Target Iran: Robertson and Podhoretz on Antisemitism (not a problem)

Swedish Intro: Det kan vid första anblicken verka förbryllande att man idag inte ser och hör så många entydigt antisemitiska attacker från kristokratin. Svaret på detta är enkelt: en ny syndabock skapades den 11/9, 2001 i form av Islam och Islamism. Varför krångla till det med traditionell antisemitism när muslimhatet är så utspritt? Se även Blackwater Army of God and Pat Robertson.

At first sight it might be a bit confusing to not find much overt antisemitism coming from Christocracy advocates today. The reason for this is very, very simple: a much more convenient scapegoat was created on 9.11, 2001: Islam, Islamism and the Archenemy Islamofascism. Why complicate things whit traditional Anti-Semitism when their already is so much hate towards muslims to exploit? See previous entry Blackwater Army of God and Pat Robertson for more on this.

Video clip from the "Left Behind" (first movie), Part 2:

Left Behind, the Movie, Part 1 is here.

You don't have to go very far back in time to find the ex-president candidate Pat Robertson deep into the traditional right-wing antisemitic conspiracy theories:

New World Order, 1991:

The New World Order

Robertson's books have been both successful and controversial. The Secret Kingdom, Answers to 100 of Life's Most Probing Questions, and The New World Order were each in their respective year of publication the number one religious book in America.

Robertson's tome The New World Order was described as a 'catch all for conspiracy theories' by Christian academic Don Wilkey:

Pat Robertson’s work, NEW WORLD ORDER, is a catch all for conspiracy theories. It combines the paranoia of the Old Right with modern versions. A summary of Robertson’s book is found on page 177 in which Pat says a conspiracy has existed in the world working through Freemasonry and a secret Order of the Illuminati, a group combining Masons and Jewish Bankers.^[12]

Ephraim Radner also accuses Robertson of espousing anti-semitic beliefs in the same book:

In his published writings, especially his 1991 book The New World Order, Pat Robertson has propagated theories about a worldwide Jewish conspiracy. Michael Land raised the issue in February in the New York Times Book Review, and in April Jacob Heilbrun, writing in the New York Review of Books, cited chapter and verse of Robertson's borrowings from well-known anti-Semitic works.^[13]

(Swedish: Liknande idéer kan hittas hos svenska kristokater: Flammor.com om hur "En ny världsordning planeras".)

So why don't those Neoconservatives pretending to be Friends of Israel care about Antisemites like Pat Robertson? Or even defend them, like Norman Podhoretz did with Pat Robertson?

Norman Podhoretz, Commentary, 1995: In the Matter of Pat Robertson (archive only)

An Interview with Norman Podhoretz, 2003

Conservative Christians as Friends

"This is why I defend the conservative Christians who have taken such a strong stand in favor of Israel. True, one of their leaders, Pat Robertson, has bought into hoary anti-Semitic fantasies about the alleged conspiracy of Jews and Masons in the eighteenth century, but bad as this is, it seems to me trivial - or academic - as compared with his support of Israel in the living present.

"Many liberal Jews don't want the fundamentalist Christians as friends, which is absurd. Israel needs all the allies it can get. Again, it is true that the support of some Christian fundamentalists derives from a belief that the second coming of their Messiah must be preceded by Jewish sovereignty in the Holy Land, followed by a mass conversion of the Jews to Christianity. But as Irving Kristol has quipped, at the end of days we'll find out whether these fundamentalists are right, and in the meantime we can embrace them as the friends and allies they now are.

"In political life one survives by the ability to tell who are one's friends and who are one's enemies. Many American Jews seem amazingly deficient in this elementary ability. In the past, as I indicated earlier, it was the parties of the left that favored civil liberties, civil rights, and emancipation for the Jews, while the parties of the right resisted such measures. But in the last thirty-five years - beginning with the aftermath of the Six-Day War of 1967 - we have seen more and more evidence of a historic reversal where Israel is concerned. On the left there has been increasing hostility toward Israel, while on the right there has been increasing friendliness.

"Many Jews resolutely refuse to accept this. They are blinded by an atavistic anxiety which takes the form of the belief that these Christians want to convert their children and turn America into a place where Jews would be less than fully at home. This anxiety has no connection with contemporary realities. Another quip of Irving Kristol is that the main danger to Jews from Christians nowadays is not that they wish to persecute or convert the Jews, but that they want to marry their daughters."

So why this odd symbiosis between Christocracy and Neoconservatism (extending far beyond Robertson and Podhoretz? A common enemy, albeit for different reasons:

Norman Podhoretz, Commentary: The Case for Bombing Iran

Robertson: Iran "now has atomic weapons" (video)

From the May 2 edition of the Christian Broadcasting Network's The 700 Club:

ROBERTSON: It's shocking what's happening. And I got home over the weekend and read the 38th chapter of Ezekiel, once again, to see a war that is forecast where a nation identified as Russia and possibly some of the Caucasian states, maybe Turkey, but some of those states in that region, join with Iran, Libya, and the Sudan to move against Israel. A great horde of people to come against Israel, re-gathered from the nations in the latter days.

