Eidelberg explains why Islam is growing so fast

21 Comments / 21 Comments

1. I bow out of this thread because it is the only thing to do. The above quotations are so illogical, so far removed from actual historical record and experience, that I cannot begin to answer.

   I bow out also, but I must wonder whose history it is that you believe is history because I see statements of leader from any given era as part of the record. As far as the schism between the different varieties of collectivism, it does not make them different as far as being a collective group. They are merely different varieties of collectivism competing for power among themselves.

   To you I don’t know what I am talking about and to me you just don’t get it so we’ll end it here.

   Peace!

2. I have met the same situation on a British blog called Harrys Place.

   There their big hang-up is with the Serbs.

   I present evidence which is heavily sourced and is in fact unanswerable.

   The answer…You must be crazy to assert that the Serbs massacred nobody in Srebrenica. Is it not common knowledge, they assert.

   Invective is hurled at you and it becomes impossible to argue rationally.

   Read again some of the assertions in these extracts which Randy has produced above.

   Like this; and remember once more this was in answer to my specific question as to how Hitler took power in 1933 and you will note my query is ignored:

   So, now you create the solution to the problem that you had created earlier. This solution is called the anti-thesis. You finance a twisted megalomaniac by the name of Lenin to cook up a political dogma (based upon the ideas of Karl Marx…who was funded by European industrialists) that attacks your thesis and offers something as bad or worse in its place. (Sorry, but Comrade Lenin was worse than John D. Rockefeller.) After awhile, the masses reject the anti-thesis. You have the so-called “fall” of communism.

   But what is left? It is called the synthesis. What remains is what you planned for in the first place: world-wide socialism!

   This is the end of all learning and I feel embarrassed finding myself having to argue against this.

   But it has appeared on Israpundit, a site and place which are important to me, and there are very important people reading this.

   The above is a kind of conspiracy theory extraordinaire. But more than that it is a vehicle for pure undiluted prejudice.

   And I cannot argue further on this level!

3. Ted

   There is no argument with you on what you say but I would have thought it fairly obvious. You do not need to know many people to know that humans will seize on any old rubbish which is around and have done so in just about every historical era.

   But that is NOT the issue in these conflicts especially with Eidelberg and with Randy.

   Let me take a specific paragraph from the Eidelberg essay:

   Both Islam and Communism reject values intrinsic not only to liberal democracy, but also to Civilization, namely, the primacy of consent or persuasion in human affairs as opposed to the primacy of force or coercion. Both Islam and Communism therefore reject the civility associated with classical Greek philosophy (think of Plato’s dialogues). At the same time, both deny the Judeo-Christian concept of the sanctity of human life and of individual freedom.

   It is a very similar manouvre to lump Islam and Communism together and say they are the same.

   But why does he do this and why is his fire directed against what he calls “communism”.

   And in the above he posits the following as being characteristic of “communists”:

   The primacy of force and coercion

   Agasinst the will of the people.

   To what is he referring? What is the historical context? Is it Marx, Luxemburg, Lenin, Trotsky or Stalin…or all of them.

   This is my point in all of this. It is opossible and so easy to argue by using the “argument of assertion”.

   With the implication “Sure doesn’t everybody know…”

   This was why I decided to bring the discussion down to a specific period or a specific event. But not just any old event. I mean the accession to power of Hitler which had such an effect on your people Ted.

   Have you made a study of this? I threw down a challenge to Randy and you saw the results…absolutely pulled the wool over our eyes and refused the challenge.

   In the absence of ideas humans will pick up all kinds of stuff. That is what is happening with Randy. I do not know where he has studied but he does not seem to have the foggiest about what happened in 1933.

   Do you not Ted asee the extreme dangers in this method of Eidelberg and even more extreme in the case of Randy where he throws assertions about and cannot give a simple answer to his knowledge about the most pivotal moment in modern Jewish history.

   That is what I am arguing about. Eidelberg is slamming socialism and lumping it with Fascism.

   Strangely enopugh in the 1930s the Stalinist Communist Party of Germany as is well known had a similar programme for “action” agasinst Hitler. These idiots stated that the social democrats were social fascists and refuased to united against the Nazi menace.

   You have to learn the history of these movements, including the position of the Jewish movement at the time, all factions including the Zionists.

