970s as a director of such well-known firms as Getty Oil." [ZWEIGENHAFT, p 35] Getty? Getty? Someone say Getty? In 1993, Leo Liebowitz; president and CEO of the Getty Petroleum Corporation, was charged by journalist Robert Friedman with being in cahoots in a tax cheating scam with a chief in the "Russian Mafia," [NATIONAL PETROLEUM, p. 20] which is mostly Jewish. (According to one state department official, ALL major "Russian" mafia tracked by the U.S. government have Israeli passports].

Even the renowned Getty Museum, founded with funds from the non-Jewish oil mogul, J. Paul Getty (and with $4 billion to play with, the richest museum on earth) has consistently had Jews at the economic helm. In 1998, after 17 years, Harold Williams left the presidency of the J. Paul Getty Trust. Williams, notes George Goodman, was "raised in a Labor Zionist home in East Los Angeles." [GOODMAN, #2, p. 142]

The new president of the J. Paul Getty Trust was another Jewish administrator, Barry Munitz, formerly the chancellor of both the California State University system and the University of Houston. [GOODMAN, #2, p. 144] The new Getty Center opened in 1998, designed by Jewish architect Richard Meier and built at a cost of $1 billion.

Elsewhere in the oil biz, August 2000, three Israeli-based companies, the African-Israel Group (at 21%), Rosebud (at 19%), and the Alon Israel Oil Company (at 60%) owned the American operations of the Total Fina oil company. Fina includes 1,700 gas stations, refineries, pipelines, terminals and other holdings, and even partial control of 7-11 markets at 170 gas stations. [BERGER, S., 10-3-2000]

In France, Henri Deutsch, also of Jewish heritage, "owned one of the two or three largest French petroleum companies and pioneered the development of aviation fuel." [GREENBERG, M., p. 69] In 1999 French-born Philipe Reichstul (also Jewish) became president of Brazil's largest company -- Petrobas. It is an oil company. In 2002, Isaac Yanovich, a businessman from the private banking sector was named president of the state oil company in Colombia.

In Russia, Mafia-linked Jewish mogul Boris Berezovsky controlled 80% of Russia's seventh largest oil company which merged in 1998 with another Jewish-owned oil firm (together called Yuski) to create "the world's largest oil company in terms of reserves.") [MCMAHON, p.3] Yet another Jewish Russian money mogul is Roman Abramovich. The Warsaw Voice (headed by Jewish publisher and editor Andrzej Jonas) noted in 1999 that he is "the CEO of the powerful Sibneft oil group. A popular joke in Moscow says that one must count one's fingers after shaking hands with Abramovich, who has for years been associated with Berezovsky's financial group." [ZYGULSKI, p. 8] Oil magnate Leonid Nevzlin became head of the Russian Jewish Congress in 2001. He and the aforementioned Mihail Khodorkowvsky "formed one of the first successful private banks in Russia in 1989. The two then went into the oil business together, and now run the YUKOS firm -- Khodorkovsky is in charge, and Nevzlin is his deputy." [GORODETSKY, L., 5-23-01] Then there is Mikhail Mirilashvili (a.ka., Misha Kutaisskey), who "is one of the biggest shareholders of the local branch of LUK oil." [KORALYEV, VLADIMIR, 10-11-2000]

As Jewish scholar Betsy Gidwitz noted in 1999:

"That Jews control a disproportionately large share of the Russian economy and Russian media certainly has some basis in fact. Between 50 and 80 percent of the Russian economy is said to be in Jewish hands, with the influence of the five Jews among the eight individuals commonly referred to as "oligarchs" particularly conspicuous. (An oligarch is understood to be a member of a small group that exercises control in a government). The five oligarchs of Jewish descent are Boris Berezovsky, Mikhail Friedman, Vladimir Gusinsky, Mikhail Khodorkovsky, and Alexander Smolensky. The other oligarchs are Vagit Alekperov, Vladimir Potanin, and Rem Vyakhirev.) Perhaps the most famous (and simultaneously the most infamous) of the oligarchs is Boris Berezovsky. In common with most of the other Jewish oligarchs, Berezovsky controls industries in three critical areas: the extraction and sale of a major natural resource, such as oil, as a source of great wealth; a large bank (useful in influencing industry and transferring assets abroad); and several major media outlets (useful for exerting influence and attacking rivals). He also controls a significant share of the Aeroflot airline and the Moscow automobile industry." [GIDWITZ, B., 9-15-99]