It's amazing that Iran has come to the fore as it has with a president who says Israel should be wiped off the map, who -- it now has atomic weapons. And a year ago, the Lord told me, as I was praying, that Israel was entering into the most dangerous time in its existence as a nation. He confirmed this again in January, and lo and behold, the events in the -- in the current affairs just keep tumbling, tumbling, tumbling upon us. And I look in disbelief.

Just like is the case with George W. Bush, Pat Robertson can hear the Voice of God. FOX News is always a willing channel for prophesies:

Religious Broadcaster Pat Robertson Predicts Horrific Terrorist Attack on U.S. in 2007

Andra bloggar om: Left Behind, antisemitism, religion, islam, islamism, islamofobi, kristendom, kristokrati, den kristna högern, Pat Robertson, video, film, Iran, Israel, USA, politik - Intressant

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Left Behind Books/Films/Game - Just Plain Armaggedon or Good Old Antisemitism

The Left Behind Series (Official Site) of books have sold some 70 million copies. - In Swedish: 70 millioner ex.! - There are three movies based on the books. Quote from below: "Besides LaHaye (one of the authors), evangelists such as Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell are among the most well-known believers in these doctrines."

Video clip from the "Left Behind" (first movie), Part 1:

And who is the main Enemy in the opening scenes of film?

Israel Insider writes about the game (under Anti-semitism):

And then there are the books. The first volume in the "Left Behind" series was published in 1995. Since then, over 70 million copies have been sold, and several of the books have made it onto the New York Times bestseller list.

The series has been described as "Tom Clancy or Steven King meets Jesus": action-adventure with heavy Christian overtones. Spin-offs include a children's edition, comic books, postcards, board games, three movies and more.

Critics are particularly incensed by the identity of the series' authors: Dr. Tim LaHaye and Jerry B. Jenkins. LaHaye heads several American conservative organizations, including the Council for National Policy, which leftwing journalists accuse of having undue influence on American policymakers.

Good for the Jews?

Where do we fit into all this? Jews and Israelis will find the series' plotline extremely troubling, to say the least.

In the first book, seven years of fighting between the forces of good and evil begin with a Russian attack on Israel, which survives to enable Jesus to return. While many Jews "see the light" and convert to Christianity, some liberal Israelis support the evil nonbelievers. In other words, "Left Behind" supports Israel but portrays Judaism as a mistaken religion.

The game has been attacked from both the left and the right. On The Daily Show, Rob Cordry showed a clip of the game's developer explaining that if a player "kills" an innocent bystander, he or she loses a point. However, if the player recruits and converts the bystander, he or she gains two points.

"Now I understand," Corddry quips. "The difference between murder and the soul's eternal salvation is three points."

Moderates view the implied connection between Christianity and violence with misgiving and caution that Islamists may use the game and the books as proof of American anti-Muslim intolerance.

Michael Standaert has written the book Skipping Toward Armageddon - The Politics and Propaganda of the Left Behind Novels and the LaHaye Empire

Just what are "Incomplete Jews?"

by Michael Standaert

[ politics - june 06 ]

One of the deepest antipathies ardent Christians have had toward Jews through the ages derives from Jewish denial of Jesus Christ as the Messiah, a denial that has long fueled much of the anti-Semitism among Christian cultures. Most enlightened Christians, especially the non-proselytizing kind, don't obsess over this anymore. It's simply a non-issue. Furthermore, in an active sense, mainline Christian denominations have gone out of their way in the past half-century to rid their cultures of slurs referring to Jews as "deniers" or at its most virulent, as "Christ killers." For most it was the realization that fuel like this embedded in the minds of pre-secular Christian Europeans, helped ignite everything from pogroms in Russia to holocausts in lands under Nazi rule.

There were other aspects anti-Semitism, the more secular class and race based notions (as opposed to the simply religious), that also aided in turning people from everyday bigots and haters to exceptional purveyors of genocide. For many Jews in Europe at the time were hardly religious at all. Being a "denier" wasn't really much of an issue, apart from the total denial of religious life in any way. Being bourgeoisie was an issue, as was, paradoxically, being a Marxist champion of the proletariat. Hitler, with his Germanic version of nationalism, attacked both Jewish bourgeoisie (shopkeepers, bankers, businessmen) and socialist intellectual upstarts alike. Stalin's anti-Semitism feasted more of the flavors of ousting the bourgeoisie and later their minor remnants in the dekulakization campaigns, playing off popular anti-Semitic notions leftover from Czarist days.

What united both ideologies, Nazism and Stalinism, in their anti-Semitism was that Jews played central roles in their dramas. Secondly, was the fact that these ideologies based the Jewish threat to their nations on wild conspiracy theories, namely the Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion. Under these lenses, Jews were seen as the Number One scapegoats, as purveyors of secrecy and conspiracy, as intellectual troublemakers, as anti-national internationalists, as unpatriotic, as outsiders, and as the ultimate "others." Today these same conspiracy theories are widely propagated throughout the Middle East by both Islamic fundamentalists and secular totalitarian regimes to use as propaganda against the state of Israel.

