Two "DEI" realities: Response to a progressive

I have recently had a discussion with a progressive colleague, which started with his telling me how he promotes “diversity” and generally DEI. I responded with this link of mine, https://blogs.timesofisrael.com/marxian-misnomers-diversity-equity-and-inclusion-in-academia/, to which he replied with an email that was followed by my response. I will not, for the sake of his privacy, display his emails, but their content will be clear from mine that I will. It seems to be an instructive example of the two different ways of thinking about the current ideological climate, mine being conservative, of course.

***

Dear …,

Thank you so much for your reply.

I don’t think you could infer from what I had written that I am against “having diversity of viewpoints, diversity of opinions, and different ways of assigning value to things like knowledge, understanding, and behavior.” On the contrary, it is exactly that kind of diversity, “the fruitful diversity of ideas that an academic institution is supposed to nurture,” to quote myself, that I fully support. That, however, has nothing to do with the “diversity” implied by DEI, a politically mandated and truly politicized implementation of racism and the progressive “divide et impera” methodology. The goal of that politics, as usual with politics, is power, by ensuring that certain groups in the US attain unmerited token privileges originating from policies introduced by a particular political party. Those groups will thus know to whom they should be thankful when it comes to elections.

I do not know if you have followed the case of Norman Wang who has been persecuted by [University of Pittsburgh] for publishing a peer-reviewed analysis of the effects of another manifestation of the same kind of racialist policies, “affirmative action,” another misleading sobriquet. None of those privileges serve anybody except politicians, but all lead to tremendous harm—first to those they pretend to help but also to entire society—and ultimately to the loss of freedom. That is why it is so threatening [to conservatives—this is the response to a question in the email].

Conservatives like myself, to whom you attribute “a vehement and well-coordinated political attack,” are, unfortunately, much less organized than and nowhere as coordinated as the progressives, whose attack is not only multi-prong—employing sex, race, justice system, immigration, religion, and education—but also very effective. The political vanguard of those progressives, the Squad, are openly racist and antisemitic. But the ideology comes from elite schools, thoroughly and for a long time permeated by Marxism, tolerating no diversity that you and I seek. The “diversity” that is offered these days to the “kids,” students, is such that they are afraid to express any hint of dissent—and that segues to being afraid of holding a dissenting opinion. And to doublethink. They are fully aware what treatment they could be given by their schools and fellow students, increasingly violent in this country as it moves to anomie, and how their job prospects may look if they don’t toe the Party line. Nowadays, they are also afraid of being Jews, a logical development. Speaking of feeling unwelcome. Ask me if I feel welcome, or even safe, especially with all that’s happened after the 10/7 pogrom. Do you?

I have seen all that—it’s nothing new. The same totalitarianism in nicer wrapping and trappings of America rather than Russia. It may be harder to see that for those whose vision of social trends is truncated by the lack of personal exposure to their entire continuum. I could go on and on, like your fellow […], but I don’t really think listening to a different opinion should get a separate label, “DEI.” It used to be a norm, or so I’ve thought. I am looking forward to our continuing exchange, an example of true diversity. Here is some more of my stuff, from over 2 years ago: https://www.thecollegefix.com/professor-from-soviet-union-warns-anti-racism-agenda-in-u-s-is-rehashing-of-marxism/.

***

Dear …,

I am glad we are on the same page regarding the meaning of "diversity" as it should be, the one I stated in the references I cited. The problem, as I am sure you are aware while trying to fit it into the DEI Marxian formula, is that the content of that formula has nothing to do with that meaning. In a fittingly Orwellian fashion, it is opposite. That is why I have written what I have, both to you and in several general access places. I too am selective about social topics to pay attention to. There are only two broad ones for me: antisemitism and the accelerating sliding of this society into progressive totalitarianism, both well familiar to me. And progressive it is—I am using this term in the sense it was applied to the Western fellow-travelers by the Soviet ideologues: "progressive humanity," "progressive intelligentsia" (curiously, I don’t remember any “progressive” workers or farmers). And just like with Soviet totalitarianism, antisemitism here, while having the usual religious roots, builds as a necessary attribute of the totalitarian ideology upon the old prejudice.

This is why antisemitism is now rampant on elite campuses—without even the Soviet-invented “anti-Zionism” disguise anymore. In your response, you skipped entirely that facet of “DEI,” whose "inclusion" excludes Jews (https://www.newsweek.com/antisemitism-growing-problem-among-college-diversity-administrators-opinion-1661416), whose "diversity" prohibits Jews, Zionism, and conservatism, and which by its “equity” penalizes the success of Jews as a group, as it does the success of Asians as a group and of anybody who reaches it on merits rather than on assignment to an “oppressed” group. That is what the persecution of Wang is about, which you dismiss as some anonymous generic “bad behavior,” and whose sin you fail to name. I have no idea what behavior on his side you consider "bad." In contrast to the administrators, he misused no ideology. Those are facts that constitute what you without a minimal discussion label "right-wing propaganda.” It is ironic that in the very next sentence you define propaganda as demonization of an idea.

It is also ironic that you accuse conservatives of weaponizing words while listing the buzzwords of DEI, purely progressive invention, intended exactly for what you accuse the conservatives of: dividing society. Divide et impera, to repeat myself. I should add to that the recent well-weaponized progressive discoveries: "systemic racism," "white fragility," "implicit bias," "anti-racism." All serving the same purpose: to cultivate and politically exploit enmity, suspicion, discord, and shame between and within groups defined by the very criterion racists have used. Somehow, the ”racial” problem has reached its maximum exactly when this “systemically racist” country elected twice the biggest diversity hire of all, President Obama, just to prove to itself, once and for all, how nonracist it is.

