Stonewall anniversary

From Wiki:

The Stonewall riots were a series of spontaneous, violent demonstrations against a police raid that took place in the early morning hours of June 28, 1969 at the Stonewall Inn, in the Greenwich Village neighborhood of New York City. They are frequently cited as the first instance in American history when gays and lesbians fought back against a government-sponsored system that persecuted homosexuals, and they have become the defining event that marked the start of the gay rights movement in the United States and around the world.

On Left and Right and Antisemitism

In the wake of the USHMM shooting, and following on the heels of Jonah Goldberg's completely idiotic Liberal Fascism, there's been an attempt on the right to politicize the shooting by claiming the shooter was a Leftist. Many commenters have rightly expressed indignation at the stupidity of such arguments, including Leonard Zeskind in the interview on WNYC I linked to Friday.

Unfortunately, this is framed around Goldberg, which is to say that the debate is kind of beside the point in a discussion of antisemitism. Left and right are adequate for describing older variants of antisemitism, but a major political function of antisemitism is to organize coalitions during reorganization of the Left/Right divide. The USHMM shooter was a member of the far right, but in saying so, we're also saying that he's holding on to political arguments that aren't very relevant today. His kind of antisemitism is probably the most lethal to me today, but not tomorrow.

Here's Zeskind in an interview with Hatewatch:

More, the concepts of left and right have lost a lot of their explanatory power. Who’s on the left, who’s on the right, in Russia and Eastern Europe today? I can’t tell.

Also, from the same interview, and this is meaningful because people often mistake all revolutionary tendencies for Left revolutions:

Here’s the trick about spotting the transformation into a white revolutionary movement: The piece that makes them the most revolutionary is anti-Semitism, because it creates for them a ruling class. The invention of a fake ruling class transformed a reform-oriented conservative movement into a revolutionary movement. Jared Taylor [editor of the white nationalist journal American Renaissance], for example, does not embrace the anti-Semitic theories that William Pierce [late leader of the neo-Nazi National Alliance] did. Taylor apparently worked in international finance at one point, and he doesn’t see himself as separate from that, despite the people railing at the banks and the Federal Reserve. It would be a mistake to call vanguardists and mainstreamers factions; they’re ideological tendencies, and they can both exist within a single organization.

Nixon's concern for Jews

No surprise Nixon was an antisemite. We've known that for a long time, but with the release of new tapes there's a little more detail for me.

Anti-Semitism is stronger than we think. You know, it’s unfortunate. But this has happened to the Jews. It happened in Spain, it happened in Germany, it’s happening — and now it’s going to happen in America if these people don’t start behaving. ... It may be they have a death wish. You know that’s been the problem with our Jewish friends for centuries.

That quote is reported by the NYT here and in the "main" article here. Toward the end of that main article, the quote is presented in pieces --both articles elide parts of the conversation, but the "main" article is more disjointed-- but some context is provided that's less apparent in the article with the full quote. Only the main article provides a short audio clip in a sidebar.

What's a little surprising for me is how sincere Nixon sounds in expressing his concern for Jews. His "concern" includes stereotyping Jews as having a death wish and using that as an excuse to blame Jews for antisemitism. But I wouldn't have guessed that someone also capable of much more blatant, explicit, and hateful antisemitism could sound so genuine expressing what he thinks of as concern.

Jewish student won't join Saturday graduation ceremony

"It's peculiar, and she's suffering," Levine told the New York Post. "She shouldn't have to choose between her religion and her high-school graduation."

What's really galling is the offer for her to have her own private ceremony in the library.

School officials later offered Morse an alternative by inviting her to march down the aisle of the school library by herself on Friday to receive a diploma from school Principal Walton. Levine however did not agree with the alternative and found it offensive.

(Via.)

kinda creepy

I had no idea there are non-Jews on J-Date.

The greater and lesser Seitan: Iran and cooking for inlaws

I just finished a meal with olives and gorgonzola, as well as lemon juice and parsley, cooked for Koreans. (And praise seitan made from scratch. Not bad for a first try, but I wonder if it will get better.) Talk about culturally inappropriate. Dong-sa trying the gorgonzola with chopsticks before not adding any to his dish was... Yes, I intentionally try to cook just outside guests' comfort range. For my wife and her sister, it can sometimes be wonderful experience. My wife previously couldn't stand olives. But with multiple guests, Dong-sa gets screwed.

Anyway, I've mostly stayed off the events in Iran. Despite personal interest, I've largely limited the topics on this blog in a way that they previously didn't seem to fit. But I do need to pass along this bit of news. Chavez is supporting Ahmadinejad. Chavez is no Leftist, but is often inexplicably treated as such. Screwiness on the Left often has repurcussions for Jews, so this was a good excuse to share.

And while I'm at it, let me recommend Richard Jeffrey Newman's careful interpretations. Often, democracy is best understood as institutionalized power for the individual. But often, for the sake of moving beyond dualism, it is better understood as the ability of the government to listen to the people. Newman bridges that gap as well as anyone.

Update: My wife instists it's dong-SUH. Like I'm some kind of expert transliterator.

On the radio

Leonard Zeskind looks at the white supremacist movement over the last 30-plus years, and the politics of the disparate groups that make up the movement--from neo-Nazi skinheads and Holocaust deniers to Christian Identity churches and David Duke. His book is Blood and Politics: The History of the White Nationalist Movement from the Margins to the Mainstream.



Chip Berlet has studied extremism, conspiracy theories and hate groups for more than 25 years. In a recent report for PublicEye.org, he says that the murders of abortion provider Dr. George Tiller and Holocaust Museum guard Stephen T. Johns exemplify the potential for violence that often lurks within extremist groups.
Listen here.