3) "AUTO PLANTS." True, the Mr. Neumann's "sinews of reality" will not find many Jews on an automobile assembly line where Jews are probably as rare as finding diamonds the size of footballs on the floor with the metal shavings. But, just for a sampling, by 1965 two Jews -- Sidney Weinberg and Frederick Cullman III (the Chairman of the Board and CEO of Philip Morris) -- even sat on the board of the Ford Motor Company, [ZWEIGENHAFT, p. 32-33] something rather astounding given the fact that the company founder, Henry Ford, is considered by the Jewish community to be the most powerful and influential anti-Semite in America's history. (By the way, in France, "the Citroen, one of France's most popular cars, is named for a Jew [Andre-Gustave Citroen] who was a pioneer in France's automotive industry ... During World War I he produced munitions for the French government, but at the war's end he turned to the mass production of automobiles.") [GOLDBERG, M. H., 1976, p. 108-109]

In the merchantry world around automobiles, Jews have founded everything from Midas Mufflers and Manny, Mo and Jack to Firestone Tires.

4) "FARMS." Jews have a traditional reluctance to getting dirty, especially in agricultural labor. It's true. Look it up. Jews have always been an urban people, zeroed in on the financial spheres of culture, where real power lies. But Paul Fribourg's tenure as the CEO of Continental Grain might count for something. There are also Jewish moguls like Charles Bluhdorn whose Gulf + Western corporate monster owned 8 percent of the arable land of the Dominican Republic." [BAGDIKIAN, p. 30-31] And if we might stretch "farms" to include the concept of "real estate," Jews are kingpins in this field.

5) "MINES." Probably the best known American mining families are Jewish ones, although their mining roots are largely unknown. They are known in the public eye because the Hirschhorns (Washington DC) and Guggenheims (New York) used their fortunes to build famous museums to house their art treasures. There are also Jewish moguls like Ira Rennert, an active Zionist, whose Renco Corporation was listed as the 51st largest private company in America in 1997. Holdings include the Magnesium Corporation of America which was declared by the Environmental Protection Agency in 1998 to be America's "top dumper of toxic chemicals." [ASSOCIATED PRESS STATE AND LOCAL WIRE, 4-19-2000]

Has Mr. Neumann ever heard of the left-wing magazine "Mother Jones?" I think so. Where have the primary funds for its existence come from? Surprise, surprise. A Jewish mining fortune. Adam Hochschild, Mother Jones' Board Chairman and an heir to millions of dollars, kept the magazine going for years with his philanthropy to ameliorate the guilt he had for his capitalist dad. His father, Harold Hochschild, was the wealthy Jewish cofounder of an international mining syndicate with holdings from Africa to Appalachia. [See Adam Hochschild's biography]

How about diamonds. Aren't those mined? Exploited Africans risking their lives in mile-long holes for pennies doesn't count? The Oppenheimers' monstrous De Beers conglomerate isn't anything? Jews have always had an international monopoly in this field, and there's been at least one book by a Jewish scholar about this fact.

6) "FORESTS." No Jewish business interest in forests? How about Charles Hurwitz, who is also a United Jewish Appeal - Federation official? A few years ago Hurwitz was noted for his role as majority stockholder in Maxxam, the company that owns Pacific Lumber. Environmentalists were fighting this company's plans to cut down some of the last remaining old growth Redwood trees on private land in California. As Benjamin Stein notes, "Charles Hurwitz's catastrophic takeover of Pacific Lumber.... resulted in some of the worst environmental atrocities of all time against first-growth redwood trees." [STEIN, B., p. 114] (Hurwitz's Maxxam empire rules over 110 subsidiaries, including Kaiser Aluminum, McCullough Oil, and Simplicity Patterns).