Contemporary progressivism is reflective of the ideological peculiarities of the majority of US Jews, proverbially earning like Episcopalians and voting like Puerto Ricans. While having been able to reach unprecedented comparative safety and opulence thanks to the capitalism of the goldene medina, many have been involved in the causes directed to destroying that same capitalism - or, to avoid obfuscating labels, destroying freedom: economic, academic, and, ultimately, freedom of thought. You regrettably did not react to my mentioning the students’ fear of expressing dissent. Under totalitarianism, there is a label for every dissenting thought: "right-wing propaganda," "slandering socialism," "vestiges of bourgeois thinking." “Racism,” “sexism,” “homophobia,” “islamophobia”—the list keeps growing. The only thing that remains here is putting those labels in law books to formally—not just by “canceling”—punish the thought criminals, as it was in the Soviet Penal Code.

The progressive Jews are led in their ideology not only by the Judaism-misderived misdirected compassion to the "poor" and the misunderstood "tikkun olam," which is presented more like "The Internationale" and a Marxist slogan than its midrashic meaning, but also by their misplaced shame for fulfilling the "rich Jew" antisemitic stereotype and the subconscious fear of losing those riches (if not life) due to others' envy, as it has happened throughout centuries. Nothing original about that capitalist/anti-capitalism contradiction either: Savva Morozov, a very wealthy (non-Jewish) capitalist in pre-Soviet Russia and a compassionate man, massively helped Bolsheviks who had sworn to destroy capitalism. Enrico Berlinguer, the nominally Jewish head of the Italian Communist Party, was a millionaire. I don't need to remind you on whose side the majority of techno-millionaires, including nominal Jews among them, are here, in the US. Soros, whose criticism by the "right" is verboten because of his nominal Jewishness, has been doing everything he can to destroy this society.

That's what Angela Davis has been doing all her life, from supplying weapons to Black Panthers, to kissing Brezhnev and Honecker, to supporting Arab Jew-murderers and the genocidal BDS movement. It is not me who condemned her for what you call her "imperfections," but Solzhenitsyn, in his "Warning to the West." He surely knew much better than would I what she was and where the West was rolling to, propelled by the communists and their apologists. He also intimately knew what communism meant. His knowledge was not from the anecdotes like yours about "transgenders," "immigrants," and "alternative family structures"—all obfuscating misnomers - but from observing from prison holes the consequences of monopolizing the Truth, what the progressives and their communist predecessors have done, the diversity of ideas be damned once power has been reached. You may think this society is far from that—but so did the Russian "bourgeois" intelligentsia just before and after Bolsheviks seized power. Tolerance to communism here has reached its pinnacle, with open communists, terrorist supporters and Israel-haters like Angela Davis extolled by Marxism-impregnated US universities.

You talk about the antisemitism of the "right"—at the time when open Jew-hate is rampant on campuses across the country, supported by the studied indifference of the administrators. You ignore that entirely, along with my question about your level of comfort with that. The BDS, the SJP, the "Free Palestine," the unrestrained support for Hamas, the NOI, the "black caucus" including Obama happily meeting with Farrakhan (keeping the photo shyly sub rosa until after his finishing his 2nd term), the pogromist Sharpton, the antisemitic "Squad" including "our own" Summer Lee, the Democrat administration declaring the Western Wall "occupied territory" and calling for ethnic cleansing of Judea and the "two-state solution" right after the 10/7 pogrom - none of this comes from the "right." The "right," which includes a 101 years old friend of mine who spent his young years in the Gulag (you may find his enlightening book at https://www.amazon.com/Thirteen-Little-Snakes-Stalins-Assassins/dp/1683481976), is no threat to the Jews, Israel, and the US. The militant totalitarian progressivism is, with its DEI and other society-destroying Marxian stuff. Antisemites on the “right” are marginals, uniformly condemned, unlike their legitimacy and logical presence among the progressives.

Now, you may dismiss all this as “right-wing propaganda” or respond substantively. I’d prefer the latter, of course, but I’ll understand if you choose the former.

***

Number one then :). I do too appreciate the opportunity to learn about that alternative reality of yours :). Agreeing to disagree.

Progressives, don’t be upset about Twitter

"Lenin's cause is alive and winning"

Musk’s purchase of Twitter is an Atlas-Shrugged-level event, afforded by his fantastic wealth. What, however, would happen if nobody had the kind of money it took? How long and in what direction the Party-media complex would guide the public opinion and the outcome of societal game-changers like elections?

The answer is obvious. As I’ve written some time ago, without knowing the details that have recently surfaced from Twitter but knowing enough to make an educated guess, the progressives have finally decided to get serious about seizing total power. For that, Lenin’s dictum about the need to capture communication means is always valid. That’s what Bolsheviks did in Russia for their power grab to succeed, then quashing freedom of speech, the condition to do away with all the other freedoms. That’s what progressives are doing in the US. Never mind that in Russia it was done with the help of bayonets and the all-powerful state whereas in the civilized US it’s been private media platforms happily merging with the secret police apparatus. The result is the same.

Yes, the same free enterprise system in the US allows for both that merger and for an occasional reversal of the trend, as happened with Twitter. I would thus suggest the progressives, the US version of totalitarians, not to despair, and the conservatives not to jump with joy. Musks are few and far between, but the organized prol… progressives, in lockstep that tolerates no dissent, will ensure that the state-thoughtpolice-media cartel will eventually crash what remains of the American utopia. Their individualist and freedom-loving ideological enemies, having no comparable rigid ideological spine, simply can’t amass an adequate response, relying on Reardens and Galts who largely remain a fiction. The utopia has already lasted far beyond utopias’ usual lifespan. We are now getting into a Randian dystopia.

The United States has not yet quite tried its own variety of totalitarianism. Apparently, the invariably nasty experience of others won’t be enough to keep us from that. Obama’s October 2008 promise to fundamentally transform the country will be kept.

Biden’s 1937 speech

No, Biden did not give any speech in 1937. He had not even been born then, ancient as he is. The actual date of  the speech I have finally read and talk about here was given by him on September 1, 2022, in Philadelphia, in the Independence Hall, no less. I had to read it myself, not relying on its retelling by the media of both partisan kinds—not only because that is what I usually do, having no trust in retellings. This time, an additional reason was what I had heard while listening to its pieces in the news. And the bleak feeling of fulfillment of my morose predictions of years ago about where this country was going. 

