Places of origin and original surnames of prominent Zionists
Many people watching the news coming out of the Near East would presume that Hebrew has been the language spoken by Jewish people throughout history.
But for nearly 2,000 years, Hebrew was as dead as Latin – and much like Latin, was spoken fluently by only a tiny percentage of educated people, and then used mostly in a religious context.
People of the Jewish faith were spread over much of the world, and usually spoke the language of their country of birth – just as Catholics could be found speaking Spanish, Gaelic, Italian, French, German, and dozens of other languages.
Other than specialist scholars, only Catholic priests tended to have a good grasp of Latin, and only rabbis tended to have a good grasp of Hebrew.
Over many centuries, the Sephardic Jews of Iberia spoke languages including Arabic, Old Spanish, Old Catalan, Galician-Portuguese, and Ladino – the latter also known as Judaeo-Spanish.
The most well-known language spoken by many Jews past and present is “Yiddish”, a name which is more or less a dialectical variation on the German word for “Jewish” (“Jüdisch”, in which the German “J” is pronounced like an English “Y”).
Yiddish is essentially German, with a smattering of words from Slavic and Romance languages, along with a sprinkling of Hebrew, Aramaic, and other loan words from the many countries through which the Ashkenazi Jews had passed over the centuries.
The actual Hebrew language spoken by Israeli politicians in contemporary news bulletins is a language brought back from the dead – mostly by 19th and 20th century Zionist settler-colonisers of Palestine.
And all of the Israeli leaders and politicians of the 20th century with names like Netanyahu, Ben-Gurion, Shamir, etc. represent a Zionist ideological desire to carry names which harken back to an ancient time (2,000 years ago) when land and language were still together under the Kingdoms of Israel and Judea.
Apologists for Zionism and Israel’s illegal settlements claim ceaselessly that “Jews are indigenous to Israel, we cannot be colonisers in our own land”.
This is an absurd and illogical argument.
Something equivalent would involve millions of Irish-Americans today claiming a birthright to colonise and settle the entire island of Ireland – Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland – while basing their claim on the territory held by High King Brian Boru in 1014 CE.
Political and demographic changes have occurred in the 1,000 years since Brian Boru‘s armies won the Battle of Clontarf. The original Irish remain, but the island has also endured invasions of Normans, Elizabethans, Scottish, English, and Welsh settler-colonisers, and absorbed many other immigrant peoples including Flemish, Palatine Germans, French Huguenots, members of the Quaker community, and of course Jewish and Romani people.
The Irish have witnessed and taken part in sundry rebellions, uprisings, and wars in the three hundred years since some of their ancestors emigrated to places like France and America.
Imagine the UK becoming embroiled in a war somewhere, and they take their eye off the ball in Northern Ireland. Imagine a couple of million Catholic Irish-Americans from Chicago and Boston rocking-up in County Antrim tomorrow, saying “This belonged to the O’Neill family 500 years ago. All non-Catholics and non-Gaels out.”
Ridiculous, right? People from thousands of miles away, steeped in USA culture for decades and even centuries, now ordering people who’ve lived in a place for 400 years to get the hell out based on a territorial claim made by a king centuries ago…
Imagine these Irish-Americans from Chicago and Boston then clearing entire towns and villages all over Ulster through ceaseless campaigns of violence and terrorism? Violence and terrorism directed not only at the Irish Protestant community, but at ANY group daring to oppose their “return to the homeland”?
Imagine the entire American military machine (along with billions upon billions in American and Irish-American funding), being put at their disposal as they bulldoze Belfast and rip up crop fields.
Imagine them giving themselves Gaelic names…
Behold the son of Eire, Frank Gillespie of Chicago. Oops. I mean Proinsias Mac Giolla Easpaig.
“Netanyahu” my arse.
I’ll leave you, dear readers, with the text of an open letter sent to The New York Times by Albert Einstein, Hannah Arendt, and other prominent, decent, and admirable Jewish people in 1948, the year in which Israel unilaterally declared its independent statehood. Just three years after the horrors of Auschwitz and Bergen-Belsen, these people had the moral courage to speak out when they saw wickedness and injustice being perpetrated by their own people.
*****
TO THE EDITORS OF NEW YORK TIMES:
Among the most disturbing political phenomena of our times is the emergence in the newly created state of Israel of the “Freedom Party” (Tnuat Haherut), a political party closely akin in its organization, methods, political philosophy and social appeal to the Nazi and Fascist parties. It was formed out of the membership and following of the former Irgun Zvai Leumi, a terrorist, right-wing, chauvinist organization in Palestine.
The current visit of Menachem Begin, leader of this party, to the United States is obviously calculated to give the impression of American support for his party in the coming Israeli elections, and to cement political ties with conservative Zionist elements in the United States. Several Americans of national repute have lent their names to welcome his visit. It is inconceivable that those who oppose fascism throughout the world, if correctly informed as to Mr. Begin’s political record and perspectives, could add their names and support to the movement he represents.
Before irreparable damage is done by way of financial contributions, public manifestations in Begin’s behalf, and the creation in Palestine of the impression that a large segment of America supports Fascist elements in Israel, the American public must be informed as to the record and objectives of Mr. Begin and his movement.
The public avowals of Begin’s party are no guide whatever to its actual character. Today they speak of freedom, democracy and anti-imperialism, whereas until recently they openly preached the doctrine of the Fascist state. It is in its actions that the terrorist party betrays its real character; from its past actions we can judge what it may be expected to do in the future.
Attack on Arab Village
A shocking example was their behavior in the Arab village of Deir Yassin. This village, off the main roads and surrounded by Jewish lands, had taken no part in the war, and had even fought off Arab bands who wanted to use the village as their base. On April 9 (THE NEW YORK TIMES), terrorist bands attacked this peaceful village, which was not a military objective in the fighting, killed most of its inhabitants (240 men, women, and children) and kept a few of them alive to parade as captives through the streets of Jerusalem. Most of the Jewish community was horrified at the deed, and the Jewish Agency sent a telegram of apology to King Abdullah of Trans-Jordan. But the terrorists, far from being ashamed of their act, were proud of this massacre, publicized it widely, and invited all the foreign correspondents present in the country to view the heaped corpses and the general havoc at Deir Yassin.
The Deir Yassin incident exemplifies the character and actions of the Freedom Party.
Within the Jewish community they have preached an admixture of ultranationalism, religious mysticism, and racial superiority. Like other Fascist parties they have been used to break strikes, and have themselves pressed for the destruction of free trade unions. In their stead they have proposed corporate unions on the Italian Fascist model.
During the last years of sporadic anti-British violence, the IZL and Stern groups inaugurated a reign of terror in the Palestine Jewish community. Teachers were beaten up for speaking against them, adults were shot for not letting their children join them. By gangster methods, beatings, window-smashing, and wide-spread robberies, the terrorists intimidated the population and exacted a heavy tribute.
