The Impossibility of a Jewish Russophile

According to neocon John Podhoretz, anyway:

podhoretz-no-jewish-russophile

Though I suppose you can expect nothing less from someone who is essentially a walking anti-Semitic stereotype.

podhoretz-jews-win

 

Incidentally, if you’re on Twitter, the subject of Podhoretz’s wrath @JewRussophile is well worth following for Syria and geopolitical updates.

Comments

  1. Might be true. My grandfather was a Latvian Jew (his family got out just ahead of Stalin’s invasion in ’39), and he always despised Russians, called them uncivilized Asiatics, fundamentally non-European, etc. Interestingly enough, he only had kind words for Germans. The Holocaust, he would always say, was entirely Hitler’s fault and had nothing to do with the race that had given the world Kant, Goethe, and Beethoven.

    Of course, he was a native German speaker, so that might have had something to do with it.

  2. Just for the record, being 98.3% Ashkenazi as per 23AndMe and having grown up in Russia, I have a lot of affection for Russian culture and Russian people, both individually (almost all of my childhood friends, for example) and in general.

    I think that the politics of guys like JPod are bad for the world in general and bad for Jews in particular. Bad from the humanitarian point of view (war is bad), but from the civilizationist point of view, bad from the point of view of honesty (a lot of what they say isn’t true). Just all-around bad.

  3. And they take this attitude to a country with a conspicuously Judaeophilic leadership!

  4. If the very notion of a Jewish Russophile is noxious does that make them Russophobes? And, to think, they banned me at National Review for calling them slavophobes.

  5. Parsifal says

    Not nearly as noxious as the existence of John Podhoretz.

    Also, earlier in the day he berated Joel Pollack of Breitbart in a similar fashion(“You are not a real Jew”) because of the Breitbart article on alt-right, so he has a habit of these things.

  6. Vera Nabokov?

  7. J-Pod really is just too perfect. I’m glad he’s one of the most prominent spokesmen for his crowd. He does a fantastic job clarifying things. Over in France there’s guy named Jacques Attali who does pretty much the same thing. These guys who shoot their mouths off and give away the game are a precious resource that need to be treasured and preserved. The more they talk the more I understand 20th century history. Let’s hope J-Pod and the others never shut up.

  8. Anonymous says

    Yelena Georgievna Bonner?

  9. And what about that she-devil psycho bitch?

  10. Are you a member of the tribe Mr Karlin? Lol @ the Protocols reply, “never forgets” indeed.

  11. I would love to see Zhenya Satanovsky “debating” JPod.

  12. extreme paranoia is probably a useful survival trait in some circumstances but it can become self-fulfilling

  13. Christian Zionism is called such for a reason and it is no surprise that its realm is mostly in the US. The same as Holocaust Industry central. Supply and demand.

  14. Some of this “paranoia” (if we are talking about the same subject) is a great way to remove responsibility. After all, there was a social and cultural demand in US for neoconservatism and it was generated not by Jews alone. Many among WASP elites gladly bought into the neocon “principles”.

  15. Some of the neocons’ success comes from the skillful use of flattery. They talk to Americans about American exceptionalism. They talk to Ukrainians about the Ukraine’s Europeanness. People want to believe good things about themselves. What did neoconnery really give America? Dead troops and patdowns in airports. But is anybody else calling Americans exceptional? Who doesn’t want to be called that?

    “Who will fight for freedom all over the world if not you? Didn’t you… INVENT freedom?”

    Who else is ever going to tell them that?

    The life lesson here is that if people are praising you it’s usually because they want things from you. Actual superiority invites envy, not flattery.

  16. I don’t understand the point the second retweeter was making about the Okhrana and the Protocols.

  17. Absolutely, Glossy. The parts of Alexis De Tocqueville’s “Democracy In America” about being “insatiable for praise” are not very popular among US “elites”. In the end, “exceptionalism” is one of the pillars of US’ founding.

  18. Especially since it is Okhranka, not Okhrana.

  19. After all, there was a social and cultural demand in US for neoconservatism and it was generated not by Jews alone. Many among WASP elites gladly bought into the neocon “principles”.

    Yup. Saker calls them collectively ‘AngloZionists’.

  20. syonredux says

    Vera Nabokov?