   Then having done that you can make your generalisations. >But not before! That way lies prejudices in the Eidelberg Randy Simon method.

   Yet there are many things I agree with in Eidelberg in his reading of the issues facing Israel from many quarters, and especially the attacks on religious Jews, which is an abomination.

   But who and what exactly are those people doing that? Has anybody traced their history? I do not think so!

4. Randy

   I bow out of this thread because it is the only thing to do. The above quotations are so illogical, so far removed from actual historical record and experience, that I cannot begin to answer.

   Except this.

   I consider any person who purports to support Zionism not to have made some kind of study of the historical events which led to Hitler taking power in 1933 very, very suspect (I mean their political position not them personally)

   Judging from the above I would say that you know nothing about the period since I deliberately posed my question in a very specific manner, because it my opinion that it is the specifics of history which nails the above prejudices.

   To do so you would have had to contend with the actual historical positions of bourgeois parties, social democratic parties, communist stalinist party, the writings of Leon Trotsky, (and the Fascists themselves of course,) in how they proposed contending with the Nazi menace.

   That you cannot do and will not do!

   Your method is severely anti-historical and essentially is a vehicle for prejudice.

   It is a method greatly to be feared by the Jewish people and all the rest of us whose future is bound up with that.

   Because for Nazis in 1933 you can easily substitute Islam today.

   Quite apart from the fact that it was in those months of 1933 that the Holocaust of the Jews was sealed.

   From that point on Hitler the racist was merely waiting his time.

   One point puzzles above others: Karl Marx in the pay of industrialists.

   Not very well then! Marx could hardly ever raise the rent on time. One of the poorest scholars the British Library has ever known in fact! I really have to laugh!

   The above is all too ridiculous. Ignore 1933 and every other period. Just label socialists and fascists as collectivists and say they are the same thing. Quite amazing!

5. Felix,
   Rather than taking all the time to put something together only to have you dismiss it as my unfounded opinion – to show the relation between the different varieties of collectivism I am going to let the fascist and socialist do it in their own words.

   As Ted stated, getting into economics is digressing somewhat from the issue of Eidelberg’s article, but I will make an exception, hopefully just this one time. (After submitting this much I will have to make a contribution to Israpundit to ease my conscience over the amount of server capacity used)

   Bernard Switalski has compiled a number of quotes from renowned socialist/communist/fascist and others during the time period being discussed:

   Roots of fascism…
   By Bernard Switalski, 18 April 2004

   The best way to learn the nature of fascism is from the fascists themselves. To wit….

   I am a Socialist, and a very different kind of Socialist from your rich friend, Count Reventlow. … What you understand by Socialism is nothing more than Marxism.
   Adolf Hitler, spoken to Otto Strasser, Berlin, May 21, 1930.

   We National Socialists are enemies, deadly enemies, of the present capitalist system with its exploitation of the economically weak … and we are resolved under all circumstances to destroy this system.
   Gregor Strasser, National Socialist theologian…

   When reading fascist theologians, one quickly realizes that fascists are as obsessively anti-capitalist as any Bolshevik or Social Democrat, and, during the 1920s and 30s, everybody knew it. For example, in the late 1930s, while in Spain during the civil war, George Orwell lamented at the fighting between fascists and socialists because, after all, Aren’t we all socialists?

   During the German election campaign in 1932, Hitler’s National Socialists ran against both Marxism and, the American system, or high capitalism, promising to take the best from each and create, a new socialist man.

   If classical liberalism spells individualism, Fascism spells government.
   Benito Mussolini…

   In his, The Coming American Fascism, 1936, Lawrence Dennis—noted American economist and anti-Semite—boasted that classic liberalism—that is, 18th-century Americanism—would soon become a laughing stock, and that, liberal norms of law or constitutional guarantees of private rights, would be replaced by fascism, that is, the enterprises of public welfare and social control. And, Dennis stated further…

   [Fascism] does not accept the liberal dogmas as to the sovereignty of the consumer or trader in the free market…. Least of all does it consider that market freedom, and the opportunity to make competitive profits, are rights of the individual. Such decisions should be made by a ‘dominant class’, an ‘elite’.