The people of the Freedom Party have had no part in the constructive achievements in Palestine. They have reclaimed no land, built no settlements, and only detracted from the Jewish defense activity. Their much-publicized immigration endeavors were minute, and devoted mainly to bringing in Fascist compatriots.
Discrepancies Seen
The discrepancies between the bold claims now being made by Begin and his party, and their record of past performance in Palestine bear the imprint of no ordinary political party. This is the unmistakable stamp of a Fascist party for whom terrorism (against Jews, Arabs, and British alike), and misrepresentation are means, and a “Leader State” is the goal.
In the light of the foregoing considerations, it is imperative that the truth about Mr. Begin and his movement be made known in this country. It is all the more tragic that the top leadership of American Zionism has refused to campaign against Begin’s efforts, or even to expose to its own constituents the dangers to Israel from support to Begin.
The undersigned therefore take this means of publicly presenting a few salient facts concerning Begin and his party; and of urging all concerned not to support this latest manifestation of fascism.
ISIDORE ABRAMOWITZ,
HANNAH ARENDT,
ABRAHAM BRICK,
RABBI JESSURUN CARDOZO,
ALBERT EINSTEIN,
HERMAN EISEN, M.D.,
HAYIM FINEMAN, M. GALLEN, M.D.,
H.H. HARRIS,
ZELIG S. HARRIS,
SIDNEY HOOK,
FRED KARUSH,
BRURIA KAUFMAN,
IRMA L. LINDHEIM,
NACHMAN MAISEL,
SEYMOUR MELMAN,
MYER D. MENDELSON, M.D.,
HARRY M. OSLINSKY,
SAMUEL PITLICK,
FRITZ ROHRLICH,
LOUIS P. ROCKER,
RUTH SAGIS,
ITZHAK SANKOWSKY,
I.J. SHOENBERG,
SAMUEL SHUMAN,
M. SINGER,
IRMA WOLFE,
STEFAN WOLFE.
New York, Dec. 2, 1948
I’ve Got a Name
/0 Comments/in Blog /by Brian HalpinAnglo-American surnames: unreliable historical narrators
Like the pine trees linin’ the windin’ road
I’ve got a name, I’ve got a name
Like the singin’ bird and the croakin’ toad
I’ve got a name, I’ve got a name
And I carry it with me like my daddy did
But I’m living the dream that he kept hid…
Jim Croce [1973]
*****
Who Changed or Modified Their Names in Colonial Times in North America?
Most people see their surname as almost immutable evidence of their ancestry or ethnic heritage, yet the Americas and Caribbean were colonized in part by non-Anglo people who often changed their names to “fit-in”.
Other non-Anglo groups who were not colonizers – indigenous peoples and the enslaved – often assumed an English name or had one foisted upon them. This might occur upon enslavement, emancipation, conversion to Christianity, or as a simple attempt to assimilate into the dominant culture.
There were many other groups of people with reason to change their names:
Adoptees
Bandits, Criminals, Outlaws, and Pirates
Illegitimate or “base-born” children
Orphans
People hiding from family or creditors
Spies
Traders
*****
Listed below are some non-Anglo ethnic groups who rarely kept their original names. Even when they attempted to do so, their names were almost always modified or corrupted by English-speaking record takers:
Free dual- or multiple-identity ethnic groups (Métis, “half-breeds”, Melungeons, et al)
Free indigenous North American peoples (Lenape, Iroquois, Shawnee, Catawba, Tuscarora, Cherokee, Choctaw, Creek, Seminole, Yuchi, Pamunkey, and hundreds of other tribes, bands, and nations)
Free indigenous South American and Caribbean peoples (Arawak, Taino, and any number of other tribes, bands, and nations)
Enslaved and formerly enslaved peoples of African, Malagasy, indigenous, and mixed ancestry.
South Asians (free and unfree, including Lascars and Portuguese Goans)
Gaelic speaking people (Scots, Manx, Irish)
Welsh speaking people (including speakers of Breton from Brittany in NW France)
Jewish people (Sephardim, Ashkenazim, and other Jewish groups including Black Jewish of South America, West Africa, and Caribbean)
Romani people (especially Eastern European Slavs, French Manouche, Iberian Calé/Gitanos/Ciganos, Welsh Kale, and German Sinti)
Also:
Armenians
Azore Islanders
Basques (from Basque Country now in both France and Spain)
Czechs (including Bohemian Jews at Roanoke Colony in 1585!)
Danes, Norwegians, and Swedes
Dutch (including those from New Amsterdam, Dutch Suriname, Dutch East and West Indies and Flemish speakers)
Finns
French speakers (including those from Switzerland, Belgian Walloons, and French Caribbean)
German speakers (including those from Austria, Switzerland, Northern Italy, and the various regions of Germany itself)
Greeks
Hungarians
Italians (including Waldensians)
Minorcans, Majorcans
North Africans (Arabs, Berber/Amazigh, et al)
Poles
Portuguese (including Creoles from various Portuguese colonies)
Sami (formerly known as Laplanders)
Spanish
Turks
All of the above non-Anglo peoples have been documented as being present in pre-Revolutionary British Colonial America – and there were no doubt other ethnic groups less well-documented.
*****
Many people assume that formerly enslaved people of color invariably took the surnames of their former enslavers, but the story is far more complex.
Many of the formerly enslaved (and particularly those not of exclusively African heritage) had remembered histories and names from the period before enslavement.
While the enslaved of primarily African heritage were often wrenched from a homeland thousands of miles distant, with little hope of maintaining any meaningful cultural continuity in the Americas (due to the intentional break-up of their ethnic communities), there were many, many others held in bondage who experienced slavery in close proximity to the still nominally free members of their local cultural community.
For example, an enslaved multi-ethnic person in Alabama or Mississippi with known free Choctaw ancestors might have chosen to use an English or Spanish family surname first assumed during the 1600s and 1700s when the Choctaw first traded with Europeans. These earliest “borrowed” surnames often have more to do with respect for a local priest/clergyman, or intermarriage with a trader, than anything to do with a slaveholder.
This makes the respect and study of such surnames important as a potential source of clues regarding historical ethnic mixing and migration in colonial times.
White Intelligence, LLC.
/0 Comments/in Blog /by Brian HalpinVance and notes to his book “Hillbilly Elegy”
It’s only after various pieces of a jigsaw puzzle are in place that we can begin to see some semblance of a picture.
When I first wrote about J. D. Vance a few years ago, it was out of simple anger.
Anger that a man who had managed to become wealthy would take the time to write an ideological piece disguised as a “memoir”, the now infamous “Hillbilly Elegy”.
Anger that a man clearly the descendant of mixed-ethnic Appalachian Americans would portray himself as a “Scots-Irish Hillbilly”.[1]
Anger that this man used his ignorance of his own ethnic roots to construct a dumb “Scots-Irish Culture Theory” [2] to explain Southern Appalachian social problems and poverty.
Anger that a film director of Ron Howard‘s standing would buy the entire story wholesale, amplifying Vance’s fake backstory [3] to a wider and credulous American audience.