What I read was, to my knowledge, comparable only with one kind of speeches—and that is where the title originates. Those speeches are given at show trials, as the result of which the political opposition—real or imaginary—is to be physically eliminated. Not any show trials, in some of which the defendants may survive, but the ones where the lethal outcome is predestined—because the alleged crimes are too monstrous: “monstrous treachery, monstrous treason.” Where the defendants “have fallen so low” that they have become “fascists,” the enemies of democracy.

What I just quoted is not from any speech of Biden’s, even though he has said as much about those who support his political rival, complete with ("semi-")fascists just a week before, with a clever prefix to avoid being accused of trivializing the Holocaust. Those are quotes from the speech by Andrey Yanuaryevich Vyshinskiy, the Prosecutor General of the Soviet Union, on January 28, 1937. As those targeted in Biden’s speech, the accused were in fact loyal citizens of the country. As in Biden’s speech, their monstrous crimes were invented, to present a mortal threat to the country's political system and existence. As in his speech, no compromise or leniency to the accused could be contemplated—particularly to a small group of devilish enemies. As did Vyshinskiy, Biden contrasted the two paths, backward and forward, the latter, of course, represented by his Party and himself, the usually semi-lethargic but now suddenly hyped-up long-lifelong politician harking back to the times when he was afraid that his "children would grow in a jungle, the jungle being a racial jungle". Like Vyshinskiy, Biden talked about "the will of the people," a common refrain of totalitarian executioners. 

Like Vyshinskiy was talking about defending socialism, which was under no threat from the fanatical communists on trial whom Stalin considered a threat to his absolute power, Biden was talking about defense of democracy, under no threat from his political opposition, in contrast to the violent pogromists, antisemites, and would-be political assassins among his own supporters. The difference was that Vyshinskiy was then really accusing only that small group, the established leaders, the Old Guard of the October Revolution—even though thousands if not millions would be shot, tortured to death, or put in the Gulag as followers of those accused after they had been annihilated. Biden, hypocritically saying that the number of the “MAGA Republicans” was small, not even mentioning the many independent supporters of Trump in addition to the huge majority of the Republicans, accused half a country of being its enemies. 

Like Vyshinskiy with those hapless victims of the Stalinist regime, Biden falsely accused half a country, his political opponents, of "willingness to engage in political violence." That phrase should scare not only "ultra-MAGA" "deplorable" "extremists" like myself, but anybody who can listen if not read. Because the only way to prevent violence is, to be sure, violence. 

No, Biden says, "we do not encourage violence": it's not "an acceptable political tool." Except, of course, when using the FBI to invade the home of your political rival, or using a black-booted SWAT team armed with automatic guns to drag out of his home a former Trump official. No, violence is not necessary for the party that comes to power after instigating mass riots, destruction, and calls and plentiful excuses for political Black Shirt violence by its leading members of Congress. No, they still only dream of taking Trump to the courtroom in shackles for a show trial. 

If you ask me, they really do not need the kind of violence that led Bolsheviks to power and the Red Terror. That was simply the specifics of the Russian situation at the time. Nazis came to power peacefully. In this country, the political means and events are too framed by its own history and system. Let’s see. The intellectuals, who, on occasion, in other countries have been in opposition to authoritarians, are fully domesticated Democrat pets here, justifying any pogrom if it is committed by "their" side. The mainstream media are already fully the Party "organs," as they were called and had to be made into via violence in the Soviet Union and in Putin's Russia. The law enforcement, the military, the intelligence and diplomatic corps are fully "woke"—or, more precisely, totalitarian—in a true Orwellian sense of "1984." Complete with the Bolshevik-dream changes in the very biological nature of people, turning one sex into the other (or many others) and forcing people to say that this 2 + 2 = 5. No need for violence when all the stars are already aligned as they should be for complete one-Party control. 

They don't need violence, but they will still use it.

1937 is the year that is symbolic in the history of Russia as the time when the communist revolution consumed its own to establish the full monopoly of Stalin's power.  The year of 2022 may yet be the one when the power monopoly of the Democrat Party, under its totalitarian eliminationist leadership, is going to be finally enacted. 

Like Soviet communists, this party sees its opponents—those not fully in goose step with it—as terrorists, extremists, and enemies worse than Osama bin Laden. You know what happened to him. Don't think they won't come for you.

Equating Judaism with Fascism

 On March 21, 2022, the online Tablet Magazine sent an email with a link to its item entitled “Putin’s fascism.” To me, despite my agreeing with what Putin’s ideology is, the piece sounded like political hackery. I wrote a letter to the editor, which has not been published—and I don't hold my breath it will be. Here it is.

Equating Judaism with Fascism

Dear Editor:

I  received today the Tablet email and could not believe my eyes reading its very first words: “Putin’s Favored Brand of Judaism.” From the standpoint of the article’s authors, Putin, the Kremlin ghoul, is associated with a particular brand of Judaism. And this is because he is a “traditionalist,” and his supposed “brain,” Dugin, an ideologue of  Russian nationalism, allegedly quotes the Vilna Gaon as prophesying that in the end of days the main enemies will be Jews who “underwent modernization”—whatever that may mean, considering that the Gaon lived in the 18th century. Not only do we have to rely on Dugin’s quote and perception of what Judaism is (even though that is what he just “imagines”), but we must also agree that “traditionalism” has one meaning only: it is a synonym for fascism.  That’s the article’s title, “Putin’s fascism.” That is because, you see, Putin, just like those “traditionalist” Orthodox Jews, disapproves of LGBT, and “enjoyed the support of Russia’s  chief rabbi.” Moreover, Dugin’s “comrades” are “right-wing Israel Zionists.” How much wider can a dirty smearing brush be? Similarly, in judging who is a Jew (because that is what we are always focused on), we are supposed to rely on Hitler, cited on the same breath as “the rabbis” and “the State of Israel” that apparently agree with Hitler.

