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jewish-privilege · 6 years

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...There are two related, yet distinct, kinds of anti-Semitism that have snuck into mainstream politics. One is associated with the left and twists legitimate criticisms of Israel into anti-Semitic conspiracy theories. On the mainstream right, meanwhile, political leaders and media figures blame a cabal of wealthy Jews for mass immigration and left-wing cultural politics in classic anti-Semitic fashion.

[Rep. Ilhan Omar’s (D-MN)] tweet was a pretty clear example of the first kind of anti-Semitism. Plenty of Jews who are critical of the Israeli government, including me, found her comments offensive...

But it’s also clear that a lot of Omar’s critics don’t have much of a leg to stand on. Conservatives have been trying to label Omar an anti-Semite since she was elected in November, on the basis of fairly flimsy evidence. (...) Trump once told a room full of Jewish Republicans that “you’re not going to support me because I don’t want your money,” adding that “you want to control your politicians, that’s fine.”

The fact that Omar apologized under pressure, and that Trump and McCarthy have never faced real consequences for their use of anti-Semitic tropes, tells you everything you need know about the politics of anti-Semitism in modern America.

...There are two core truths about this incident. First, Omar’s statement was unacceptable. Second, Republicans going after her — including the president — should spend less time on Democrats and more time dealing with the far worse anti-Semitism problem on the right.

...In the day and a half since Omar’s initial comments, a number of left-wing writers have emerged to defend her. They argue that Omar was attempting to point out the financial clout of the pro-Israel lobby — the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, or AIPAC — and not to make generalizations about Jews. The pushback against Omar, they say, is part of a broader campaign to smear a young Muslim congresswoman and silence criticism of Israel.

...It’s true that in some cases, all criticism of Israel or AIPAC, even if it’s legitimate, is labeled anti-Semitic — and that’s a real problem. Omar’s faith has made her a particular target, and it’s fair to want to defend her against these smears in the abstract.

But the specifics of Omar’s tweet make things quite different. In the original context — where she was quote-tweeting [Glenn Greenwald]— she says that US lawmakers’ support for Israel is “all” about money. Yes, it’s a Puff Daddy reference, but she’s a member of Congress and maybe should be a little more careful about the implications of what she says...

There are two problems here: First, the tweet isn’t true. The US-Israel alliance has deeper and more fundamental roots than just cash, including the legacy of Cold War geopolitics, evangelical theology, and shared strategic interests in counterterrorism. Lobbying certainly plays a role, but to say that “US political leaders” defending Israel is “all” about money is to radically misstate how America’s Israel politics work (and discount the findings of the scholars who study it).

Second, and more important, totalizing statements like this play into the most troubling anti-Semitic stereotypes. The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, an infamous early-20th-century Russian forgery, describes a plot by Jewish moneyed interests to subvert and destroy Christian societies through their finances. This in turn draws on longstanding European anti-Semitic traditions that portray Jews as greedy and conniving.

After World War II and the creation of the state of Israel, the conspiracy theory shifted. Anti-Semites started using “Zionist” or “Zio” as a stand-in for “Jewish,” using Jewish activism in favor of the Jewish state as proof that they were right all along about the Jewish conspiracy. David Duke, the former Louisiana state representative and Ku Klux Klan grand wizard, released a YouTube video in 2014 that bills itself as an “illustrated” update of the Protocols. The video features footage of leading Democratic and Republican politicians speaking to pro-Israel groups, with the caption “both are in the grips of Zio money, Zio media, and Zio bankers.”

...Omar is, of course, not coming from the same hateful place as Duke is. But by using too-similar language, she unintentionally provides mainstream cover for these conspiracy theories. After her comments, Duke repeatedly defended her, even tweeting a meme that said “it took a Muslim congresswoman to actually stand up & tell the truth that we ALL know” (he rescinded the praise after her apology).

This is not to equate Duke and Omar — which, to be clear, would be absurd — but rather to point out how if you’re not careful when talking about pro-Israel lobbying, you can provide ammunition to some awful people. By saying that US support for Israel is “all” about money, Omar was essentially mainstreaming ideas that have their roots in anti-Semitism, helping make them more acceptable to voice on the left.

...There’s a real dilemma here. Pro-Palestinian activists, writers, and politicians have every right to point out what they see as the pernicious influence of groups like AIPAC. The group is undeniably powerful, and it’s worth mentioning in our conversations about both Israel policy and money in politics. You can and should be able to say, “AIPAC’s lobbying pushes America’s Israel policy in a hawkish pro-Israel direction,” without saying that it is literally only about dollars from (disproportionately) Jewish donors.

At the same time side, there is a special need on the left — where most pro-Palestinian sentiment resides — to be careful about just how you discuss those things. It’s not just a matter of providing ammunition to the David Dukes of the world; it’s about the moral corruption of the left and pro-Palestinian movement. If references to the baleful influence of Jews on Israel policy become too flip, too easy, things can go really wrong.

...When left-wing insurgent Jeremy Corbyn won the center-left Labour Party’s leadership [in Britain] in 2015, the people who inhabited these spaces seized control of the party power centers.

Corbyn, who had once referred to members of Hamas and Hezbollah as his “friends,” opened the floodgates for the language of Labour’s left flank to go mainstream. The result is a three-year roiling scandal surrounding anti-Semitism inside the party.

Dozens of Labour elected officials, candidates, and party members have been caught giving voice to anti-Semitic comments. One Labour official called Hitler “the greatest man in history,” and added that “it’s disgusting how much power the Jews have in the US.” Another Labour candidate for office said “it’s the super rich families of the Zionist lobby that control the world.” The party has received 673 complaints about anti-Semitism in its ranks in the last 10 months alone, an average of over two complaints per day.

...This is why Omar’s tweet was so troubling, and why the pushback from leadership really was merited. If the line isn’t drawn somewhere, the results for Jews — who still remain a tiny, vulnerable minority — can be devastating.

...The way Omar handled the controversy is interesting. Her apology was certainly given under immense pressure, but it reads (at least to me) as quite sincere[, and] this kind of sincere willingness to reconsider past comments is characteristic of Omar. She had previously gotten flak for a tweet about Israel “hypnotizing” the world, and recently gave a lengthy and thoughtful apology for the connection to anti-Semitic tropes during an appearance on The Daily Show.

“I had to take a deep breath and understand where people were coming from and what point they were trying to make, which is what I expect people to do when I’m talking to them, right, about things that impact me or offend me,” she told host Trevor Noah.

This is not the kind of behavior you see from deeply committed anti-Semites. Yair Rosenberg, a journalist at the Jewish magazine Tablet who frequently writes about anti-Semitism, argued on Monday that Omar has earned the benefit of the doubt:

“I’ve covered anti-Semitism for years on multiple continents, and this level of self-reflection among those who have expressed anti-Semitism is increasingly rare. Not only did Omar apologize for the specific sentiment, but she put herself in the shoes of her Jewish interlocutors and realized that she ought to extend to them the same sensitivity to anti-Semitism as she would want others to extend to racism.”

...This is what it looks like when the system works. A member of Congress says something offensive, most of her party explains why it’s wrong, and then she issues a sincere apology and demonstrates an interest in changing. That is a healthy party dealing with bad behavior in a healthy way.

This is not what you see on the Republican side when it comes to most forms of bigotry — up to and including anti-Semitism.

...Last summer, McCarthy sent a tweet accusing three Democratic billionaires of Jewish descent — George Soros, Tom Steyer, and Michael Bloomberg — of trying to buy the midterm election...

...Around the same time, President Trump claimed that protesters against Brett Kavanaugh were being paid by Soros...

And Florida Rep. Matt Gaetz suggested Soros was behind the so-called “migrant caravan” coming to the US through Mexico, a theory spread when Trump tweeted the video in Gaetz’s original tweet...

This all follows years of Soros demonization in the conservative press, with everyone from conspiracy theorist Alex Jones to Fox News anchors blaming the Jewish billionaire for various ills in the United States.

The defense of these lines is the same as the left-wing defense of Omar: It’s not anti-Semitic to simply state facts. But many of these “facts,” like Soros masterminding immigrant caravans, are false. Moreover, creating a narrative in which Soros and other left-wing Jews are puppet masters, using their money to undermine America from within, they are engaging in the same normalization of Protocols-style anti-Semitic tropes as Omar.

What’s more, they’ve done it with virtually no official pushback. The GOP has not reacted to the Soros hate and other anti-Semitic conspiracy theories with the same fierceness with which the Democrats responded to Omar’s comment. There has been no leadership statement condemning the mainstreaming of anti-Semitism; in fact, demonizing Soros has long been part of the overall party strategy. In 2016, Trump released a campaign ad that played a quote from one of his speeches over footage of Soros and former Fed Chair Janet Yellen (also Jewish) that comes across as an anti-Semitic dog whistle...

...“Don’t kid yourself that the most violent forms of hate have been aimed at others — blacks, Muslims, Latino immigrants. Don’t ever think that your government’s pro-Israel policies reflect a tolerance of Jews,” Jonathan Weisman, the New York Times’s deputy Washington editor and author of the new book (((Semitism))), writes. “We have to consider where power is rising, and the Nationalist Right is a global movement.”

...While the Democratic Party handled an offensive comment quickly, Republicans have never shown a willingness to do the same when it comes to right-wing anti-Semitism. There’s a reason most Jews in the United States are Democrats, and will likely remain so for the foreseeable future.

[Read Zack Beauchamp’s full piece at Vox.]

#long post #antisemitism #if you reblog or reply with antisemitism or any defense of antisemitism i will block you #if you reblog or reply with islamophobia anti blackness misogynoir or any other bigotry i will block you

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aboriginalnewswire · 6 years

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TheAngryindian

07.06.2001

‘As for a climactic conflict between a once-Christian West and an Islamic world that is growing in numbers and advancing inexorably into Europe for the third time in 14 centuries, on this one, Breivik may be right’.