But most of my anger was reserved for the way Vance essentially blamed social dysfunction, substance abuse, and what HE perceives as a lack of ambition, on the people themselves.[2]
Not just on individual people and their individual choices, mind you. He blamed widespread social malaise on something INNATE to these people. Something in their culture.[2] Something in their GENES.
If this had been the extent of his nastiness and ignorance, it could have been dealt with in short order.
First, J. D. Vance is not “Scots-Irish”. Not by descent, and not by culture.[1]
He is like a kid – a very human kid – who wins a medal in the long jump in high school, and then proceeds to explain that his grandparents were in fact kangaroos.
And the only reason no one else in his family ever won a long jump medal, was because they all kept insisting on hopping across busy roads, and getting run over.
They’re very proud kangaroos, you see, and won’t be told where they can or can’t hop…
*****
Once our friend J. D. decided to run for the Senate, I began to suspect there was something more sinister afoot.
When riches aren’t enough and someone begins to crave POWER, it is worth asking what they would like to achieve with a greater level of personal and political power.
I’ve written elsewhere about how, during his time at Yale Law School, Vance and his future wife Usha Chilukuri jointly organized a discussion group focusing on “social decline in white America”.[3]
I’ve also written elsewhere about how Vance’s political ambitions have been deeply-backed financially by ultra-Libertarian tech barons like Peter Thiel [4], who specialises in Big Data mining.
I’ve pointed-out how Vance’s wife contributed to the senate election campaign of Blake Masters in Arizona [5]. I explained how Masters is an open and avowed fan of the late white supremacist “philosopher” Sam Francis [6].
I wrote that Masters has also worked for and received millions of dollars in backing from the aforementioned Peter Thiel [7].
Once we had all of these “border pieces” of the jigsaw in place, we could begin to work toward the interior.
And the emerging picture looks a bit like an Hieronymus Bosch painting…
*****
Remember those guys at school who were always trying to join “Mensa”, the weird club for people with a need to feel intellectually elite?
The socially maladroit guys who openly believed that having a high IQ score made them superior to those around them?
The ones so deep inside the cult of “intelligence”, philosophical thought experiments, IQ scores, tech, science and science fiction that they begin to believe that they are above accountability to anyone outside their exclusive technocracy? People who seem to be skirting the outer edge of a way of thinking not entirely dissimilar to the social and moral “transcendence” of the child killers Leopold and Loeb in the 1920s USA?
The ones who adore statistics (any statistics) which can be manipulated to underpin their belief in their own oh-so-rare-and-special transcendant superiority?
The ones who eventually begin to find a reason for their financial success IN THEIR VERY GENETIC SUPERIORITY?
Vance is being propped-up by exactly those guys, who are now middle-aged, wealthy, and powerful. They have also donated millions to current GOP candidate Donald Trump [8].
The connections between groups like Mensa and the alt. right have been commented upon and documented elsewhere [9].
But Peter Thiel appears to have been in direct communication with members of extremist white supremacy group members back in 2016 [10].
People like Elon Musk and his former partner Grimes have been open and simultaneously disingenuous in their support of “White Pride” [11].
The admirers of high IQ scores among extreme Libertarians and the alt. right are also the ones most likely to subscribe to the thinking behind books like “The Bell Curve” [12], which presented a deeply flawed analysis of data suggesting that intelligence is highly heritable, and that IQ itself varies greatly across “racial” groups at birth (basically suggesting that poverty among certain people of color is an unsolvable problem, due to fundamental differences in intelligence levels).
A distant Vance cousin of our friend J. D. noted this week on her social media page that J. D. Vance actually felt brazen enough to offer a blurb to a book published this year called “Unhumans” [13], which is essentially a brownshirt fascist call to arms against “enemies” of the alt. right. The book has also been praised by such “luminaries” as Steve Bannon, Donald Trump, Jr., and Tucker Carlson [14].
A final piece of this jigsaw landed in my hand this week via a brief comment left by a follower of this very page. A reader pointed-out that the alt. right, white supremacist nature of Vance and his backers was sitting there, hiding in plain sight, in the list of notes on the final page of Vance’s grubby springboard to fame, his 2016 faux memoir “Hillbilly Elegy” [1].
Note No. 1 cites a 2012 article called “The Scots-Irish as Indigenous People”, written by none other than Bangladeshi-American animal genomics specialist Razib Khan [15].
Don’t bother looking for the article online, though, unless you’re prepared to dig deep. The article has been removed from the website of Discover Magazine, where it was first published. The article has also been removed from Mr. Khan’s own website [16]. I just happened to have an old PDF of it lying around the recesses of my trusty PC.
Why is it gone? Probably because it’s a pile of poorly informed, pseudo-scholarly claptrap.
Which should probably come as no surprise, as Razib Khan is quite the busy little bee in the field of “New Eugenics”. Not heard of “New Eugenics”?
You’re probably not a regular reader of far right blogs like Taki’s Magazine [17], VDARE, or the Unz Review [16].
You would need to follow such blogs to be up-to-date on the new racialist obsession with HBD [18] – “human bio-diversity”, which is essentially racism in search of a scientific underpinning.
This jigsaw isn’t finished, but we can see enough now to have an understanding of the man on Trump’s ticket. A mixed-ethnic Melungeon in denial, who wants to play with the “white” Übermenschen.
*****
[1] beforewewerewhite.com/2024/07/24/sometimes-i-forget-myself/
[2] harperacademic.com/book/9780062300553/hillbilly-elegy/
[3] imdb.com/title/tt6772802/
[4] forbes.com/sites/leokamin/2024/07/19/here-are-jd-vances-biggest-billionaire-donors/
[4] ft.com/content/408fb864-5831-4b1d-beef-fd1966b3beed
[5] washingtonian.com/2024/07/18/6-things-to-know-about-usha-vance-the-potential-next-second-lady/
[6] mediamatters.org/white-nationalism/blake-masters-endorsed-white-supremacist-writer-who-said-country-should-oppose
[7] politico.com/news/2022/07/22/peter-thiel-arizona-senate-campaign-00047536
[8] reuters.com/world/us/who-are-mega-rich-donors-backing-trump-2024-04-26/
[8] latimes.com/opinion/story/2024-07-26/elon-musk-and-peter-thiel-backed-trump-and-vance-to-what-ends
[9] newyorker.com/culture/culture-desk/jamie-loftus-the-comedian-who-infiltrated-mensa
[10] splcenter.org/hatewatch/2021/03/18/white-nationalist-who-met-peter-thiel-admired-terroristic-literature
[10] nytimes.com/2021/09/21/books/review/the-contrarian-peter-thiel-max-chafkin.html
[11] theverge.com/2023/11/16/23964160/elon-musk-antisemitic-x-post-ibm-ads
[11] consequence.net/2023/12/grimes-white-culture/
[12] intelltheory.com/intelli/the-bell-curve/
[12] archive.org/details/whatitmeanstobel00char
[13] skyhorsepublishing.com/9781648210860/unhumans/
[14] usatoday.com/story/news/politics/elections/2024/08/08/jd-vance-support-book-unhumans/74687296007/
[15] forward.com/opinion/346533/human-biodiversity-the-pseudoscientific-racism-of-the-alt-right/
[15] pinkerite.com/2022/01/the-appalling-race-pseudoscience-career.html
[15] undark.org/2017/02/28/race-science-razib-khan-racism/
[16] unz.com/gnxp/the-scots-irish-as-indigenous-people/
[17] takimag.com/
[18] brookings.edu/wp-content/uploads/2017/08/9780815732884_ch1.pdf
The Invention of New Hebrews
/0 Comments/in Blog /by Brian HalpinPlaces of origin and original surnames of prominent Zionists
Many people watching the news coming out of the Near East would presume that Hebrew has been the language spoken by Jewish people throughout history.
