Spinal Fire Scientia Est Potentia

Reader Weekly
Issue 314, April 14, 2005

On a recent installment of the Rush Limbaugh talk show, Rush dropped a bomb that signaled a new era in the battle for our minds. In a bought of demonically possessed fury Rush expressed his disdain of the term “Neocon” stating that he wished people would just call the term what it is, a code word for Jews. A little digging reveals that Rush has been subtly pushing this point at least as far back as April 22, 2003, when he posted a commentary on his web site entitled Anti-Semites Use "Neo-Con" Code Word. In this “Blog” Rush states “I'm getting a little tired of these media people speaking in their own code language. A case in point is their use of the term ‘neo-conservative’. Whether they choose to hyphenate the label or not, it's a pejorative code word for ‘Jews’” (Limbaugh 2003). Rush accurately reveals that the media does indeed use subconscious code words (i.e. propaganda), yet fails to mention that they also use reverse psychology as he, a member of the “New Media” does. In fact, it seems that labeling “liberals”*** anti-Semites has become all the rage on talk radio programs such as Sean Hannity and Michael Savage, which have become little more than “freak shows of political pornography.”

Jewish intellectual Irving Kristol, the father of William Kristol a co-founder of the Project for the New American Century didn’t shy away from the prefix when he wrote Reflections of a Neoconservative (1983) and Neoconservatives: Autobiography of an Idea. Kristol, opines “Ever since I can remember, I’ve been a neo-something: a neo-Marxist, a neo-Trotskyist, a neo-liberal, a neo-conservative; in religion a neo-orthodox even while I was a neo-Trotskyist and a neo-Marxist. I’m going to end up a neo— that’s all, neo dash nothing.”

If the so-called Godfather of the movement embraces the term, why on earth would “old-school" conservatives such as Limbaugh be crying racism? The answer: Propaganda.

In our politically correct culture it is hard at times to pinpoint racism, as it is serpentine in nature and the waters it swims in have became muddied with constant stirring. “It’s hard for many Jews, much less gentiles, to define what exactly anti-Semitism is. Except for its most virulent forms e.g. Jew-hating by neo-Nazis, we may wonder if something is truly anti-Semitic, or if Jews are just defensive and paranoid. (A history of genocide will do that to you.)”(Greenspan). A more widely recognizable form of the new anti-Semitism is the blurring of the lines between anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism (Zionism being the movement which feels the Jewish people are a nation which deserves a homeland). This racism is manifested when Jews of the Diaspora are targeted for discrimination and hate crimes due to Israeli policy.

As we are marched closer to the precipice of a synarchic* brave New World Order were are being inundated by multiple forms of propaganda, the front lines of which appear to be talk radio. Propaganda runs the gamut of our society and we are constantly being subjected to archetypes and subliminal messages both overt and covert. Aldus Huxley succinctly summed up the goal of this propaganda; “The Propagandist’s purpose is to make one set of people forget that certain other sets of people are human.” History has repeatedly proven this axiom every time the drums of war are heard. It is imperative for the masters of war to dehumanize and demonize the enemy so the drones will not think twice while killing them.

This is a tried and true “divide and conquer” maneuver, which is the reason why the battle lines are being drawn in America and the world as we are being manipulated towards World War III. In the Arab world they are taught to hate Americans and Israelis while we are being force-fed a demonization program aimed at Muslims. This propaganda is serving a dual purpose as those who, due to 9-11 fearfully blindly support the state are taught to hate the Muslims while those who oppose the Bush doctrine are subconsciously being labeled terrorist sympathizers and even anti-Semites by propaganda mouthpieces like Limbaugh.

Through the magic of radio Limbaugh and his cronies are resuscitating a scathing form of racism that had nearly died 50 years ago. In a bizarre form of reverse anti-Semitism, Rush and his spin-off acolytes are attempting to label “anti-Semitic” all who dare to oppose the Bush cabal and use the term “Neo-Conservative.” This type of rhetoric is extremely damaging to race relations and constitutes a new form of anti-Semitism used as propaganda in a manner worthy of Goebbels.

Nightmare

What is new about this stealthy form of anti-Semitism is that instead of using the Jewish people as an all purpose scapegoat for our societies ills, the Bush Junta is using the fear of being labeled an anti-Semite to suppress opposition to its bellicose empiric aspirations. By attacking the messenger instead of the message the Bush family is utilizing a classic Machiavellian move tailor made for our politically correct culture. The Project for a New American Century cheerleader, Norman Podhoretz, artfully represents this new-anti-Semitism in his article entitled “World War IV: How It Started, What it Means, and Why We Have to Win”:

A cognate count in this indictment held that the invasion of Iraq had been secretly engineered by a cabal of Jewish officials acting not in the interest of their own country but in the service of Israel, and more particularly of Ariel Sharon. At first the framers and early spreaders of this defamatory charge considered it the better part of prudence to identify the conspirators not as Jews but as "neoconservatives." It was a clever tactic, in that Jews did in fact constitute a large proportion of the repentant liberals and leftists who, having some two or three decades earlier broken ranks with the Left and moved rightward, came to be identified as neoconservatives. Everyone in the know knew this, and for those to whom it was news, the point could easily be gotten across by singling out only those neoconservatives who had Jewish-sounding names and to ignore the many other leading members of the group whose clearly non-Jewish names might confuse the picture.

As a result of Israel’s newfound stature on the playground after the 1967 war, many eminent democratic Jewish politicos understandably found themselves leaning further and further right until they eventually set up camp in Reagan’s hawkish coalition where they fused with the Bush band. In fact these new republicans embraced the label “Neo-Conservative” as early as the seventies in order to help carve out a niche for them early on in the party, while distancing themselves from traditional conservatives. This marriage resulted in the formation of the Project for the New American Century, which became the mother hive for neo-conservatives.