-Patrick Buchanan

[FOTO: Public memorial one day after the Breivik attacks. Credit: Johannes Grødem]

As sensible people try to find psychic balance after the deplorable attacks in Norway against cultural progressivism in Europe, it has become painfully clear to all that Christian fascism, xenophobia and right-wing violence have again become an undeniable part of everyday life in the west. As much as it hurts, White society must finally accept the fact that what occurred in Norway did not arise out of a vacuum. Only a flat-out bigot would try to deny that right-wing Christian terrorism does not has a long and sordid history of violent opposition to ethnic and religious minorities, left-wing politics and progressive social change. Despite what conservative apologists might say, their religion has not taught them anything about tolerance and peace.

The racist doctrine of White ‘ethnic’ supremacy has been lovingly nurtured in popular culture, spiritually endorsed by Jesus’ theologians and accepted by many within the White and non-White mainstream as an equitable politic in the 21st century. When wealthy Caucasian dandies like fashion designer John Galliano and pop icon to the forlorn, Morrissey, start playing around with far-right racialism, it is painfully obvious that being a dedicated follower of fascism has become more than respectable. It’s back in vogue. We can continue to bury our heads in the sand like the Obama administration and pretend that White racism on a global scale does not exist, or, we can pragmatically move forward by bravely addressing the ugliness that is staring us in the face.

Like it or not, White racist attitudes have been a prominent part of the European social fabric since antiquity. And it is foolhardy to overlook the reality that xenophobia is still used as a political tool by the European and Euro-settler upper-classes. Visible examples of pro-White, anti-immigrant and anti-Islamic sentiment have been simmering in Western Europe ever since the fall of the Berlin Wall. Inspired by US President Ronald Reagan’s ceremonial state visit to honour the Nazi dead of Bitburg, Germany in 1985, Eastern European fascists simply brought their admiration for Adolf Hitler along with them to the now unified Bundesrepublik Deutschland. And guess what, no one cared.

In the UK, Tory Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher deftly contributed to the rise of the right by making it perfectly understood that she felt White Britons were ‘tired of being swamped by immigrant cultures’ as Brick Lane slowly began to turn sepia. A conscious move on her part to make peripheral use of the National Front and the British Movement which began attacking Asians, Africans and Jews at will. And during that time, they were quietly protected by the veiled racialist sympathies of the British media and local law enforcement.

It sounds like a chapter pulled out of the Mussolini years but it isn’t. It is a matter of the international public record and it is rarely mentioned in connection with the role of fascism in modern Europe. The acceptable line of selective thinking argues ‘that was then and this is now’. Things have changed they tell us. But do not be fooled by what seems like progress. The rank unpleasantness the ‘Great Communicator’ and Baroness Thatcher gave birth to in the 1980’s is still with us. Only the superficial veneer is different. The current US President Barack Obama may be of African descent, but his portfolio as an American politician is no less Europocentric and no less racist than any of his predecessors. By and large, the most powerful Black man in history has done more than any other world leader on record to enforce the machiavellian processes of White Christian supremacy by any means necessary. And no one knows this better than self-aware African and Indigenous peoples.

Conservative White folks and other suckers suffering from acute Europhilia may be able to ignore the realities of this apathetic disdain, but people of colour and the poor are suffering loudly and in plain sight. It does not take more than a glance to see just how little his administration is concerned with how bad African people in America are doing under federal Black leadership. Although he is deep into his first term as Commander-in-Chief, Mr. Obama has yet to address institutional anti-African or anti-Indigenous racial discrimination, the widespread social crisis of racial profiling or the established inhumanity of overtly racist police departments or conservative judicial brutality against the poor. Now that it is achingly clear to the conscious that the incessantly repeated fear of an Obama-led era of Marxist-neo-Nazi-Wahabbist ‘reverse-discrimination’ against White Christian American world is patently ridiculous, what next? Will the racists and politically stupid now cease behaving like the goofy characters in ‘Springtime for Hitler’ or will they persist in their pursuit of a global Whites-only agenda? You know the answer to this question as well as I do.

So for brevity’s sake let us cut to the chase and admit to a few well-known social variables. Even if it happens to embarrass the Europeans who may be reading this commentary. The phenomenon of pro-European racism and exploitation of darker peoples is, and has been, a reality across the world since the classical Roman Empire. We can get into lengthy discussions about how and why later. But let us suffice it for now by saying that what we are dealing with in terms of the ‘new’ Christian fascism is in reality, a White man’s problem. Faulting the people of the Third and Fourth Worlds and social progressives for what has happened in Norway is like blaming Jews for the Odessa pogroms.

And truth be told this is exactly what is being done with the editorial reportage of Breivik’s bloody massacre of the innocent. The victims, mostly young socialist-leaning citizens and residents of Norway, are ultimately being blamed for what happened to them. And US media jester and devout Mormon Glenn Beck did just that when he equated the socialist victims of the Utøya attacks with the Hitler Youth cadres of the German Nazi era. And really, is anyone in the literate world really surprised by this, or the fact that this vicious Mormon bigot still has his job? The sad fact is that Glenn Beck and the other unrepentant Völkisch journalists like him in the US, UK and Israeli news media did exactly what they were expected and paid to do. In a conscious fit of blatant White supremacist damage control they all blamed the attacks on Islamic extremism, even after it became clear that the perpetrator was a Christian zealot hoping to spark an anti-Islamic ‘Holy War’ in the traditional lands of the Master Race and Palestine.

The ‘Truth’ Game

For once it would be refreshing if White society actually took responsibility for its own congenital insanities, but this isn’t likely to happen anytime soon. Expecting the dominating Europocentric racist world order to willingly come to grips with its own xenophobic hubris is foolish. Denial is central to the paradigm and White racism as an ideology has been spinning the same outrageous frequent liar programme across the globe for generations. The reality that people around the world are being starved, maimed and killed in the name of positive White control has always been soft-pecked and dismissed as inconsequential. Although racialist laws are considered morally reprehensible, Apartheid in South Africa was clearly defined as racial separation and it was still supported by all of the major democratic powers.

We can make believe that we are witnessing a sudden sea change in social and political attitudes, but this just isn’t credible. The writing, in large part due to the maddening and sickening violence of Anders Breivik, is on the proverbial wall and it is written in scarlet. You and I both know what is really going down in the world, to whom it is happening to and ultimately, who it is that benefits from the institution and maintenance of human-on-human brutality. And we are all cowards for knowing this and for allowing it to continue in a democracy. And Whites who work overtime to deny what has been going on in their name for centuries are the greatest cowards of all.

At some point one would hope that White people as a demographic would eventually come to their senses and stop playing games with the lives, minds and general welfare of others by facing up to the truth of their own belligerent behaviour. They could actually begin right now by admitting to themselves that the Christian terrorist, Anders Behring Breivik, is one of theirs. This hasn’t happened yet because the conservative lobby is doing everything possible to deny the obvious connections him and the rest of the White ‘race’. Some are even going so far as to deny that Breivik is actually ‘White’ since we now know that Breivik decided to undergo plastic surgery in the United States in order to look, ‘more Aryan’. Twisted identity politics maybe? Perhaps. But no matter how the conservative lobbies in the US, UK and Israeli may try to spin things, Anders Breivik in all his anti-Muslim, bathed in the blood of Jesus glory belongs to them lock, stock and bloody barrel.

Anyone who has watched the rise of the far-right in Europe and North America is not surprised by this omission of kinship. And this writer for one does not accept the juvenile arguments of the White Christian talking heads that are trying to convince us that no one could have seen this coming. You and I both know that this is indeed a lie. And further, we know that such protestations are more than just disingenuous. They are also telling in that any rush to vigorously defend Breivik’s Christian terrorism and racism at this moment only blatantly exposes the establishment’s unmistakable fondness for this sort of Europocentric extremism.

There is no excuse for this. How can there be after the ravages of Mussolini, Hitler and Franco? Pretending that they did not do their very best to burn their way across the subcontinent in pursuit of ‘purity’ is inherently dangerous and stupid, but who really remembers anymore? Who really cares? Not the educated, apathetic Judeo-Christian democratic populations of the exalted west. They have made a conscious choice to dismiss the lessons of any history they regard as a passing joke, including their own.

Considering the hard reality of the mass graves left over from the ethnocidal breakup of Yugoslavia, how can anyone in the progressive world sit quietly while it happens all over again? Remember that Yugoslavia was supposed to be the genocide everyone said was impossible.

Yet, it happened right in front of the United Nations and the world’s news cameras while the European and American far-right laughed at the world community. Why not? They were watching their fascist compatriots from World War Two, the Hrvatski Revolucionarni Pokret (or Ustaše) of Croatia come back to the world stage blessed and endorsed by the world’s superpowers as a legitimate government and military force. They also thought well of the Kosovar Albanian Ushtria Çlirimtare e Kosovës or KLA, an extremely violent and xenophobic criminal faction that Yugoslavian government and intelligence authorities officially identified as a terrorist group on line with the Sicilian Mafia. NATO, along with several foreign observers and journalists in the country during the conflict, even went so far as to declare that the KLA were dead-serious about ‘cleaning-out’ Kosovo’s Serb population and expanding their criminal enterprises internationally.

Curiously, no one was interested in this news. And despite their murderous activity, the US state dept. and the other European powers who could have stopped them did not regard the KLA as terrorists while Slobodan Milosevic’s government certainly did. And when the KLA was finally removed from the official terrorism watchlist in 1998 by the US, UK and France, the capitalist powers began building business relationships with the major Kosovar caporegime as if nothing had happened. The victims are not remembered much less regarded any longer and the rest of the story is simply seen as the bygone history of an unpleasant time in the Balkans. Business as they say, is business.

As we can see, if the far-right were really considered a threat by the ruling classes they would have been stopped cold in the 1940’s. Instead, (and with considerable help from Pope Pius the XII and US intelligence) the Nazi’s simply moved to the Americas and continued on with their work. This goes a long way in explaining why even the organised, government sponsored madness that swept Europe under fascism has been largely forgotten aside from its unfortunate misuse as a political tool. We know this because when US Christian-Zionists began defining the European Holocaust as a gift sent to them from the Almighty, virtually no one objected. And as bizarre as this idea sounds, the fact remains that this outlandish belief is shared amongst a great number of ethnic Jews.