But for nearly 2,000 years, Hebrew was as dead as Latin – and much like Latin, was spoken fluently by only a tiny percentage of educated people, and then used mostly in a religious context.
People of the Jewish faith were spread over much of the world, and usually spoke the language of their country of birth – just as Catholics could be found speaking Spanish, Gaelic, Italian, French, German, and dozens of other languages.
Other than specialist scholars, only Catholic priests tended to have a good grasp of Latin, and only rabbis tended to have a good grasp of Hebrew.
Over many centuries, the Sephardic Jews of Iberia spoke languages including Arabic, Old Spanish, Old Catalan, Galician-Portuguese, and Ladino – the latter also known as Judaeo-Spanish.
The most well-known language spoken by many Jews past and present is “Yiddish”, a name which is more or less a dialectical variation on the German word for “Jewish” (“Jüdisch”, in which the German “J” is pronounced like an English “Y”).
Yiddish is essentially German, with a smattering of words from Slavic and Romance languages, along with a sprinkling of Hebrew, Aramaic, and other loan words from the many countries through which the Ashkenazi Jews had passed over the centuries.
The actual Hebrew language spoken by Israeli politicians in contemporary news bulletins is a language brought back from the dead – mostly by 19th and 20th century Zionist settler-colonisers of Palestine.
And all of the Israeli leaders and politicians of the 20th century with names like Netanyahu, Ben-Gurion, Shamir, etc. represent a Zionist ideological desire to carry names which harken back to an ancient time (2,000 years ago) when land and language were still together under the Kingdoms of Israel and Judea.
Apologists for Zionism and Israel’s illegal settlements claim ceaselessly that “Jews are indigenous to Israel, we cannot be colonisers in our own land”.
This is an absurd and illogical argument.
Something equivalent would involve millions of Irish-Americans today claiming a birthright to colonise and settle the entire island of Ireland – Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland – while basing their claim on the territory held by High King Brian Boru in 1014 CE.
Political and demographic changes have occurred in the 1,000 years since Brian Boru‘s armies won the Battle of Clontarf. The original Irish remain, but the island has also endured invasions of Normans, Elizabethans, Scottish, English, and Welsh settler-colonisers, and absorbed many other immigrant peoples including Flemish, Palatine Germans, French Huguenots, members of the Quaker community, and of course Jewish and Romani people.
The Irish have witnessed and taken part in sundry rebellions, uprisings, and wars in the three hundred years since some of their ancestors emigrated to places like France and America.
Imagine the UK becoming embroiled in a war somewhere, and they take their eye off the ball in Northern Ireland. Imagine a couple of million Catholic Irish-Americans from Chicago and Boston rocking-up in County Antrim tomorrow, saying “This belonged to the O’Neill family 500 years ago. All non-Catholics and non-Gaels out.”
Ridiculous, right? People from thousands of miles away, steeped in USA culture for decades and even centuries, now ordering people who’ve lived in a place for 400 years to get the hell out based on a territorial claim made by a king centuries ago…
Imagine these Irish-Americans from Chicago and Boston then clearing entire towns and villages all over Ulster through ceaseless campaigns of violence and terrorism? Violence and terrorism directed not only at the Irish Protestant community, but at ANY group daring to oppose their “return to the homeland”?
Imagine the entire American military machine (along with billions upon billions in American and Irish-American funding), being put at their disposal as they bulldoze Belfast and rip up crop fields.
Imagine them giving themselves Gaelic names…
Behold the son of Eire, Frank Gillespie of Chicago. Oops. I mean Proinsias Mac Giolla Easpaig.
“Netanyahu” my arse.
I’ll leave you, dear readers, with the text of an open letter sent to The New York Times by Albert Einstein, Hannah Arendt, and other prominent, decent, and admirable Jewish people in 1948, the year in which Israel unilaterally declared its independent statehood. Just three years after the horrors of Auschwitz and Bergen-Belsen, these people had the moral courage to speak out when they saw wickedness and injustice being perpetrated by their own people.
*****
TO THE EDITORS OF NEW YORK TIMES:
Among the most disturbing political phenomena of our times is the emergence in the newly created state of Israel of the “Freedom Party” (Tnuat Haherut), a political party closely akin in its organization, methods, political philosophy and social appeal to the Nazi and Fascist parties. It was formed out of the membership and following of the former Irgun Zvai Leumi, a terrorist, right-wing, chauvinist organization in Palestine.
The current visit of Menachem Begin, leader of this party, to the United States is obviously calculated to give the impression of American support for his party in the coming Israeli elections, and to cement political ties with conservative Zionist elements in the United States. Several Americans of national repute have lent their names to welcome his visit. It is inconceivable that those who oppose fascism throughout the world, if correctly informed as to Mr. Begin’s political record and perspectives, could add their names and support to the movement he represents.
Before irreparable damage is done by way of financial contributions, public manifestations in Begin’s behalf, and the creation in Palestine of the impression that a large segment of America supports Fascist elements in Israel, the American public must be informed as to the record and objectives of Mr. Begin and his movement.
The public avowals of Begin’s party are no guide whatever to its actual character. Today they speak of freedom, democracy and anti-imperialism, whereas until recently they openly preached the doctrine of the Fascist state. It is in its actions that the terrorist party betrays its real character; from its past actions we can judge what it may be expected to do in the future.
Attack on Arab Village
A shocking example was their behavior in the Arab village of Deir Yassin. This village, off the main roads and surrounded by Jewish lands, had taken no part in the war, and had even fought off Arab bands who wanted to use the village as their base. On April 9 (THE NEW YORK TIMES), terrorist bands attacked this peaceful village, which was not a military objective in the fighting, killed most of its inhabitants (240 men, women, and children) and kept a few of them alive to parade as captives through the streets of Jerusalem. Most of the Jewish community was horrified at the deed, and the Jewish Agency sent a telegram of apology to King Abdullah of Trans-Jordan. But the terrorists, far from being ashamed of their act, were proud of this massacre, publicized it widely, and invited all the foreign correspondents present in the country to view the heaped corpses and the general havoc at Deir Yassin.
The Deir Yassin incident exemplifies the character and actions of the Freedom Party.
