ZGram - 2/1/2002 - "The Fatal Embrace"

[irimland@zundelsite.org]

Copyright (c) 2002 - Ingrid A. Rimland

ZGram - Where Truth is Destiny

=46ebruary 1, 2002

Good Morning from the Zundelsite:

My friend, Anita, who prefers to be called "colored" rather than "Black",
is an avid activist on behalf of Freedom of Speech in her own ethnic
community.  She contacted me years ago and alerted me to Jewish author
Benjamin Ginsberg's amazingly frank, taboo-breaking book, "The Fatal
Embrace:  Jews and the State."  Anita also contacted Ernst Z=FCndel, who was
then living in Canada and involved in lengthy Human Rights Tribunal
hearings involving material which had appeared on my website, the
Zundelsite, regarding the so-called "Holocaust".

Anita, bless her heart, sent Ernst a copy of Fatal Embrace.  Ernst
immediately saw the importance of Ginsberg's analysis and revelations and
slated the book as a defense exhibit.  The expert witness, who was to
present "Fatal Embrace", along with over 30 taboo-busting books, was the
American scholar, Dr. Robert Countess, a former Army chaplain, who was well
versed with the contents of this book.

The Jewish opposition and their so-called "intervenors" went ballistic, and
in the most vitriolic attack of character assassination before the Tribunal
prevented Dr. Countess from being allowed to testify as an expert witness -
and thereby prevented this important information from becoming part of the
over 20,000 pages of transcripts and, thus, the public historical record.

It gives me sweet pleasure to offer you today Dr. Stephen J. Sniegoski's
review of Fatal Embrace.  Please remember that this book review is about 7
years old - it was written during the Clinton era, long before George W.
Bush became a neo-con Republican candidate and eventual President!

[START}

By Dr. STEPHEN J. SNIEGOSKI

Benjamin Ginsberg's "The Fatal Embrace: Jews and the State,"  which deals
with the rise and fall of Jews in different  societies, is an intellectual
bombshell. A liberal American Jew who teaches  political science at Johns
Hopkins, Ginsberg makes observations about Jewish  influence in government
and society that would be deemed anti-Semitic if  expressed by a Gentile.
Ginsberg, however, does not criticize that Jewish power  for being harmful
to Gentiles; his only concern is the harm it can cause for  Jews by
provoking Gentiles to anti-Semitic actions.

Outlining Jewish power since the Middle Ages, Ginsberg notes that Jews
helped  kings expand and centralize their realms; in medi=CAval Spain, for
example, Jews  were closely tied to the monarchies, largely, but not
solely, in the financial  sphere. But they also took the lead in working
for the revolutionary destruction  of societies hostile to Jews; thus, Jews
played key roles in European  revolutions, liberal and Communist alike.

In the liberal revolutions and in the development of liberal states, Jews
propagandized the public and financed liberal groups. In France, Jews
helped  established the Third Republic in the 1870s; their influence loomed
especially  large in the republic's anti-clerical campaigns. Jewish
financial and media  power also provided the underpinning for the Weimar
Republic, whose depiction as  the "Judenrepublik"  by anti-Semites was not
far from the mark. In  late 19th-century Britain, the Jewish-dominated
press championed imperialism,  which benefited Jewish finance. And during
the early stages of the Soviet  regime, Jews were numerous in leadership
positions, especially in the secret  police and the propaganda agencies,
which they dominated. In contrast to  Judeophiles who claim that Jews
observe a higher humanitarian ethos, Ginsberg  acknowledges that Jewish
Communists played a ruthless role in liquidating their  opposition.

Ginsberg warns that as a result of  their great power, Jews become a highly
visible target for the enemies of the  regime and often suffer group
destruction with the regime's demise. Thus in the  late 15th century,
=46erdinand and Isabella expelled the Jews from Spain, where  they had
occupied key positions under previous monarchs. In Germany, Hitler
eliminated the Jews along with the Weimar Republic; what enabled Nazism to
succeed was a coalescence of lower- and upper-class opposition to Jewish
power.  Where such a fusion of divergent classes does not take place, as in
the French  Third Republic, Jewish power survives despite a high degree of
anti-Semitism.

The Jewish fall from power does not always require the demise of a friendly
regime. Sometimes a previously hospitable regime will eliminate Jews when
they  are no longer necessary for the maintenance of power, as was the case
in the  Soviet Union when Stalin dispensed with Jews. Ginsberg's
fundamental theory is  that the Jewish close relationship with the state is
a "fatal embrace": the  achievement of great power, and the concomitant
high visibility, invite group  destruction as situations change.