The Zionist Organization of America for instance not only defended but actively promoted the US evangelical shaman John Hagee when he began preaching that the genocides of the last century were necessary for Yahweh (יהוה) to bring back the state of Israel. Clearly, the Evangelical Christian desire for Armageddon, the Rapture and a holy ‘race war’ far outweigh any logical of moral considerations for social justice. The victims of White religious and capitalist violence are simply seen as acceptable exodus fodder, nothing more. They are either exploitable pawns or annoying hindrances standing in the way of God’s divine plan. Either way, they must and will be moved into positions of advantage for European uses. This is the vicious cycle Scotsman Adam Smith described with his ‘Vile Maxim of Mankind’, the willingness of the rich to take unfair advantage of the weak while actually believing that such an arrangement is ‘fair’. So much for the wonder that is capitalism.

Social xenophobia is bad enough, but denying that it isn’t a political and economic device when it is clearly evident in thought and deed is vulgar. This is why conservative media attempts to downplay what happened in Oslo and Utøya are patently absurd. They selectively ignore the political role of Judeo-Christian violence, slavery and ethnic repression in Europe and throughout its colonialist holdings during the Catholic-led Crusades immediately after the Reconquista in 1492. It also leaves out the horror-show that developed after those overseas colonies became independent and internally-colonialised the native populations they displaced or enslaved for their own benefit. This includes the direct involvement of German and US private industry, international banking and the Catholic Church who knowingly assisted in carrying out the ‘Final Solution’. Because of this moral negligence, belligerent fascism has returned with a vengeance. And seemingly, no one in authority is willing to stop it.

Especially not the first African leader of the whole free world. Like the Roman Emperor Septimius Severus Augustus or the native collaborators who proudly served with the South African Police during Apartheid, Mr. Obama has shown precious little mercy to other people of colour at home or abroad. Native Americans, Africans across the Diaspora and Spanish-speaking Indigenous immigrants are doing worse now than ever before. While at the same time, White conservatives gripe and grumble about Obama’s supposed war against European American and the White Christian heritage. This is of course absurd on a variety of levels, mostly because Mr. Obama has done more to uphold traditional standards of ‘Whiteness’ in the United States than any one else.

By the same token, the European conservatives that are complaining about him the most do not believe in the system nearly as strongly as he does. The ideal world these idiotic people claim to want is being given to them by the Obama administration on a platter. Arabs and Muslims are being militarily intimidated, Africans and being starved and racially profiled and immigrants, (who aren’t White) are being ejected from the US at record numbers. So what are they complaining about? Thanks to Mr. Obama and his financial backers, it is the people of non-White, non-Christian world that are paying for US capitalism’s rampant and unrestricted greed. Self-evidently, then, it stands to reason that the racist opposition to Barack Obama is just that, an issue of White racism, not of political differences.

The sordid hoaxes circulating about his non-connections to Weather Underground alumni Bill Ayers, the location and conditions surrounding his birth, his genealogy and his religious convictions are all about White fears of a Black and Brown planet. Their racism is so ingrained and so blinding that they cannot see how closely the Obama presidency actually mirrors their twisted vision of White American global supremacy. Politically, militarily and economically, the United States is without a doubt still the biggest bully on the block. This is the reality. And the Obama administration has done absolutely nothing but expand their capabilities while US citizens bear the brunt of the nation’s economic collapse. Without mercy, the Obama administration has pressed on with the so-called ‘War on Terror’ in search of its ‘enemies’, the very people, these ignorant arses say Barack Obama ‘really’ represents.

Their nonsensical theories also painstakingly leave out the fact that the Goldman Sachs Group and other wealthy capitalist contributors to his campaign were clearly making an investment for their own best interests, not for the working classes most of these White supremacist Neanderthals happen to hail from. Their gross ignorance of politics and history, even of their own country, makes it nearly impossible for them to comprehend what is really happening. Their fears that the election of Barack Obama is some sort of depraved Manchurian Candidate socialist coup d’état’ designed by Islamic mullahs to enslave America’s non-White population is based on absolute smoke. Just as is was during the Antebellum Era and Jim Crow, White folks, bigoted or not, live in morbid fear of an angry and massive backlash for all that has and continues to happen under European racialism and exploitation. But it is not the dark masses that encourage this derangement, it is the inner-human, the race-neutral consciousness

And because of this historical paranoia, Europeans have never felt totally secure anywhere, even within their own territorial domains. Anti-miscegenation laws, ‘Separate but Equal’ education restrictions and the application of indiscriminate White terrorist violence are symptoms of this fear. The mark of the racist is the stubborn unwillingness to acknowledge his or her own fears of the ‘Other’.

And if one is to take the late Algerian psychologist Franz Fanon seriously, Whites often react as explosively as they do precisely because they know how they would react if it was they who were faced with the same sort of oppressions non-Europeans are expected to endure quietly. White people for the most part walk the Earth as if they own it most anywhere and in relative safety. Nonetheless, those Whites that cannot or refuse accept even this are, as we have seen in Norway, prepared to go to extraordinary lengths in the name of White racial and cultural ‘security’. From false propaganda about the first African US president to violent acts directed against non-White people and left-wing political activists, White racism as a movement is willing to go that extra mile. It needs to be reckoned with as a danger to the greater society but until the powers that be decide to a ‘War on Racism’, expect the White Power movement to grow even more as the world’s economic health continues to deteriorate.

Xenophobia, Paranoia and Negligence

Almost from the moment Anders Breivik declared himself the hero of White Christian Europe, conservative opinion makers began doing ju-jutsu with the facts behind his ideological ideas and inspirations. Why is the far-right allowed to get away with this? Obviously because someone within the Europocentric power structure wills it and the psychologically downtrodden masses passively allow it to continue. It is clear that the more White control is challenged, the more White society is seen to overreact. This is indisputable. And it also gives us an important clue as to why Anders Breivik is being accorded such undue preferential treatment and extreme tolerance by the White, mainstream press. Very few conservative news agencies refer to him as a terrorist and most far-right media pundits now enthusiastically describe him as insane and ‘deeply disturbed’. We are told by his lawyer and other experts that he is not entirely responsible for his actions. At first this seems almost reasonable until you think for a moment about how Arab, Muslim and left-wing terrorist suspects and acts are handled by the establishment information paradigm as opposed to how White, far-right terrorist activity is dealt with.

Have Jose Padilla or Pfc. Bradley Manning received this sort of consideration or attention from the mainstream media? When was the last time you read a story or report discussing at length the mental stability of a known Muslim terrorist or noticed a veiled tolerance for their extremist religious convictions? And why is this not a legitimate question? Neo-Nazi, White supremacist and anti-immigrant factions operating in Europe, North America and Australia are by their own admission using violence and intimidation to get their politics across through a policy of fear. Yet, democratic governments in the west are only concerned about such groups when their actions cross the line into threatening their own legal authority or political existence.

Given the extensive record of far-right violence in the past as well as the present one would logically expect to find these entities at the very top of the list for anti-social threats, not at the very bottom. But this is the reality of the situation internationally, and American and European governments are entirely at fault for allowing and encouraging the existence of such organisations in the first place. Democratically-elected governments are supposed to defend their societies against threats to the progressive well-being of their constituents. But they cannot do that and covertly align themselves with the very same negative forces that almost destroyed the world at the same time and call themselves moral. We are forgetting what it means to be and how to remain human. And it is unambiguous that no one is a position of authority thinking in terms of raw political and economic power is willing to identify such movements as contrary to the social good.

The extant Europocentric paradigm operates on two distinct principles: first, it makes damn sure that the literate population only understands the world through a rhetorical mythology concerning the ‘Enlightened European’ and two, that the class-separated masses observe a closed-minded and emotional rejection against their own betterment. Under such jaundiced circumstances, White Christian violence and marginalisation against minorities, Muslims, socialists, atheists, homosexuals, anti-war protesters and non-submissive women can almost always be dismissed as justifiable. Particularly if you repeatedly and intentionally mischaracterize these issues as conservatives regularly do via their lapdogs in the mainstream corporate owned media.

Not a day goes by when the spokespersons for the powerful do not make light of the everyday concerns of real people. With the authority granted to them by the political and religious elite, the problems of historical and institutional White racism, Christian hegemony and capitalist domination are articulated as someone else’s problem. In this way the sole responsibility for doing anything about it is placed on the victims, not the perpetrators. The international discourse concerning social injustice is little more than a sad joke. Europeans are held accountable for nothing. And the United States, now led by a son of Africa, will belligerently defend the influence of White racism and politicised Judeophobia so long as it is beneficial to their imperialistic aims.

I don’t say this without credible evidence. When reports began circulating that the USA’s chief media jester Glenn Beck had the unmitigated gall to tell his dim-witted public that the people killed by Anders Breivik were left-wing ‘Hitler Youth’ wannabes, everyone just shrugged. By rights, Beck should have not only have lost his job but should have been swiftly drummed out of the industry for such callous insensitivity. But if you look closely you’ll notice some things you might not wish to see. For one, its hard not to notice that the usual Zionist jackals obsessed with ruining the lives and careers of honest journalists and bloggers have not gone after Glenn Beck. Even after his numerous verbal assaults against the ‘uniqueness’ of the Jewish holocaust under the Nazis, Beck and people like him have yet to be seriously hindered by their hypocritical positions concerning gentile bias towards the world’s Jews.

In fact, it seems as if their radical Jewish support actually increases after such utterances of stupidity. Following his nonsensical remarks about Reformist Judaism being a different kind of ‘radical Islam’, support for Beck among hard-line Zionists in the US and Israel grew substantially. And let’s not forget that the head of the very Zionist Anti-Defamation League, Abraham Foxman, actually had the audacity to apologise to Beck after the popular ‘Two Minutes’ Hate’ chap suggested that capitalist George Soros, a Jew, helped ‘send other Jews to the death camps’.

Where is the Zionist lobby when the western world could really use them? As I have said before, Beck’s shameless, pro-gentile Zionism is simply Christian theological chauvinism in drag. It isn’t serious. But now that Beck has yet again crossed the line into territory that has permanently ruined the careers and personal lives of better mortals, where are the usual Zionist loudmouths and why haven’t they called for his symbolic flogging? Where are the ‘responsible’ talking heads of the mainstream media, the American Exceptionalist crowd and the Zionists now that Beck has identified the young victims of a rabidly fascist, anti-Islamic Christian terrorist as a left-wing gaggle of the ‘Hitler Youth’?