Unsurprisingly, this kind of twisted logic inevitably leads to Trump, another threat to democracy and “modernized Jews”— like Soros. Once we get to that point, the goal of the article becomes clear. It is not to denounce Putin’s fascism and the ongoing slaughter of Ukrainians by the Russian murderous army, nor is it to call for Jewish unity, which the Gaon actually called for. No, it is to associate Orthodox Judaism with fascism—and, most importantly, associate Trump with Putin the fascist.

The method employed in the article is the one that was used by the Soviet Union in its ideological war, called “rotten herring.” An adversary is accused of a dirty disgusting thing, no matter how implausible. Then, irrespective of whether the person is further accused or defended, the name gets associated with the rot, and every time the association mentioned, a little bit of it gets rubbed into the name. That’s what Putin uses accusing Ukrainians of Nazism and developing biological weapons, that’s what was done to Trump with the obscene “Russian dossier.” I am no rabbi, but I am pretty sure that there is no brand of Judaism that encourages this Soviet-kind deceptive anti-religious partisan propaganda. 

The black hole of Russia

 My op-ed in The Pittsburgh Jewish Chronicle , "The Black Hole of Russia."

Солдату России

Разуй глаза, —скажу, любя,—

солдат России.

Тебе солгали, что тебя

сюда просили.

Тебе солгали, что «хохлы»

тебя приветят.

Но почему поверил ты

мерзавцам этим—

убийцам за стеной Кремля—

и стал убийцей?

Не видел ты, какая тля

там век ютится—

с повадкой ката и ворья

упырь всевластный?

Или тебя учили зря,

и все не ясно,

что не спаситель ты, а враг

и гадок людям,

и в голове твоей дыра—

коль нет, то будет—

от пули брата твоего,

в кого ты метил?

Ведь это ты открыл огонь,

и ты—в ответе.

Putin

      Fragment of the fresco of Vitale de Bologna of the Benedictine Monastery of Pomposa (Italy), 1350

That’s, I’m sure, a vampire
Gnaws on bones, bloody-lipped.
—A. S. Pushkin. “Vurdalak,” Songs of Western Slavs
(Это, верно, кости гложет
Красногубый вурдалак.
—А. С.  Пушкин. “Вурдалак”, Песни западных славян)

What’s in the mirror that you see?

No bloody fangs, which would be fitting:

you feed on corpses of your victims.

You make them as you drink your tea.

You are no ghoul from fairy tales:

there’s been no one that’s been as horrid.

This is your time. But see, before it,

there were some others, and they failed.

One placed a bullet in his brain.

The other choked on his vomit.

The end is near. You postpone it:

you'll murder more - but that’s in vain.

You should have grown fangs, a horn,

a snout that you've almost grown,

while sitting on your trashy throne.

When you are dead, no one will mourn.

Democrats’ “Palestine”

 https://worldisraelnews.com/biden-admin-reverses-state-dept-declaration-of-strategic-talks-with-palestine/

https://www.breitbart.com/middle-east/2021/10/08/state-department-walks-back-snafu-referring-to-palestine/

https://www.state.gov/biographies/jalina-porter/

https://worldisraelnews.com/biden-admin-reverses-state-dept-declaration-of-strategic-talks-with-palestine/

This is no “verbal snafu.” This is getting the public inured to the concept of “Palestine,” a Jew-hating non-entity ethnically cleansed of the Jews. Goes well with the rest of Marxism, currently coming to rule America.

"Diversity Forum" and Communism

I have been pleasantly surprised by the University Times' publishing my letter that protests against the race-baiting institutionalized by the university's "Diversity" structures. Those seem to multiply like rot - in the body long crippled by the progressive ideology adopted by the majority. I was surprised not only because the letter was clearly outside of the ideological mainstream, but also because my prior letter had been ignored - both by its original addressees, all the university's top machers, and by the UT editor. Understandably, it had no impact. Here it is.

Dear Editor,

Like all Pitt [University of Pittsburgh] faculty, I have received an email signed by Dr. Kathy Humphrey, Senior Vice Chancellor for Engagement, inviting participation  in “the 2020 Diversity Forum, Advancing Social Justice: A Call to Action.” The upcoming event was introduced as featuring “Dr. Angela Davis, who has dedicated her life and work to the fight for social justice and human rights.” I am sharing my reply, to which I have received response from neither Dr. Humphrey, nor from Chancellor Gallagher and Associate Vice Chancellor Pope, to whom I forwarded it.

“I am gravely concerned that Angela Davis is featured in any forum outside of her ideological circle. Angela Davis was well familiar to everybody in the Soviet Union as a devoted member of CPUSA, a wholly owned subsidiary of the KGB that never deviated from its directives. She was the face of the anti-US Soviet propaganda and earned the Lenin Peace Prize from the Soviet government that murdered and imprisoned true fighters for human rights, about whom she could not care less. A celebrity cherished by the Soviet authorities, she refused requests to speak to them for imprisoned Soviet dissidents, but she has embraced convicted terrorist murderers Rasmea Odeh and Marwan Barghouti. For the enslaved Soviet population, she was a despised symbol of foreign support of the Soviet activities directed at the destruction of freedom.

She is an unrepentant communist who still laments the Soviet Union and is admired by the communists in today’s Russia—for the kind of “social justice” she stands for. She is a supporter of the antisemitic BDS movement. It is no accident that she has floated up these days, when the imperfections of this society, aggravated by extraordinary circumstances, are used as a pretext for attacking its foundations and cutting it at the seams. I doubt she could contribute any perspective of value to Pitt audience. Nobody would ever think about any “conversation” with Nazis, but communists, whose ideology has caused no less death and suffering around the world and still suffocates billions, are still viewed as deserving attention and time.

As a refugee from the Soviet Union, I hope communism is not part of “diversity” that is sought by this society. I respectfully request that Angela Davis be disinvited from participating in the forum.”

I hope there is still time for removing Angela Davis from the program scheduled to start on July 28. Her participation is certain to discredit the forum and negate anything positive that it is planned to accomplish. Communism is not “a more just society” that an American academic forum is supposed to help creating.