    A quite attractive woman in her younger days:

    http://photos.geni.com/p13/8e/75/0c/e2/53444839bbba5189/slonim_vera_evseevna_large.jpg

  21. syonredux says

    Of course, Russians also tend to dilate on their “specialness.” Cf all the talk of Russia as the “third Rome” ( “Two Romes have fallen. The third stands. And there will be no fourth.”), the mystical notions of the Slavophiles, etc.

  22. Jacques Attali has said things about Jews, Soviet communism and money that would cause JPod’s head to explode. IIRC Attali, whether one agreed with him or not – almost always not – at least came up with ideas of his own. JPod never adds anything to a topic. He is basically a commissar of other people’s thoughts rather than a thinker himself.

  23. The Ronald:-

    As someone whose grandparents helped to found the modern State of Israel, I experienced a feeling of immense sadness after reading Norman Podhoretz’s powerful analysis of the current post-Oslo fighting in Israel (Commentary, October 2001).
    […]

    There appear to be only two possible outcomes to this conflict. Israel may eventually choose to follow the path of the outlawed Kach Movement, and exterminate or expel virtually all Palestinians from both Israel proper and the West Bank, whether or not they are long-time Israeli citizens. Or the endless fighting, with its social and economic consequences, will produce an increasing and self-accelerating exodus of Israeli Jews to America and other places that allow a more peaceful, affluent, and stress-free way of life, eventually leading to the collapse of the Jewish state within another generation or so.

    I doubt that even the harshest possible crackdown on Palestinians short of complete elimination would today do anything other than simply increase the remaining pool of suicide-bombers and random knifers. Similarly, I fear that even the most extraordinarily generous two-state peace proposal wouldn’t today do more than temporarily mollify even most of Israel’s own Arab citizens. There are simply no plausible solutions anywhere within the full spectrum of what is currently regarded as legitimate Israeli political opinion.

    I doubt that democratic Israel will ever develop a Kach consensus for achieving ethnic cleansing by killing or expelling all the millions of Palestinian men, women, and children. Therefore, I expect Israel’s trajectory to follow that of the temporary Crusader kingdoms, surviving for seventy or eighty years following its 1948 establishment, then collapsing under continual Muslim pressure and flagging ideological commitment.http://www.ronunz.org/2002/01/01/israels-future-kachism-or-nothing-2/

    But there is a factor that could mediate: Russia!

    http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/69cb93de-b552-11e5-8358-9a82b43f6b2f.html#ixzz44bA4iMN6
    President Bashar al-Assad’s forces are making a new push in southern Syria with the help of Russian air cover in a move that could not only weaken one of the country’s remaining rebel strongholds, but also threaten the balance of power on a combustible border with Israel. The growing Russian role in the south has surprised many regional diplomats who believed Moscow had an understanding with Syria’s southern neighbours, Jordan and Israel, not to extend into their sphere of influence

    Most Israeli Jews want to expel the Arabs according to an article on Mondoweiss. Van Crefeld says the reason such an unspoken option is begining to be quietly toyed by militant Zionism is the prospect of ”the collapse of the Hashemite Kingdom and its occupation by Daesh or some similar organization. That would create an opportunity to repeat the events of 1948 and throw the Palestinians of the West Bank across the River Jordan..” Israelis know what has to be done, but the US pundits of the Israel Lobby will not argue for it, because they prefer life as important and respected US figures, bashing the largely irrelevant Iran and European countries who are supposed to be inherently antisemitic.

    Podhoretz’s family business pushes that the Arabs got infected with a virulent European hated of Jews. So the main thing is not to save Israel, but rather to pin the blame for its demise as a Jewish state on Europeans and a (non existent) Wasp ascendancy in the US. http://edition.cnn.com/2016/02/17/opinions/europe-anti-semitism-thriving-oren/. Podowitz has always distrusted Europeans, and the fact that French Jews are leaving for Israel, (where they will increase the demand for security) because of Muslims just confirms him in his prejudices.

    Islamic State is the only thing that can save Israel and Europe , but not if the neocons and US foreign policy establishment have their way.

    http://www.ibtimes.com/us-launches-rockets-southern-syria-jordan-first-time-2335353

    https://news.vice.com/article/the-great-wall-of-jordan-how-the-us-wants-to-keep-the-islamic-state-out The Obama administration is spending close to a half a billion dollars to build a sophisticated electronic fence along Jordan’s northern and eastern borders, a wall which US strategic planners hope will stem the flow of refugees and also wall off the increasingly important American base from the disintegration of Syria and Iraq.

