What Should This Very Real Thing With Very Real Effects Be Called?

There has been an objection to my calling the campaign of slander that has been waged against me for the past several years "playing the Jew card".  The thing, what I am calling "playing the Jew card" is a rote charge of antisemitism made against someone who is not an antisemite.   As an aside, it's my experience that many, perhaps most, people will behave as badly as they figure they can get away with being, which is what I think accounts for that particular form of slander.  It is something which the liar can say with little to no negative consequences for themselves.   In our lie infested media and political culture, it is one of the most potent of lies.

I don't know what else to call it but it is "a thing" and it is a thing that has been used against, not only me, but against many others, including many Jews who do not conform to particular and rigidly required ideas.   Its primary purpose is to protect the financial and military aid from the United States to Israel, to shut down and preclude even legitimate observations and criticisms about that.  Though, as will be seen, its usefulness is far more extensive than that.

Those ideas range from mere opinions which reasonable people can differ on to outright and outrageous lies that spew forth from the most racist and extremist sectors of the Israeli far right, the right that such Jews as Albert Einstein, Hannah Arendt,  Sidney Hook and many other Jews warned of and identified as being fascists*.  What would be called the American neo-conservatives were hardly noticable back then but they are the ones who always keep that particular card up their sleeve.

Mostly the card is played over the state of Israel which was founded on the backs of the ingenious Palestinian population, something denied by some of the more extreme of the Zionist apologists but which is mostly to be just pretend to not have happend.   Noam Chomsky has been one of the people against who the "Jew Card" is regularly played, I would suspect by people who take advantage of his principle that he won't sue those who slander him.  But he is hardly alone among Jews who are regularly told they are antisemitic  when they criticize the Israeli government and political, military and judicial figures for  acts which often rub right up against and at times cross over into crimes that if done by other people would get them accused of crimes against humanity.

In my case, what got the accusation issued at Eschaton blog was me saying I regretted that, instead of the eternal state of war it has existed under, getting large numbers of people killed, including probably the largest number of Jews who have died of unnatural causes since the end of the Nazi regime,  European and other Jews hadn't been given the option of setting up a state on land donated by the United States or offered citizenship in my own country, the country where the man who has been slandering me has lived his entire life, notably not in the same danger as those who have lived in Israel and the surrounding countries for the past six decades.

Just in case you didn't notice what I just said, what I'm accused of was the terrible crime of wishing there were more Jews living as citizens in my country or in a neighboring state to my country on land donated for that state by my country.  That can be called antisemitism without anyone pointing out there's a little bit of an inconsistency in the accusation.  If our culture is so degraded as that, there is going to be hell to pay because nothing means anything.   So far as I'm aware of, no one has pointed out that the charge is an obvious lie and its repetition is an obvious smear by a serial liar who is a member in good standing in any number of places despite his lying.  After putting up with it, I've decided anyone who figures I should put up with that kind of smear campaign isn't worth me bothering with.

Obviously the risk free practice of accusing someone of antisemitism has been granted a power that surpasses reason or a requirement of even coherence.  A charge of antisemitism can include wanting more Jews living in your country as full, voting citizens and wishing that an Israel that lives in a state of peace instead of in a state of perpetual war had been attempted.  It's not that much different from Clarence Thomas and Thomas Sowell when they claim the major civil rights laws passed in the 20th century are racist and supporting their continuation is racist, only what I'm talking about is, apparently, widely acceptable on the alleged left.

I am unaware of any code of morality or any reasonable case that would preclude me from pointing out that I'm being smeared.   Any such code isn't one I've affirmed.  Apparently I'm supposed to let that continue.   I won't.

*  I hadn't noticed until now that, in the signatories of that letter published in the New York Times is Stefan Wolpe, a composer whose music I love but who my accuser has implied,  agreeing with the Nazi Reichskulturkammer,  is a degenerate composer.   Not that I believe for a second that he's at all familiar with Wolpe's music, from any of the many different periods of his life.  Though I'm certain that he had probably never known that he signed that famous letter before reading this footnote.

Update:  As an example, I suspended my resolve to not post his comments and posted a comment from the liar in question.

steve simelsJune 30, 2014 at 9:28 AM
Fuck you, Father Coughlin.

Seriously, Sparky, I'd explain to you why everything in your screed above is 100 percent Grade A Bovine Fecal Matter, but you'd only quote me selectively so I won't bother.

But be assured, everyone who isn't a moron knows you already lost the argument.

Also, again: Fuck you, Father Coughlin.

If you want an example of what he has been saying about me, for years, at Eschaton,  here he is from a couple of days ago.

 • Reply•Share › 
Avatar
Steve Simels • 2 days ago
And speaking of Laura Nyro, America's Stupidest Lurker© has this to say.

And, you know what, Sims, Laura Nyro was about ten times the composer
that the John Lennon was and an infinitely better performer than Mick 
"less sexy than a pissing toad" Jagger and it was only because she was a
woman that you professional adolescent boys never admitted it.

The dumb gay moron really thinks he'll get laid more often if he sucks up (heh) to women.
:-)
 • Reply•Share › 
Avatar
Billy B  Steve Simels • 2 days ago
hmm. I think all three artists' work are pretty good. why the fuck pit them against each other. that's stupid.
 • Reply•Share › 
Avatar
Steve Simels  Billy B • 2 days ago
Because Sparky's an anti-semitic shithead. For starters.
 • Reply•Share › 
Avatar
Billy B  Steve Simels • 2 days ago
heh
 • Reply•Share › 
Avatar
Steve Simels  Steve Simels • 2 days ago
BTW, Laura Nyro was great. America's Stupidest Lurker© not so much.
:-)
 • Reply•Share › 
Avatar
bo, Skull-fucked Wonder  Steve Simels • 2 days ago
hey, you be nice, too.
 • Reply•Share › 
−
Avatar
Steve Simels  bo, Skull-fucked Wonder • 2 days ago
Not to that moronic anti-semitic asshole.
 • Reply•Share › 

I will point out that in the midst of this, I'm the one who Atrios banned at his blog, not Simels.  For which I say Atrios can bite me.

Update 2:  I will only post those two comments from Simels and not the one he just posted here because, while I'm willing to post his slanders against me, I won't post his slanders of other people.   He can post those elsewhere, where the blog owner doesn't mind carrying that kind of lie.

Update 3: I have a message that Simels is lying about what I said here at Duncan Black's blog, the man who hosted the lies about me for the past several years.  I'm going to consider he is the one who is ultimately responsible for this, as far as I can tell, it's where most of it has been posted.   Obviously Duncan is OK with it.