***

Ginsberg devotes the greatest part of his book to the history of Jewish
power  in America. German Jews gained significant power in the United
States after the  Civil War, largely in the realm of finance. Jews financed
the U.S. regime's  Civil War debt, the debts of the reconstructed Southern
states, and the nascent  industries. In essence, according to our author,
Jews were a part of the new  business and industrial class of the Gilded
Age, and became "identified with the  worst excesses of the
nineteenth-century industrial order." (p. 75) Jewish  prominence induced an
anti-Semitic opposition from Southern and Western  agrarians (Populists),
and from old-stock New England patricians. Reacting to  that anti-Semitic
criticism, the Gentile business class jettisoned its ties with  the Jews
and aligned itself with the patricians. Thus, the 1890s saw the  emergence
both of exclusive clubs that barred Jews and of anti-Jewish quotas in  the
Ivy League colleges. Having been thrust out of the business elite, Jews
sought to alter the American economic system, Ginsberg writes. They
identified  with the Progressive reform movement and - on the part of the
newly immigrating  Eastern European Jews - with radical socialism. The
Jewish role in the  Progressive movement crested in the Wilson
administration, with Louis Brandeis  playing a major role in the creation
of the Federal Reserve System and the  Federal Trade Commission. However,
the Jewish rise was transitory, cut short by  the anti-radical Red Scare in
the aftermath of World War I, which destroyed  radical and reform movements
as well as (in Ginsberg's view) an emerging welfare  state.

It was with Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal that Jews gained long-term power
in  the United States, power that continues into the present. Jews served
as Roosevelt's idea men and staffed his  New Deal agencies. They played a
fundamental part in fashioning the centralized  American welfare state -
and Ginsberg asserts that they created it to serve  their own interests. In
contrast to American Protestants' success in the private  sector, Ginsberg
writes that Jews "relied upon the state and the public economy  to achieve
positions of influence and status in American society." (p. 103) That
account contrasts, we should note, with Thomas Sowell's portrayal of Jewish
success via the free market.

Jews also played a significant role in getting the United States into World
War II to destroy their Nazi nemesis. And they worked actively to undermine
popular noninterventionist resistance to war. For example, the
Anti-Defamation  League "employed investigative agents who secretly
penetrated isolationist and  anti-Semitic organizations and collected
potentially damaging or incriminating  information" which it turned over to
the FBI and other federal agencies. (p.  110) Ginsberg does not develop
this point, but given the fact that the  overwhelming majority of
"isolationists" were not enemy agents and were simply  exercising their
constitutional right to oppose a policy, it is apparent that  activist
American Jews have been quite willing to crush the civil liberties of
others in order to advance their own goals. Jews also played a critical
part in  turning the media toward a prowar stance. (That was quite an
achievement, since  the American mood in the 1930s was strongly antiwar and
"isolationist.") In  Hollywood, Jewish film makers concentrated on
producing anti-Nazi propaganda  films to prepare the masses for a crusade
against evil.

In the immediate postwar period, right-wing attacks on Communist subversion
put Jews on the defensive. Since Jews had been numerous in the American
Communist Party, to them the attacks reeked of anti-Semitism. But by
joining  forces with the also-imperiled WASP elite, Jews were able to
destroy the threat  by exercising their media power. They did not just
succeed in downplaying the  idea of Communist subversion; they were even
able to change the issue >from  Communist subversion to the right-wing
threat to American civil liberties. That  was quite a striking ideological
turnaround from the Jews' total disregard of  the civil liberties of
pre-World War II "isolationists." The Jewish success  against the
right-wing danger meant that by the late 1950s, "conservative
anti-Communists who sought to maintain a modicum of respectability ...
carefully  avoided the least hint of anti-Semitism." (p. 125) Ginsberg
cites William F.  Buckley Jr. as an example.

In the 1960s, the Jews played key roles in the civil rights revolution and
the concomitant Great Society programs. For Jews, Ginsberg points out,
support  for black civil rights was not only a "moral commitment" but also
an "important  political tactic" to weaken the white South and the ethnic
machine politicians  in the North, and, as a consequence, increase their
own relative power within  the Democratic coalition. Moreover, the
advancement of the concept of "equality  of opportunity" bolstered Jewish
power throughout society. (pp. 125-26) Jews  opposed the Vietnam War
because it inhibited the expansion of those liberal  Great Society programs
in which their power resided.