In fact, Jews have a tradition of dominating the timber industry in Eastern Europe. As Jewish scholar Salo Baron notes, "During the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries domestic commerce (in Poland and Lithuania) as well as export (timber, grain, furs) and import (cloth, wine, luxuries) were for the most part in Jewish hands." [BARON, EHOJ, p. 227]

Jewish dominance of the timber trade (and many other industries) was the case in pre-communist Russia. As W. D. Rubinstein notes: "A number of important industries were very disproportionately owned and organised by Jews. They included textiles, sugar refining, flour milling, saw mills, brewing and alcohol, tobacco, and the leather manufacturing industry; in commerce, the grain and timber trade; banking; shipping and transport; and mining -- industries from which Jews were not barred by law. Such statistics as exist show that the Jews often far exceeded their percentage of the population in these fields. For instance, Jews owned about 182 of 518 join-stock sugar companies (35 per cent); 69 out of 106 sawmills in the northwestern areas (68 per cent); and so forth, based on very scattered statistics. By 1878, 60 per cent of the grain export from Odessa was in Jewish hands; according to the 1897 Census, 886 of every 1,000 persons engaged in commerce in Russia's northwestern provinces were Jews." [RUBINSTEIN, WD, 2000, p. 6-7]

7) "OCEANS." What does Mr. Neumann mean by "oceans?" Who owns/controls the oceans? If we take, for example, cruise travel across oceans, it is not only a Jewish monopoly, but an Israeli one. The Israeli newspaper Ha'aretz noted the following in 1998: "The meteoric rise in Carnival Cruise's worth has been matched by similar growth for the company's major competitor, Royal Caribbean ... What the two companies have in common, besides their arena of business, is Israeli ownership ... Last summer, the two companies waged a fierce bidding war to purchase another cruise firm, Celebrity. The winner was Royal ... Remarkably enough, Celebrity also belongs to the 'Israeli Club,' as 50 percent of its shares were held by a shipping firm controlled by the Recanati family." [LIPSON]

8) "ROADS." What does this mean? Who owns/controls "roads?" WASPs?

9) AIRPORTS. What does this mean? Who owns/controls "airports?" If we look at the airline industry, we find some interesting things. In recent years, the Jewish Pritzker family's Marmom Group has controlled both Braniff and Continental Airlines. After taking over Trans World Airlines (TWA) the company president, then C. E. Meyer, Jr., called famous Jewish corporate raider Carl Icahn "one of the greediest men on earth." [BROCK, p. 171] By 1998 Icahn was attempting to take over Pan Am airlines. In 2002, Jonathan Orenstein's company (Mesa Air Group) sought a 38% stake in U.S. Airways. [ DE LOLLIS, B., 8-16-02, p. 6B]

Recent Jewish airline CEOS have included Gerald Greenwalt of United Airlines and Jeffrey Katz of SwissAir. (Korean Air flight 85 was almost mistakenly shot out of the sky over Alaska on the day of the World Trade Center jet attacks. The Korean Air operations chief was David Greenberg.) [LEVIN, A., 8-13-02, p. 5A]

10) "MEDIA." After listing the above subjects of alleged Jewish noninvolvement and disadvantage, Neumann then has the audacity to say this: "Even in the media, their [Jews'] power is exaggerated." (Financial world too. The Rothschilds strangling European banking monopoly, Paul Warburg's centrality in the creation of the Federal Reserve, Michael Milken and his list of cohorts, Jewish prominence on Wall Street and investment banking, and on and on are apparently figments of the "anti-Semitic" imagination?)

So Jewish power in mass media -- the lifeblood of culture -- is exaggerated. Really? Mr. Neumann doesn't follow up with any evidence that Jewish media power is exaggerated; it is enough to just say it. As usual in this flippant argument, he notes non-Jewish media moguls Rupert Murdoch, Ted Turner, and Steve Chase as power kings who prove (?) Jewish mass media influence as an "exaggeration." But read Murdoch's biographies. You will find that Murdoch was surrounded by New York Jews in his rise to power, including ABC's Leonard Goldenson, and Murdoch is accredited with being more Zionist than even his Jewish business partners. The president of Turner's CNN at its founding was Maurice Schonfeld. In 1999 Brad Siegel became head of the Turner Broadcasting System and in 2001 Walter Isaacson became head of CNN. CNN itself was subsumed by Time-Warner, with Gerald Levin at the helm. When Steve Chase's AOL merged with Time-Warner, it was also Lewin in charge.

