Jewish Influence Countercultural Jones

The Jewish Revolutionary Spirit: And Its Impact on World History, by E. Michael Jones. 2008

Countercultural Jews Played, and Play, a Major Role in Shaping Social Trends

This work spans classical antiquity through the present, and is quite Catholic-centered. Because there is so much content, I focus on a few issues, emphasizing recent history.

INTRODUCTION: THE AUTHOR’S THESIS, AND POSSIBLE ALTERNATIVES

According to Jones, the Jews rejected the true Messiah (Jesus Christ) and, ever since then, have exhibited a revolutionary spirit in trying to find a substitute, earthly messiah of one kind or another. (e. g, p. 341). This included actual messiahs (e. g, Bar Kokhba), then messianic movements (Zionism, Communism), and finally more subtle forms of change-the-society messianism (e. g, the Sexual Revolution). In fact, Jewish influences morph into different forms according to time and circumstance.

Unfortunately, Jones, does not consider alternative explanations. Consider the following. Are Jews massively overrepresented in Communism, abortion “rights”, feminism, academia, journalism, the media, the Hollywood moral sewer, etc., primarily because they have a messianic mindset–frustrated or otherwise–to change the world? Is it because they want to enhance their power by weakening the majority culture (Christianity)? Or may the actual explanation be much more prosaic? Is it because tradition-destroyers tend to be overrepresented among successful people of ANY background, and Jews tend to be overrepresented among successful people, so tradition-destroyers thereby tend to be associated with Jews?

Let the reader even entertain a more fundamental question. Could Jewish restlessness, opportunism, and creativity be a cultural trait that is a gift–a gift that unfortunately also can be corrupted into a vice? If so, this would simultaneously explain the considerable Jewish overrepresentation among Nobel Prize winners and the considerable Jewish overrepresentation in movements that have done great harm to humanity.

ANTI-SEMITISM?

Jones comments, (quote) An anti-Semite used to be someone who didn’t like Jews. Now it is usually someone whom Jews don’t like. (unquote). (p. 1063). (Quote) Opposition to Jewish ambition is not anti-Semitism, even if Jews portray it that way. (unquote). (p. 1076).

Of course, author E. Michael Jones is not saying that all or most Jews were or are counter-cultural. Nor does he say that all those who are revolutionaries were or are Jews. The author rejects any PROTOCOLS-style conspiracy theory, or any notion of Jews having some sort of innate malevolent characteristics.

Now here is my position: As with my other reviews, I strive to follow a Judeo-realist approach. This avoids the extremes of making unfounded accusations against Jews (anti-Semitism) and the blanket exemption of Jews from criticism (philo-Semitism).

The author repeatedly quotes Pope Gregory the Great’s dictum of SICUT JUDAEIS NON (pp. 86-88) as follows, (Quote) No one may harm Jews or disturb their worship, but Christians also have the duty to prevent Jewish subversion of faith and morals. (unquote). (p. 1075). The latter constitutes the emphasis of Jones’ book.

MEDIEVAL AND EARLY MODERN JEWISH-CHRISTIAN RELATIONS

The Inquisition did not go after Jews, except when they converted and then relapsed, and when they aided heretics. Both Christian and Jewish scholars agree that Jews commonly furthered the revolutionary activities of heretics, such as that of the Albigensians. (pp. 109-110). The Inquisition did persecute Moses Maimonides, but did so because the Jewish community wanted the Inquisition to punish him as a heretic to Judaism! (p. 118).

Christian leaders gave commonly-ignored warnings about the beguilement of the easy money offered by Jewish usurers. This situation not only locked the borrowers in financial bondage, but also increased Jewish influence on Christian society through those who owed them money. It also put large amounts of property (including church property) under Jewish control. (p. 114, 135).

Many history books state that Christians commonly accused Jews of being behind the Black Death. Few mention the fact that Pope Clement VI exonerated the Jews of this charge. (pp. 129-130).

Jones believes that the conversion experiences of most of the CONVERSOS of Spain were religiously genuine. (p. 204). Irrespective of this, many CONVERSOS wanted the best of both worlds, claiming the privileges of Christians AND the privileges of Jews, (quote) They could advance in careers formerly barred to them, and they could continue to lend money and tax farm, without the heavy burden of the Jewish law or the equally heavy burden of taxation levied on the Jews. They had the freedom of the Gospels from the Jewish law, and they had the freedom of the Jews from Christian responsibility. (unquote). (p. 209). [Similar issues appeared centuries later in the increasingly-seen Jewish assimilation in Europe. For instance, the Endeks suspected that Jews who assimilated to Polishness, even those who converted to Catholicism, commonly did so out of opportunism.]

The Spanish Inquisition acted not against Jews, but against insincere Jewish converts, as they were essentially functioning in terms of subversion and deceit. (p. 221). Since religion no longer necessarily demarcated Jew from gentile, this facilitated the appearance of what later came to be known as racial anti-Semitism.

THE JEWS IN 19TH CENTURY GERMANY

During this time, German Christianity became less religious. In addition, both German Christianity and German Judaism became more Germanized. (pp. 568-569).

