“there is a true fascism rising in academia and its target is Israel”
American Anthropological Association moves closer to academic boycott of Israel.
I was a guest earlier today on The Craig Silverman Show on 710 KNUS in Denver.
For almost 20 minutes we talked about the use or refusal to use the term “radical Islam,” Obama’s world view and foreign policy, Jesse Watters’ visit to Cornell, and the vote at the American Anthropological Association last night to send an anti-Israel academic boycott resolution to a vote by the full membership in the spring.
If you didn’t hear about the vote, you can read about it at the Times of Israel.
I previously wrote about how over the course of several years anti-Israel professors and graduate students put together misleading and dishonest seminars and publications which presented a completely one-sided view of the conflict. That was compounded by a study commissioned by the AAA in which the authors adopted a settler colonial approach to predetermine the outcome of the study by framing it as Israel being illegitimate, then finding facts to support the narrative while ignoring or diminishing contrary facts.
This series of maps, displayed outside the voting session purporting to show Palestinian loss of land, reflects the type of propaganda used to pass the boycott on to the membership. It’s the false and misleading series of maps that MSNBC apologized for using because it is wrong. Yet it was on full display at AAA.
As with all the academic boycott resolutions so far, it’s symbolic because AAA already has no dealings with Israeli universities. But symbolism counts because it’s part of a strategy to destroy Israel by delegitimizing it, just like the U.N. tried to do in the 1975 Zionism is Racism resolution (since revoked) and as NGOs and U.N. agencies continue to do.
So it matters in that sense. I don’t know if we’ve reached the inflection point yet where American civil society finally pushes back against the propagandists with Ph.D’s in a serious way. Among those ways needs to be to Stop taxpayer subsidies for anti-Israel boycott groups.
Hundreds of millions of Americans support Israel over the Palestinians and that support has grown steadily. Fewer than 2000 left-wing anthropologists versus hundreds of millions of Americans? I like those odds.
But it’s still upsetting how anti-Israel zealots have been able to corrupt once-noble professional organizations through years-long organizational manipulation. They are fighting over the one tiny piece of real estate they can control in a vast nation of pro-Israel sentiment, but they still need to be opposed so that the evil doesn’t spread.
And if you followed the taunting in social media and at the meeting of the AAA members who opposed BDS, you’d know how ugly the situation is going to get. BDS activists not only engage in thuggish behavior on campus, that’s how they treat faculty who oppose them.
But predictably, when the push-back starts, those in the pro-boycott side will be the first to scream that it’s not fair that the boycotters be boycotted.
Here is the text of the portion on the vote from my interview on The Craig SilvermanShow, starting at 17:15 [click on link to jump ahead].
Last night, in Denver, the American Anthropolical Association at their annual Business Meeting for their Annual Meeting, voted to endorse the academic boycott of Israel. It now goes to the membership for a full vote. So it’s not effective yet, but at the business meeting, these radical Israel-haters who are obsessed, voted by something like 88%. And this is only the people in attendance, so it’s not the whole membership, to boycott Israel.
Of all of the problems in the world, of all of the horrors that are going on. ISIS rampaging places, the knifing attacks on Jews in Israel, Hamas still occasionally shooting rockets at Israel and abusing their own people, of all of those problems the academics at the American Anthropological Association business meeting in Denver, Colorado, voted to boycott Israel. How sick is that? ….
Now it does go to the full membership now, which is 10,000 people, and I’m hopeful that a little bit of sanity will prevail, but there is a true fascism rising in academia and its target is Israel. I hope your listeners understand that. These are vicious, nasty people who have decided to take all their frustrations in the world out on the Jewish state. When there’s so many worse problems, so much less academic freedom elsewhere in the world, they’ve singled out Israel.
So if your question to me was do we have to reform the educational system because we’re turning out people who are radicalized, the answer is ‘absolutely,’ and it’s the professors who are the single biggest problem.”
(added)
When fascism comes 2 America will look like @AmericanAnthro Israel boycott https://t.co/9dupWMI7eg @thesadredearth pic.twitter.com/tCtYkXpNvh
— Legal Insurrection (@LegInsurrection) November 22, 2015
2/2 When fascism comes 2 America will look like @AmericanAnthro Israel boycott https://t.co/9dupWMI7eg pic.twitter.com/PXiKIwG6eA
— Legal Insurrection (@LegInsurrection) November 22, 2015
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Comments
This is kind of like the way Communists used to take over organizations a long time ago. (1940s)
But the problem isn’t that they take a one-sided view of the conflict.
The problem is they take the WRONG side. Because there is a side to blame.
The truth of the matetr is:
Anti-Zionism (when it consists of accusations of evil, and readiness to credit slander) is a form of anti-semitism.
Anti-semitism is form of racism.
And therefore anti-Zionism is a form of racism.
The Gallup chart clearly shows the reality that many in academia will not acknowledge and accept. That reality is beneath them.
It is easy to see from the uber-sensitive ungrounded students they produce (wisdom is known by its fruit) that many in academia see themselves well above the dark green line or most of humanity. It is from this elevated sense of self (‘truth’ is something they create) that they believe they see things as they ‘really’ are. From out of this distorted self-righteous view they (one glaring example: Obama) propound ‘professorial’ propaganda not to inform or to persuade, but to denigrate, humiliate and shame the ‘other’. Whole Truth is never their means to their desired ends – Israel’s submission to their intellectual domination.
