HENRY GALLAGHER FIELDS -- More merde from Mercer

www.thornwalker.com/ditch/fields_merde.htm


Reprint rights

 

More merde from Mercer

By HENRY GALLAGHER FIELDS

 

As we used to say in the distant days of my childhood after uttering an obscenity: Pardon my French. But since TLD doesn't tolerate four-letter Anglo-Saxonisms, merde is the only appropriate description of Ilana Mercer's continual whining about "anti-Semitism." Yet another obnoxious shovelful is available for inspection in her recent article at WorldNetDaily, "Blame the Jews."

In her role as P.C. police-yenta of the Right, Miss Mercer is determined to ensure that criticism of the war on Iraq stays within permissible parameters. One may attack the war as having been misguided or even malevolently mongered. One may even lambaste the neocons, as Miss Mercer is wont to do herself. But one dasn't say that the neocons engineered the war. Likewise, it is absolutely verboten to imply that the neocons are motivated by any Jewish ethnic loyalty to Israel. That would be equivalent to whispering the disreputable charge of dual loyalty, whereas we know that the loyalty of all American Jews is absolutely singular. To chastise those guilty of the above-mentioned sins, Miss Mercer swings the sharp-edged scimitar of "anti-Semitism."

In fact, in "Blame the Jews" Miss Mercer largely abstains from all the tiresome marshaling of logic and facts that so hampers fussier writers, and instead relies simply on imputing anti-Semitism all over the place. Essentially, she depends on what Ayn Rand termed "the argument from intimidation." (Miss Rand was certainly one to know about verbal intimidation, since it was, ahem, a tool she did not always eschew.) And the charge of anti-Semitism is the hydrogen bomb of intimidation — just go ask those who have been sacked, blacklisted, fined, excluded from whole countries, mobbed, or even jailed as a result of being so branded. Like the night owl's piercing scream that paralyzes its prey with fear, so the screech of "anti-Semite!" paralyzes its victims into silence.

One notable aspect of Miss Mercer's disinformation campaign is her implication that the paleocons, perverse scoundrels that they are, are the only ones who have broached the "wild-eyed" idea that the neocons were the primary driving force behind the Iraq war, a war fought, at least in part, for the benefit of Israel. Miss Mercer does not let on that this "wild-eyed" idea, far from being peculiar to paleocons, has been expressed by people on all points of the political spectrum and from all parts of the globe. Exponents of the view happen to include many Jews — e.g., Jim Lobe, Michael Lerner, Paul Krugman, Joshua Micah Marshall, and Israelis Ari Shavit and Uri Avnery. Obviously, Miss Mercer's smear job would be more far more difficult if she admitted that the "wild-eyed" idea about neocon influence was not simply a peculiar eccentricity of benighted paleocons but a viewpoint of widespread and diverse provenance.

Nor is it some variety of mass hallucination: there is beaucoup documentary evidence to back it up. The neocons have been planning and promoting such a war for years — and it is a war intended to encompass the entire Middle East. Neocons such as Norman Podhoretz refer to it as World War IV. I urge any doubters to follow the advice of the late great baseball sage Casey Stengel: "You could look it up." I'm not much into the footnoting so cherished by some titled gentry who grace these pages, so just Google your way to "neoconservative" and take a gander. [*]

Now it doesn't take a rocket scientist, as everyone is always saying these days, to see that an American removal of all regimes in the Middle East hostile to Israel would serve the interests of Israel. In fact, there's only one fellow I know of who lacks the mental capacity to discern that obvious fact — and he currently resides in a large pale palace in downtown Washington, D.C.

Miss Mercer cannot deny that the neocons ardently supported the war, but she alleges that they were only one tiny part of a humongous war crowd: "Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Woolsey, Bolton, Rice, and Powell are right there beside the Jews, hollering, 'Me first.' Equally, and on the lower decks, Richard Perle is flanked by neoconservative Christians like Gary Bauer and William Bennett."

Let's check the list of alleged non-neocons who Miss Mercer claims helped instigate the war. Famous Christian Bill Bennett has been tied to the neocons for eons — in fact, he's a veritable neocon creation. No one has ever said that the predominantly Jewish neocons do not have gentile auxiliaries. And Famous Christian Gary Bauer represents the Zion-Christian Right. Yes, it's certainly a group that was 100 percent in favor of the war, but, look here, you're not going to find members of Reverend Bobby Joe Jeter's Four Square Baptist Church holding influential foreign-policy posts in the Bush administration. Most of the prominent people there — Paul Wolfowitz, David Wormser, Douglas Feith, Scooter Libby — are more likely to wear yarmulkes than "WWJD" bracelets.

As for Cheney and Rumsfeld, they, too, have been linked to the neocons for years — in fact, they filled their offices to the brim with such folk. Neocons are the people they depend on for advice. They certainly don't pay much heed to facemen such as Colin Powell, who often resisted the move to war, or poor Condi Rice, who is a downright know-nothing on the Middle East.

You know Miss Mercer has hit rock bottom when she trundles out our illustrious dog-droppin', hawkin'-and-spittin' President Knucklehead as an independent decision-maker. Anyone who believes that Dubya came up with the idea for the Iraqi war is probably also apt to believe that he designed NASA's Mars Mission. Miss Mercer wonders how Patrick Buchanan can believe that Franklin Roosevelt lied the country into war while at the same time envisioning Bush as being "bamboozled." The reason for the difference, patently obvious, is that the nefarious President-for-Life operated a live brain.