In a logical world, Israel’s zealous-minded supporters in the west would have a great deal of explaining to do. But as we have seen in the editorial aftermath of the Norway tragedy, the Zionist lobby not only approved of the Oslo and Utøya attacks but cheered the racism, Islamophobia and the terrorist proudly taking responsibility for the attacks. As writer J.J. Goldberg has accurately noted, radical as well as moderate Jewish conservatives have gratefully given their sympathy and support to Breivik mostly because of what they perceive as his uncompromising stance in support of their claim to Occupied Palestine.

After this, let there no longer be any doubt that international Zionism is perfectly willing to stand by a frenzied, racist Christian terrorist seeking to reestablish the decidedly Judeophobic medieval Order of the Knights Templars:

‘The debate exploded aboveground on Saturday in an opinion essay at Ynet (in Hebrew only) by Ziv Lenchner, a left-leaning Tel Aviv artist and one of Ynet’s large, bipartisan stable of columnists. It’s called “Dancing the Hora on Norwegian Blood.” He argues that the comment sections on news websites are a fair barometer of public sentiment (a questionable premise) and that the overwhelming response is schadenfreude, pleasure at Norway’s pain’.

Historically speaking, the Templars were a professional Catholic military organisation that violently occupied and looted Jerusalem during the Crusades by killing Jews, Muslims and non-European Christians in the name of the Mother Church. Their religious biases against the people who dared crucify ‘The Christ’ at Golgotha is beyond credible refute. But modern Zionists simply gloss over this specific by only recognising the Islamophobic and Europocentric aspects of the story. They do this in favour of the ‘White makes Right’ philosophy, a racialist gospel that assumes for itself a dominating role within any given setting no matter what the circumstances are. Proof of this can easily be found in any popular English of Hebrew-language web portal that is covering Breivik’s gross act. Without a doubt, Israelis and Israel-supporters that have bothered to comment at all on the attacks or the debate surrounding the attacks have clearly focused their attention on whether or not the victims of Oslo and Utøya ‘deserve’ any respect at all.

Don’t believe me, read the disturbing comments left by conservatives on the web for yourself via the anti-Zionist crew over @ Jews Sans Frontiers and a translation provided by one of their compatriots from the original Hebrew by way of Ynet:

1. And in the mosque there won’t be some ceremony?

2. It’s fun and warms the heart to see them crying!!!!

3. Go to hell. Haters of Jews/Israelis, anti-semites busy with the problems of others all day—here you got some too. [signed Zionist]

4. I have no identification with an anti-Semitic country that leads to the hatred of Israel. Not happy, not sorry.

5. All in all, what they asked for is what they got!!!!

6. [in Norwegian.] Serves you right, you Nazis.

7. He is a hero, kill all leftists, expel all Muslims.

8. European efficiency.

9. It’s only a matter of time until an Israeli rightwinger will do something similar.

10. My heart with the families of all the victims. I wish you will never know more sorrow and I wish all the wounded will heal as quickly as possible and will put this tragedy behind them. Condolences and sympathy from Israel. [Norwegian and English]

11. I have hope too… that you have many more days of mourning and tears.

12. Feel a little bit of what we feel here all the time, maybe now you’ll understand what it is, terror.

13. The ugly Israeli continues to talkback. Shame on you, you bunch of people who rejoice in the suffering of others dancing on the blood. It’s a shame that you even hold Israeli IDs.

As you can see, Norway is viewed by Zionist hard-liners as too pro-Palestinian for its own good. Once it became clear via his numerous online screeds that Anders Breivik as anti-Arab spree killer was acting on his anti-Islamic theological and political beliefs to combat Islam in Europe, he immediately gained their loyalty as a fellow fighter engaged in their struggle. Don’t be surprised by this. Especially since the discourse has evolved, if you will, into a Hasbara-driven controversy suggesting that any objective criticism of the pro-Breivik position amongst Zionists and Israel’s goyim supporters is actually veiled anti-Israeli and anti-Jewish prejudice in disguise.

The Dynamics of Denial

‘It is out of the question for the leader of the Western world to lay a wreath in a war cemetery where Nazi storm troopers are buried. … The stated purpose, reconciliation, is being drowned in a rising flood of long-buried passions from the death camp survivors, who feel as betrayed and abandoned as they did 40 years ago.’

– Washington Post, 23 April 1985

If you are confused at this juncture be not afraid, because that is exactly the point of all of this circular semantic diarrhoea. Remember if you will for a moment how all this began. The mainstream media in the west immediately began flooding the international news cycle with false and sensationalist headlines stating as fact that al Qaeda had finally penetrated Europe by attacking two targets in Norway. Although they had absolutely no evidence for this, their contemptible reportage on the story forced the public opinion broadly against Muslims whom they mistakenly held responsible for the double attacks.

The propaganda politruks working within mainstream media did their damndest to create the falsehood that militant Islam was making a serious bid to make itself known in Europe. Even the technical journal Wired published a story that assumed only Muslims could have been behind the attacks showing, rather embarrassingly, that the supposedly ‘liberal’ sectors of US society are not all that tolerant of religious differences. Apparently even ‘geeks’ can share the very same knee-jerk prejudices of the rabidly extreme anti-Muslim far-right.

What about the other overlooked fact that the establishment media’s knee-jerk ‘terrorist’ label was abandoned the split-second Anders Breivik was identified as the culprit? How does his act of religious indiscriminate violence differ qualitatively from other acts of theological xenophobia? Does Breivik’s ideological position in full support of White Power globally exclude him from being considered a terrorist? It is a reasonable question since independent investigators and journalists not swamped by corporate censorship have been finding connections between Breivik and known White supremacist organisations operating in Europe. Including ties to the Christian fundamentalist movement gaining social and political ground in the United States.

This isn’t a big secret. The US based New York Times, to its credit, did admit that Anders Breivik was extremely enthusiastic about the rise of the racist right-wing in the United States. But they noticeably stopped short of holding traditional American fascism responsible for its role for what happened in Oslo and Utøya. Not surprisingly, popular media attention in the US has been critically focused upon the entertainment aspects of this story instead of the serious speculation one would expect considering the importance of the issues at hand.

Earnest, investigative journalism concerning the conspicuous ideological and religious use of US, UK and Israeli cultural Islamophobia and political conservatism is difficult to find in the mainstream. As expected, the Christians have given themselves a pass. The religio-political movement founded by the late Rev. Jerry Falwell, when one really thinks about it, is perhaps ultimately responsible for creating the sort of poisonous social climate that has made unconscionable far-right bastards like Anders Breivik possible. But do not expect to read anything about this is the western press which is still ideologically blaming Muslims in Europe for Breivik’s murderous rampage.

The artful dodging of responsibility for US Euro-settler Christian fascism’s international influence says a great deal about the level of cowardice shown by conservatives and White racists when faced with the morose reality of their twisted and hypocritical rhetoric. The American racists and Islamophobics cited by Anders Breivik in his detailed writings, (still available online for the time being) represent a hodgepodge of right-wing ideologues. But is it clear from reading his work that his main source of inspiration is centrally rooted in the United States and the US-led anti-Palestinian Zionist movement.

His list of popular anti-Muslim media propagandists includes such luminaries as Pamela Geller, (creator of the wildly ridiculous ‘birther’ myth suggesting that Barack Obama is Malcolm X’s illegitimate son) Daniel Pipes, Robert Spencer and hard-line Israelis like Avigdor Lieberman and Caroline Glick. Each of these names figure prominently in his writings as definitive reference points for articulating his personal insecurities about non-White inclusiveness in European social life. A concern duly noted by US pundit and legendary pro-Europocentric bigot Pat Buchanan who succinctly put it this way, ‘Breivik may be right’ when he opined that the Norwegian Christian Berserker’s idea of a major military conflict between the Christian European world and Islam may actually be the next logical step forward for White survival.

Scared yet? If not you should be. While the fascist 1930’s are without question furiously nipping at our heels, the bright minds of the political, legal and journalistic establishment say their is nothing for us to worry about. Rest assured they tell us, the culture war against Muslims in Europe and North America is still on the table despite its idiocy. Especially if professional Islamophobic politicians like Irish Republican Army supporter Rep. Peter King and the very Catholic Rudolph Giuliani have anything to say about it. And if you can see past the glaring hypocrisy you’ll notice that their stated political beliefs and religious convictions are as weak as their antiquated, narrow-minded arguments. Please believe, there is nothing, absolutely nothing, democratic, religious or sane about conservative politics in the west.

Still not convinced that there is more to this tragedy than the conservatives are making things out to be? If that is the case, it would do well for the reader to consider the base ideas behind Breivik’s obsession with ‘Whiteness’ and his affection for Christian cultural and racial ‘purity’. Ideas often do have an ideological genealogy and unfortunately, many of the visible road signs along Breivik’s explosive path lead directly to the doorstep of the American and United Kingdom’s organised far-right. Although Breivik’s connections to the Scandinavian branch of the English Defence League and infamous Irish loyalist and Neo-Nazi supporter Jonathan ‘Mad Dog’ Adair (former brigadier of the notorious West Belfast UDA) have been positively confirmed, his emphatic allegiance to America’s brand of White supremacist thinking is being selectively ignored.

The US ideological component is interestingly rarely mentioned in relation to Brevik’s politics and you should be asking yourself why. Very few foreign observers would try to refute that the United States is currently the world leader in popular racism although most mainstream US citizens and residents will vociferously argue the reverse. No matter, American conservatives regularly and treacherously perpetuate the false myth of an organised left-wing/Islamic extremist alliance against the entire White world population all day long. The craziness is now so embedded that socially conservative politicians, pundits, clerics and politicians, both White and non-White, are finding it necessary to ride the wave of populist racism if they intend to stay socially relevant.