Mr. Neumann might have added Bill Gates to the slim list of media mogul monsters who aren't Jewish. But then he would have to mention Steve Ballmer who has taken Gates' place at the head of Microsoft. Ballmer's mother is Jewish, he is philanthropist for Jewish causes, and Ballmer is heralded by the Jewish community as the richest Jew in America. How about Conrad Black, British media mogul? He's not Jewish. But he is married to Jewish Zionist Barbara Amiel, and when Black bought the Jerusalem Post it became editorially skewed to the far Zionist right.

Hollywood -- one of the key influences over the past century in the formulation of public mores and values -- has always been a nepotistic Jewish fiefdom, from top to bottom . Is that questioned by anybody? MGM, Paramount, Columbia, Warner Brothers -- all Jewish-founded. All Jewish-led. When Jewish scholar Patricia Ernes noted in 1980 that 70-80% of the membership of the Screen Writers Guild were Jewish, no big deal, right? Jewish convention holds that 80% of all professional comics are Jewish. Meaningless, right?

Jews built to power ALL three American TV networks (Paley at CBS, Goldenson at ABC, Sarnoff at NBC). Coincidence, right? It's completely meaningless to point out their ethnic allegiance, right? In 1973, Jewish scholar Daniel Jay Epstein found that 21 of the top 36 TV news producers and editors were Jewish. Coincidence, right? Who cares? (Maybe someone looking for a news producer job?)

And, yes, all over the Internet "anti-Semites" note the Jewish root of the owners and controllers of the New York Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, etc. Of course, to popular convention, those who point out these facts are bigots, despite the fact that in Canada Izzy Asper's much-publicized ham-handed, censorial Zionist dictates over his monstrous media empire (CanWest, decried throughout Canadian journalism) seem to be aimed at trying to prove that the Protocols of the Elders of Zion wasn't fiction but was based on him.

Meanwhile, while its impermissible to count Jewish noses in the lists of the powerful, Jews have been in the vanguard of attack against "white" or "WASP" or "Christian" power/influence in any and all realms, both by legal means and its open access to Judeo-centric media venues. It's been a free forum of attack and now that the more obvious Jewish nemesis is quickly rising as Arabs/Muslims (thanks to American Jewry's beloved Israel), we have Jewish guys like noble "civil rights" lawyer Alan Dershowitz arguing that its time to start torturing people. Nathan Lewin, prominent Jewish American religious leader, also joins in to add that it's time to murder family members of suicide bombers (i.e., "terrorists.") Read the mainstream Jewish chorus -- is it a sin to say the 'J' word? What other word would you use if this coterie isn't all Israeli? -- on the opinion page of your local newspaper.

Mr. Neumann isn't terribly interested in the subject of Jewish power in American culture, yet he writes about it to dismiss it as fantasy. Truly, concerted ignorance cannot be changed if someone is intent upon a veritable conviction of self-delusion. But details about Jewish hegemony in the mass media are readily available here, to whoever cares to look. Here too is documentation about Jewish preeminence in the art world, the intelligentsia, and popular culture generally.

Jews dominate the mass media and, yes, folks like Mr. Neumann apparently would prefer that this "exaggerated" fact be kept in debatable disrepute. Or, better, dismissed to the provenance of the Ku Klu Klan, skinheads, neo-Nazis and stereotypical "anti-Semitic" bigots of all sorts where the political world can be kept rather simple: good and evil. Rational and irrational. True and false. He thinks its better to focus on Jewish power in oil, "the ocean," and the Oregon woods. Of course, apparently unbeknownst to him, there are prominent Jewish power-mongers to be found in such places too, although not on as great a scale. There is the usual Jewish argumentative undercurrent here. Jewish victimization tradition (i.e., Jewish identity itself) emphasizes -- as does Mr. Neumann -- that Jews ARE NOT found in these fields (despite the fact that, as earlier noted, and countering traditional notions of institutionalized Jewish disadvantage in Europe, Jews actually dominated some of these realms in parts of that continent).