Within the Jewish community they have preached an admixture of ultranationalism, religious mysticism, and racial superiority. Like other Fascist parties they have been used to break strikes, and have themselves pressed for the destruction of free trade unions. In their stead they have proposed corporate unions on the Italian Fascist model.
During the last years of sporadic anti-British violence, the IZL and Stern groups inaugurated a reign of terror in the Palestine Jewish community. Teachers were beaten up for speaking against them, adults were shot for not letting their children join them. By gangster methods, beatings, window-smashing, and wide-spread robberies, the terrorists intimidated the population and exacted a heavy tribute.
The people of the Freedom Party have had no part in the constructive achievements in Palestine. They have reclaimed no land, built no settlements, and only detracted from the Jewish defense activity. Their much-publicized immigration endeavors were minute, and devoted mainly to bringing in Fascist compatriots.
Discrepancies Seen
The discrepancies between the bold claims now being made by Begin and his party, and their record of past performance in Palestine bear the imprint of no ordinary political party. This is the unmistakable stamp of a Fascist party for whom terrorism (against Jews, Arabs, and British alike), and misrepresentation are means, and a “Leader State” is the goal.
In the light of the foregoing considerations, it is imperative that the truth about Mr. Begin and his movement be made known in this country. It is all the more tragic that the top leadership of American Zionism has refused to campaign against Begin’s efforts, or even to expose to its own constituents the dangers to Israel from support to Begin.
The undersigned therefore take this means of publicly presenting a few salient facts concerning Begin and his party; and of urging all concerned not to support this latest manifestation of fascism.
ISIDORE ABRAMOWITZ,
HANNAH ARENDT,
ABRAHAM BRICK,
RABBI JESSURUN CARDOZO,
ALBERT EINSTEIN,
HERMAN EISEN, M.D.,
HAYIM FINEMAN, M. GALLEN, M.D.,
H.H. HARRIS,
ZELIG S. HARRIS,
SIDNEY HOOK,
FRED KARUSH,
BRURIA KAUFMAN,
IRMA L. LINDHEIM,
NACHMAN MAISEL,
SEYMOUR MELMAN,
MYER D. MENDELSON, M.D.,
HARRY M. OSLINSKY,
SAMUEL PITLICK,
FRITZ ROHRLICH,
LOUIS P. ROCKER,
RUTH SAGIS,
ITZHAK SANKOWSKY,
I.J. SHOENBERG,
SAMUEL SHUMAN,
M. SINGER,
IRMA WOLFE,
STEFAN WOLFE.
New York, Dec. 2, 1948
Protection from Harm
/0 Comments/in Blog /by Brian Halpin“Protecting from harm” in the Middle East, while hospitals close in Wheeling, WV.
“Harm” = mental or physical injury
They say the taxes spent on the US military are essential for “protecting freedoms” and keeping Americans safe from harm.
The leading cause of “harm” in the USA is poverty, not the actions of foreign powers.
The lowest rates of premature death in the USA are in wealthy northeastern states like Massachusetts and Connecticut.
The highest rates of premature death in the USA are in poor Appalachian and southern states like West Virginia and Mississippi.
*****
If government believes it has a role to play in keeping Americans safe from harm, then taxes should be spent on education, the alleviation of poverty, a healthy, clean environment, and the provision of universal health care.
The powers-that-be will insist that a vast taxpayer-funded military for “protecting” Americans is essential, while calling taxpayer-funded higher education and health care “radical socialism”.
Yet a taxpayer-funded military is “socialism for the rich”, because the corporatocracy uses this military to prop-up corrupt regimes in the Middle East and elsewhere – TO THE BENEFIT OF WEALTHY ELITES.
Trillions of taxpayer dollars are diverted into government contracts for the armaments industry.
Between 2001-2021, Pentagon spending was over 14 TRILLION dollars – one-third to one-half of which went to defense contractors.
But a children’s hospital in Mississippi, or an addiction treatment center in West Virginia?
You gotta be joking.
How is that going to fill-up someone’s offshore bank account?
Second Amendment Redux
/0 Comments/in Blog /by Brian HalpinSlave patrol – a well regulated militia
I have written elsewhere about the Second Amendment of the US Constitution having its roots in two or three major aspects of USA history.
On 15 Dec 1791, the second (of an initial ten amendments) was appended to the US Constitution as part of the Bill of Rights.
“A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.”
Nowhere, in not one single instance before the 21st century (2008), was this amendment taken by any court as a federal guarantee of an individual’s right to keep and bear arms.
A federation of “states” such as the USA – without a monarch at its head – had never been formed in quite this way.
The US Bill of Rights was based loosely on an English Act of Parliament passed in 1689. A parliament had been convened largely in opposition to the deposed monarch (and convert to Catholicism) James II, with a majority of the English parliament having invited the Protestant William of Orange and his queen Mary (an Anglican daughter of James II) to become replacement sovereigns of England.
The 1689 Bill of Rights essentially laid-out the conditions for this invitation, outlining the rights which had been infringed by James II. It was basically saying to William III “You can be King of England instead of James, but only if you honour these rights”.
This English Bill of Rights included a provision that “Protestants may have arms for their defence suitable to their conditions and as allowed by law…”
It is without doubt that this right was a product of the recent English Civil War, and the Wars of Religion in Europe, in which Protestants had suffered persecution at the hands of the Catholic Church-supporting aristocracy in many lands.
As students of history, we must realise that the writers of this Constitution were only two or three generations removed from these events in England.
The framers of the US Constitution were seeking to balance the power of the federal executive with the rights of states as a way to prevent the Presidency and Congress from morphing back into an over-reaching monarchy and elitist House of Lords in all but name.
Their worries were largely conjectural – the USA was in deep, deep debt post-Revolution and in no position to create a standing army large enough to be a danger to state governance anyway.
Perhaps even more important, by sub-contracting the formation of militias to individual states, the US government was relieved of a huge cost burden.
Finally, slave state economies simply could not function or exist without well-armed militias (aka slave patrols). If the US government had attempted to remove slave states’ “…right of the people to keep and bear Arms…” as part of a “…well regulated Militia…”, there would have been uproar, and it is almost certain that the Bill of Rights and US Constitution would not have been ratified.
Anyone who doubts the centrality of slavery to American gun culture should read carefully the contemporary correspondence of men like Patrick Henry, he of the “Give me liberty or give me death” quote so beloved of Junior High School history teachers. “Liberty” was clearly not a concept meant to extend to all humans. After all, our hero Patrick held dozens of slaves in bondage his entire life. Mr. Henry was explicit in his worry that if an individual state’s right to maintain a standing militia were superceded by a centralised federal army, this federal army (full of potential abolitionists) might fail to arm or deploy itself sufficiently or act with the necessary severity needed to maintain the white supremacist status quo.
Once the USA realised and accepted that it was an empire in all but name, both states and federal government soon got over their queasiness about maintaining a national standing army. St. Clair’s Defeat at the hands of a Shawnee/Miami/Lenape Confederation in 1791, and the US failure in its attempts to invade and annex Canada during the War of 1812, made the transition from irregular militias to a professional army an urgent imperative.