By the end of the Great Society reforms, Jews, in Ginsberg's view, had
become  the major force in American politics and government: "From the
1970s onward, Jews led or were influential in  most, though not all, of the
political reform, feminist, consumer rights, gay  rights, environmentalist
and other public interest groups and related  foundations, study groups,
and think tanks that came to dominate the Democratic  party during the
1970s and continue to be the leading forces within that party  today." (p.
137) And Jews wield considerable power in the institutions of the  American
welfare state, holding as they do prominent positions in the "public or
quasi-public economy of government agencies, helping professions, private
foundations, think tanks, and universities." (p. 140) Since Jewish power
and  wealth is either directly or indirectly tied to the national
government, rather  than to state and local governments or to the strictly
private sector, Jews have  a vested interest in its maintenance and
expansion. In short, Ginsberg contends,  Jews support the liberal welfare
state for reasons of material self-interest:  "Jewish liberalism is more an
institutional  than an  attitudinal phenomenon. It is associated more with
Jews' political  linkages and involvements than with their underlying
attitudes." (p. 143)

Ginsberg attributes the rise of black anti-Semitism over the past couple
decades to the desire of upwardly mobile blacks to share in the positions
of  power held by Jews in the welfare-state apparatus. Jews may oppose some
black  activities, but they cannot become too critical of blacks because it
is the idea  of helping disadvantaged blacks that provides the
"legitimation of the American  welfare state." Indeed, Ginsberg maintains,
"Many Jews and Jewish organizations  believe that the fundamental interests
of Jews are so closely tied, both  politically and institutionally, to
those of blacks, that it is sometimes  necessary to support black demands
even when, conceived narrowly or in the short  term, these seem to be
disadvantageous to Jews." (p. 165) It is that vested  interest in the
liberal welfare state that prevented most Jews from turning to
Republicanism in the 1980s despite the Republicans' support for pro-Jewish
positions on racial quotas and the defense of Israel.

Although the overwhelming majority of Jews did not turn to Reagan
Republicanism in the 1980s, "Jews played important roles in implementing
the  administration's economic and foreign policy objectives," Ginsberg
writes. "The  association of Jews with Reaganism, especially in the realm
of foreign policy,  helped to heighten the anti-Semitism of forces on the
political Left but  produced a measure of philo-Semitism on the right, most
notably among Protestant  fundamentalists." (p. 188) Neoconservative
Reaganauts identified Israel as  America's "strategic asset" in the Cold
War, and Israel actually helped the  United States fight communism in Latin
America and elsewhere. In the economic  realm, Jewish parvenu financiers
such as Michael Milken were the major  beneficiaries of the Reagan rollback
of regulations.

Ginsberg claims that the Republicans, unable to attract any significant
number of Jews to their side, abandoned their support of the neocon elite
with  the end of the Cold War. Israel simply was no longer needed as an
ally. Thus  President Bush and Secretary of State James Baker tried to
coerce Israel into  following American Middle East policy and in so doing
alienated their  neoconservative support. Ginsberg, who completed "Fatal
Embrace"  at  the beginning of the Clinton administration, emphasizes the
large number of Jews  who were entering that regime, reinforcing his theme
of American Jewry's  continued identification with liberal Democrats.

The author attempts to gauge whether Jewish power - which aroused strong
opposition in the past - is threatened today. Despite the explicit
anti-Semitism  of blacks, Ginsberg doubts that they pose a direct threat to
Jews because of  their dependence on the welfare state that Jews supervise:
blacks and Jews are  "locked into a long-term relationship which neither
can easily abandon." (p.  183) Black anti-Semitic rhetoric, however, has
loosened the taboo against  anti-Semitism in American society, according to
Ginsberg, so that white  right-wing forces - Joe Sobran, Patrick Buchanan,
David Duke, paleoconservatives  - can attack Jews and their agenda.
Ginsberg believes that those right-wingers,  if they should use the correct
populist appeal to unite upper- and lower-class  whites in what he
characterizes as the Nazi manner, could pose a formidable  threat to
American Jewry: "An alliance of radical populists and respectable
conservatives would almost inevitably make vigorous use of anti-Semitic
themes  to attack the liberal Democratic regime, and the Jews would find
themselves  locked in the fatal embrace of yet another state." (p. 243)

***

Ginsberg is far more explicit on the reality of Jewish power than any other
pro-Jewish author of which this reader is aware. However, he leaves some
important matters unresolved.