Ironic to those who blame Christianity for the misfortunes of the Jews, Jewish poet Heinrich Heine (1797-1856), best known for his transparently-opportunistic conversion to Christianity for social advancement, warned that the decline of Christianity in Germany did not bode well for the Jews. In a quoted statement alluding to Neopaganism, and eerily prescient of the Nazi movement and the Holocaust, Heine warned that the Christian restraints on German militarism and barbarism had faded, and that what will come will make the French Revolution seem like a harmless idyll. (p. 584).

THE JEWS IN 19TH CENTURY TSARIST RUSSIA

Jews did not become farmers even when the Russian authorities had encouraged it, in part because Jews did not want to attach themselves to land owing to their traditional messianic beliefs. (pp. 575-576, 646). The dislike of Jews for physical labor was exemplified by the fact that Jewesses who married farmers had a clause, in their marriage contracts, exempting them from manual farm labor. (p. 576). In addition, Jews could realize greater profits by engaging in their traditional occupations, and by leasing the land for others to farm. This meant that the peasants, already in bondage to Jews through alcohol, were now also their servants and sharecroppers. (p. 576).

Author E. Michael Jones rejects the common “Jews were oppressed” explanation (or exculpation) for the strong Jewish overrepresentation among revolutionaries in tsarist Russia. In fact, Jones details the significant and growing Jewish privileges in tsarist Russia, notably in industries. (pp. 681-682). Furthermore, the Jewish turn to revolution had taken place AFTER their political and educational emancipation by Russia and their ensuing self-emancipation from Talmudism, rabbinism, and the shtetl. (p. 646). Thus, the messianism of political revolution came about as a substitute for the ostensibly-obsolete messianism of the Jewish religion.

The author finds no contradiction between Jews being seen as hyper-capitalists and as hyper-revolutionaries. Both were forms of Jewish self-advancement. In addition, revolutionary Jews, evidently being leftists first and Jews second, had no problem with harming capitalist Jews, as exemplified by Karl Marx. (pp. 662-663). Jones adds that, (quote) In each instance, including Russia, which had yet to experience revolution, the Jews, as Karl Marx noted, flourished in those countries’ newly created capitalist economies. This economy coupled with industrialization uprooted huge numbers of people who had lived on the land for generations and herded them into the cities, where they became the revolutionary proletariat. By promoting capitalism, the Jews were also promoting revolution. It was a dual role that Jacob Schiff would carry to new levels in a few years. (unquote). (p. 677).

JEWS, COMMUNISM, AND ANTI-COMMUNISM

Jones quotes a number of Jewish authors who affirmed the central role of Jews in Communism (Zydokomuna), as well as the fact that Communism was an extension of their Jewishness. (pp. 731-on, 827, 857, 861, 929). This is exemplified by Jones’ reference to author Erich Haberer, (quote) It would be naïve, or as Haberer says, “shortsighted” to claim Jews just happened to be revolutionaries just as Abe Foxman later would claim Jews just happened to be involved in pornography. Both were forms of revolutionary activity, and Jews were drawn to them precisely because of the hold Messianic Socialism acquired over them once they abandoned traditional religious practice. (unquote). (p. 749).

Jones notes the turn of American Jews to anti-Communism by the early 1950’s. He attributes this in part to Stalin’s turn against the Jews, but mainly to the public-relations liability of the Rosenberg case and the danger of American Jews becoming marginalized in the strongly anti-Communist climate of the 1950’s. (p. 840). In time, some Jews became neo-cons (neo conservatives).

OUR ORWELLIAN WORLD THAT TREATS NAZI AND COMMUNIST CRIMES DIFFERENTLY

The double standard regarding Nazi crimes and Communist crimes is palpable. The author writes, (quote) Similarly, while many Jews, most prominently [Daniel] Goldhagen, accuse Catholicism of complicity in the Nazi Holocaust, no Jews of any stature apologized for Jewish participation in the Communist Holocaust, which took many more lives. (unquote). (p. 758). Indeed!

AMERICAN JEWS AND THE CREEPING ATHEIZATION OF AMERICA

Author Jones traces the Jewish-sponsored de-Christianization of America, through a series of court rulings, based on an “evolved understanding” of the “separation of church and state”. In fact, he speaks of this as part of “the Talmudic redefinitions of American law.” (pp. 837-838).

The author focuses on Jews in the entertainment industry, (quote) Hollywood was a Jewish creation…During the 1950’s, Jews taught Americans to become “specialists in alienation”. In promoting alienation, Jews projected their image onto American culture and weakened the mores of the Christian majority…They imposed “their own condition–their loss of religious faith and a sense of estrangement–upon the society.” (unquote). (p. 920).