   I am proposing the integrated State, which will bring economic justice, and which will say with due authority: no more strikes, no more lock-outs, no more usury, no more starvation wages, no more criminal conspiracies against full production, no more capitalist abuses.

   … if this be the Fascist State, then I proudly declare myself a Fascist!
   Calvo Sotelo, from a speech made to the Cortes, Spain, 1936.

   (A few months after his speech, a hit-squad composed of Republican army officers and agents from the Spanish Socialist-Communist Youth League murdered Sotelo, thus triggering the Spanish Civil War.)

   ….As late as 1932, Mussolini acknowledged Fascism’s affinities with Communism: “In the whole negative part, we are alike. We and the Russians are against the liberals, against democrats, against parliament”.
   Richard Pipes, Russia Under the Bolshevik Regime, 1993.

   The mainspring of the socialist ideas that arose under the combined influence of the Industrial and the French Revolution was the conviction that the uncontrolled concentration of wealth and unbridled competition were bound to lead to increasing misery and crises, and that the system must be replaced by one in which the organization of production and exchange would do away with poverty and oppression and bring about a redistribution of the world’s goods on a basis of equality. …. …Leszek Kolakowski, Main Currents of Marxism.

   It is a common mistake to regard National Socialism as a mere revolt against reason, an irrational movement without intellectual background. If that were so, the movement would be much less dangerous than it is. But nothing could be further from the truth or more misleading. The doctrines of National Socialism are the culmination of a long evolution of thought, a process in which thinkers who have had great influence far beyond the confines of Germany have taken part. Whatever one may think of the premises from which they started, it cannot be denied that the men who produced the new doctrines were powerful writers who left the impress of their ideas on the whole of European thought. Their system was developed with ruthless consistency. Once one accepts the premises from which it starts, there is no escape from its logic. It is simply collectivism freed from all traces of an individualist tradition which might hamper its realization.

   ….

   What, then, caused these views held by a reactionary minority finally to gain the support of the great majority of Germans and practically the whole of Germany’s youth? It was not merely the defeat, the suffering, and the wave of nationalism which led to their success. Still less was the cause, as so many people wish to believe, a capitalist reaction against the advance of socialism. On the contrary, the support which brought these ideas to power came precisely from the socialist camp. It was certainly not through the bourgeoisie, but rather through the absence of a strong bourgeoisie, that they were helped to power.

   … the socialists of the Left approached more and more to those of the Right. It was the union of the anticapitalist forces of the Right and of the Left, the fusion of radical and conservative socialism, which drove out from Germany everything that was liberal.

   The connection between socialism and nationalism in Germany was close from the beginning. It is significant that the most important ancestors of National Socialism—Fichte, Rodbertus, and Lassalle—are at the same time acknowledged fathers of socialism. …. From 1914 onward there arose from the ranks of Marxist socialism one teacher after another who led, not the conservatives and reactionaries, but the hard-working laborer and idealist youth into the National Socialist fold. It was only thereafter that the tide of nationalist socialism attained major importance and rapidly grew into the Hitlerian doctrine.
   Hayek, Road to Serfdom….

   [In Mussolini] Socialists should be delighted to find at last a socialist who speaks and thinks as responsible rulers do. – George Bernard Shaw, 1927…

   “… better go down with Bolshevism than live in eternal capitalist servitude” – Joseph Goebbels, Diaries…

   Fascists are socialists

   First clue: the Nazis called themselves, The National Socialist German Workers Party, not, The National Capitalist German Plutocrats Party, and the National Socialists boasted that Hitler had created in Germany, the most modern socialist state in the world.

   Fascism is but a sect of socialism. In Mussolini’s early days, before his rise to power, many of his Marxist critics viewed his fascism as a curiosity and recognized it as more of a heresy from, rather than a mortal challenge to revolutionary Marxism. (See Agursky’s, The Third Rome, 1963.)

   In the first few paragraphs of Capital, Marx decreed private property to be the root cause of capitalism and, thereby, the root cause of evil, and no self-respecting Marxist-socialist will ever let go that cardinal article of faith. And therein resides the critical difference between Marxist-socialism and fascist-socialism: Marxism prohibits the private ownership of property, and fascism does not – which is the ultimate heresy to Marxists and thereby inspired the unbridgeable and often violent schism between Marxism and fascism which has lasted until this day. (Later, more on how this schism came about.)