Europocentrism Revisited

This is a clear throwback to the melodramatic and quasi-religious whinings of traditional Euro-American White Power terrorist organisations such as the Ku Klux Klan and the ‘respectable’ Bible-thumping bigots who populate the membership of John Birch Society. And Anders Breivik is known to have travelled, (and sought surgical services) to the United States where he hoped to make personal contact with professional Islamophobes such as the ‘Ground Zero Mosque’ maven Pamela Geller, (who is doing everything possible to refute any link between them) American White supremacist Christian militia extremist groups like the Army of God and the belligerent members of the pro-corporatist Tea Party. If you have the stomach and the time for it, try reading some of Breivik’s published Christian Übermensch manifesto, his 1,500-page statement regarding his admiration for the Americans and the conservative Christian movement. In his own words he makes it plain that the US is his main inspiration and that he was certain American fascists would approve of his ideas:

‘A majority of Europeans love the U.S….just like a majority of Europeans support Israel’s fight against Jihad. But considering the fact that 80-90% of the media + politicians ‘officially’ support Cultural Communist views it’s only natural that the coverage is extremely biased’.

Now, where have we heard this line before? Taking his cues from the American fascist nut-cases he likes so much, Breivik parrots the groundless fib that liberal bias in the mainstream media distorts the ‘truth’ of White Christian superiority and the threat of Islamic infiltration. A charge that makes little sense considering that the US media industry is a field hopelessly overloaded with stiff, conservative-minded simpletons who do little but intentionally report misleading and contradictory information to serve the extant corporate interest. This is incontestable. Simply look at the ownership of the major news providers and see for yourself who actually ‘owns’ the media. Under such obviously parochial conditions the concept of ‘truth’, as one UK official candidly put it, ‘can be a dubious proposition’.

How US conservatives can spin the Norway incident into a ‘warning’ about the evils of Islam in the White world only makes sense when you consider the actions of American extremists at home. Anders Breivik may very well have gained some of his inspiration from the rogues gallery of American Christian terrorists that have made the news headlines in recent years:

 Eric Robert Rudolph – The pro-Christian anti-abortion extremist responsible for numerous bomb attacks in the United States between 1996 and 1998 that killed two and injured at least 150 other people. He hoped that attacking the Olympic Centennial Park in Atlanta would lead to the end of the radical Marxist and homosexual ‘agenda’ in the US.

 Timothy McVeigh, Terry Nichols and Michael Fortier – Hard-line Christian Identity followers and militia movement members who planned and executed the bomb 1995 attack against the Alfred P. Murrah Building in Oklahoma City.

 Byron Williams – Inspired by the conspiracy theories endorsed by right-wing conservatives such as Glenn Beck, this unemployed carpenter donned body protection, loaded his mother’s vehicle with automatic weapons (loaded with armor-piercing rounds) and headed off with the expressed intent of killing of progressives in liberal San Francisco. After he survived an extended fire-fight with the California Highway Patrol who stopped his car for erratic driving, Williams readily admitted that he wanted to start a revolution by ‘Killing people of importance at the Tides Foundation and the ACLU’.

 George Sodini – A devout Christian upset with the Obama election and his belief that: ‘Black dudes have thier choice of best white hoez….’ decided to take three loaded weapons into a Pennsylvania dance class and shoot wildly after he shut off the lights. He killed three women and severely wounded nine other people before killing himself.

 James W. Von Brunn – A lifelong White supremacist and cold-blooded Judeophobe, Von Brunn led a lone armed assault against the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington DC in 2009 that killed an African-American security guard. Later, when US President Barack Obama spoke of the need to ‘remain vigilant against anti-Semitism and prejudice in all its forms’, he failed to mention that Von Brunn’s racism was not limited to Jews.

This is far from a complete list. I could have added minor White Power superstars like Christian terrorist Scott Roeder who murdered the well-respected Dr. George Tiller while he was in church, or the seditious ‘Hutaree Group’, a ‘Christian Warrior’ militia outfit accused of conspiring to commit acts of violence against their local law enforcement department. And of course there are the ‘patriotic’ anti-immigrant ‘Nativist’ goons of the Minuteman Project, Inc., the self-ordaining racial separatists of the Phineas Priesthood and the Council of Conservative Citizens who would prefer it if the planet was only populated by White Christian heterosexuals and women like Ann Coulter. I also left out the murders of radio chat-show host Alan Berg by the White Power terrorist group, The Order and of African immigrantMulugeta Seraw by neo-Nazi ‘boneheads’ in Portland, Oregon. I even could go further by citing how the Ruby Ridge incident did much to help fertilize the notion that White racists in American deserve sympathy too and other underreported stories detailing the religious far-right’s reach in the United States. but in spite of all this documented violence you will be hard pressed to find major news services, in English, willing to do objective, investigative reporting on these issues.

Earlier this month I presented an editorial entitled, ‘Why the Time to Dismantle Edward Bernay’s Corporatist Propaganda Paradigm is Now… ’ laying forth a reasoned case for why the organised left should get off its befuddled arse and start aggressively challenging the legal and moral credibility of Rupert Murdoch and his fascist-friendly international media empire. Like any other sober political analyst paying attention to the rise of Europocentric paranoia and the gross inequalities of the never ending class-struggle, I fully expected Murdoch’s News Corp and the UK Tories to deny everything and take responsibility for absolutely nothing.

And true to form they did just that and were allowed to feign total ignorance to the inner workings of their own media organisation. Moreover, they provided a functional example for their American executives to follow as they actively downplay the severity of the wiretapping of 911 victim families phone calls in the US with mobile devices provided to them by News Corp employees.

Mainstream politicians, journalists and academics are consciously turning a blind eye to the rise of pro-White supremacist/Christian fascism in their nations while at the very same time they capitalise upon the social bad-jacketing of non-European ethnic and cultural groups. Occasionally this is intelligently discussed in fair terms, but the fact remains that the victims of discrimination in Europe and the Americas are the same ethnic and cultural groups that have been demonised in European and Euro-settler social tradition, religion and law for centuries.

This dynamic however is rarely discussed at length because to do so would be a self-convicting acknowledgement that xenophobia in the White world is an undeniable fact of life. Further, such an admission would empirically unshroud the reality that White racial perspectives and prejudices undoubtedly remain to be the primary reason why the world is in the shape it is.

The popular post-modernist argument that ‘all oppression is the same everywhere and in every circumstance’ is a Europocentric deception. It suggests a sociopolitical, educational and economic equality amongst all people that does not exist. It flatly denies the harsh realities of White Power, its hatreds, its inconsistencies and its long and sordid history of violence against those they declare to be feeble and powerless. It is also a blatant insult to the basic humanity of the victims who have generally been convinced that it is proper and noble to acquiesce quietly to their own disenfranchisement. This of course is not by accident. It is by calculated design. White society is not ignorant of the routine stresses that demoralise the hearts and minds of the non-European world. It simply masquerades institutional marginalisation and exploitation as the normative division between the better and the worse amongst human society.

And the problem is everywhere and anywhere you may care to look. Worldwide, the struggle between human dignity and the stubborn persistence of White racist advocacy, religious violence and economic robbery continues unabated by modern liberalism or common sense. Those of us who realise that our political, social and psychological under-development is the direct result of our struggle against racialism understand that have a great deal to do in terms of standing firm during these difficult times. We are not swayed by the pretty talk of the establishment or Barack Obama’s skin colour.

We live with the gross indignity of White racism and its by-products every day of our lives. What’s worse, every White person in the Americas is fully aware of this reality, but only a precious few are prepared to do more than simply wax philosophical about it.

There is a reason for this and it is important that we understand the issue fully for what it is. Peer pressure is a very powerful thing. And when decent White folks stand up to White racism they often place themselves at considerable social and physical risk. White people who are not shy about their anti-racism can experience rejection, insult and sometimes violent retaliations from family, lifelong friends and other Whites who object to their ‘cultural’ and/or racial dissent. This is sometimes so damaging emotionally that people who do indeed believe ethnic equality may decide to either stay ‘in the closet’ about their feelings or, they may even pretend to ‘go along’ with the traditional attitudes as a means of social survival. Even for ‘good’ White people, the risk of being socially marginalised as a ‘Nigger Lover’ is simply too much to deal with when it is easier to simply acquiesce to the mainstream and agree that White’s have an inherent God-given ‘right to rule’.

And whether White people in the US, UK or Israel want to accept it or not, they are all to an individual actually profiting from non-White social and political disenfranchisement and genocide. Forget about the hypocritical statements made by US Justice Robert Jackson as he sat in judgment of German Nazis while his own country was still eliminating Native Americans to steal their lands and brutalising African people for profit and sport. The fact is, White supremacist attitudes, Europocentric power and unearned White privilege are the end results of racist imposition and belligerence, not the assumed frailties of the chosen victims. White power is a lot like the Christian concept of the Devil in that it claims it does not exist, yet it informs everything that occurs in national, international and inter-cultural relations. And if you dare tell the truth, the way Brazil’s former president Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva did when he correctly pointed out that the international financial crisis is entirely the fault of the White people who really control what happens in the world, expect to be painted as a reverse-racist who despises ‘civilisation’ itself:

‘This crisis was caused by the irrational behaviour of white people with blue eyes, who before the crisis appeared to know everything and now demonstrate that they know nothing. I do not know any black or indigenous bankers so I can only say [it is wrong] that this part of mankind which is victimized more than any other should pay for the crisis.’

– Lula da Silva

European conservatives took great offense to this but what could they really say? He was spot-on with his analysis and moreover, he was using the apologetics of White supremacy to effectively support his statement. The concept of White racial and cultural superiority isn’t his idea, its the most elemental argument presented by the ever-dominating White male power structure. It is also the primary fundamental hypocrisy of White racist philosophy. If the White man is the only cultural and ‘racial’ entity on Earth that has ever produced anything of consequence, this means that White society must also accept its central role in all that is wrong with the world they assert they alone have created.

Rational Alternatives to Manifest Destiny

The rise of the far-right is not simply a populist response to non-White immigration and modern religious and ethnic tolerance in the west. It is an engineered sociopolitical phenomenon created, financed and directed by the economic and social upper-classes of continental Europe and their corporate Euro-settler offshoots in the Americas and Australasia. And while ‘Old Europe’, (as former US Vice-President Richard Cheney rudely put it) is still a very important player internationally, the real bulk of actionable world power rests squarely within the intellectual domain of the United States which has occupied this exclusive position since the end of World War Two. Think beyond Bretton Woods, which is still important, and ask yourself why the literate world chooses to believe that the US is a bastion of democracy and human rights.