None of the Pitt leaders I addressed has replied. Angela Davis’s participation in the event is now a fait accompli. The “forum,” which entertained no discussion, let alone a critical one, with expressions of admiration for Davis’s activities from both Drs. Humphrey and Cudd, has been discredited. Communism is not “a more just community” that an American academic forum is supposed to help creating. Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn said about Davis’s cruel refusal to help dissidents in the Gulag, “That is the face of Communism. That is the heart of Communism for you." I never thought, when I left the now extinct Soviet Union, that I would be made to remember that face 30 years later, plastered on my American university’s computer screens.

I watched, nauseated, the old Communist witch spewing her wisdom into the current racialist swill. The "Diversity Forum" was neither forum nor was there any diversity (see also Maher's Pandemic and Mayakovsky's Throat).

20 years after: Who attacked us?

Who attacked us on 9/11? Right, 19 Muslims, 15 of which were Saudis. Right, Osama bin Laden, may his name be erased. Right, terrorists. The “Islamic” ones.  Supported by Afghan “Islamists.” Is that it?

Suppose it is. Why then the said “Islamists” are again allowed full rein over Afghanistan, after being quickly defeated? Why are people who express the same ideas not pursued to their extinction but spread those ideas freely in Europe and the US? Why does a mention of the “Islamist” (not even “Islamic,” let alone Muslim) ideology call for accusations of “Islamophobia”? Why are those who sling those accusations exclusively progressive— in the US, mostly Democrats?

Many questions, all of which have the same answer. The enlightened Western world prefers to think of Islam as another “Abrahamic” religion. Almost entirely progressive as this world now is, it views all religions as backward. So Islam is on a par with the Judeo-Christian foundation of that world, even though it was the opposition to Islam that has brought about our civilization. Yes, there were crusades that killed eastern Christians and Jews along with Muslims who oppressed them. Yes, there was the Inquisition and other crimes of the Catholic Church (not that the Eastern Orthodox Churches were any better, given power). Those crimes and crusades, however, horrible as they were, were a response to what Islam offered to the world: full submission until the entire world becomes Muslim. And it did not just offer that—Islam has brought its vision on the tips of spears to virtually the entire world, with all Mideast, North Africa, and much of Europe and Asia conquered and subjugated by victorious Islam.

What is conveniently ignored is that it is irrelevant if Islam is a religion, a set of rituals, or a couple of now well-familiar incantations like “Allahu Akbar.” What matters is what Islam as an actively propagated ideology promises humanity. It’s easy if uncomfortable to find out. According to the ruling scripture of Islam—not some marginal interpretations thereof, not some murderous escapades of crazy Muslim potentates, and not the purely Western concoction of "Islamism"—the world is to become Muslim in its entirety, with the intermediate stage of complete subjugation or murder of those who disagree. The full Muslim harmony, when the entire world becomes the abode of Islam, Dar ul Islam, will not obtain until the Jews are completely exterminated. Muhammad, Islam's founder, promised that even stones and trees, with few exceptions, would help the Muslims in that.

This is not a Nazi catechism— this is a command of the “Prophet” and thus of the Muslim deity, equivalent to the Constitution in Islam because this ideology by design cannot be separated from the state. A command given directly, in simple words, this is not subject to ijtihad, interpretation. You can't reinterpret a call for murder. This is the plan—no need to invent any “Protocols” and nothing to debunk. It is all in black and white, for anybody interested to see.  Why don’t they, the rulers, the presidents, the premiers, the thinkers?

Because it means that the West faces 1.4 (or 1.9?) billion people, the carriers of that religion-mimicking ideology—not some lethally dangerous but ultimately manageable Germany with its narrow “Aryan” ideological focus. Even if a small proportion of Muslims are murderous followers of the above, it would be a war similar to which the world has not seen. Moreover, someone would have to take responsibility for “starting” it —even though it was started with Mohammad’s taking over Mecca in 630 CE. The 9/11 attack was one piece of it, and not the last one. Nineteen devoted followers of the "Prophet"—and 3,000 infidels are gone. Seeing this threat also means taking the side of the Jews—once and for all, even if reluctantly, admitting that they are the foremost target of that threat, the only Jewish defense against which is Israel.

That’s the fears. There is, however, an option that allows us, as Solzhenitsyn said, to live not compliant with the lie, hiding our collective head in the Muslim sands of deception, but facing the truth. Soviet communism, a mortal threat to the Western civilization, was never recognized as acceptable—but was dealt with accordingly (not counting the unfortunate dhimmitude of the detente). Hardly anybody in the West accepts Chinese communism (yet), despite China's population of ~1.5 billion. You could, apparently, move virtually all world manufacturing there without accepting communism as just another political ideology (even if the myopic pursuit of  cheap labor supports the communist regime). You can still buy oil from the savages—without waxing ”inclusive” about the “Abrahamic” character of Islam, which stole Jewish biblical personages while mutilating the sacred history to fit the primitive wishes of Muhammad, a highway robber, child rapist, and genocidal murderer. You can live in peace—but you must recognize that Islam's product is an empire of evil, one that is much older and much more dangerous than the newfangled Marxian garbage that has failed in similar designs while costing humanity 100 million lives.

Only facing that truth would lead to understanding who attacked us on 9/11 and what is needed to prevent that in the future. Until then, there will be more “endless wars,” “Islamists,” and 9/11s. More Talibans. More PLOs. More murderous Islam.

Response to a Gil Troy article

 My response to a Gil Troy article praising the new Israeli government: https://blogs.timesofisrael.com/reagans-lessons-for-gil-troy/

Article 70, Criminal Code of the RSFSR

 University of Pittsburgh School of Law announces creation of a KGB lab

If only KGB had the digital resources now in possession of their successors! Orwell  could only guess how good they would be.

Institutional racism: Quitting another scientific membership

Published by the Jewish News Syndicate, the story of my parting with Behavior Genetics Association I've been a proud member of for almost 30 years: 

https://www.jns.org/opinion/when-scientists-support-hate-racism-and-anti-semitism/. 