   During the 1920s and 30s, because such little practical difference existed between fascists and Bolsheviks, critics of Hitler’s National Socialism routinely called it, National Bolshevism. The Bolshevists, stung by being throw on the same theological pile with fascists, contrived the agent theory of fascism, and decreed through the Comintern that the international Marxist propaganda machine should immediately associate fascism with capitalism, and, thereby, per formal Stalinist/Leninist dogma, fascism became, the open terrorist dictatorship of the most reactionary, most chauvinist, and most imperialist elements of finance capital. The machine acted with such vigor and lasting effect that even today people wrongly perceive fascism as a necessary attribute of capitalism, and critics of the socialist gospel get tagged as fascists.

   Other sectarian differences existed between the old Marxists-socialists and fascists-socialists. For example, Marxist-socialists were internationalist; that is, Marxists-socialists dismissed national frontiers as the obsolete vestiges of capitalism, and, to destroy capitalism, all the world’s proletariat must rise up and act as a single, unified entity without regard for geography or nationality or ethnicity—as Marx proclaimed in his Manifesto, The working men have no country. (A cannon still fundamental to today’s left, latched on to especially hard by environmentalists. See the first few citations in F, below.)

   [RandyTexas adds: Judging by his actions, for Hitler being a nationalist he certainly had an international agenda. That would make Hitler an internationalist]

   ……..Ernst Roehm, a dedicated socialist, leader of the SA, second only to Hitler in power in the National Socialist Party, in a letter to a friend, observed how often his street thugs switched back and forth between Roehm’s National Socialist gangs and the Communist gangs, uncertain on whose side they rightly belonged.

   In his, Road to Serfdom, Hayek remarks upon how, during the 1930s, the propagandists of both parties recognized the relative ease with which a young communist could be converted into a Nazi or vice versa and how university professors in the U.S. and Britain noticed that students returning from study in Germany could not decide whether they were Marxists or fascists, but were certain only that they hated, Western Civilization.

   One more piece and I am done with this:

   Fascism And Socialism Explained

   Have you ever wondered why the Nazis called themselves the “National Socialist Party,” and why the Soviets called themselves “Socialist Republics”? In history and political science classes we were told that the Nazis were “fascists” and that the Soviets were “communists.” It is not hard to come to the conclusion that people living under fascism and people living under communism seemed to be coming out in the same place….as terrified slaves (if not dead).

   Properly understood, fascism and communism were, as the Soviet and German labels openly declared, actually the same thing:, just two varieties of socialism. The fascist praises the free market, but secretly works to destroy it. The communist condemns the free market and openly works to destroy it. Both tactics are tools of a monopolistic type of parasitism known as socialism. The key goal in either case is the destruction of economic market competition so that certain ruthless individuals can acquire huge wealth and power. The wars between the fascists and the communists in the 20th century have simply been wars fought between competing monopolists.

   If the communists had their way, the world would be one giant monopoly government devoid of any troublesome “free market economy.” A one-world communist government would control every aspect of a world economy. Nothing would be left to the untidy devices of the free market. Wages and prices would be controlled by government fiat.

   If the fascists had their way, the world would be one giant monopoly corporation devoid of any troublesome “free market economy.” A one-world fascist government would control every aspect of a world economy. Nothing would be left to the untidy devices of the free market. Wages and prices would be controlled by a central bank, fiat currency, and interest rate manipulations.

   Fascist socialism is more subtle than communist socialism. One form of tyranny has corporate logos pasted across the landscape, while the other has government logos pasted over the landscape. The Japanese pledge loyalty to the Corporation. The Cubans pledge loyalty to the Party. Communist socialism (less China’s meager one billion strong) is falling apart because it wasn’t seductive enough. Fascistic socialism is thriving because it is incredibly clever and devious.. Corporate Earth will simply take a bit longer to build than Communist Earth because the fascists have learned from the mistakes of those heavy-handed commies and are now doing things with a lot more delicacy.

   What is GATT? What is NAFTA? They are both monopolistic corporate tools masquerading as “free market” devices, aren’t they? Both allow corporations to exploit the cheapest labor market across national boundaries. The goal of GATT and NAFTA is to erase national borders through economic manipulation. Sounds sort of like world communism to me. So what’s going on here? Well, I’ll tell you.