  24. Evidently you haven’t been in Russia lately. “Third Rome” is nothing but a meme, by far the more important document is Russia’s military doctrine. Speaks volumes.

  25. And a very good wife for Vladimir Nabokov.

  26. Mulegino1 says

    Considering what the Jews did to the Russian Christians during the Bolshevik Revolution and its aftermath, the idea of a Russian Judeophile is far more noxious than anything that would justify the whiny Podhoretz’s ethnocentric paranoia.

    Organized Jewry (as opposed to simply “Jewish people”) as exemplified by perpetually litigious and never satisfied Podhoretz, always insists upon the Jews being the bride at every wedding and the corpse at every funeral. The end result of continually grabbing the spotlight has quite the opposite effect, and brides at funerals and corpses at weddings tend to be quite unpopular.

    Jewry has indoctrinated its minions into an unrelenting and monumental sense of entitlement and victimhood; thus they tend to a crystalline sensibility and are quite thin skinned. Perhaps the Jews will now demand that the Copernican cosmology be replaced by Judeocentrism.

  27. syonredux says

    Evidently you haven’t been in Russia lately. “Third Rome” is nothing but a meme, by far the more important document is Russia’s military doctrine. Speaks volumes.

    Memes reveal national myths.

    Russia likes being important.

  28. Ever seen a map of the globe?

  29. syonredux says

    Ever seen a map of the globe?

    I’ve seen lots of globes and maps. Russia occupies one hell of a lot of territory:

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_conquest_of_Siberia

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caucasian_War

    You don’t get that big and powerful by being meek….

  30. Russia likes being important.

    Russia was important way before United States came into existence. Russian Navy is about 70 years senior than US as a nation. But then again, the way history is taught in US;-)

  31. syonredux says

    Russia was important way before United States came into existence.

    Russia has been important for a very long time:

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Northern_War

    That’s one of the reasons why Russians get a huge testosterone charge out of Putin’s muscular foreign policy. It restores their need for national greatness.

    Russian Navy is about 70 years senior than US as a nation. But then again, the way history is taught in US;-)

    The US Navy and the Russian Navy have at least one thing in common: John Paul Jones

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Paul_Jones#Russian_service

  32. True, Jacques Attali is more like France’s version of Douglas Rushkoff than its JPod. Attali does have JPod’s Jewish chauvinism though. Raphael Glucksmann is the closest French equivalent to the Pod man. Glucksmann is even personally entangled in the neocon project in Ukraine via his Georgian wife. She’s part of Poroshenko and Saakashvili’s gang. What a menagerie.

  33. The US Navy and the Russian Navy have at least one thing in common: John Paul Jones

    Very true. John Paul Jones is a Rear-Admiral of Russian Navy.

  34. jimmyriddle says

    OT I came across this piece in the Colonel Cassad blog about the nationalities of the Soviet scientific cadre in 1973:

    http://colonelcassad.livejournal.com/2682105.html#cutid1

    This graph of scientists per 100,000 is interesting:

    http://f1.s.qip.ru/8NLT3gzn.png

    Jews, of course, out perform by a mile (almost 5x the Russian figure). Then there are Armenians, Georgians and Russians. Then Krymchaks (a Turkic group that converted to Judaism) followed by Estonians and Latvians. Gypsies were dead last. No surprises there.

    But the Ukrainians and Belarusians seem to do significantly worse than Russians – which is a surprise. They were out performed by Buryats.

  35. My grandfather was a Latvian Jew… and he always despised Russians… Interestingly enough, he only had kind words for Germans.

    In the Baltic, particularly further North, a sizable proportion of Jews were fairly well integrated with the ethnic Germans. Baltic Germans were urban, commerce-oriented, educated, trans-national minorities that often found themselves on the wrong end of the pitchfork of a Slavic mob. Not altogether different than their Jewish compatriots. Consequently the two groups tended to get along much better and view redneck Slavs as a common enemy.

    In general as you go North, there’s a steeply declining gradient of anti-Semitism in Tsarist Russia. Ukrainian Jews received the worse persecution by far. Poland is a big improvement but things are still bad. Lithuania improves further. Latvia and Estonia look positively progressive. And anti-Semitism becomes virtually non-existent in Imperial Finland.