The editor thankfully made only few changes, except for deleting the paragraph below and moving a couple of sentences around. I also do not use the term "anti-Semitism," which implies that there is some "Semitism," or it has anything to do with Semites as a language group, which would then include Arabs. It pertains to the Jews only, and it's no-hyphen "antisemitism," just as I am used to it in Russian. No need to make it sound more "scientific" than what Wilhelm Marr did, introducing "Antisemitismus" to make Jew-hate sound more genteel.

The deleted paragraph:

An organization has never needed to consist entirely of antisemites to be antisemitic. Even in the Nazi party there were people like Schindler who were saving Jews rather than murdering them. Nonetheless, the entirety of Germany was a Nazi country, by virtue of being fully controlled by Nazis, a Jew-hating party. In the Soviet Union, when Stalin was preparing his own “final solution” for Soviet Jews, a token Jew held one of the top governmental positions.  When the leadership and founders of an organization are antisemites, it is safe to call it antisemitic. Denying BLM’s antisemitism is exactly what is now fashionably called “gaslighting.”

 

A Stranger’s Advice

Was that a conscious plan? Did the progressive intelligentsia in the United States  finally decide to get serious, study  Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, and  follow his article that every Soviet student at a higher education institution had to read, entitled «Советы постороннего», A Stranger’s Advice (aka “Advice of an Onlooker”—hard to translate)?  And what an advice that was. “Telephone, telegraph,” that is, the means of communication, information transfer, all that were available then—this is what Lenin held as a necessary condition for the revolution to succeed. That was not about just any revolution—it was the communist one, establishing a totalitarian rule. 

Lenin’s article was published a little over two weeks before what later was solemnly named the Great October Socialist Revolution, Bolsheviks’ following Lenin’s “advice” and seizing power from the legitimate but helpless Provisional Government. Soon establishing a power monopoly, they extended it to full political uniformity and ideological monopoly. The printed media, in turn, was to become “organs” of the totalitarian structures—labor unions, communist organizations, soviets—and the most prominent newspaper, Pravda, the Organ of the Communist Party. To be sure, there was resistance, real and imagined by the regime, which required repression—imprisonment and murder of millions. 

This country is lucky. Although the Democrat party has held its opponents as enemies to be eliminated, not to be argued with to establish a compromise, mass murder for accomplishing what Bolsheviks planned is not necessary here. The ideological monopoly has all but been established—long before the socialist revolution advanced to the power monopoly stage. The media and means of communication are carried by the information companies captured/created by communists, educated by communist teachers who had taken over the entire education system a long time ago. Who knew those companies would also be the richest corporations ever existed, monopolies in which Marx and Lenin saw the undertakers of capitalism? The communist classics thought that would be because the big corporations would produce an organized working class. They were right in one regard—not about the class (although race struggle has partially replaced class struggle demagoguery here) but, combined with the uniform ideology murdering democracy, about the ability to finish off the economic and political system they called capitalist. Ideologically monopolizing and blocking access to the means of information transfer—Twitter, Facebook, Internet in general—are critical in the totalitarian enslavement. It is not people that are canceled anymore—just freedom.

Not depriving the political opponents of life, oh no, but making life intolerable for them. What was proclaimed by Maxine Waters as needed to terrorize the Trump administration, “in a restaurant, in a department store, at a gasoline station,” will be and is already being extended to half the US population. The Reichstag fire will be many little fires, lit by little “antifa” provocateurs, progressive Blackshirts, followed by increasingly draconian censorship, elimination of freedoms, and repressions. I feel lucky that the January 6 events were not planned in the way that would leave some members of Congress or Pence dead. Considering what the Democrats have been doing since, it would be easy for them in the aftermath of that to capture Trump and any supporter of his, declare martial law, and set up the terror regime with “re-education” camps. I guess, the most rabid ones have not yet floated up to the top of the cesspool. Then again, the Biden administration is not even gathered yet.

When Lenin gave his “advice,” just a little over two weeks remained before the Bolshevik revolution, throwing the country into the darkness for almost a century—not that it had been very bright before or has been after. That likely also was a cause of Nazi ascent, as if Communism was not enough. Just a week remains for Communists’ power monopoly in the US.

Post hoc ergo propter hoc presidency

I am not trying to sound smart, and I can’t really speak Latin. The expression is simply the standard term for a logical error. In vernacular, it means “after that, hence because of that,” as most of you know. It is common for humans to draw causal connections from temporal sequences. In my field, substance use and addiction, "gateway theory," based on the same fallacy, has ruled over research and policy. Hardly anybody cared that it does not matter which drug one starts with for the risk of poisoning or addiction. But it's not just that the false causes are used as guides for action. Once they are in play, the true causes are ignored.

Does anybody doubt Trump would win, hands down, over Biden if not for the Chinese virus? He almost did (or has won) despite the Democrat agitprop that spread the calumny of the virus deaths' being Trump's fault. Nobody cared that Trump's trump card was economics, his China trade measures were substantial part of its success, and the virus came from China smack at the good time to destroy Trump's advantage. The progressive media (a clear redundancy) ignored China's role  in the spread of the virus, while Trump was depicted as a Plague-time well-poisoner.

What is the connection between the China virus and Biden's creeping out of his basement to possible presidency, with his pothead sidekick aiming at the Resolute Desk? All that was thanks to the common human mistake of readily taking “after that” for “because of that”, Trump's presidency—hence COVID deaths, the false conclusion endlessly propagated by Democrats and their media, exactly the "Organs" of the Democrat Party, as their counterparts used to be honestly called in the Soviet Union. Who cares that those deaths have no relationship whatsoever with Trump, who has done the maximum he could to withstand the biological attack while fighting the sabotage of Democrat governors, the posturing of know-nothing buffoons from NIH and WHO, and the constant attempts of political assassination from the Democrat Congress and Biden's "xenophobia" accusations. The NY governor Cuomo has actively murdered seniors by his order for care facilities—nobody will charge him with the crime. It is Trump who bears its consequences. Who cares that the US, despite all the Democrat agitprop, is far from the worst corona-wise in the world. It’s Trump's fault just because he was the president when it happened—forget all the praises Cuomo has given him in a fit of honesty.