   Here is the “revelation of the method” that can turn on that light bulb in your mind. It is based on one key understanding: socialism is actually the invention of the designers of monopolistic capitalism.

   Capitalism is good if government doesn’t interfere or take sides. Such does not exist anywhere in the world today. Capitalism becomes something else that is very bad (and is not even capitalism anymore) when government interferes with competition and takes the side of various corporate elites.

   And now we get to the “C” word: conspiracy. It is my belief that corporate monopolists like John D. Rockefeller, Henry Morgan, the Du Ponts, the Vanderbilts and other infamous “robber barons” here and in Europe (where it all began with the Rothchilds and English royalty) actually created and maintained communism in the Soviet Union.

   At work is what is known as the “Hegelian Principle.” There are three parts to this technique. First you create the thesis. This is usually a problem that is created by government meddling. The thesis in this case was naked monopolistic capitalism, the bared fang, no-holds-barred type that John D. Rockefeller wielded. The masses get rather angry at some point. They don’t like the big boys taking over the whole block.

   So, now you create the solution to the problem that you had created earlier. This solution is called the anti-thesis. You finance a twisted megalomaniac by the name of Lenin to cook up a political dogma (based upon the ideas of Karl Marx…who was funded by European industrialists) that attacks your thesis and offers something as bad or worse in its place. (Sorry, but Comrade Lenin was worse than John D. Rockefeller.) After awhile, the masses reject the anti-thesis. You have the so-called “fall” of communism.

   But what is left? It is called the synthesis. What remains is what you planned for in the first place: world-wide socialism!

   Bingo! And here it is. Today not one nation in the entire world has a free market economy. Not a single one. Not a single nation has gold- and silver-backed currency. Not a single nation is allowed to withdraw into its national boundaries and make its way as a free market isolationist entity. Das Korporation uber alles, ladies and gentlemen!

   People this cannot have just happened by accident. That is why I call it a conspiracy. That is why I firmly proclaim that socialism is actually corporate monopolism unmasked. It has never been anything else. The mask has just slipped and you can now see behind it for yourself anytime you care to look. And the elitist sons of bitches don’t care if you now know! They think it’s too late for you to do anything about it.

   This isn’t good news. It means the return of a feudal system to the entire globe. It pretends to be the illuminated New World Order, but it will be a New Dark Age unlike anything mankind has ever known. That is…unless we stop it.

   I am done, I will feel no need to further evidence the foundations of my future comments in such a lengthy manner. RAS

6. His silence on 1933 would indicate that perhaps that these generalisations in the case of Randy Texas are based on not very much at all.

   Felix my silence is a time issue, it is the result of working two jobs and having six children at home, my time is very limited, If I can work it in I will but other comments that I feel to be more expedient are first up in line. Also I do not wish to stay to far off into a course on history and away from the focus on Israel. If I must spend all my time defending the basis of the way I think I will have nothing left to contribute directly to the issues.

   There is plenty that links it all together, if i get the oppertunity I will put some of it out here.

7. Felix as a result of your conviction and time spend making your point, I reread Eidelberg carefully. He is stating a general truth namely that many people, in the absence of belief, seize on belief even if such belief is untrue.

   He argues that

   This disillusioning nihilism is rampant in post-Christian England and Europe. Given man’s need to believe in something, is it any wonder that many of the disillusioned have converted to Islam?

   He is in effect making an argument against moral relativism. Belief is necessary to combat belief. Unbelief doesn’t cut it. You know, if you believe in nothing you will fall for anything.

   You don’t take issue with this argument. You prefer to look at economic and social causes that existed at any one point of time. Certainly they are relevant but so is Eidelberg’s argument.

   You on the other hand have a clear set of beliefs.

8. Ted

   Your comment was:

   “Hoffer had it right in The True Believer. He is a type and can believe in Communism one day and Christianity the next. Fromm also had it right in Escape From Freedom. Many people prefer serfdom to freedom

   I have read Hoffer, not Fromm.

   Hoffer is not correct on this. There is no “type” as you suggest.