    It’s easy to forget because of the period of madness from 1929-1945, but for the vast majority of their history, the Germans have generally been the good guys fighting on the side of relative inclusivity and progressivism. That goes from ethnic Germans creating beacons of liberalism in Eastern Europe. To Frederick the Great accepting masses of Protestants and Jews fleeing religious persecution. To German-Americans being the only group to actually give a damn about the Native Americans, while the British-Islanders waged indiscriminate genocide. To Prussia, Austria and Switzerland keeping their hands almost completely out of the ugly business of colonialism and the slave trade.

  36. Anatoly Karlin says

    Not really a surprise.

    The Jewish superiority is self-evident and based on merit.

    There’s bits and pieces of evidence indicating that Ukrainians are a bit duller than Russians.

    Frankly, I’m pretty sure the Georgian figures are significantly inflated over what they “should” be. PISA indicates they have low IQs and coming from a Russian academic family I have been privy to quite a few stories of Georgian nepotism in academia.

    The high performance of the Buryats is of course surprising but I haven’t heard anything specific about them.

  37. What about the Jewish “superiority” among political pundits in today’s USA? Self-evident and based on merit?

  38. >> What about the Jewish “superiority” among political pundits in today’s USA? Self-evident and based on merit?

    no, it’s based on revenues.

    We don’t know what Philip Giraldi’s bank account balance is, but we know he can’t sell many boxes of laundry soap

    Money talks, bullshit walks.

  39. A lot of it’s power politics; remember, lots of Jews were Russophiles during the Soviet era.

    Now, Putin is associated with the European nationalist right (which gives ’em bad vibes for historical reasons), so they don’t like him.

    My opinion is that Putin is using the European nats to break up a competitor power bloc (the EU) rather than out of any love for the white race, but that’s another story.

    You can have an affection for a country without supporting its government, too.

  40. Self-evident and based on merit?

    It is about as “merited” as IDF’s performance against utterly incompetent Arab militaries, which later was “sold” (mostly in US) as a testament to Jewish special “ability” in warfare. This whole “IQ only” numbers crunching, without relating to a much larger and way more important social-cultural frameworks, is as scientific as never released Mel Brooks’ film “Jews In Space”;-)

  41. A lot of it’s power politics; remember, lots of Jews were Russophiles during the Soviet era.

    My Jewish friends (with the exception of one “couple”) are decent people, great friends and no Russophobes. Jewry IS NOT represented by American Jews only. Many Russian Jews are patriotic, well-integrated into Russian society and even Russian “equivalent” of neocons differs drastically in MO from US neocon cabal.

  42. Also, earlier in the day he (John Podhoretz) berated Joel Pollack of Breitbart in a similar fashion(“You are not a real Jew”)

    No question, John Podhoretz is a real Jew – an obnoxious, arrogant, self-absorbed, dishonest, six million liar.

    p.s. He is truly a great Israeli.

  43. Thank you for finding this. I stopped reading Colonel Cassad after the Donbass War cooled down, so I would have missed it. Rozhin is a very bright guy, by the way. The current chess champion of Sevastopol, I think. And he was the best source of info on the war while it was going on – a serious achievement in itself.

    The chart:

    Another proof that Armenians are bright. I’m not surprised at the Georgian result either. The Georgian movies I remember seemed a bit smarter than Soviet movies in general, and Soviet movies were much smarter on average than Hollywood stuff. If you read about linguistics (and not just the Caucasian kind), you come across Georgian researchers’ surnames from time to time.

    Anatoly mentions PISA results. Maybe the smarter Georgians have left for Moscow and other places. Georgia lost an enormous share of its population since 1991. It’s a low-trust culture, so a state run by them isn’t going to be very successful. But I’ve always assumed they were bright, either at the Russian/Euro average or slightly below it. Italians are another example of a bright people with a low-trust culture.

    Estonians are above Latvians who are above Lithuanians. I knew it. The north-south human capital gradient among farmers’ descendants is so common that the exceptions (like Ireland) are more interesting than the trend. I think I first read about Estonians being the most and Lithuanians the least orderly and efficient Balts in an English-language travel guide about 20 years ago.

    Surprised by the Buryats’ high place. The Tatars are in the upper half of the list, but I would have expected them to be even higher. Surprised by Karelians’ low place. Yakuts, a Native Siberian people, are pretty high. There’s obviously a north-south gradient among hunter-gatherers too, but it’s shifted downward from the agricultural one. Not surprised by the Moldovans’ low place.

