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

Technorati: Left Behind, Antisemitism, Anti-Semitism, Film, Pat Robertson, Books, Podhoretz, USA, Iran, Israel, Christocracy, Film, Religion, Islamophobia, Christo Fascism, Christofascism, Christocracy, Religion, Video, Politics

Cruising and Crusading with Norman

Mer om korståg mot Evil-Doers. "Ship of Fools" nedan är lång, men ger en unik bild av hur den välartikulerade amerikanska högern låter i avspända sammanhang. Islamhat. Islamhat. Islamhat.

From The Sunday Times September 30, 2007

Neocon 'godfather' Norman Podhoretz tells Bush: bomb Iran

Sarah Baxter, Washington

ONE of the founding fathers of neoconservatism has privately urged President George W Bush to bomb Iran rather than allow it to acquire nuclear weapons.

Norman Podhoretz, an intellectual guru of the neoconservative movement who has joined Rudolph Giuliani’s 2008 presidential campaign as a senior foreign policy adviser, held an unpublicised meeting with Bush late last spring at the Waldorf Astoria hotel in New York.

The encounter reveals the enduring influence of the neoconservatives at the highest reaches of the White House, despite some high-profile casualties in the past year.

Karl Rove, who was still serving in the White House as Bush’s deputy chief of staff, took notes. But the meeting, which lasted 45 minutes, was not logged on the president’s schedule.

Hold mouse pointer over link below to watch Podhoretz talking about how he is the one and only person in the USA supporting the Bush Doctine (endless Crusade):

Norman Podhoretz on His New Book (World War IV: The Long Struggle Against Islamofascism) - Video

Meet Norman Podhoretz, William Buckley (founder of National Review and Conservative Icon of the past), Bernard Lewis (essential in forming Bush's War on Islamic Countries) and other right wing luminaries aboard on

Ship of fools: Johann Hari sets sail with America's swashbuckling neocons

The Iraq war has been an amazing success, global warming is just a myth – and as for Guantanamo Bay, it's practically a holiday camp... The annual cruise organised by the 'National Review', mouthpiece of right-wing America, is a parallel universe populated by straight-talking, gun-toting, God-fearing Republicans.

By Johann Hari

Published: 13 July 2007

I am standing waist-deep in the Pacific Ocean, both chilling and burning, indulging in the polite chit-chat beloved by vacationing Americans. A sweet elderly lady from Los Angeles is sitting on the rocks nearby, telling me dreamily about her son. "Is he your only child?" I ask. "Yes," she says. "Do you have a child back in England?" she asks. No, I say. Her face darkens. "You'd better start," she says. "The Muslims are breeding. Soon, they'll have the whole of Europe."

I am getting used to these moments – when gentle holiday geniality bleeds into... what? I lie on the beach with Hillary-Ann, a chatty, scatty 35-year-old Californian designer. As she explains the perils of Republican dating, my mind drifts, watching the gentle tide. When I hear her say, " Of course, we need to execute some of these people," I wake up. Who do we need to execute? She runs her fingers through the sand lazily. "A few of these prominent liberals who are trying to demoralise the country," she says. "Just take a couple of these anti-war people off to the gas chamber for treason to show, if you try to bring down America at a time of war, that's what you'll get." She squints at the sun and smiles. " Then things'll change."

I am travelling on a bright white cruise ship with two restaurants, five bars, a casino – and 500 readers of the National Review. Here, the Iraq war has been "an amazing success". Global warming is not happening. The solitary black person claims, "If the Ku Klux Klan supports equal rights, then God bless them." And I have nowhere to run.

From time to time, National Review – the bible of American conservatism – organises a cruise for its readers. I paid $1,200 to join them. The rules I imposed on myself were simple: If any of the conservative cruisers asked who I was, I answered honestly, telling them I was a journalist. Mostly, I just tried to blend in – and find out what American conservatives say when they think the rest of us aren't listening.

II. "We're doing an excellent job killing them."

The Vista Lounge is a Vegas-style showroom, with glistening gold edges and the desperate optimism of an ageing Cha-Cha girl. Today, the scenery has been cleared away – "I always sit at the front in these shows to see if the girls are really pretty and on this ship they are ug-lee," I hear a Reviewer mutter – and our performers are the assorted purveyors of conservative show tunes, from Podhoretz to Steyn. The first of the trip's seminars is a discussion intended to exhume the conservative corpse and discover its cause of death on the black, black night of 7 November, 2006, when the treacherous Democrats took control of the US Congress.

There is something strange about this discussion, and it takes me a few moments to realise exactly what it is. All the tropes that conservatives usually deny in public – that Iraq is another Vietnam, that Bush is fighting a class war on behalf of the rich – are embraced on this shining ship in the middle of the ocean. Yes, they concede, we are fighting another Vietnam; and this time we won't let the weak-kneed liberals lose it. "It's customary to say we lost the Vietnam war, but who's 'we'?" the writer Dinesh D'Souza asks angrily. "The left won by demanding America's humiliation." On this ship, there are no Viet Cong, no three million dead. There is only liberal treachery. Yes, D'Souza says, in a swift shift to domestic politics, "of course" Republican politics is "about class. Republicans are the party of winners, Democrats are the party of losers."