   But the real killer in that approach is that it does not really explain what is Counterpunch or who is George Galloway.

   In the field of politics people are what they are because of the political influences which they have run up against.

   It is these political ideas that need to be tested out in the proper way.

   The road of endless speculation separated from historical experience which in the short time I have read him here on Israpundit appears to be the method of Randy Texas.

   This is why he appears to make continually – generalisations, and sometimes he tells us of people he has met etc as a way of explanation. This is divorced from history and contemporary political positions as well.

   This is why I asked him to furnish us from his pool of knowledge how he understands the way in which Hitler was able to take the power in 1933…not a small question I would venture for you Ted, your family I suspect, and certainly for your Jewish people.

   It is a big question for me because I am Irish and I seek to align the Irish with the Jews and against Fascism.

   I did this to try to break out of the series of generalisations which seems to devour his mind. Generalisations are good and necessary. I just want to find out what they are based on.

   His silence on 1933 would indicate that perhaps that these generalisations in the case of Randy Texas are based on not very much at all.

   Your own point…we have a herd mentality. You are wrong. We humans do not have a herd mentality. But human life has many stages and many levels but sure I thought that was obvious.

   What we have here on Israpundit is the very opposite of that or I hope it is. We are seeking salvation in historical and factual truth.

   That is why Eidelberg in his beginning “It has been reported” was so wrong…and why that method found an immediate ally in Randy Texas.

   On Israpundit we join together for the very opposite reasons to “herd instinct”.

   Plus psychology is a difficult subject do you not think…look at Jung and his anti-Semitism, not a pretty sight.

   If that is the case and if Israpundit goes down that route then we are in a spot of trouble here on this site. But I do not believe we will for a moment.

9. Randy

   Yes as I thought. I did not expect you to use any erudition you may have and explain the puzzle to us…how did Hitler do it in 1933.

   Is this a closed book in the land of R A Sprinkle, or am I wrong there, is that a different person.

10. Felix and Randy,

    If all socialists and left wingers were like you Felix who never seems to let your ideological leanings get in the way of dealing with facts and truths as they are, those who are centrists and lean to the right would have the utmost respect for the left wing.

    As things stand however Felix, you stand quite apart from and heads above the usual braying and bleating left wingers mired in their left wing world of discontent, who invariably find they must deny, twist or ignore realities in order to make their arguments fit within their ideologies.

11. Felix wrote:

    “I am socialist, left wing and I am a great advocate of the Zionist cause.

    So where do I fit in to the above schema of “Randy” who also goes by the name of RA Sprinkle.”

    First of all I would say that you are to be commended for your support for Israel, unfortunately, if current trends in left wing circles continue you are going to increasingly find yourself alone, that, or else finding company with others in places like this where most tend to oppose the radical left and promote individual freedom.

    As to your question about where you fit in the above “scheme“ – I do not know you well enough to answer that. One thing you failed to note in your comments was that I qualified my statements by directing them at “radicals.” You stated that you are a left wing socialist but you did not state if you are a “radical.”

    Are you a radical? If not my comments and the article by the professor are not directed at. nor do they pertain to you. I would say however, that the statements of Prof. Eidelberg and myself apply to you to the degree that you practice unnecessary collectivism/socialism and desire to force it all upon others .

    I have stated before that certain necessities require some degree of collectivism even in countries where individual freedoms are held above all. Nonetheless, I do believe that in these instances collective actions should be as limited and as provisional as possible in order to preserve freedom and liberty.

    Zionism is Jewish nationalism, by far and in large today’s left is for weakening the nation-state in favor of supranational institutions with supreme authority. Support for Israel is welcome from all but in far leftist circles this support becomes a paradox and will fall into conflict.

12. Felix

    I know we are treading on your subject but I continue undeterred. Leave aside your concern for historical truth and focus on the psychological truth that I drew attention to in #3 above. Are you saying a fanatic isn’t a fanatic or that people don’t gravitate to mass movements and servitude because of their nature. The search for salvation drives us. In this regard we have a herd mentality. You are hung up on distinctions between movements rather then their commonality.

    Randy puts it this way

    Islamic radicals and radical leftist are the opposite polls of the same natural impulses.

    Is he not right ? are you and he not talking about apples and oranges?