    Kazakhs > Kyrgyz > Uzbeks > Turkmens > Tajiks. I knew that Kazakhs would be on top and I would have put either Turkmens or Tajiks at the bottom. I first heard of Turkmenistan’s backwardness compared to other Central Asian republics 25 to 30 years ago.

  44. I think. And he was the best source of info on the war while it was going on – a serious achievement in itself.

    I already had a brief exchange with Saker on that issue and for those who have not been on Sevastopol’s Political Forum since early 2014 it is difficult to understand what was going on with “colonel” Cassad. It wasn’t until Vlad Shurigin’s “North Wind” interview that Mr. Rozhin finally toned down his panic and hysteria. As per “source”–no, he was not, anyone who uses Strelkov (aka Girkin) as an adviser on Ukrainian issues should be seriously considered very lacking in OODA Loop. Playing chess and understanding how national security apparatus works and how decisions are made on top political level is not the same.

  45. I never saw Cassad spreading panic or hysteria. And I started reading him early in the war. El Murid spread panic, other people spread panic, but not Cassad. I’ll tell you the first time that I learned that Russian forces were involved:

    During the summer of 2014 the Ukrainian army got trapped between the border and Strelkov’s army. And Ukrainian media started reporting that they were being shelled from the Russian side. I thought that was propaganda until Cassad hinted that this was true. That was before Shurigin’s North Wind article.

    Cassad does not have a military education, he does not pretend to be an expert in that field. He was involved in gathering and distributing humanitarian aid. He made frequent trips to the warzone for this purpose, he had contacts there. That gave him some inside info.

    There were many times during the war when the two sides made mutually-contradictory claims. Who held Saur Mogila, whether the Debaltsevo cauldron was closed, etc., etc. Cassad usually published info that ended up being confirmed after the fog of war blew away. That accuracy was why he got a huge following.

  46. There is no country that has inflicted as much suffering
    on Europe as Germany in its 1200-year history.
    During that period Germany has been the
    consistent destabilizer of the European status quo,
    with Merkel’s insanity and her typically German
    acting without consultation with her allies simply
    the latest example of Germany’s modus operandi.

    Germany is the only country in Europe that has engaged
    in colonialism both overseas and on the European
    continent. How can you respect a country that
    practiced slavery as recently as 1945? Germans are
    widely regarded as basically barbarians with rockets,
    and unless they change their ways, they will continue
    to be distrusted and viewed as barbarians by the
    rest of Europe. If there’s anything that European history
    has taught us, it’s that, alas, science and technology don’t
    raise the moral level of the population – the neocortex
    is too easily outmatched by the primitive and powerful
    paleomammalian and reptilian levels of the brain

  47. Evidently you missed on juicy “Surkov conspiracy”.

  48. I think you’re confusing Cassad with El Murid. Strelkov blamed Surkov for his firing and Murid was (maybe still is, I don’t read him anymore) Strelkov’s mouthpiece. So Murid presented Surkov in a very bad light. That had nothing to do with Cassad.

  49. I don’t confuse anything. I read El-Murid “analysis” couple of times and ignored him ever since.

  50. jimmyriddle says

    “Kazakhs > Kyrgyz > Uzbeks > Turkmens > Tajiks”

    It’s amazing what has happened to Tajikistan since the end of the USSR.
    Literacy is collapsing – literate parents are raising illiterate children.

    The odd thing is that Tajiks were (eg in Babur’s memoir) supposed to be “civilised” and the Turkic nomads “barbarians”.

  51. jimmyriddle says

    Yep, Cassad proved himself to be very reliable during the Donbas war. He was objective and sceptical and his information was proved correct again and again.

    He doesn’t have any inside knowledge about Syria, but what he writes is clear-eyed. Along with Sic Semper Tyrannis, well worth reading even on Syria.

  52. Hibernian says

    Napoleonic France and Hapsburg Austria were prime examples of colonialism on the European continent.

  53. You are deranged.

  54. Shaikorth says

    Yakuts actually descend from herders who migrated into the region now called Yakutia from South Siberia. They’ve been dominant over other Siberian tribes who presumably inhabited Yakutia earlier.

    There could be a link to religion here too. Georgians and Armenians have their own churches. The Baltic rim is Catholic or Protestant. Karelians are Eastern Orthodox (of the Russian branch), Tatars are largely Muslim, Buryats are Buddhists.

  55. I’d say change ‘1200-year period’ to ’12-year period’ and you’re right. France had Napoleon, Russia had Stalin…the list goes on and on.

  56. Your mama wears combat boots!