Forget that it has been and would still be Trump's team that has born the brunt of the Chinese biological attack—and this is what it is. Even if—and it's a big if—the virus were not cooked in that Wuhan "institute," it was definitely deliberately spread to kill the US economy and thus remove Trump, the enemy of China. The Democrat fifth column was only happy to help, busy with the same work ever since Trump had been elected. Those are the causes ignored. Forget what is at stake: America’s freedom, energy independence, peace, Middle East conciliation, trade fairness, and honesty with allies and enemies. Let’s just pray that the utopia that this country has been does not turn into another nightmare of the communist takeover and bread lines. That has been a true cause-effect relationship.

The party that fought for slavery, that has revived racial conflict in this country and supports pogroms, that has open antisemites as its vocal and unrestrained leaders, that has given Iran billions to fund world-wide terror and pave its way to nukes, that is ready to reinstitute your tax-funded payments for terror murders of Israelis, that has its projected president neck-deep in corruption and client connection with the true enemies of the US—it is now on the verge of gaining unlimited power. A one-party totalitarian state, partnered with its benevolent creditor, Communist China. No Latin needed.

Intersectionality of hate

The unwieldy word “intersectionality” is relatively new. The dictionary says it was invented in 1989 to describe the confluence of various forms of discrimination. That is possible, even though 1989 does not sound like representing a time period when the likely correlation between various expressions of xenophobia would manifest in a most pressing fashion. In reality, however, the term is much better defined as a confluence of various victimhoods. More precisely, it denotes an assemblage of accusations with assigned guilts—viz., the guilts of not belonging to a class of victims, regardless of  any actual guilt.  Those excluded from among the victim classes are ipso facto oppressors. This, naturally, graywashes real oppressors--they become part of the many, those who committed genocide in Poland or Rwanda, and those who are trying to stop Taliban terror. Thus, a “white” heterosexual male is by default “intersectionally” guilty of racism, sexism, homophobia, Islamophobia, etc. 

"Whiteness", the main defining concept in the determination of "intersectionality," also covers certain groups regardless of their race, despite what that color word would seem to mean. The Jews, for instance, are viewed as "white" irrespective of their color and non-European (Asian) origin. Hence, they are not victims anymore but, by the Manichaean default, oppressors. Linda Sarsour, a prominent Democrat activist, said that Jews can't be feminists, which is one of the intersectionality component groups. The Jews' oppressor status evidence is also in the firm defense of Congresswoman Omar by her progressive Democrat colleagues. Instead of getting her censured, Omar's antisemitic statements have brought  her an appointment to the Foreign Affairs committee. There she is able to translate her Jew-hate into US policy.

In contrast to Judaism, being Muslim places one into the "brown," hence "intersectional," category, whatever the actual skin shade. Linda Sarsour is a very lightly-pigmented co-religionist of Omar's. She is a shariah and terrorist supporter, aka Obama's "champion of change" and a leader of the intersectional Women's March. She is not concerned that her Muslim devotion is incompatible with anything feminism stands on, considering that Islam scripturally holds women much below men (e.g., Koran 2:282), and Muslims above all non-Muslims (Koran 3:110). Indeed, the March was disavowed by its Jewish organizer, Vanessa Wruble, upon learning that  she was twice disqualified from it, as "white" and as a Jew. Now, to be fair, when denying the Jews their share of coveted intersectionality, Sarsour was cautious to talk about those Jews who supported Israel. Then, everyone knows that Jews generally do support the Jewish state, and everyone knows what those "anti-Zionist" provisos are worth. Sarsour's activist colleagues from the March, who adore Farrakhan, make no such fine distinctions and hold all Jews responsible as white, slavers, and generally exploiters. 

As in card games or rock-paper-scissors, there is a system of victimhoods, one trumping another. I may not have fully figured it out, with all its contingencies, but being Muslim trumps homosexuality. You may be a homophobic antisemite, but in combination with being “black” and a membership in the Nation of Islam this brings you to sit two seats from a Democrat US president. 

Being “straight” "white" non-Muslim male is trumped by all, let alone by being a "Latina," as asserted by Sonia Sotomayor. Her remark on how her ethnic origin makes her better qualified than any "white" male has landed her in the US Supreme Court as a Justice, ironic as that may sound. Heaven forfend that male has wealth. Then, the only protection from being considered fully inhuman is his generous support of all progressive causes there are, always on the verge of being denounced for any infraction. That support, however, may keep even a wealthy Jew afloat on the sea of otherwise ineluctable guilts—that’s why Soros's water is fine. His hate for Israel is par for the course. Being conservative, on the other hand, is unforgivable and punishable violently.

Hate for conservative opponents, for Israel, and for religion—except, Allah forbid, Islam—comes in one neat intersectional package. That is the modern Democrat ideology, which has evolved from its slaveholder KKK racism and statism of old times to race-, sex-, and other identity-baiting, with overt socialism on top. Long gone are the times when socialism was viewed as a swear-word, to be strenuously denied if accused of, like a shameful secret habit. It is now the mainstream ideology of the party that won popular vote in the last presidential elections. It is as mainstream and flaunted as admitting to drug abuse, also no longer a secret, to be "I-did-not-inhale" coy about. Consider Bernard Sanders. He sounded slightly off calling himself “Democratic Socialist” when running for Democrat nomination in 2016 (beware of the need to use “Democratic,” same as in DPRK or GDR). Despite the comforting adjective and the expectedly overwhelming support by the younger and entirely ignorant generation, by Obama's henchman's admission, the establishment was not ready yet to employ his communist demagoguery in full. There is no such reticence anymore in the Democrat Congress, whose members expound wild agitprop slogans and describe their drug abuse as the most natural experience.