Jones quotes, and then comments on, the insights of the conservative Alfredo Cardinal Ottaviani, on the changing trends in American culture already seen in the 1950’s, (quote) “Modern life, without doubt, multiplies invitations to evil by such distractions as beauty contests, spectacles, billboards, songs, illustrated magazines, beaches, places of vacation, promiscuity, and certain forms of sport…the church points out as dangerous and condemns as erroneous all theories that are then translated into practice concerning the cult of movie stars, naturalism, the so-called sexual education, pansexualism [eroticization of everything], and certain injurious aspects of psychoanalysis.” It didn’t take a genius to know who in America was prominent in supporting “the cult of movie stars, pansexualism, and psychoanalysis.” It was the Jews. (unquote). (pp. 886-887).

Clare Booth Luce, a convert from Judaism to Catholicism, wrote, (quote) “We Christian innocents have been duped into our present godless condition by the unholy triumvirate of communism, psychoanalysis and relativity. These three symbolized by Marx, Freud and Einstein, are the result of the messianic impulse of the religiously frustrated Jewish ego.” (unquote). (p. 887). [Note that this is a mirror image of the Jewish argument that Christians resent Jews because Christians are secretly jealous of the intellectual and sexual freedoms of Jews.]

JEWS, PSYCHOLOGY, AND THE DE-CHRISTIANIZING OF AMERICA

The author mentions the Frankfurt School (a. k. a cultural Marxism and neo-Marxism). (e. g, pp. 745-746, p. 853). Jones sees Teodor Adorno’s attack on the “authoritarian personality” as a veiled attack on Catholic moral teachings.

However, the issue ran much deeper. Jones comments, (quote) Freudianism became a “salvation religion.”…The redefinition of psychology was a revolution in the truest sense of the word…Jewish psychology was either covertly, as with Freud, or overtly, as with Wilhelm Reich, instinctual. As a result, the redefinition of mental illness changed from passion out of control to passion repressed. This unleashing of sexual passion from the bonds of reason corresponded with Jewish involvement in pornography and the constant chafing of prohibitions against nudity in Hollywood films. (unquote). (p. 922).

Furthermore, (quote) The third way of Erich Fromm, Carl Rogers, and Abraham Maslow was less aggressively atheistic but still retained Jewish animosity toward the unthinking GOYIM, who needed to be liberated from repression. (unquote). (p. 922).

All this filtered down into popular culture–through feminism and even advice columnists such as Eppie Lederer (Ann Landers), (quote) America’s largely Jewish advice columnists had become experts in persuading GOYISCHE America to ignore what their consciences and their ministers were telling them and to engage in Talmudic rationalization, abetted by the psychologists, instead. (unquote). (p. 923).

VATICAN II, DEICIDE, THE JEWS, AND Nostra Aetate

The author identifies the cause behind the trend of Jews blaming Christianity for the Holocaust, which first became prominent before and especially during the time of Vatican II, (quote) The real issue, the issue the Jews did not want to face, was the Jewish rejection of Christ, which was on-going not by occult force but because of Jewish will. By portraying this rejection as a curse, the Jews trivialized it and placed the onus not on their rejection of Christ but on the Church as the perpetrator of some occult voodoo spell, which, while harmless of itself, had caused prejudice, which led to persecution, culminating in the Holocaust. (unquote). (p. 889).

Elaborating on this theme, Jones details the angry accusations and pressure that Jews placed upon the bishops of Vatican II. Any concession led to only more demands, along with “an indignant Press campaign.” (p. 931). Jones believes that Jews were very arrogant in the nature and tone of their demands, and that they overplayed their hand.

The author points out that NOSTRA AETATE retained the charge of deicide, but qualified it. (p. 932, 1051). He contends that the Jewish lobbyists, using “Talmudic interpretation”, twisted its meaning, got their enemies (the Catholics) to argue with each other (p. 932), and made it into a weapon against the Church and traditionalist Catholicism. (p. 933, 934). For instance, they used it as a club to demand changes in the Oberammergau Passion Play. (pp. 935-936). Here is how the “Talmudic interpretation” worked, (quote) The Catholic Church lost control of the document because she lost control of the interpretation, which was forged in the media which the Jewish interest groups controlled. (unquote). (p. 933). Furthermore, (quote) The Jews coopted Catholic scholars into accepting their interpretations. (unquote). (p. 936). [The misrepresentations of NOSTRA AETATE are used nowadays in Jewish attacks on RADIO MARYJA, and these attacks are also facilitated by liberal and Jewish-compliant Catholics.]

The Jewish bullying of the producers of the Oberammergau Passion play continued unabated. However, Mel Gibson, in his PASSION OF THE CHRIST, came on the scene, and got the last laugh. Jones comments, (quote) No sooner do the Jews get one end nailed down when the other end springs up and cracks them in the head. Doubly infuriating, a Catholic beat the Jews at their own game by successfully directing, producing, and releasing a big budget film that grossed over $100 million at the box office in the first weekend after its release. (unquote). (p. 1052). Touche!

Unfortunately, throughout this entire discussion, author Jones overlooks an essential fact. For all the modern-day protests about Jews innocent of the death of Christ (deicide), this is a recent development. For much of history, Jews themselves not only accepted responsibility for the Crucifixion of Christ (as a false messiah, of course), but also took active credit for it. Please click on Religious Violence Between Christians and Jews: Medieval Roots, Modern Perspectives, and read the detailed Peczkis review.