Are the educated around the world not cognizant of what is happening in occupied Iraq and Afghanistan? Of course we are. It is virtually impossible to avoid the ‘designated information’ streamed to the masses about the glorious mission to bring ‘freedom and democracy’ to the Arab world. Are we ignorant of the overt oppression and covert repression of Indigenous peoples, the African population, Spanish-speaking immigrants, political dissenters and religious minorities in the Americas? No, we are not ignorant of these human rights abuses but we are willing to turn a blind eye because the perpetrators are White. As long as the victims are not White Christians or Ashkenazi claimants to the Holy Lands, all forms of injustice to the human dignity of those deemed unworthy of being regarded as ‘legitimate Europeans’ will be justified in deed, faith and the written word as sanctioned by the great Aryan deity of Providence.

This sad state of affairs is of course helpful to Judeo-Christian industrialists and bankers, but it is bad business for those whom they regularly rob, rape and pillage without mercy in the name of profit and Europocentric hegemony. This is why understanding the White nationalist duo-doctrine of American Exceptionalism and Christian fundamentalism is vital if one is to make any sense out of what has happened in Norway. While the United States did not invent White racist religiously-sanctioned philosophy or violence, it certainly has perfected its practise and political apologia like no other society in history. And the United States is unique amongst the Euro-settler nations in that its institutional practise of ethnic hierarchy, marginalisation and racial terrorism are regarded as normal, if not benevolent, for those who are subjected to it.

And understand this too if nothing else, Europe’s irrational intellectual belief in its own supremacy and cultural superlative will serve to be the factors that will bring about its eventual downfall. Like Apartheid is South Africa, White Power simply cannot last. Just do the math. Whether the situation is in Aotearoa (New Zealand) or Occupied Palestine, Europeans are not a racial majority anywhere outside of Europe, (except for maybe Argentina). Ignore the usual multicultural arguments for a moment and just deal with basic numbers. Racism in any form is a foolish and black-hearted practise, but White racism in particular is completely daft and totally unrealistic. If White folks were smart, they would be eagerly finding ways to work along with non-European folks rather than seeking ways to exploit them.

And despite the wacky suspicions of the insecure, people of colour, even after centuries of mistreatment and neglect, still do not hate White people simply because they are ‘White’. We hate the oppression and we hate the arrogance. If this were not the case, non-White feuds against Europeans would be a very regular occurrence all around the world. It simply isn’t happening. Outside of a few very well publicised incidents, non-Whites have been pretty forgiving. And although ‘normal’ people are finding ways to adjust to the new circumstances, the current trend we are witnessing of compulsive White racialism is clearly reactionary. It is a symptom of the White world’s psychological failure to come to grips with a decaying system of monolithic Europocentric authoritarian domination.

Not that the major press agencies, celebrity psychologists or mainstream politicians report on it much, but conservative folks are frankly just a pitiful rabble of sad, insecure little sods afraid of the world their prejudices made out of whole cloth. And on that basis alone they should not be feared. Just like the American, (and now Canadian and Australian) Ku Klux Klan, the violence exhibited by White conservatives only betrays them. It just proves just how afraid they really are of things that logically challenge their closed-minded perspective of the world.

Their childish fear of non-Whites, Catholics, homosexuals, Jews and anyone else who crosses them is unfortunate. Its also a clear and easily readable indicator of just how deep set and how self-immolating such hatred is for those that hold on to such ideas. Bigots of any colour are mentally ill, and Whites who practise race-ism are consciously vile. There is a very big difference between the two, disliking someone because of their ethnicity is bias, having the social power to actualise that bias is something else entirely.

Ignore the conscious liars and the loony songbirds of the conservative and neo-Confederate media lobby, Anders Behring Breivik, the devout Christian fascist terrorist who has openly admitted to planning and executing the recent attacks against organised leftists in Norway is one of theirs. They own this tragedy and we should not allow them any leeway to disassociate their politics or their intentional falsehoods from what has happened. And most importantly, we must not let Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp be exempted from blame for pressing the bigotry button the moment they found out that Oslo was burning in the name of the risen Christ.

Despite the obvious cognitive and social setbacks of racialist thinking, the important business of Europocentric, pro-Christian, ultra-conservative and neo-Confederate propaganda will roll along. Even in the face of extreme hypocrisy, White supremacist attitudes and terrorism can always be assured of a warm and welcoming reception from the people who bring us the news and from those who claim to serve us politically. This is a shame and people of goodwill must do more than just politely ignore such issues.

Racism is everyone’s problem. And the problem of White nationalism and racist violence will not go away unless we all, all of us, work earnesty to expose and ridicule these attitudes and the movements that fuel them. Violence is the refuge of the weak-minded, so let’s educate them, and ourselves, by taking the fight to another level. When we expose the roots of Eurpocentric ethnic bias we do more than just fight racism, we get to the heart of the unfair exploitation that threatens us all. Even the bigots.

After Vlakplaas, I think we all deserve better than this.

– TheAngryindian

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evilwickedme · 7 years

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I'm not Jewish but I had a question about anti-Semitism. If you're not up for the emotional labor of answering that's cool but I saw a post that compared seeing the Wonder Woman movie to supporting facism and that seemed wrong to me, but I'm not sure I know enough about the nuances of the situation to express why. I was wondering if you could help me understand if that's a bad comparison and why? If not I totally understand.

hey anon, great question. short answer: yes. long answer: abso-fucking-lutely. longer answer:

hell yeah, comparing seeing the wonder woman movie to supporting fascism is terrible. here are a list of posts I’ve seen in this context:

a literal blood libel on gal gadot, comparing the way she looks at chris pine to the way she might look at palestinian children before she eats them

the amount of times I’ve seen people say she supports killing palestinians because she opposes hamas, or saying she was a combat soldier, if I had one cent for every time I’d probably get a seven-digit check along with my actual paycheck on monday

comparing israel to the apartheid, fascism, or the nazis isn’t new, but hey, it’s always good to see it on my dash, ffs

so here’s why all of that is fucking bullshit.

1. we’re going to start with the convenient timing of all of this. see, you may not remember this, but gal has already been wonder woman before - in the dc film batman vs. superman. arguably, one of the worst films of all time, but she still had a relatively large part in it, appearing in at least a quarter of the movie’s scenes if not more. she also had a large part in a fast & furious movie, which I haven’t watched, so I can give no commentary on it. and in that movie earlier this year, keeping up with the joneses. all of these movies had moderate to starring roles by our favorite amazon, gal gadot. all of them went unbanned in arab countries, unprotested by palestinians and tumblr and the antisemitic left. would you like to guess why?

see, here is this movie, starring a woman, who is good, and strong, in that order, who saves the day, who isn’t sexualized, who is a goddamn hero, who isn’t joss-whedon “strong” but rather compassionate AND goddamn powerful. and imo - and other people on this agree with me - that fucking scares people.

people don’t want to support wonder woman. but since there’s nothing wrong with the movie itself - sans the car that appeared out of nowhere - they have to find something else to latch onto. and oh, how convenient, gal gadot is in this movie, and she’s jewish and israeli, so she’s double evil, let’s get people to avoid this movie that way.

to clarify, I don’t think everybody doing this is doing it maliciously. I think it’s understandable for a palestinian to not want to go see a movie with an israeli in it. especially if they’re told that gal gadot was a combat soldier who killed palestianians herself, who wanted to join and joined willingly. it’s understandable if somebody who doesn’t actually know much about the situation - who gets all their information about israel from tumblr and other leftists gentiles - hears the literal lies and antisemitic bullshit and believes it, because, funnily enough, the sjw movement has completely skipped us and many times fucked jewish people over. so again, it’s understandable. but there’s a reason the controversy is only surrounding the movie led by a woman who is actually everything tumblr claims to want - and that is plain old sexism.

2. let’s address the idf, mmkay? the idf is mandatory service for all citizens. that’s right! every 11th and 12th grader in israel misses at least a dozen days of school to go to various army bases till they decide where you’re going to go once you enlist. some people, like myself, get a special permit not to enlist - but it is very, very rare, and very difficult to obtain even if you have good reason for it - they dragged me around for a whole year, from city to city, until they finally issued me mine. not enlisting means jail otherwise. so gal gadot enlisted in 2004 when she was 18, like the rest of us, sure. but she didn’t choose to. and she didn’t join the combatant forces. she didn’t even go to the ever-popular intelligence units. she was a fitness instructor. she helped people get in shape. (sidenote: גל, אם את רוצה לעזור לי להכנס לכושר, תשלחי לי הודעה.) in addition, gal gadot is a fierce feminist, who shows up to premiers in flats cause her back hurts, who posts pictures of herself with her husband wearing no make up, who became wonder woman for her daughter.

but what about that three year old facebook post???? you mean, the one where she writes she supports the israeli troops in their efforts against hamas? people write about it as if it’s one of many posts she’s written about killing innocent palestinians. and just to clarify: that’s the only fucking post. and hamas is internationally recognized as a terrorist organization. it uses human shields and schools as centers for their activity on purpose. saying you’re angry at her for supporting her troops - as if you’d say anything like that to a retired american soldier for saying they support their troops, as if you’d dare - in the face of a battle with a literal terrorist organization - what could possibly go through anybody’s head that would make that sentence logical.

not to mention, she’s said repeatedly that she wished there was no need for the idf, that she wished that there could be peace. hey, I feel the same way. but the political situation doesn’t work like that. and so she supported eliminating hamas, a terrorist organization, and people actually hated her for it. literally what the fuck.

3. is israel apartheid or fascist? no. does it have problems with racism, and serious problems at that? hell yes. but we’re not fucking apartheid.