These new Republicans made strange bedfellows with the now paleo-conservative movement who’s covertly racist poster child Pat Buchanan describes the newcomers as; “ex-liberals, socialists, and Trotskyites, boat-people from the McGovern revolution who rafted over to the GOP at the end of conservatism’s long march to power with Ronald Reagan in 1980”. In one of histories most stunning ironies the Republican Party now contains a spectrum of followers that include at the far right racist anti-Semitic paleo-conservatives with Buchanan as their vanguard, and neo-conservatives who are calling liberal democrats anti-Semitic! This is not to mention the Bush family’s predilection towards eugenics and company that was seized during World War II for trading with the Nazi’s. The old axiom holds true, Politics sure do make strange bedfellows.

Limbaugh further compounds the propaganda by fuming; “these Anti-Semites see a Jewish conspiracy within their imagined vast right-wing conspiracy, and claim that guys like this have total control over the Bush administration's foreign policy - which is really, they claim, oriented toward building up Israel and wiping out Arab opposition” (Limbaugh, 2003). Unfortunately Limbaugh and his cadre of spin-off talking heads are trying to pin this anti-Semitism card on all detractors (read “liberals***”) who they feel need to be silenced. This sets a dangerous precedent and amounts to little less then an attempt to pave the way for the policing of thought crime. That both sides of this “Neocon” anti-Semitism debate originate under the GOP tent should make the discerning observer take pause. This is most certainly a well rehearsed and excellently orchestrated “good cop/bad cop” propaganda offensive.

Awake

We as a people must be free to openly criticize and question our leaders and intellectuals without the fear of being labeled a racist. We must also take it upon ourselves to make sure that we ourselves harbor no racist sentiments to any person regardless of creed, color, or nationality. We must also learn to discern the difference between a people and their leadership; a person is not a nation. If we do not recognize that this power elite (composed mostly of WASPs) is attempting to divide and conquer us we shall continue be led about like mindless drones until we are subjugated slaves. Miram Greenspan, in her article for Tikkun magazine intuits that someone is pulling the wool over our eyes using the Hegelian dialectic**:

…those who subscribe to rigid orthodoxies of the Left or Right are fond of reducing the confusing morass of violence in the world to simplistic dualistic allegiances: Victims to be Championed versus Villains to be Vilified. Competing moral and political claims leave us in a state of confusion and anxiety that are dispelled by taking a "hard line…This kind of thinking, conversing, demonstrating, and hollering doesn't get us too far. I would venture to say that in the turbulent global realignments of the twenty-first century, adhering to rigid Left/Right "lines" is actually interfering with our ability to understand the political landscape. Understanding anti-Semitism today requires some open-minded critical thinking that doesn't necessarily line up with any particular "orthodoxy" and doesn't fall into the trap of either/or thinking.” (Greenspan)

This open-minded critical thinking is increasingly being suppressed by the “powers that be” in an attempt to blind us into a black and white myopia while our critical thinking and reasoning skills atrophy and are replaced by a herd mentality. We must never forget the lessons history has bequeathed us from the atrocities of World War II. We must never again permit a genocide such as the holocaust to ever be repeated. Neither must we let our guard down when a despot threatens to drag us down to the backwaters of histories dankest corners. We must not remain silent as evil gathers around us clothed in the velvet garments of patriotism and liberty, all the while beating the drum for a “permanent war for a permanent peace.”

We in America are not impervious to the gales of history. If the last 3000 years can be taken as an indicator, our empire will fall, and on the way down we will be scrambling for a scapegoat to sacrifice. As Martin Luther King Jr. remarked: we must “Never forget that everything Hitler did in Germany was legal.” It took a madman to dream up the Holocaust nightmare but most importantly it took a people willing to carry out his orders. We as a species must collectively assume the guilt of the wicked fruits of our civilization and repent all our deep-seated racism. If we take “passing comments” by our talking heads lightly, we are only paving the way for more tangible forms of hatred and laws, which institutionalize it. From there it is a slippery slope to the gates of Hell.

Theodor Herzl the godfather of Zionism said it best: “Anti-Semitism of today…is for the most part a movement among civilized nations by which they try to chase away the specters of their own past.” Until we can come to terms that we are all one human family with a collective past, present, and future, everywhere will be the specter of war, and with that war comes hateful propaganda and mindless suffering.

*** Not limited to or by established, traditional, orthodox, or authoritarian attitudes, views, or dogmas; free from bigotry. (dictionary.com)

** A dualistic process of controlling both sides of the political spectrum [thesis/antithesis] so that you can institute a preordained revolution/change [synthesis] at the opportune time

* Synarchic is the antithesis of anarchy and as such represents total control of the population by a council of select adepts in the mode of George Orwell’s 1984.

Buchanan, Patrick J. (2003) Whose War? A Neoconservative Clique Seeks to Ensnare our County in a Series of Wars that are not in America’s Interest. (US. The American Conservative March 24, 2003. http://www.amconmag.com/03_24_03/cover.html#)

ESPN.com News service. (2003) Limbaugh Resigns From NFL Show. (October 2nd, 2003. http://espn.go.com/gen/news/2003/1001/1628537.html)

Greenspan, Mirriam. (2003) What’s New About Anti-Semitism? (US. Tikkun November/December 2003. http://www.vopj.org/issues48.htm)

Limbaugh, Rush (2003) Anti-Semites Use "Neo-Con" Code Word (April 22, 2003 commentary on http://www.rushlimbaugh.com)