But, even if there were not a single Jewish individual of power in such realms, what would it mean per control and/or influence upon popular culture? Does the owner of a coal mine influence what you believe about the world? Does a utilities CEO have influence upon what you think about Christianity? Does the owner of a woods in Colorado have any reason to care about what you think about Israel? And even if he did, what could he do about it?

To even the most naive student of the social and political world, the center of culture -- the nerve center, the brain -- is the mass media, government, and the opinion formulation apparatus that defines the world in consumer society. Its premise of presentation -- whatever its subject -- has long been veiled in the guise of "objectivity." In the steady erosion of religious and traditional values (as the mass media and its appendages have become the American pulpit), the mores of materialist hedonism have been spread in their places. Who is responsible for this? Coal miners? The owner of Aramco? Is the fact that people of Jewish heritage dominate the pornography and smut trades, like so much else, coincidence?

Mr. Neumann declares there isn't enough evidence for him to assert that there's a problem in American culture with too many ethnocentric, propagandistic Jews in positions of power. Well, how come he hasn't investigated the issue at length himself? When popular culture actually FORBIDS any sort of critical inquiry into ANYTHING Jewish, let alone an investigation into Jewish influence in popular culture (that's "racism," that's "anti-Semitism," that's "bigotry," ad nauseum), what kind of indicting evidence does he expect to find in mainstream annals about it? Who would get a university grant to study "Jewish power in the mass media?" Who would get academic funding to study "Jewish influence in government?" What journalist would dare to write an article about the top tiers of the mass media hierarchy with asterisks next to Jewish names? (Nonetheless, Mr. Neumann demands a "two-columned" list of Jews and non-Jews to prove Jewish Jewish dominance in "any" field. He will find one here, about the major studios in Hollywood, researched by a man, John Cones, who -- as consequence -- repeatedly faces the charge of "anti-Semitism" by the Jewish Thought Police for doing so). The Thought Control is total, the "pathologization" process ("anti-Semite") into this realm of intellectual (and moral) endeavor absolute. (A related two-columned comparison list of Jews and non-Jews may be found here, this in the context of the self-protective Judeo-centric mass media's profoundly disproportionate focus on corrupt priests and not rabbis).

For the dissenter, the one of open intellectual inquiry, once he dares to exert his inalienable RIGHT to look frankly at whoever wields authentic power in American society, he is confronted with a package of surprises, facts that can only cause profound consternation. What's all the more troubling is that these facts have been systematically screened from popular/public examination, and -- as a realm of "connect the dots" information -- are known by virtually no one.

Example. Exhibit A:

1) the three individual Jews built NBC, CBS, and ABC to power (Sarnoff, Paley, Goldenson)
2) Hollywood is a Jewish nepotistic fiefdom and has always been so (Jewish dominance in this field can not be refuted, and rarely is -- even by Jewish commentators, but merely qualified by apologetics: "i.e., so many are Jewish, yes, but that doesn't mean anything.")
3) by 1999 four of the five largest American media conglomerates were headed by Jews
4) the four current commissioners of professional baseball, football, basketball, and hockey are all Jewish (Selig, Tagliabue, Stern, Bettman)
5) five of the last eight American poet laureates have been Jews (Kunitz, Pinsky, Nemerov, Strand, Brodsky)
6) In a 1974 book, The American Intellectual Elite, Charles Kadushin's determined that, based upon subjective opinion within rings of the American intelligentsia, 15 of the top 21 "intellectuals" were Jewish, overwhelmingly located in New York City and New England.
7) By 1998, five of eight of the Ivy League college presidents had "Jewish parents."
8) According to Jewish investigators, an estimated half of the donations to the Democratic Party's national campaigns are Jewish.
9) In 1996, not only was the director of the CIA Jewish (John Deutch), but so were four of the seven CIA directorates.
10) For most of the 20th century, a Jewish power elite (and attendant Jewish money), from Joel Spingarn at the head of the NAACP on down, essentially ran the African-American civil rights movement for Jewish ethnocentric benefit.

And on and on and on and on, across the spectrum of social and political influence and control. Jews are just "smart," right? They're just "hardworking," right? The fact of their ethnicity (which, by self-definition, infers a extremely strong intra-allegiance) is entirely meaningless, true?

