[Peace-discuss] Quiet?

Thu Sep 15 19:25:11 UTC 2016

You offer a Cold War caricature of socialism (now curiously back in fashion, in the mad Clinton campaign, to demonize Putin - and Trump), but Luther wasn’t any sort of socialist - although his contemporary, Thomas More could be considered one. In “Utopia" [1516], More wrote,

“...when I consider any social system that prevails in the modern world, I can’t, so help me God, see it as anything but a conspiracy of the rich to advance their own interests under the pretext of organizing society. They think up all sorts of tricks and dodges, first for keeping safe their ill-gotten gains, and then for exploiting the poor by buying their labour as cheaply as possible. Once the rich have decided that these tricks and dodges shall be officially recognized by society – which includes the poor as well as the rich – they acquire the force of law. Thus an unscrupulous minority is led by its insatiable greed to monopolize what would have been enough to supply the needs of the whole population…"

As for the rest, as a Catholic I shouldn’t judge Luther’s foolishness (especially with a major Luther anniversary looming), but I do note that his own last written words were, “Wir sind Bettler, das ist wahr” - "We are beggars, that is true." 'Bettler’ come from a root meaning 'to plead,' which might be taken as the pleading of fools…

There’s no doubt Luther was an antisemite; he also plead with the feudality of Germany (in "Against the Robbing and Murdering Hordes of Peasants," 1525) to “...let everyone who can, smite, slay and stab, secretly or openly, remembering that nothing can be more poisonous, hurtful or devilish than a rebel. It is just as when one must kill a mad dog; if you do not strike him, he will strike you, and a whole land with you.”

In his poem on the outbreak of the Second World War, W. H. Auden wrote, 

"Accurate scholarship can 
Unearth the whole offence
From Luther until now
That has driven a culture mad,
Find what occurred at Linz,
What huge imago made
A psychopathic god:
I and the public know
What all schoolchildren learn,
Those to whom evil is done
Do evil in return." 

‘Foolishness,’ at least in English, seems too weak for the evil bound up with antisemitism.  —CGE