So let’s read this sacred amendment one more time…
“A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.”
The words “well regulated militia” and “state” are not there by accident.
If it had been written with anything contemporaneously akin to AR-15s and teenage boys weaned on Call of Duty in mind, it would have stated simply that:
“The right of an individual to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.”
A degree in history should be mandatory as part of all higher law degrees.
Many members of the US Supreme Court are supremely lacking in both a sense of ethics, and a sense of historical context in their decision-making.
(Author’s note: I am not anti-gun ownership, although I find the widespread availability and fetishisation of military style firearms disturbing and “weird”. I have owned a fine old handmade double-barrelled 12 gauge shotgun most of my life, and cannot imagine what use I could make of an AR-15. If the apocalypse comes, I’ll be more worried about seed potatoes than anything else.)
Picking a Version
/0 Comments/in Blog /by Brian HalpinBattery E, 1st Artillery who took part in massacre at Wounded Knee
Attempting to understand and decipher history – real history – is hard.
We read, we question, we read some more, we check our sources for ideological bias, we read someone else’s revision of canonical sources, we sniff around for hidden motivations and contingencies…
And when we think we’ve got to the deepest level of interpretation, there is always another angle to consider.
Consider the massacre at Wounded Knee in South Dakota in 1890.
For those unfamiliar with this piece of American history, the bare bones of what happened is this:
The US government had signed treaties with the Lakota, primarily to protect colonisers passing through Lakota territory on the Oregon Trail to the American Northwest. The government of the US of America undertook to enforce a restriction on US citizens settling on Lakota territory.
The government of the US of America did not honor its undertakings as per treaty.
The discovery of gold in the Dakotas led to a mass influx of ruffians, squatters, and miners.
The introduction of forts and railroads on and over treaty-protected Lakota territory led to further conflict.
As part of its policy of ethnic-cleansing, the US encouraged and facilitated the shooting to extinction of the Great Plains bison, which were the main source of sustenance for Indigenous peoples of the Plains.
As part of its policy of ethnic-cleansing, the US allowed the mass settlement of Scandinavian immigrants in the Dakotas.
Under-employed veterans from the Civil War and newly enlisted men were sent west to put down Lakota resistance.
These early military expeditions against the Lakota and their allies were failures.
But “Custer’s Last Stand” is probably the worst name for any historical event in US history. It really should be called “The Lakota’s Last Stand”, for their battlefield victory at Little Big Horn would see the US throw its full weight behind neutralising the Lakota – the last self-governing group of Indigenous people in the lands now called the USA.
The Wounded Knee Massacre came at the tail end of various “mopping-up” operations by the US military, as remnant bands of Lakota were being rounded-up and forced onto small reservations.
Put simply, while force-marching a band of Lakota to a reservation, a roughneck bunch of green army recruits attempted to collect all firearms from the people being force-marched.
What happened next – the death of scores of Lakota people including women and children – is a perfect example of history which has been told from multiple angles…
1) Murica hoo-hah! version
Decent army boys (thank you for your service) just doing their job, and those darn “Injuns” went crazy, and we had to shoot the shit out of them in self defence.
2) Vietnam era hippy version
Gentle nature-worshipping people meaning no harm are brutally slain by colonialist oppressors.
3) Historian No. 1 version
Americans already inured to violence by the Civil War, along with recent immigrant recruits eager to “prove their worth”, are only too happy to fight wars against people they see as “savages”.
4) Historian No. 2 version
This mass shooting was a tragic escalation, in which army recruits already on edge due to their misunderstanding of the meaning of the “Ghost Dance” religious movement, saw danger in every aspect of Lakota behavior.
*****
There is something wrong with every one of these versions.
And only by digging, digging, digging can we hope to get a proper picture of such terrible events.
American “hoo-hah!” apologists for Manifest Destiny will point out that the Lakota were themselves a warlike people. After all, the original homeland of the Lakota was around the Great Lakes, and they were only in Dakota Territory recently, having taken those hunting grounds from the Crow people through warfare.
The hippy version also ignores the warlike nature of the Lakota.
The “proper” historical versions have their own specific angles of interpretation.
Every version seeks to blame, excuse, demonise, explain or justify.
No humans are saints. None are innocent “Children of God”.
But whoever we see as our enemy, there is a crystal moment of clarity when we can choose to do wrong, or try to do right.
There is no historical interpretation which will ever make it right, that men turned machine guns on women and children crouching for cover, terrified, in a deep ravine in mid-winter South Dakota.
And to those who insist that Wounded Knee was a tragic mistake?
On the shared image, you’ll find a piece of doggerel poetry.
People ashamed of a “tragic mistake” do not proudly pose for photos, and write such things.
Pick your version(s).
Revenge of the Weird* Kids
/0 Comments/in Blog /by Brian HalpinRevenge of the nerds?
Why is J. D. Vance misrepresenting his ethnic background?
1) Because he’s a man with limited knowledge of his own family?
or is it because:
2) If he admitted his ancestors were once “not quite white” Appalachians, he would have to confront the real historical reasons for transgenerational poverty there?
or maybe:
3) By claiming to be “Scots-Irish”, he gets to claim a White Christian Nationalist identity which goes down well with a certain bloc of voters?
4) Or is Vance and his entire bootstrapping “Hillbilly” persona a construction crafted by shadowy multi-billionaire Libertarian puppet-masters who have been
grooming him for power?
The answer is probably “all of the above”.
*****
Peter Thiel, one of the co-founders of PayPal, has had a profound influence on Vance’s fast track political career, seeding him millions of dollars to launch “Narya”, before funding a successful campaign to win his US Senate seat in 2022. No one in American history has occupied the office of vice president with less political experience.
Vance is also being cheered-on by Elon Musk of X and Tesla, and Jacob Helberg of “Palantir”. “Palantir” is a Big Data mining and analytics company founded by the above-mentioned Thiel which services Big Business and governments – a powerful tool for politicians hoping to micro-target voters, identify points of dissent, and keep tabs on “enemies”.
These people are Libertarian in outlook, which essentially means they support complete deregulation of Big Tech and other mega businesses.
It is fascinating and simultaneously terrifying just how many of these Silicon Valley techno-feudalists have framed their outlook within fantasy worlds like Tolkien‘s “Lord of the Rings”, or on role-playing games like “Dungeons and Dragons”.
Over the past 50 years, any teenager prone to pondering “Big Ideas” eventually landed on Libertarianism as their pet political ideology for a while. Most teenagers with even an iota of humility or social empathy eventually outgrow Ayn Rand and dumb Libertarian ideas, realising that it is nothing more than a fluffed-up, right wing version of anarchism – minus any social conscience.
Men like Peter Thiel and Elon Musk are essentially teenage boys who became rich enough to live out their adolescent fantasies well beyond puberty:
“My own sovereign territory on Mars!”
“Being cryogenically preserved in the name of immortality!”