Forget "power." Use your own word. Whatever it is, is this kind of concentration healthy for "multiculturalism?" Is this healthy for democracy? And why isn't anyone talking about it? Why? Because popular culture holds ANY critical investigation into ANYTHING Jewish to be taboo, a situation that is result of a careful social engineering process for the last few decades. This socialization process -- championed throughout today's culture, from the mass media to academe -- declares that Jews are humankind's consummate sufferers, the Holocaust is the indisputably "unique" measure of disadvantaged victimhood, Jews are collectively entitled to "reparations" of all and every sort, and virtually any criticism of Jewry is inevitably held to be the first push off the hill towards a second attempted genocide. Hence, for perhaps the first time in modern history (short of totalitarian dictatorships and blatant censorship by ruling royalties), a power elite (and Jews are also the wealthiest ethnic group in America, which is a fact that is also publicly very much guarded) is held to be beyond the pale of criticism, thereby guaranteeing increased entrenchment and expansion of its ethnocentric power.

Look at xenophobic, racist Israel, for decades almost completely free from criticism. And look at the Jews who stand out today like blinking neon signs -- Wolfowitz, Perle, Feith -- who are so incredibly influential in running America's intolerant, warmongering, Israel-centric foreign policy. And look how we are all forbidden from noting that those who spearhead such destructive policies to American interests are Jewish.

This kind of profound Jewish influence isn't just in America. It is very much a part of Jewish history and entrepreneurial/exploitative tradition. Isn't it an interesting fact that in 1999 a Jewish author (Betsy Gidwitz) for Israel's Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs declared that Jews were estimated to control 50-80% of Russia's economy, and that an oligarchy of eight men (five of whom are Jewish, at least two of whom have dual Russian-Israeli citizenship -- Berezovsky and Gusinsky) were instrumental in creating what is Russia's capitalist government today? In a truly free society, that item -- and the sample flurry of facts I've mentioned above -- would be worth WIDESPREAD debate and commentary, towards understanding these facts' essential meanings, whatever they are. Instead, we have monolithic condemnation of the mere citation of such facts as -- by Thought Police definition -- a categorical manifestation of "bigotry."

If one of the premises of our multicultural society is the continued deconstruction of the "white" power structure towards a democratization of culture by percentages of ethnic entities, why is one subdivision of this "white" category (Jews) BEYOND the same deconstructive attack? Why, as in Hollywood, has Jewish nepotism NEVER faced critical investigation, whatsoever? And why is any attempt to do so emphatically considered to be grounds for intellectual and moral marginalization from mainstream discourse?

The answer to such questions, of course, has to do with who controls the terms of discourse for what IS regarded as public morality -- civil rights organizations, advocacy groups, the mass media, government, the publishing world, and so forth. Not coal mines.

Is this Jewish ethnic chauvinism -- evidenced throughout American culture and other countries -- a manifestation of true "multiculturalism?" Is it also a manifestation of genuine democracy, except to the degree that entrepreneurial capitalism allows itself to be co-opted by wealthy, self-promoting "special interest groups" who stake out far, far greater claims to power and collective advancement than their own fair share (in this case, 2.5%) of the population merits?

No. This whole outrageous scenario is a fraud of the first order. It is fraud not merely because Jews are afforded the luxury of such an extraordinarily disproportionate influence in mass culture towards their own ethnocentric interests. Thanks to "anti-hate" laws, massive "anti-bigotry" indoctrination programs, and Jewry's chronic victim status, they have even succeeded in creating protective walls around their own acute ethnocentrism, hiding it from public view. Ditto for examining Jewish power in influencing what you believe and know. It's taboo to even mention these things. Even worse, modern American Jewry has instituted a sociopolitical milieu in which they can declare their RIGHT to maintain this status quo of disproportionate wealth and influence in a virtually legalized -- and totalitarian -- secrecy.

RETURN TO JTR HOME PAGE

When Victims Rule. A Critique of Jewish pre-eminence in America
2,000 page scholarly work featuring approximately 10,000 citations from about 4,000 bibliographic sources.
The most thorough investigation to this day on Jewish power and influence in the USA and the world.