4. and finally: the antisemitism. because… dear god, the antisemitism. I’m going to break this down from the most “innocent” to the absolute worst.

wonder woman is white feminism - jewish. people. aren’t. white. they can be converts, or identify as white for other reasons - but antisemitism is racism against jews, aight? is that clear? the white/poc dynamic that is the common theory in america right now doesn’t work with jewish people. pale ashkenazis like gal gadot are not poc, but not white either, because white people were our oppressors for literally thousands of years, they raped us and killed us, and equating us with our oppressors is fucking antisemitic. see the first link for more detail on that.

a blood libel is a blood libel is a blood libel. for those of you who don’t know, blood libels are among the oldest forms of antisemitism. a blood libel is an accusation, specifically against jews, of killing non-jews, with little to no evidence, as an excuse to prosecute jewish people and kill them. the most common form is the claim that jewish people kill children, either to serve the devil, to use their blood for a matza or otherwise religious sacrifice, or even for fun. when searching for the blood libel I had seen - which thankfully, I couldn’t find - I found this post. this is an example of a blood libel torn apart. and just to clarify, ffs: yeah, claiming she killed palestinians and put notches on her gun is fucking antisemitic, especially when she did none of the above. it’s a classic blood libel, it’s literally garbage, and don’t fucking perpetuate it.

my personal favorite antisemitic trope is the elders of zion. saying every jewish person or israeli has connections to the people who secretly control everything!!!!! we’ve never been oppressed, we’re just pretending to be while secretly running the antisemitic media, the antisemitic american government, and of course, the ever popular antisemitic idea we run the banks!!!!!!!!!!!!!! yay!!!!!!!!!! here’s a secret: gal gadot, beyond voting, has no connection to the israeli government, or to any policies it has, racist or otherwise. she’s an actress, for god’s sake.

and the worst of it. comparing israel to nazis. comparing jews to nazis. comparing the magen david (aka the jewish star) to a fucking swastika. all the height of antisemitism. people on this site so conveniently forget that the nazis targeted jews more than any other group, that we still haven’t reached pre-wwii numbers, that around half of all jews worldwide live in israel, and that, ffs, we aren’t a fascist government, we’re the only true democracy in the middle east. call it pinkwashing or brainwashing, call it whatever you like, I call it antisemitism, because we’re not fascist, and we’re definitely not fucking nazis.

and once again, I’d like to remind you that even though I myself am open to talking about my opinions cause I can’t fucking shut up, asking every jewish person to talk about israel and its actions is fucking racist as fuck.

tumblr: don’t ask every muslim person to immediately denounce isis, a terrorist organization that literally kills other muslims!!!

jews: aight, don’t ask us to denounce the only place where it’s even a little safe to be jewish -

tumblr: what???? no!!!! no way!!! here’s a jewish person, if you’re not explicitly for the destruction of israel and extremely vocal about it, you’re literal garbage!!!!

essentially.

anyway, so to summarize: yes, anon, your instinct was right. wonder woman is feminist as fuck, intersectional as fuck, and a great fucking movie which I’ve already seen twice, and not going to see it because of gal gadot, who is a literal sweetheart, makes me go:

#antisemitism #wonder woman #ww #wonder woman movie #dc #jewish #judaism #ip conflict #israel #anonymous #ask #(i have a lot of jewish memes. maybe i should make a post.)#jew tag

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halas1 · 7 years

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Searching for Skill

It is interesting to consider the difference between a child’s state of play and how the same child could be taught music: Whereas in play, one can obtain a unique skill based around his/her interest and natural proclivities, the run-of-the-mill musical training begs to unify the subjects and assumes a non-agile, goal oriented practice. And whereas a musical child left to his own devices could eventually become an interesting non-idiomatic player, the same child could find the ‘one size fits all’ attitude constraining if he were to be trained in that manner. That child is now that man and our 32nd guest on Experimental Israel: Mr. Adam Scheflan.

Scheflan, a maverick guitar and bass player and all round performer/producer, comes from a rigorous background. Bringing to mind our former guest, Shmil Frankel, Scheflan too is a product of long years of training, and indeed like Frankel, Scheflan too started noticing a growing affinity with the bizarre in music he was listening to from an early age. From rock and pop through straight jazz and then combining all of the above in his current practice. Scheflan, in current years, is slowly moving from the performer/producer slot towards the sole creator. And when musing on creation, Scheflan veers more often than not towards the new, open and indeed experimental.

Mainly occupied with the ‘precision’ of ideas these days, Scheflan explains that not only the through composed, but also spontaneous ideas require their full extraction. “This is the artist’s true responsibility”, he claims. We discuss the Kutiman Orchestra, a project Scheflan takes part in as hired musician, and even with this type of funk-based song writing, Scheflan hails the bandleader, Kutiman, as someone who has managed to make retro materials without being kitschy or self indulgent; indeed traits Scheflan equates with responsibility. “The question is whether you are marking something or doing it”, Says Scheflan… “Marking is easy, my 6 year old kid can mark an experimental performance pretty accurately, however doing requires understanding the historical context of what you’re playing. Responsibility entails musicality and cohesiveness”. Reflecting on our own collaboration in ‘Spotlight’, Scheflan continues and remarks that any piece or process requires, at the very least, a performer’s query as to the layered meanings it might have, and this requires time and work. “The written score is tantamount to a groove – it opens up the sphere for decisions. And this is the true experiment – whether one can make informed and musical decisions based on all the skill and knowledge s/he or has at hand”.

Scheflan brings to mind yet another past guest, Alex Drool, who claimed that his musical shortcomings were the basis of his entire career trajectory. In his case, it was a coupling of what he terms ‘lack of ability’, coupled with incessant boredom that brought him to his current standing. With Scheflan there’s a twist added to this story: A self-proclaimed rock and pop kid turns into a failed straight jazz musician as a teen. He recalls teachers of his renowned music high school creating a divide between the first and second tier jazz students. Being perceived second tier actually liberated Scheflan, as he recognized the opportunity to focus on other, perhaps more personal, sides of himself. Not knowing how to practice or read scores properly actually created room for a more intense listening and defining of tastes. These tastes, continues Scheflan, were in many cases consequences of mixing with his peer group and recognizing their influences. Shortly after, Scheflan was already a member of PEZZ, a legendary and (for now) disbanded super group, where he took on a first shot at total improvisation. Thus, claims of not being really good at any skill yet knowing what he likes lead Adam Scheflan to a mishmash of talents, all devised mainly through experimentation.

However, Scheflan also recognised the need for skill early on. As an example he mentions his first forays into free improvisation with Harold Rubin, Daniel Sarid and Haggai Fershtman, all of who were steeped in the jazz tradition. Through these meetings he became aware of the need to “feel the ground” whilst searching for sound, or something else. And the skill referred to is not a technical know-how – if anything, claims Scheflan: “…this technicality can open up the sphere for many hacks; why does an experiment always require the ceremony? Must the flux of intention be stamped upon the listener at every instance? Why do we always seem to aim for an exploration from A to B, rather than present shorter forms? There are, no doubt, creators that require a grand canvass, Such as Iancu Dumitrescu or Ana-Maria Avram, however this becomes immediately evident upon hearing their music. Compare that to the lone ego calling ‘me me me’ within a collective experience”. Indeed, as Scheflan sees it, the skill referred to is a comingling of technical ability, listening and contextualisation. “In a context where it is so easy to fake a noise piece to an expert audience, yet even the lay-listener is able to note a bad Mozart performance, we are confronted with a problem. In free music, only the performer knows what the true direction is”. This is, according to Scheflan, both this music’s advantage, and shortcoming.

So how does one do it? Well, in Schefaln’s case it requires arriving attuned to the performance, and be aware of the possible frames in which he might be working: “With frames, you know more or less what you are going to get”; and the frame could literally be anything from style to direction, etc. More so, where free music and improvisation are concerned, Scheflan attempts to ease the audience’s scepticism regarding the performer’s ability. In fact, the experimentation in many cases, claims Scheflan, is the listener’s. Which is why it is important to train in front of an audience: “…they bring in the element of commitment, of having received what they deserve, of being presented with that which every person wants when they leave their home in favour for a cultural experience – to be rocked”! Scheflan takes the opposite stance to my claim that this requires a charitable audience. He claims that it requires charitable musicians, as mostly audiences are quick to write off an experience, or react to a moving experience in an unforeseeable fashion. But the stirring of emotions is of the essence, no matter the reaction. Scheflan believes that whatever one might present to an audience, this has to be experiential music from artists who understand their placement on a long historical trajectory. “If it isn’t experiential, then we get dangerously close to that which experimentalism is partially to blame for, namely throwing a blanket over the listeners eyes and masturbating. And then there’s no communication, no journey, no nothing. For people outside the genre it is usually achingly clear when someone is being unauthentic or doesn’t understand their genre top to bottom, but within the playing field one sometimes gets lost”.

To my questions regarding locality, Scheflan muses: “There is definitely a shift in recent years in Israel. When I started out playing in the Harold Rubin circle at Ha’gada Hasmalit, I was constantly eyeing that coming in from Jerusalem. It seemed as if whilst we were still at jazz, they were doing abstract noise and electronics… Now, due to the Levontin and many other such venues, much of this has come to Tel Aviv as well… Israeli experimentalism doesn’t have a sound or character yet, but we’re definitely experiencing a boom”. But Scheflan also claims that the sound in Israel, mainly due to the country’s size, is a bit conservative: “Working in the same circles creates conservatism. Searching outside your immediate comfort zone and learning from others negates conservatism. Those active in avant-garde in Israel are something of a privileged elite. When this opens up to the periphery, the scene will become meatier”. And in this context, I query, what could be deemed the difference between the centre and the periphery? Scheflans immediate response: “knowledge”… “I have had the opportunity to be exposed, which in turn allowed me to explore and then become part of something”.

However, when thinking of own solo creations, Scheflan claims he is still trying to figure out what it is he can offer the world. Ever a “fan boy” of sound – his method was following sounds he was interested with. When looking for his own sound, he actively practices it the only way he claims to know how – like a performer.

#Adam Scheflan #Experimental Israel #Ophir Ilzetzki #Guitar

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rebeccahpedersen · 8 years

Text

Buying A Former Marijuana Grow-Op As Your Primary Residence (Pt2)

TorontoRealtyBlog

You know the expression, “Good things come to those that wait”?

There couldn’t possibly be a more incorrect way to describe being a buyer in the 2017 Toronto real estate market.

Those that wait either end up paying more for a semi than they could have paid for a detached a year earlier, or get priced out of the market entirely.

Waiting intentionally gets you nowhere. But once in a while, you get somewhere after a while, by complete fluke…

What is marijuana anyways?