The panel nods, but it doesn't want to stray from Iraq. Robert Bork, Ronald Reagan's one-time nominee to the Supreme Court, mumbles from beneath low-hanging jowls: "The coverage of this war is unbelievable. Even Fox News is unbelievable. You'd think we're the only ones dying. Enemy casualties aren't covered. We're doing an excellent job killing them."

....

A fracture-line in the lumbering certainty of American conservatism is opening right before my eyes. Following the break, Norman Podhoretz and William Buckley – two of the grand old men of the Grand Old Party – begin to feud. Podhoretz will not stop speaking – "I have lots of ex-friends on the left; it looks like I'm going to have some ex-friends on the right, too," he rants –and Buckley says to the chair, " Just take the mike, there's no other way." He says it with a smile, but with heavy eyes.

Podhoretz and Buckley now inhabit opposite poles of post-September 11 American conservatism, and they stare at wholly different Iraqs. Podhoretz is the Brooklyn-born, street-fighting kid who travelled through a long phase of left-liberalism to a pugilistic belief in America's power to redeem the world, one bomb at a time. Today, he is a bristling grey ball of aggression, here to declare that the Iraq war has been "an amazing success." He waves his fist and declaims: "There were WMD, and they were shipped to Syria ... This picture of a country in total chaos with no security is false. It has been a triumph. It couldn't have gone better." He wants more wars, and fast. He is "certain" Bush will bomb Iran, and " thank God" for that.

Buckley is an urbane old reactionary, drunk on doubts. He founded the National Review in 1955 – when conservatism was viewed in polite society as a mental affliction – and he has always been sceptical of appeals to " the people," preferring the eternal top-down certainties of Catholicism. He united with Podhoretz in mutual hatred of Godless Communism, but, slouching into his eighties, he possesses a world view that is ill-suited for the fight to bring democracy to the Muslim world. He was a ghostly presence on the cruise at first, appearing only briefly to shake a few hands. But now he has emerged, and he is fighting.

"Aren't you embarrassed by the absence of these weapons?" Buckley snaps at Podhoretz. He has just explained that he supported the war reluctantly, because Dick Cheney convinced him Saddam Hussein had WMD primed to be fired. "No," Podhoretz replies. "As I say, they were shipped to Syria. During Gulf War I, the entire Iraqi air force was hidden in the deserts in Iran." He says he is "heartbroken" by this " rise of defeatism on the right." He adds, apropos of nothing, "There was nobody better than Don Rumsfeld. This defeatist talk only contributes to the impression we are losing, when I think we're winning." The audience cheers Podhoretz. The nuanced doubts of Bill Buckley leave them confused. Doesn't he sound like the liberal media? Later, over dinner, a tablemate from Denver calls Buckley "a coward". His wife nods and says, " Buckley's an old man," tapping her head with her finger to suggest dementia.

I decide to track down Buckley and Podhoretz separately and ask them for interviews. Buckley is sitting forlornly in his cabin, scribbling in a notebook. In 2005, at an event celebrating National Review's 50th birthday, President Bush described today's American conservatives as "Bill's children". I ask him if he feels like a parent whose kids grew up to be serial killers. He smiles slightly, and his blue eyes appear to twinkle. Then he sighs, "The answer is no. Because what animated the conservative core for 40 years was the Soviet menace, plus the rise of dogmatic socialism. That's pretty well gone."

This does not feel like an optimistic defence of his brood, but it's a theme he returns to repeatedly: the great battles of his life are already won. Still, he ruminates over what his old friend Ronald Reagan would have made of Iraq. "I think the prudent Reagan would have figured here, and the prudent Reagan would have shunned a commitment of the kind that we are now engaged in... I think he would have attempted to find some sort of assurance that any exposure by the United States would be exposure to a challenge the dimensions of which we could predict." Lest liberals be too eager to adopt the Gipper as one of their own, Buckley agrees approvingly that Reagan's approach would have been to "find a local strongman" to rule Iraq.

A few floors away, Podhoretz tells me he is losing his voice, "which will make some people very happy". Then he croaks out the standard-issue Wolfowitz line about how, after September 11, the United States had to introduce democracy to the Middle East in order to change the political culture that produced the mass murderers. For somebody who declares democracy to be his goal, he is remarkably blasé about the fact that 80 per cent of Iraqis want US troops to leave their country, according to the latest polls. "I don't much care," he says, batting the question away. He goes on to insist that "nobody was tortured in Abu Ghraib or Guantanamo" and that Bush is "a hero". He is, like most people on this cruise, certain the administration will attack Iran.

Podhoretz excitedly talks himself into a beautiful web of words, vindicating his every position. He fumes at Buckley, George Will and the other apostate conservatives who refuse to see sense. He announces victory. And for a moment, here in the Mexican breeze, it is as though a thousand miles away Baghdad is not bleeding. He starts hacking and coughing painfully. I offer to go to the ship infirmary and get him some throat sweets, and – locked in eternal fighter-mode – he looks thrown, as though this is an especially cunning punch. Is this random act of kindness designed to imbalance him? " I'm fine," he says, glancing contemptuously at the Bill Buckley book I am carrying. "I'll keep on shouting through the soreness."

This was a short excerpt. The full article here

Andra bloggar om: Bush, Iran, korståg, Podhoretz, Irak, Neokonservatism, islamofobi, USA, politik - Intressant

Technorati: Bush, Iran, Podhoretz, Iraq, Religion, National Review, USA, Islamophobia, Politics, Religion, Neoconservativism, War