Intersectionally with hate for capitalism, which is in a word hate for economic and political freedom, almost as many Democrats "sympathize more" with Palestinian Arabs as with Israel. An almost the same proportion, 35%, predominantly the young ones, hold an unfavorable (mostly or very) opinion of Israel, more than double that of Republicans. In another poll, a measly 27% of Democrats sympathized with Israel vs. 78% of Republicans. As Tuvia Tenenbom notes in his "The Lies They Tell," choosing "Palestine" over Israel is as certain for a progressive in the US as belief in man-made climate change. It is irrational to demand from the Congress Democrats to act against antisemitism, when their young and cool colleagues, representing the new generation of their electorate, are Jew-haters, the recent Deputy Chair of their party was a member of the Mein-Kampf-strength antisemitic Nation of Islam, and the entire Black Caucus, including Obama himself, happily met with Farrakhan, the preacher of Jew-hate whom Democrat presidential candidates reverentially call "minister." (The kompromat picture was immediately stashed away and remained hidden not just before Obama's presidential nomination but to the end of his second term.)

In their hate, they intersect with Farrakhan’s and his friend Rev. Wright’s morbid racism and antisemitism, and with the Jew-hating Palestinian Arabs—93% of their population, according to the recent poll. The hate-filled Arab population of the land illegally occupied by Jordan and Egypt before the Six-Day War, governed by its two grotesquely corrupt and murderous regimes of their own choice, Hamas and the PLO, are the ultimate victims, intersecting victimhoods from colonialism, imperialism, Jews, whites, Crusaders--you name it. Regrettably, they also intersect with Jewish quislings who, like Bernard Sanders, faithfully follow their Bolshevik predecessors in their hate for capitalism, Jews, and freedom. Antisemitism, including its Jewish variety, is inevitable on the way to the totalitarian uniformity of progress.

It is Communism, now comfortably conjoined with another totalitarianism, Islam, that is the final intersection to which "intersectionality" leads. As a century before, parallel totalitarian movements gain strength around the world that does not want to remember. The Communist and National Socialist flags differed only in the small emblem on their bloody background. Today, the entire spectrum can be found in the colors of the vanguard of the immense expanse of humanity rolling in the same general direction: to squash freedom, whatever idiosyncrasies individual groups entertain, Muslim, feminist, progressive, socialist. Paraphrasing a little, "Intersectionalists of all stripes, united!"

Nobelists and I

Honestly, I’ve never hoped to be listed among Nobel prize winners—just not my caliber, for many reasons. Nonetheless, I have recently been. You may be surprised, but that was no cause for joy. You won’t be surprised that it was unwarranted, in more than one respect. Let me dispense with the suspense. The events occurred in an online discussion of a statement by the leadership of the National Prevention Science Coalition, of which I had been a member. Along with the audience of over 500 coalition members, I was informed by an authoritative scientist that he had heard “such rhetoric” as mine from “some very smart people like James Watson and William Shockley, and frankly, it scares the shit out of [him].” 

So, as you can see, although the discussion was among scientists (you could be misled by my opponent's coprolalic lexicon), my joining the Nobelist ranks had nothing to do with science. As you likely know, the gentlemen I was made to share company with are known not only for their discoveries, but also for their prejudice against the intellectual abilities of people of African descent, which those Nobel laureates viewed as not only inferior but genetically so. You’d think that Watson should have known better, considering that there is no surefire way currently to know if the IQ differences between the poorly defined racial groups have anything to do with genetics. You may also ask how I, knowing that and having a history of public objections to those views among scientists, could be such a troglodyte as to share those very views—not only in my mind but in my public rhetoric, in our times—and before securing a Nobel prize. You’d think I must be hopelessly deranged. 

You’d be mistaken. I have never said anything that could be considered “such rhetoric.” What I did say is that I had not seen any evidence that Officer Chauvin killed George Floyd because of racism, to use as a pretext for the ongoing social disorder, and that “implicit bias,” a current buzzword, is an Orwellian thoughtcrime, which requires telepathy to be proven. That is, even if the studies that have produced that concept register the objective phenomenon of different expectations associated with different population groups, some real, some false, those statistical data, i.e., population sample-derived, cannot be applied to any particular individual—or to all, to summarily accuse them of prejudice. That accusation would be as wrong and prejudicial itself as accusing all “black” males of inclination to murder because the frequency of murder in that vaguely defined population is higher than that in some other groups.

One does not need to be a scientist to understand that, but scientists, who are supposed to understand that perfectly, are guilty of despicable dishonesty when they pretend they don’t, drawing wrong conclusions from questionably designed statistical studies, translated into imaginary dystopian concepts. There is, however, nothing uncommon in creating those concepts among scientists or in their insisting on falsehoods even when proven otherwise: science has often been remarkably dogmatic. That has always been the case when scientists followed a totalitarian ideology. Under the Party’s protection, they have even outlawed whole branches of science, getting rid of scientific competitors, be it genetics under Stalin or relativity physics under Hitler. Totalitarian ideology, displacing morality with virtuous phraseology, is capable of permitting not just lies, but murder—be it for the sake of class struggle for communists or race struggle for Nazis.

In fact, where a totalitarian ideology, which is what the current progressive social-justice-structural-racism set of cliches strives to be, controls a scientist’s mind to convert scientific opponents into enemies, when the opponents’ views are perceived as opposing that ideology, nothing coming from that scientist can be trusted. The enemies’ theories and results will be at best ignored. Discussions are verboten, and that precludes scientific process. 

That is what has happened with the prevention scientists I communicated with. The NPSC director quickly “turned off the spigot,” as she put it. Her self-contradicting explanation: “I’m not making a unilateral decision to dismiss your perspective simply due to the points you are arguing.  However, they are inconsistent with the values of NPSC and so, as director, it is at my discretion to determine when to step in.” Understandably, she did not object to my being accused of racism, a calumny that in our times is akin to a Soviet citizen’s being publicly denounced as a Zionist lackey of capitalism.

The last time my perspective has been officially inconsistent with any values was back in the USSR I fled from. People accused of that thoughtcrime and attendant invented sins (they had to be invented, just like my racism) were blacklisted at various levels. It may be a small consolation that a recent editorial in one of the top scientific journals, Nature, nightmarishly declares the entire “enterprise of science” racist—even though I am not sure that white(black)washes my individual crime. Just as back in the USSR, I am happy about my inconsistency with those "values," even though that has forced me to leave—this time, the NPSC. I only wonder what kind of blacklisting I should expect.