13. I doubt if there will be any answers from Professor Eidelberg or “Randy” to any of my above questions.

    The method of Eidelberg is quite clear in his first assertion that Islam is gaining converts. This has been challenged by the first comment by Isragood.

    Eidelberg states “it has been reported” to introduce this assertion which may or may not be true. That is the method used. He uses that to build a whole set of allegations by claiming basically that Socialism and Islam are the two sides of the same coin.

    Again this is a general statement. So we have introduced onto Israpundit an attack on socialism, the worst possible by climing that it (socialism) more or less, there is alwauys some ambiguity with this method, is Fascist. So then, I am a fascist! Do people on Israpundit not see where this method of “reasoning” leads to.

    The method if you can call it a method, and Randy is worse in this regard than Eidelberg, who sometimes does deal with concrete examples from history, is to remove historical evidence out of the equation.

    Indeed either Eidelberg nor Randy have ever used the simple terms, Leninist, social democratic, stalinist, or Trotsky´s position in a historical sense. The result is that the reader is left in ignorance of what was going on. Is that any way to educate a new layer of yout, among them youthful Jewish folk!

    The method is rotten to the core and can only lead not in the direction of learning and cool reflection but prejudice. No thanks, I do not wish to follow the prejudices of Mr Randy!

    In my most recent article of an historical nature I put forward evidence of actual historical experiences mainly from the very significant period 1900 to 1940. These historical experiences and this evidence was not even commented upon by Randy. But he did feel “inspired” to write an essay on “collectivism” which did not address one specific historical fact. I mean he did not address my article, nor did he produce historical examples himself to back up this strange thesis of “collectivism”.

    So let me be specific and pose an actual historical example which has got great moment for the Jewish people then and also today. Let me take the coming to pòwer of Hitler in 1933.

    Who were the various parties and social forces which were involved in German society at that particular conjuncture of history. What positions did they take up in relation to the Nazis. Yes you can also throw in the English aristocracy if you feel like it. But Germany should be enough to go on.

    It is not unimportant you may agree. 6 million Jewish souls were lost in those few months of 1933.

    Any takers!

14. Back to Eidelberg who has never that I have known come onto Israpundit to defend his views.

    He writes in the above:

    “Recall how fervently Communism was held by intellectuals who had rejected, along with capitalism, lukewarm Christianity and milk-and-toast Judaism.

    Like Islam, Communism is a totalitarian creed that readily appeals to the fanatical mind—those that cannot tolerate diversity. Both Islam and Communism reject an international community of sovereign nation-states. Both are imperialistic and regard international borders as artificial and temporary. War is their modus operandi.

    So let us take this:

    Who are these intellectuals he is referring to?

    He asks us loosely to recall them. So what period is he talking about.

    1860

    1900

    1917

    1926 to 1933 say

    What are their names.

    Or what does Eidelberg mean by Communism. Is it the ideas of Karl Marx. The Communist Manifesto say? We do not know.

    The ideas of who exactly. What period.

    What are these ideas in a rather more precise form.

    And just what has this to do with the situation in which Israel finds itself today. It is an amazing way to proceed.

15. Randy writes

    “It is the same natural impulses that drives them both to focus on the same enemies. Even though they are the furthermost socially and culturally from each other their primary targets are everyone and everything else that falls anywhere in the spectrum between them.

    Barring cultural and family influence, had a radical liberal been raised in an Islamic nation he may very well have grown up an Islamic militant. Had an Islamic militant been raised in San Francisco he may well have grown up to be a flaming liberal. The Americans who I have seen that became Islamic Militants were raised in liberal and secularist homes.

    Adolf Hitler stated that converted communists make a good Nazis. Fanatics have a need to be fanatical about something and can become fanatical about almost anything they find some attraction to. For them it is more about fulfilling that need than it is about arriving at a faith or belief through reason. “

    Unless Ted Belham, Joseph Alexander Norland, or somebody on Israpundit begins to confront these views and stops letting them go through without comment Israpundit will go down and will deserve to.

    I am socialist, left wing and I am a great advocate of the Zionist cause.

    So where do I fit in to the above schema of “Randy” who also goes by the name of RA Sprinkle.

    The method of Randy is to make general statements which are out of his mind, and not out of any produced evidence historical or otherwise.