“Controlling the fates of nations!”
“I bet Susan back in high school wishes she had gone to the prom with me instead of Josh!”
By funding and grooming a man like Vance – an underclass kid desperate to outrun his class origins – these creepily weird teenage-brained boy-men are within a whisker of being inside The Oval Office.
Think of Putin and his inner circle of oligarchs and you begin to see where the US under Trump, Vance, and the Tech-Bros would be heading.
As Vance himself stated while sucking-up to Trump earlier this year, a new administration would like to “fire every single mid-level bureaucrat, every civil servant in the administrative state, and replace them with our people”.
He would be happy to deny election results if they don’t turn out well for the GOP this November. He is also on record as saying he would not have certified the results of the 2020 election – at least not until various swing states had been allowed to submit “alternative” slates of presidential electors.
He’s also willing to fall into line with Trump’s plan to cut taxes for the already hyper-rich.
He has advised Trump to defy the Supreme Court if it rules him as acting unlawfully in firing executive branch officials.
He’s ready to take away from women the right to a safe and legal abortion – even in cases of rape and incest. He has even toyed with the idea of blocking interstate movement of women suspected of seeking abortions in places where such care is still legal. Just begin to imagine the levels of surveillance and invasive scrutiny required to enforce such a regime…
As for international politics, try this from a 2022 interview with populist rabble-rouser Steve Bannon:
“I got to be honest with you, I don’t really care what happens to Ukraine one way or another”.
Even if we set aside the lack of humanity in allowing a democratic nation to fall to an autocrat, Vance shows a profound ignorance of the danger of allowing Putin to gain control of a country which acts as a bread basket to much of the world. Or maybe Vance’s “handlers” are happy to divide the world into zones controlled by autocratic regimes (as aspiring autocrats themselves)?
*****
Social media is by nature a place for short-form articles, so we’ll just leave these names for your later investigation:
Ajay Royan, Marc Andreessen, Steve Case, Eric Schmidt, Jeff Bezos, Ray Dalio, Vivek Ramaswamy, Colin Greenspon, Scott Dorsey, Ben Horowitz.
All of these big money players (along with Donald Trump, Jr., Tucker Carlson, and of course the aforementioned Peter Thiel) have had a role of some kind or another in the rise of James Donald Vance [Bowman].
The only massive tech businesses which Vance has expressed a negative opinion of are those he accuses of “censoring” conservative voices.
“We are in a late republican period…If we’re going to push back against it, we’re going to have to get pretty wild, and pretty far out there, and go in directions that a lot of conservatives right now are uncomfortable with.”
That’s right, fake hillbilly. Even a lot of conservatives are still uncomfortable with the idea of the USA as a dictatorship.
If you’re lucky, you’ll be dropped like a hot potato by Trump. He’s starting to think maybe you’re not smart enough for the game he’s playing.
Oh well. Maybe you could get back to your real roots, J. D.
Before your soul shrivels-up and blows away.
*bad weird, not good weird
Hillbilly Face
/0 Comments/in Blog /by Brian HalpinImage: Members of the mixed-ethnic Scott Family String Band (left and bottom); Minnie Pearl (top right)
It is no coincidence that “Hillbilly Face” co-existed for decades alongside Blackface. To explain why, we need to step back in time…
America’s earliest cultural foundations always involved a delicate tightrope walk between the forces of God (Puritans, Massachusetts Bay Colony) and Mammon (speculators, Virginia Colony).
This delineation was of course not entirely clear-cut. Puritans enjoyed making money, and most speculators were Christians. It’s more a question of emphasis.
As eastern North America began to fill-up with colonists during the 1600s and 1700s, these parallel forces of “God and Mammon” began to rub up against one another, becoming more and more deeply entwined.
Most Christians in the USA today are unaware that the Puritans believed deeply in the theological concept of “predestination”. That is to say, they believed that God had already decided at the time of His Creation how every single person’s life would unfold.
Puritans walked through the world wondering whether they had been chosen for salvation or damnation, constantly looking for signs of their place in the universal schema.
This is a difficult concept for us today. Professing faith in God and Jesus while “doing good” in the world were of themselves no guarantee of a heavenly reward.
Why “do good” at all, then?
Because to do evil was seen as a “sign” that a person was being used as a vehicle for The Devil. Anyone assisting in Satan’s work had obviously been “pre-selected” for damnation.
“Doing good” was a way of being extra careful to show all the outward “signs” of “pre-selection” for salvation.
It might sound strange now, but it was a bit like trying to “call God’s bluff”. By modeling “Godliness” in their daily life, a person hoped they were acting-out their “pre-destination”.
This is part of what drove much of the Puritan work ethic, an ethic which would greatly inform later American attitudes to money, work, and leisure. To be successful or wealthy was a sign of Divine Providence – in other words, God was giving a sign to His favored or “saved” people through His beneficence.
Such a view of the world is of course endlessly capable of an internal self-justification for just about anything. The line between God’s plan and Satan’s work was patrolled by men, and through men’s interpretations of other men’s translations of ancient Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek texts. And after all is said and done, every American Christian of a certain age remembers the wry observation that “The Devil can quote Scripture to suit himself”.
Every event which falls favorably for a person can be characterised as a sign of “God’s Providence”.
Even land theft. Slavery. Or massacres.
It is this mindset which can even re-construe plain wickedness as the “Hand of God” in action.
*****
This is not to draw a simple line between Puritan ideas of Providence and Predestination straight through to historical bigotry, racism, or current “prosperity Gospel”. How ideas move, percolate and permeate a society is extremely complex.
As already mentioned, the forces of “God and Mammon” began to become more and more deeply entwined as colonial America became less fragmented. Puritanism gave way to Congregationalism, while groups like the Baptists and Methodists became especially popular in rural places via revivalist meetings and circuit-riding preachers, especially in Appalachia and The Deep South.
It would take twenty articles to even begin to outline the ways in which various sects and denominations interacted and cross-pollinated one another.
But whether it was the Puritans, Anglicans, or any other religious group (with a few notable exceptions), class and race tended to matter a great deal.
And across most religions, the four most abused groups of people in North American history have always been:
1) The enslaved or formerly enslaved
2) Indigenous peoples
3) “White Trash”, aka Rednecks, Hillbillies, Melungeons, et al (note that New England also had such groups, called by other terms)
4) Women
All of these groups displayed characteristics which certain types of Christians could conveniently point to as a sign of God’s disfavor.
People are enslaved because God has placed “The Mark of Cain” upon them.
People’s land is taken from them because they are non-believers, and it is God’s “Manifest Destiny” being revealed.
People are poor because “The Devil makes work for idle hands” or because God has pre-destined it to be so.
Women are bound to submission, forever deemed to be “lesser” due to their “sin” in the Garden of Eden.
And if God himself has shown disfavor for certain people, then why shouldn’t humans do the same?
*****
Most think that the history of Blackface is only a story of “white people” blacking-up, and mocking African Americans.
The story is far more complicated.