And why is it illegal?

We Canadians think it’s insane that our neighbours south of the border give out jail time for possession of a gram of herb, but they can walk a loaded handgun through a school gym class…

I think that if the U.S. government was able to regulate, and tax, the sale of marijuana, it would be a no-brainer.

Same goes for Canada. I never met a Liberal government that didn’t love a tax! Figure out how to profit from it, and the Liberals will make possession of marijuana legal.

In 2006, I went on a journey with my father and my brother, that saw us climb to Base Camp at Mount Everest, but then take a short side-trip to Bhutan.

I had never even heard of Bhutan until my Dad told us we were going.

I’ll never forget, driving from the airport (which was the size of your house) to the hotel, and you could see fields of marijuana from the window.

I’m not joking.

I’ve just gone into my archives, check this out – this is the view from where we pulled the car over:

Gorgeous, eh?

And then this is what was at our feet:

There are literally fields of marijuana, growing in the wild.

Our guide told us that it grows “like a weed.”

Hence one of the many reasons why it’s referred to as “weed.”

It seemed to come in all different shapes, sizes, and colours.

That classic light-green look above, and then something like this below, which shows the typical light-green leaves, but on a redwood stem that you’d expect to find on a maple tree:

We took hundreds of photos of wild marijuana on this trip.

Our guide kept asking us, “What is the fascination with this weed?”

We told him that back home, it was like a currency. It had value.

He said, “It’s illegal to own it here.”

That made no sense! It was growing wild everywhere, but it was illegal to own it? And what was the value like, given it was readily available in fields as far as the eye could see?

“It has no magic powers, like yours back home. It does not make you feel good.”

He went on to tell us all about the male and female marijuanas, how they’re born, how they grow, what metabolites they contained, etc.

For a guy that didn’t use it, didn’t own it, and claimed it was illegal to possess it, our guide sure knew a lot about it!

On Monday, I told you the story of my buyer clients, Duncan and Amanda, who were having a tough time finding a home that suited their needs, and was within their price range (like every buyer out there), but who stumbled upon a house that was priced like we were in the spring of 2014, only to find out that it was used as a marijuana grow-op thirteen years earlier.

When we left off, I told you that we had decided to make an offer.

And we did.

Our offer was conditional on financing and home inspection, since we needed to know if there was anything wrong with this house, but more importantly, we needed to know if a lender out there would finance it!

I knew it was a long shot, but it was a shot I was willing to take.

I don’t generally seek out the near-possible, but I have faith in my “team.”

I often tell my clients that I have spent 13 years surrounding myself with people who I know and trust. My mortgage broker, home inspector, lawyer, stager, painter – if you need it, I have a guy or a gal for it.

And I knew that while most buyers wouldn’t want to own a “former grow-op,” and most agents would tell the buyers it’s impossible to finance, this was a situation we could use to our advantage.

As I said on Monday, this house was listed at $800,000, but was worth, in my opinion, well in excess of $900,000.

We didn’t waste any time with the offer – we made it an hour after seeing the house, threw the full $800,000 list price at them, and gave them until midnight.

We could have tried to work the price down under $800,000, but it was simply a risk-reward equation that we didn’t like.

I had no doubt that somebody else could try to buy this house. They could outbid us, and tie it up conditionally, but they would never get financing. So I wasn’t afraid of losing the house, but I was afraid of the house being tied up for two weeks.

The house had also just been reduced by $50,000 that afternoon. Now would be the least likely time for the seller to negotiate.

So while we could have tried to get the house for $790,000 or $795,000, we couldn’t have put the midnight gun to their head, and I thought another offer would come in by the next day.

We bought the property, conditionally, and yet there was still a hint of excitement in the air.

I called Duncan to tell him, and he laughed. Hard. The classic Duncan-cackle that I’ve been hearing since 1985.

“Dave, one day we’re gonna be sitting around like two old men, and you’ll say, ‘Hey man, remember the time I sold you that grow-op?’”

At least we could laugh about it! We had a tall order ahead of us.

And we were setting ourselves up for disappointment too.

We had a 1% chance of getting this deal firmed up, and we knew that.

I asked my mortgage broker well in advance if we could get financing on a former grow-op, and he said, “Next to impossible.”

Everybody in my office thought I was nuts.

But we got the ball rolling, and booked a home inspection for two days later.

I only use Gordon Mathieu from Carson Dunlop. He is, in my opinion, the most knowledgeable inspector working in the city today. I’ve probably used Gordon a hundred times, and I trust him emphatically.

When Gordon likes something, he’ll glow about it. And when Gordon doesn’t like something, he takes it personally. It’s like every house out there, is his own.

We spent three hours at the house, and Gordon was raving about it. Not only did we find absolutely no evidence of mold, water damage, or basically anything wrong with this house (other than the 35-year-old furnace), but Gordon pointed out many of the super-adequacies, or features of the home that were built above and beyond the building code, or how it’s done today.

“The way it’s built” changes with the years, whether it’s the style, the aesthetic, or the materials. Look at some of the detail in the beautiful old buildings in downtown Toronto, and then look at the glass towers we see today.

Gordon pointed out many of the features of the home that were built better in the late-1970’s than they are today.

Overall, he loved the house. The report checked out, and we even added the thermal imaging (which few people do), just to be safe.

The sellers had done an Indoor Air Quality Inspection Report through EnviroSolve Canada – a 22-page report, which concluded that there were was no hidden mold growth within the wall or ceiling cavities of the home that were affecting indoor air quality.

Armed with these two important pieces of evidence, it was time to approach the lenders.

Just for good measure, however, I added a third bit of data, which I simply called logic.

I drafted an email that I knew my mortgage broker would forward to the lenders, which laid out the nuts and bolts.

The house, as I explained, was not a “former grow-op.” It was a “former, former grow-op.”

The house was used as a grow-op for a few months back in 2002. That was it.

The house was now inhabited by a family of four, who had been living here for thirteen years with no issues.

The basement, which is where the plants were grown, was completely gutted and renovated in 2003.

So was this really a “former grow-op?” Was it really a concern?

Or was this just stigma on paper?

As somebody pointed out in the comments section on Monday, any sigma like this must be disclosed forever. When my clients go to sell in 20-30 years, they’ll have to disclose this too.

So while the fact that this house was used as a grow-op in 2002-2003 had to be disclosed out of necessity, was it really applicable or important in 2017? Or was it just a formality?

We started going to the lenders, and we got shot down left, right, and centre.

The bank that held the current mortgage, turned us down, which was shocking.

Imagine that! The very bank that currently holds a mortgage on the property, won’t lend us the money. Does that make sense to you?

The owners got a mortgage in 2003, renewed in 2008, and renewed again in 2013 – all three times, with no problems.

Now we were talking to the same lender, a Big-5 Bank, who was saying, “no.”

We talked to Big-5 Banks, credit unions, and monolines, but nobody wanted to touch it.

Then one credit union said they would lend, as a favour to my broker, but they wanted the following:

-2003 police report -2003 mold remediation report -2003 re-entry certificate -2003 environmental study -2017 home inspection -2017 air quality report -2017 environmental study -2017 appraisal

And I think that was it. Wait…..there might have been one or two other things.

But overall, the list was exhaustive.

And as I soon found out, there was no 2003 mold remediation report, since no mold was found, and none was remediated! There was no 2003 re-entry certificate issued, since this house wasn’t condemned or shut down by the police. There was no 2003 environmental study.

This “grow-op” wasn’t much of a grow-op after all. It was small-scale, short-lived, and made no impact on the house.

But the credit union wanted what they wanted, and we couldn’t get financing without it.

Now as you would probably assume from the tone of my story, and from the title of my blog, we did get financing on this property eventually.

Can you guess where we got it from?

A credit union?

A monoline?

An underground lender?

Nope.

We got financing from a Big-5 Bank.

I won’t say which one, just as I won’t name the bank that holds the current mortgage and turned us down.

But it wasn’t some fly-by-night, and it wasn’t a lender you’ve never heard of. In the end, it was a bank you know and trust.

And it was 100% due to my mortgage broker’s relationship with the underwriter.

Some of the lenders told us, “We’ll do 10,000 mortgages this year; we don’t need to do 10,001.” They saw this simply as a deal they wouldn’t touch, because of the stigma.

But the underwriter and the Big-5 bank we went to, knew my mortgage broker, and listened when he framed this deal as one that was just as good as any, if not better. The clients had 35% down, their mortgage application was top-notch, and they were brilliantly qualified. So what if the MLS listing had the words “grow-op” next to the date “2002.” We had enough to refute that, and more.

My mortgage broker’s relationship with this particular underwriter made this deal, and that’s something that no other broker had up his or her sleeve.

I’m sure somewhere out there, there’s another mortgage broker, with another relationship, with another underwriter, that could have got the deal done

But this was truly 1/100 from the start, and thanks to the people around me, we got it done.

We almost lost the deal at the last minute, however, when the on-the-ground “mortgage specialist,” who worked retail at my buyers’ branch of this Big-5 bank, refused to close his own pre-approval on the buyers. He told my clients, “There’s a rate hold on file, and it can’t be removed for four months. I’m really sorry.”

This would have meant that the underwriter my broker was working with couldn’t have approved the loan on her end, and we’d be without financing.

My mortgage broker sniffed this out quickly. He told my clients, “Put me on the phone with him, please,” and after a 30-second phone call, low-and-behold, the retail-rep said, “Oh, wait, I actually can closet this file, my mistake,” and that was that.

I’m all for getting business, but when somebody shows up at your door and says, “We got a broker to approve a deal that you never could have got approved, we’re going with him,” why try to deliberately get in their way? I’ve heard a lot of bad stories about mortgages and lenders at the retail level lately, but that’s a story for another day.

So there you have it, folks!

My clients bought a $900,000+ house for $800,000. In this crazy market!

Who’d have ever thought?

I can’t wait to be invited over for a summer pool party.

I really, really need to work on my Dad-bod…

The post Buying A Former Marijuana Grow-Op As Your Primary Residence (Pt2) appeared first on Toronto Real Estate Property Sales & Investments | Toronto Realty Blog by David Fleming.

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