    Amazing stuff.

16. Hello Ted!!

    Okay will do. Sorry about that! Got carried away there… Great site you got here. Found it on the Jewish blogger’s network. Love the articles and especially the patriotic no bullshit no molly-coddling attitude of the readers posting their comments here.

    Let’s get active folks and kick some Jihadist ass!! (preferably off the planet and into outer space!!) 🙂

    Thanks most of all to you Ted, for producing such an easy to read site with great and informative articles and most importantly, such a patriotic site for Jewish and Christian people alike.

    Shlomo Baum (great Israeli hero) rules!!

17. Shlomo

    Welcome to Israpundit. I hope you’ll stick around. By he way, wait 30 seconds beween comments. Our filter doesn’t like rapid fire comments.

18. Islam is a plague (like the Bubonic Plague or “Pest” of the middle ages).Or you could rightly describe it as a disease like cancer.

    Crack Cocaine, Heroin, “ice”, “ecstasy” and Amphetamines were other “plagues” of the modern age (but far less harmful, since they are “voluntary” plagues subject to possibly successful treatment).

    Islam needs a giant “pest exterminator” to eradicate it. Unfortunately ,the West is not up to the task as it has been thoroughly infested by this insidious cancer.

    The leftist-liberal politically dominated Western patient is sick, very sick. Who or what can save him? Or would he prefer to commit suicide by letting the Islamic plague or cancer spread further without treatment – eventually killing him?

    If current trends continue, it looks as though the latter will be the case.

19. Hoffer had it right in The True Believer. He is a type and can believe in Communism one day and Christianity the next. Fromm also had it right in Escape From Freedom. Many people prefer serfdom to freedom.

20. Another good article from the professor,

    I have argued for some time (although it may be hard to wrap your head around it) that Islamic radicals and radical leftist are the opposite polls of the same natural impulses.

    Although these impulses manifest themselves as opposites, they are driven by similar aspirations. The differences between them are in their outward appearances which are based largely on their cultures, societies, and religions (Yes, secular leftist are religious.)

    I have no problem whatsoever with the professor’s comparison between the two when he writes:

    Like Islam, Communism is a totalitarian creed that readily appeals to the fanatical mind – those that cannot tolerate diversity. Both Islam and Communism reject an international community of sovereign nation-states. Both are imperialistic and regard international borders as artificial and temporary. War is their modus operandi.

    Both Islam and Communism reject values intrinsic not only to liberal democracy, but also to Civilization, namely, the primacy of consent or persuasion in human affairs as opposed to the primacy of force or coercion. Both Islam and Communism therefore reject the civility associated with classical Greek philosophy (think of Plato’s dialogues). At the same time, both deny the Judeo-Christian concept of the sanctity of human life and of individual freedom.

    This has been a theme in some of my writings also on the issue of collectivism. There are really only two types of people, free individuals and those who are drawn to a strong totalitarian group identity that develops a mob or group conscience. All other people fall between the two and are combinations of them, however, the further a society wonders from freedom the stronger the gravitational pull becomes to totalitarianism.

    It is the same natural impulses that drives them both to focus on the same enemies. Even though they are the furthermost socially and culturally from each other their primary targets are everyone and everything else that falls anywhere in the spectrum between them.

    Barring cultural and family influence, had a radical liberal been raised in an Islamic nation he may very well have grown up an Islamic militant. Had an Islamic militant been raised in San Francisco he may well have grown up to be a flaming liberal. The Americans who I have seen that became Islamic Militants were raised in liberal and secularist homes.

    Adolf Hitler stated that converted communists make a good Nazis. Fanatics have a need to be fanatical about something and can become fanatical about almost anything they find some attraction to. For them it is more about fulfilling that need than it is about arriving at a faith or belief through reason.

    The war being waged today is by both ends against the middle and the major difference between the ends is their heritage and culture.

    Thanks for posting this article.

21. Really? Last I checked Christianity was the fastest growing religion.

    I am under the conclusion that Islam is only increasing by birth rate. If you just simply look at conversions, Islam is probably dying as six million Africans leave the faith every year.

    Although Islam may be increasing in the west, Christianity is exploding in the east, which is making everyone ask the question, “Why?”