It is undeniable that non-neocons supported the war. Such warfans include the Zion-Christian Right; Halliburton-like war profiteers; Karl Rovians sniffing after political advantage; and, let's not omit to mention, gullible goyim who actually believed all the lies about the WMDs, couldn't distinguish Saddam from Osama, and just yearned to kick some raghead ass. To pull off the war, the senior Imperials did have to round up those auxiliary troops. But there is no evidence that the auxiliaries planned and propagandized for the war for years in advance, as the neocons did. Nor did most hold influential positions in the Bush administration. Their influence in instigating the war was in no way comparable to that of the neocons.

Although many of the commentators who emphasize the neocon role in the war dare not connect it to the broader Jewish community, Miss Mercer charges that such is their intent. Naturally she zeroes in on Kevin MacDonald, who does make such a broader connection: "Kevin MacDonald, at least, comes straight out with it. Instead of the cowardly, infantile, and frankly nauseating nudge-nudge, wink-wink insinuations about Jews, he offers grand conspiracy." Hmmm — "cowardly." One wonders what Miss Mercer's wink-winking cowards could possibly have to fear. If they feared Jews, that would seem to say something about the reality of Jewish power. They must just be afraid of their own shadow.

Mercer attacks not what MacDonald says but rather a strawman version of his thesis. In her less-than-artful misreprentation, MacDonald offers a "grand conspiracy" explanation for Jewish domination. However, MacDonald's actual views are far more sophisticated, and on numerous occasions he has explicitly denied the existence of a "grand conspiracy." (Why, you could even call him a Conspiracy Denier.)

But to cut to the chase, since I'm developing writer's fatigue, the bottom line of the neocon-motivation issue is not that all Jews supported the war on Iraq but rather that the neocons promoted the war out of their loyalty to Jewish interests. Let me repeat that, so it may have a better chance of sinking deeply into the cerebral cortex: Not all Jews, but rather the neocons, sought the war for the benefit of Israel. Again, if you doubt that Commentary Magazine, JINSA, and other neocon haunts are partial to Israel and Jewish interests, "you could look it up."

It is understandable why professional Jews such as Miss Mercer would rely on distortions and lies to advance their own people's interests; but the question why libertarian and conservative Websites feature Miss Mercer's rantings requires more exploration. The reader may wish to consult my earlier piece on P.C. libertarianism; but for purposes here, suffice it to say that P.C. libertarians must kowtow to professional Jews because they understand privately the very Jewish power that they cannot acknowledge publicly.

Contrast the current crop of libertarians with leftists and leftist forums such as Alexander Cockburn and his CounterPunch site, or the Chomskyist Z-Net. They readily criticize Israel and its American devotees. Since they hold across-the-board left-wing views, their bona fides are well-established, so they can épater les juifs and get away with it. Not so the libertarians, since from the vantage point of Political Correctness, with its sacred state-enforced egalitarianism (i.e., minority- and alien-supremacism), libertarianism is suspect by its very nature. Moreover, as a matter of personal history, many libertarians are refugees from various dens and caves and fever swamps on the True Right ... and we know the kind of thing that gets muttered after dark over there.

As long as professional Jews dressed in libertarian clothing yammer the platitudes of official Jewish victimology, non-Jewish libertarians can enjoy the kosher seal of approval that wards off (or is thought to ward off) deadly charges of hate, racism, and anti-Semitism. If P.C. libertarians wish to flourish in fame and fortune, and perhaps even inhabit a big think tank in Washington City that's almost as tony as those of the neocons (think Cato Institute), they have to jettison most libertarian principles. Instead, they have to busy themselves littering the capital's streets with technocratic paperstorms showing how government can operate more efficiently, so it can fight more wars and conquer more countries, or whatever happens to be on the statist agenda at the moment. So much sucking up, so little time.

Libertarians of old such as Murray Rothbard and James J. Martin were built of sterner stuff, of course, so they didn't care about ruffling the feathers of the powerful; in fact, they wouldn't be caught dead chanting the Establishment's sacred shibboleths. They were willing to suffer for the truth. But as I've suggested before and may suggest again, it's safer, and more profitable, to live the lie.

October 9, 2003

© 2003 WTM Enterprises. All rights reserved.

A related article by H.G. Fields.


If you found this column to be interesting, please donate something to our cause. You should make your check or m.o. payable in U.S. dollars to WTM Enterprises and send it to:

WTM Enterprises
P.O. Box 224
Roanoke, IN 46783

Thanks for helping to assure a future for TLD!


Notice to visitors who came straight to this document from off site: You are deep in The Last Ditch. You should check out our home page and table of contents.


 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 


* Perhaps I should amplify that slightly. I have been told that the The Last Ditch has a foreign following. So if you're from Zambeziland, Upper Slobbovia, or some other exotic port of call, let me point out that baseball is a major American sport — it used to be the "national pastime" — and Casey Stengel for years managed America's best baseball team, the New York Yankees; and he was noted for saying humorous things. I'm trying to be humorous too. Maybe the editor will insert a smiley face to help me out.

Editor's note. No. — Nicholas Strakon.

[Back to the text.]