Education today is no longer about an outward search for truth. It has become, instead, an inner search for discontent. And as I see it most education today offers no answer for such easily found discontent other than exclusion of others (or words) who (that) ‘appear’ to be causing the feelings of ‘pain’ or angst. The social doctors of academia use radicalization (social surgery) to promote themselves as saviors of the self-marginalized. It gives their otherwise banal lives some degree of ‘meaning’ beyond a secure tenured existence. Truth for them is not self-aggrandizing (because it always points away from them toward the Absolute).
I see academia’s orphans – those who’ve had parenting Truth murdered before their eyes – replicated in all of the self-disenfranchising groups today.
And much like Esau, the godless and profane will continue to sell their birthright as educators for material ends and immediate approbation.
As many colleges today are increasingly producing a degree product that is marginal in the employment market & leaves the customer in deep debt they do what state centered institutions always do. Put blame elsewhere for their failure. And where do these frauds invariably go in these cases? Blame the other, blame the Jew.
The wonder is all to many Jews go along. That is the centuries old dilemma. Israel has for the first time in centuries given Jews an independent foothold where they don’t have to kiss up to some Prince for asylum. Therefore to the universal totalitarian religion it must be destroyed.
My point is in the bold below, so read that. The rest is background and support, subject to change … no extra charge. 🙂
The communists (cultural Marxists, whatever) must break down the pillars of the nation state to defeat us. Those pillars are religious, ethnic, geographic, along with multiple elements of family heritage. Israel exemplifies a nation state built on strong heritage based in their religion, as does the America of our founding fathers.
Obama wants to grab our children at preschool, and keep a stranglehold on them till the grave. Massive migratory invasions from third world nations (Africa, the ME, everything south of US) … helps dilute “Who We Are”.
http://www.amazon.com/Who-Are-We-Challenges-Americas/dp/0684870533/ref=mt_hardcover?_encoding=UTF8&me=
(that’s a book Levin referenced last week …
Who Are We: The Challenges to America’s National Identity)
So with the anti-America left opening new fronts against our liberties via BLM and various safe zone mandates, it is no surprise they continue their assault on Israel, which maintains a strong hold on its cultural identity. Breaking “Little Satan” is part of the war on “Big Satan”. In a sense I suppose, both cultures came “out of Egypt”.
While the above poll shows more than 2 to 1 support for Israel, American Jews still voted more than 2 to 1 for Obama in 2012, and more than 3 to 1 in 2008. While Israel has managed to find some common cause with elements of Jordan, Egypt and Saudi Arabia, that would appear to be despite the best efforts of Hillary and Obama.
The Bush Doctrine to spread democracy was in harmony with a strong Israel alliance. The Obama Doctrine of “God Damn America” allies with the Muslim Brotherhood. But behind Iran and Assad is Russia and communism. Stalinist communism has been the heart of cultural divisiveness in America since Buckley started the conservative movement, or actually going back another fifty years or more. The demonization of “McCarthyism” marked a major victory for those leftist forces, as commies and Che became “cool” in the sixties, where they raised little Barack and Jarrett to be the
Manchuriancommie candidate.Infiltrating and undermining the Christian church and Jewish synagogue are both robust parts of their invasion, which is first and foremost cultural. Meanwhile white America wallows in guilt over colonialism, its super power status, and economic success.
Education may be the answer, but “they” took over public education. So my point here is that I don’t think the target of this fascism is (just, or mainly) Israel, even though they are certainly a core objective. America’s chief geo-political enemy is Russia, and they are at the heart of the academic fascism. We stand WITH Israel to the extent they believe in liberty, not communism. We don’t stand FOR Israel, so much as WITH them FOR freedom, academic and all others. The distinction seems important, imo.
The (communist/academic left’s) target is liberty, and part of breaking America’s global influence is to break off our bond with Israel, the main lamp of liberty in the whole middle east. Americans fight along side Israel because they are the civilized democracy of the region, which springs from the “Judeo-Christian” heritage.
I’m just trying to say, I don’t think the strongest appeal to America in general is for protecting the academic freedoms of Israel, though that argument must be made. The right of Israel to exist as a cultural identity should be tied to the right of America to exist as a cultural identity. It’s lady liberty’s universal war against the lies of moral equivalence and diversity, and in favor of identifying good and evil. Liberty (democratic republics) versus bondage (fascism, communism).
That’s just my opinion, and I’m not directly in those same culture wars. My vague understanding of Israel is that they have internal battles with “communism” like we do. But the first thing I thought of on that headline was that … no, their target is not Israel, it is the superpower America, which supports Israel because they also stand for liberty. I’m not in disagreement really, it’s just a matter of emphasis.
Russia had ties to the Mandelas in South Africa, and can be linked to the Islamic jihads as well. The Russian bear did not die.
http://www.thenewamerican.com/world-news/asia/item/13069-russian-red-jihad
That was from 2012, and Putin has advanced since then.
Hunting and gathering anti-Semitic shibboleths was a favorite pastime for the lost tribe of the AAA leadership.
Great interview, Professor.
The left had their long march through the institutions, and in response we should have a much shorter counter-march that defunds and de-charters as many of these institutions of treason as possible.
Double kudos if we manage to jail any of the instigators.