=46irst, it must be asked: What enables Jews to dominate societies? Ginsberg
says they have certain talents - scholarly, business, managerial - not
possessed by the bulk of the  population. However, he does not claim (like
Nathaniel Weyl) that Jews are  innately more intelligent than other people.
It is odd that societies supposedly  based on equality (such as America's
current welfare state) would come to  reflect greater Jewish dominance.
With all the purported equal educational  opportunities and aid to the
disadvantaged, one would think that social and  economic differences among
groups would lessen over time. Of course, it could be  argued that the real
purpose of the liberal welfare state is not to help the  disadvantaged but
rather to keep them dependent in order to maintain the  rationale for the
welfare institutions that Jews dominate. Ginsberg does not  even hint at
this explanation.

Also problematic is the author's understanding of anti-Semitism. Ginsberg
characterizes as anti-Semitic those Gentiles who are critical of Jewish
power  and its uses. Therefore, anti-Semitism does not necessarily entail
racial  hatred, threats of racial expulsion or racial extermination, or
even lies. A  statement can be perfectly truthful and still qualify as
anti-Semitic! Despite  this apparent meaning, Ginsberg still gives
anti-Semitism a negative  connotation. Presumably, it is wrong for Gentiles
to oppose the Jewish agenda. A  reader of Ginsberg's book should understand
from the outset that the work is  directed to Jews and Judeophiles, and
that the author's concern is the long-term  effect of Jewish power on Jews.
He does not dwell on the negative impacts that  Jewish power has had on
Gentiles, even though he cites examples in which  Gentiles have been harmed
- such as in the Soviet Union.

=46inally, Ginsberg underplays the importance of neoconservatism.  (Paul
Gottfried, the foremost paleoconservative analyst of neoconservatism, has
underscored the significant power of neoconservatism in such works as "The
Conservative  Movement". Bush and Baker did anger neocons, but
neoconservatism  still dominates the Republican Party and the American
conservative  establishment. Neoconservatism simply does not threaten the
welfare-state  apparatus that provides Jews a base of power. As
paleoconservatives correctly  point out, neoconservatism simply acts to
coopt the conservative thrust of the  electorate, rendering it harmless to
those whose interests are served by the  welfare state. Besides being
innocuous to the domestic welfare state, a neocon  Republican regime might
better serve Jewish foreign policy interests than a  liberal Democratic
one. It could pursue a Zionist-oriented globalistic foreign  policy without
the inhibitions of the Democratic Left. And having neocons in  strategic
positions in the Republican Party means that the Jews have placed  their
eggs in more than one basket: no matter who controls the government,
Democrat or Republican, Jewish power remains intact. Outside of the Jewish
orbit  there remain only Patrick Buchanan and the paleoconservatives, whom
Ginsberg  sees as imminent threats to Jewish power and its agenda.

Despite some questionable interpretations, The Fatal Embrace  is  of
immense value for its candid discussion of Jewish power, especially since
it  is authored by a Jew who identifies closely with Jewish interests. It
is must  reading for anyone interested in this taboo but critically
important subject.

[END]

=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D

Zundelsite comment:  I want to repeat that this book review is about 7
years old - what a prophetic review!

Reread the second-to-last paragraph and ponder it!  What do we see today?
A "Republican" president expanding the Clinton foreign policy of global
military intervention against Moslem groups and states - all,
not-too-coincidentally, on Israel's enemy lists.

And what irony!  There exists no conservative opposition to the Bush
Administration's War on Terror - in or out of Congress.  The only voices of
opposition to the New Republican Globalism are found, as the reviewer
predicted, with Libertarians, new-Liberal Democrats and socialist-anarchist
groups.  The Left has, in fact, preempted the Right in this struggle.
Anarchists and Marxists, Labor Unionists and Libertarians mount street
demonstrations and cause riots and near-insurrections whenever and wherever
the new Globalists meet - from Seattle to Vancouver to Montreal to Ottawa
as well as Italy and Sweden.

Beating the war drums are the neo-cons in the media - George Will, Charles
Krauthammer and others - demanding an expansion of the bombing and invasion
of countries like Iraq, Libya, Somalia, possibly even Syria, Iran and - if
they have their way - the overthrow of Saudi Arabia.  These media mavens
move in perfect tandem with the new Imperialists like Wolfowitz, Pearl and
others within the Administration.

The traditional American, patriotic Right has been marginalized into
silence and oblivion.  As a political force, they simply don't exist.

=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D

Thought for the Day:

"Well now, I wonder, if the US and Canada merge, will the Canadians gain a
=46irst Amendment or will the Americans lose one?"

(Letter to the Zundelsite)