For a start, USA culture has also been permeated with the constant presence of “Redface”, a sort of internal Orientalism, in which Indigenous Americans are othered and categorised according to “white” projections of “savagery” – alternatively violent or “noble” in nature. This is a cultural phenomenon which would take volumes to attempt an elucidation.
This piece is concerned with an aspect of Blackface minstrelsy which many fail to notice – the regularity with which “The Dumb Hillbilly” is also present as a stock character, side-by-side with “The Plantation Negro”. What sets “Redface” apart from “Blackface” and “Hillbilly Face” is that it is mainly the latter two who are consistently presented as objects of mockery for their imagined ignorance, stupidity, and other traits associated with the lowest underclasses.
Hillbillies or “white trash” have traditionally been so far down the American pecking order that even the children of poor Italian immigrants – people like Michael James Gubitosi, better-known as the actor Robert Blake – could make their start in show business in the 1930s as part of a dance troupe called “The Three Little Hillbillies”.
People of the American heartland who grew up in the 60s and 70s watching variety shows like “Hee Haw”, probably never stopped to think that this show was a late, almost post-modern, wink-to-the-camera, sanitized version of Blackface/Hillbilly face.
Regular guest Minnie Pearl‘s character, while seemingly self-mocking instead of ill-intentioned, was still pulled straight from the age of minstrelsy.
But set aside for the moment all the “white”, non-Appalachian people participating in Blackface/Hillbilly face.
It seems extraordinary to this writer that no one has seemed to notice just how many Blackface minstrel shows were comprised of and performed by people from “non-white” backgrounds, including Black Americans and people from mixed-ethnic backgrounds such as the Appalachian Melungeons.
Much in the way Black Americans began to reclaim words of insult over the past decades, and much in the way LGBT+ people have recently reclaimed the word “queer”, it seems that Black, Hillbilly, and mixed peoples began to reclaim minstrelsy in the late 1800s and early 1900s.
Again, it is no coincidence that “Hillbilly Face” has co-existed for decades alongside Blackface.
The marginalised underclasses of the world have been doing this since time immemorial – using their streetwise or insider ethnic status to transcend and leverage the lower caste social identity placed on them.
They then bend it back onto the middle and upper classes, by selling a “product” to gormless outsiders who are willing to pay for an “ethnic experience”.
People like Jason Aldean and J. D. Vance are STILL performing Hillbilly Face, but not in the gently knowing, letting-you-in-on-the-joke way of “Hee Haw”. And what makes it triple-twist funny, is that they and others like them don’t even seem to realize it.
#JDVance #hillbilly #blackface
Class War in the Age Before Codified Racism
/0 Comments/in Blog /by Brian HalpinCaptain John Smith taketh the King of Pamaunkee prisoner [1608]
American History 101 (or 289?)
“Mr. Potts, a Master of Arts, well practised in Chirurgerie and Physique, and expert also in distillinge of waters.”
In 1623, Dr. John Potts, holder of a masters degree from Oxford University in England, prepared a poison to be served in wine to the Powhatan delegation to peace talks in Virginia Colony.
Apologists for the wrongs of English colonisers will say that this act of duplicity was in retaliation for Powhatan attacks on English colonists – without mentioning that Powhatan attacks were themselves in response to the violent raiding and theft of Powhatan winter food stores by English colonists at Jamestown.
Although wealthy himself, Dr. John Potts was later convicted of cattle theft from his own fellow colonists.
Some female colonists at Jamestown who were captured alive in raids by the Powhatan were later ransomed back by Dr. Potts.
So a decent enough rogue our Dr. Potts. Right?
Not so fast. Dr. Potts only ransomed-back the wives of his own indentured servants who had perished in Powhatan raids, so that these traumatised women could work-off their dead husbands’ “debts”.
One hostage later petitioned for her release from “slavery” stating that her subjugation and indenture by Dr. Potts:
“…differeth not from her slavery with the Indians.”
#jamestown #colonialism #indigenousamerica
Fake “Race” versus Real Ethnicity
/0 Comments/in Blog /by Brian HalpinOlmec head made in Mexico sometime between 1000 and 1500 BCE
Continuum…
Our local once-a-year jazz project wrapped-up last night.
When considering what the USA has given the world, you’ll usually hear things like Hollywood, rock & roll, cheeseburgers, or democracy.
I’m not here to defend the merits or legitimacy of those claims.
But jazz.
As jazz legend Art Blakey once remarked “Jazz washes away the dust of everyday life”.
In centuries to come, when the USA is but another in a long line of defunct empires, I hope the world will still be playing some form of jazz.
At the end of last night, a very friendly and elderly lady was passing among the tables in the lobby, handing-out a survey form. By its questions, this survey was clearly intended to gather the data required to show the value of this music festival to the local community and economy when applying for government funding.
The section of the survey asking questions of ethnicity was a somewhat heavy-handed attempt to collect data showing how music encourages the positive aspects of “multi-culturalism”.
Those being surveyed were asked to circle their “ethnicity”. This is the only question I refused to answer on the questionnaire, because as I’ve written a hundred times here and elsewhere, “white” is not an ethnicity.
The idea that I would be lumped into a group including people from Poland, Spain, Michigan, New Zealand, Canada, Florida, South Africa, or Finland for “diversity” figures was rankling in the extreme.
And I imagine that those of darker complexion would find it annoying if various peoples from Madagascar, California, Nigeria, the UK, Brazil, Senegal, South Carolina, Jamaica, or Kenya were collectively described as being from the same ethnic group.
This placing of “race” above culture and actual ethnicity is why I got home and put-up yesterday’s post, inviting people to pretend for a moment that “race” actually exists in the American sense.
Many readers described the man in one of the pictures correctly – by POPULATION GROUP, rather than “race”.
Most readers were honest, and said that in the USA, the people in both photos would probably be simply described as “Black”.
The boy on the left is from the Batek tribe of Malaysia. The man on the right is a central Pacific Marshall Islander (where Bikini Atoll saw the USA conducting atomic tests during the last century).
If our identity were determined by genetics alone, both of these people are more closely related to many Europeans and indigenous Americans than to most Africans (Africa being the most genetically diverse region on Earth).
But of course our identities are far more complex than a collection of inherited genes.
The colossal Olmec heads of eastern Mexico show facial characteristics which most Americans would associate with Africa, yet they were sculpted thousands of years before West Africans began their forced migration to the Americas. In other words, the genes which can be expressed as certain phenotypes (physical characteristics) are present IN EVERY POPULATION IN THE WORLD, including the European population.
It is easy to forget that much of Europe was probably still “black” as recently as 8,000 years ago.
If either of the people shown in yesterday’s post were to immigrate to the USA, their unique histories and identities would soon be subsumed within ridiculously arbitrary “race” categories.
I am not here to explain anything to American people of color, who know only too well that the “Black experience” is very real, even if actual “race” is not.
But spreading a wider understanding of how population genetics actually works is one small part of dismantling race-based social and political structures.
#raceisasocialconstruct #weareallrelated #ethnicity