> On Sep 15, 2016, at 12:27 PM, Stephen Francis <stephenf1113 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> 
> As per CGE: "Antisemitism is the socialism of fools"
> Was Martin Luther a fool?
> If I'm not mistaken, in his book 'On the Jews and Their Lies' circa 1543, Martin Luther is decrying the attempt by Jews to monopolize the virtues of circumcision before the eyes of God...
> Luther: "Why then do the Jews lie so shamefully before God in their prayer and preaching, as though circumcision were theirs alone, through which they were set apart from all other nations and thus they alone are God's holy people?"
> 
> Socialism and Zionism are not unlikely partners.... given the history of Israel... and the ring of antiSemitism has always been a form of protection that this group needs to surround their identity. It's group-think instead of individuality expressed.
> 
> Socialism ultimately is the abandonment of individuality for the collective leader's dictates. A primitive form of socialism must have been forming even in Luther's day.
> 
> Evidently in 1543, the Jews were able to, through considerable means, convey their power, to the consternation of Luther, through this discourse on circumcision given that this discourse was available to them, where racism was not.
> 
> 
> 
> On Thursday, September 15, 2016 12:09 PM, Carl G. Estabrook <galliher at illinois.edu> wrote:
> 
> 
> Stephen’s arguments should not be dismissed out of hand, not because they are plausible, but because some people follow them. 
> 
> They are not impossible - a square circle is impossible - just highly improbable, like David Icke’s shape-shifting lizards.
> 
> They are arguments that need to be countered with accurate analyses of current politics and war - and the current political establishment is even more opposed to that.
> 
> The founders of AWARE were right to connect war and racism, not because the US government’s wars arise from racism (as perhaps identity politics would have us believe), but because US wars generate racism, as in the perhaps misnamed Islamophobia. (As the estimable B. Fields puts it in regard to a related matter, "Probably a majority of American historians think of slavery in the United States as primarily a system of race relations—as though the chief business of slavery were the production of white supremacy rather than the production of cotton, sugar, rice and tobacco”!)
> 
> From Thomas Pynchon’s immortal Proverbs for Paranoids (in his novel Gravity’s Rainbow): “If they can get you asking the wrong questions, they don’t have to worry about answers” - they, being the ruling class, and the wrong questions being about Jews rather than the 1%.
> 
> August Bebel (1840-1913) applied that principle to Stephen’s assertions more than a century ago, when he observed, “Antisemitism is the socialism of fools.” He meant that contemporary Europeans knew that there was something profoundly wrong and inhuman about capitalism, but misidentified who was responsible for it - the Jewish shopkeeper rather than the owners of the means of production. (How that came about is illuminated by an unjustly ignored book, Israel Shahak’s "Jewish History, Jewish Religion: The Weight of Three Thousand Years" [1994].) 
> 
> But (as we often say on News from Neptune), no one can be wrong all the time. Stephen is right when he says “Donald Trump … is telling the truth about the Iraq/Afghanistan wars and the trillions of dollars that have lined the pockets of the rich while ordinary Americans muddle through economic hard times” (and that’s the real source of the appeal which may make Trump president). Stephen there is not babbling but perhaps Bebeling… (sorry).
> 
> —CGE
>   
> > On Sep 15, 2016, at 9:56 AM, Karen Aram via Peace-discuss <peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net> wrote:
> > 
> >  Stephen is so full of it, all one can do is LOL, which is really sad given the really serious issues humanity is facing, and this peace list is meant to address, not his nonsense
> > 
> > . 
> >> On Sep 15, 2016, at 07:51, Stephen Francis via Peace-discuss <peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net> wrote:
> >> 
> >> Instead of BS, prove to me with facts and figures that Jews have NOT controlled banking/finance for millennia.
> >> I'm not supposed to say these...keep my mouth shut...
> >> I know that I'm risking harm by doing this.
> >> 
> >> 
> >> On Thursday, September 15, 2016 10:44 AM, David Johnson <davidjohnson1451 at comcast.net> wrote:
> >> 
> >> 
> >> Hey Stephen,
> >>  
> >> I heard that the sinking of the Titanic was a Jewish plot.
> >>  
> >> You know, Iceberg, Goldberg, what’s the difference ?
> >>  
> >> David J.
> >>  
> >>  
> >> From: Peace-discuss [mailto:peace-discuss-bounces at lists.chambana.net] On Behalf Of Stephen Francis via Peace-discuss
> >> Sent: Thursday, September 15, 2016 9:28 AM
> >> To: Mildred O'brien; Peace-discuss List
> >> Cc: Stephen Francis
> >> Subject: Re: [Peace-discuss] Quiet?
> >>  
> >> When I get messages like this it just confirms that I'm getting my message across.
> >> I'm attempting, like (Donald Trump, who I'm no fan of) to expose the LIES and DECEIT by our government and its leaders.
> >> He is telling the truth about the Iraq/Afghanistan wars and the trillions of dollars that have lined the pockets of the rich while ordinary Americans muddle through economic hard times.
> >> Jewish banksters (major bulge bracket banks) were fined over $100 billion dollars for the 2008 housing fraud 
> >> crisis and not one of them went to jail. By not admitting wrong-doing in the legal proceedings, the fines became tax write-offs that the American people have to pay for. We just signed a $38 billion foreign aid bill to Israel. GET MY POINT!
> >> Jill Stein just declared that 9/11 should be reinvestigated. Zionists did 9/11. I'm going to vote for her.  She will do something about our corrupt Israeli-controlled, bribed, blackmailed government.
> >> If you don't like me...organize an effort to get me kicked off this group.  It would only happen because of Jewish power not because I broke any rule governing this group.
> >> http://forward.com/the-assimilator/131574/jews-dominate-forbes-rich-list/
> >> 
> >>  
> >> On Thursday, September 15, 2016 9:09 AM, Mildred O'brien <moboct1 at aim.com> wrote:
> >>  
> >> How about YOU keeping quiet for a while
> >> 
> >> mo'b
> >> 
> >> 
> >> -----Original Message-----
> >> From: Stephen Francis via Peace-discuss <peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net>
> >> To: Peace-discuss List <peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net>
> >> Cc: Stephen Francis <stephenf1113 at yahoo.com>
> >> Sent: Wed, Sep 14, 2016 10:29 am
> >> Subject: [Peace-discuss] Quiet?
> >> Sure is quiet on this site ...???
> >> Let's see...
> >> AWARE Antiwar, Anti racist?
> >> Maybe we need some comments on anti-racism.
> >> How about some Critical Theory.... 
> >> Maybe a little Horkheimer and Markuse
> >> _______________________________________________ Peace-discuss mailing list Peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net https://lists.chambana.net/mailman/listinfo/peace-discuss
> 
> >>  
> >> 
> >> 