Considering what we know about how past uses of anti-Semitism in popular culture have later supported popular feeling against Jewish peoples, it is somewhat amazing how little has been said about these narratives within American culture. They are no more apparent today than in the hugely popular and successful series of Christian apocalyptic thrillers, the Left Behind novels.

Over the past decade, the Left Behind novels, have sold around 70 million copies and have become the most successful Christian publishing phenomenon ever in the United States outside the Bible. Written by Jerry B Jenkins and Tim LaHaye, a prominent Evangelical minister and political activist, series will culminate with the final and 15th book, The Rapture, appropriately enough, on June 6, 2006 (6/6/06). Three movies have been made based on the books, with the third movie, Left Behind: World at War, released last October 25th on DVD, skipping theatres altogether. It didn't skip churches, however. Over 3,000 churches signed up for a pre-release viewing the weekend before the official release.

For these books, LaHaye provides Jenkins with a detailed outline of prophecy based on the beliefs of dispensational premillennialism, a previously minor Protestant belief system that proposes a "Rapture" of "true believers" to Heaven prior to a seven-year period of tribulation culminating in the return of Jesus Christ and the Battle of Armageddon between the true believers and Satan. These beliefs came into being only 150 years ago when Scottish preacher John Darby formulated the ideas, ideas later disseminated in popular bibles such as the Scofield Reference Bible. They found a home in Protestant fundamentalism in the US and were propagated throughout academic systems, mainly through the Dallas Theological Seminary. The beliefs of dispensational premillennialism are then converted into a fictional narrative set in the present day and hung on the scaffolding of premillennialist prophecy interpretation, mostly based on the interpretation of the Book of Revelations. Besides LaHaye, evangelists such as Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell are among the most well-known believers in these doctrines.

Read the entire article here

Andra bloggar om: Left Behind, antisemitism, religion, mission, islam, islamism, islamofobi, kristendom, kristokrati, den kristna högern, Pat Robertson, video, film, Israel, USA, politik - Intressant

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Blackwater Army of God and Pat Robertson

Den svenska högern gör alltså allt för att minimera betydelsen av den kristna högern - kristokratiska missionärer - i USA, trots en överväldigande dokumentation om motsatsen. Ett litet antal exempel nedan.

The Swedish right is extremely eager to minimize the impact of the so called Christian Right, i.e. Christocracy Missionaries. One tiny example below. This is also a classical - historical - example of how the prosecutor puts on the cloak of a prosecuted. Powerful interests always need scapegoats to cover up their real intents and motives.

Blackwater Army of God >

Christian Freedom International (CFI) Founder and President Jim Jacobson >

Pat Robertson (Jacobson interviewed - VIDEO)

This is the same (or a totally different) parallel universe as we encountered in the previous entry. Jim Jacobson has Eric Prince on the board of CFI. Eric Prince is founder and CEO of Blackwater. Blackwater is part of the occupation forces in Iraq, killing civilians most recently. Iraq was a secular country ruled by an oppressive regime before the Army of Good invaded the country on March 19, 2003.

The majority of Iraq is still dominated by secular Iraqis or moderate muslims caught in a religious (and political) war between USA, Sunni and Shiite extremists. Of course they are not happy to let Christocrats like Robertson, Jacobson and their missionaries on the ground in Iraq add fuel to the flames.

Jacobson: "Thank God for CBN" (Robertson's Christian Broadcast Network) telling the truth about how Christians are prosecuted by evil muslim Jihadists. "People just don't understand how barbaric the Jihadists really are. How much they hate us. How much they hate Christians. If they could attack us they would. " Thus a big thank you to Eric Prince's Blackwater teaching them Evil-Doing ayrabs a lesson or two. (This blog has no sympathy whatsoever to Talibans, other Muslim Jihadists, Christian Jihadists or any other extremist group.)

So what about Robertson? Some videos via Youtube (and as usual you merely put your mouse pointer over the links below to watch the clips here - click takes you to Youtube.com in case you prefer that):

Pat Robertson calls for an Assassination of Hugo Chavez

Pat Robertson Nazi Moment (about 30-40000 Dangerous Academics brainwashing, beating up students and you name it. "Some of them are killers."

Excuse Us, Pat Robertson. (Threating any Israeli Prime Minister dividing God's Land the same fate as Ariel Sharon: Death.)

Christianity's Greatest Menace is Islam (from Robertson's CBN, on Christian Martyrs)

These are just some tiny drops of the Christian Jihadist mentality oozing into the American living rooms.

Andra bloggar om: Eric Prince, Blackwater, religion, mission, islam, islamism, islamofobi, kristendom, kristokrati, den kristna högern, Pat Robertson, video, Irak, USA, politik - Intressant

Technorati: Eric Prince, Blackwater, War Profiteers, Video, Army of God, USA, Christocracy, Politics, Religion, Mercenaries, Missionaries, Islam, Islamism, Islamofascism, Islamophobia, Christo Fascism, Christofascism, Christocracy, Religion, Video, USA, Sweden, Politics,Ted Nugent