Two Hundred Years Together

I've been making my way through Alexander Solzhenitsyn's "Two Hundred Years Together". I'm still only at page 363 of 687 pages (see update at the bottom of this post). It's been slow going because the book is densely packed with information and the less than fluent translation makes the reading more difficult. A review in The Guardian of January 2003 writes of the 2002 book:

In his latest book Solzhenitsyn, 84, deals with one of the last taboos of the communist revolution: that Jews were as much perpetrators of the repression as its victims. Two Hundred Years Together - a reference to the 1772 partial annexation of Poland and Russia which greatly increased the Russian Jewish population - contains three chapters discussing the Jewish role in the revolutionary genocide and secret police purges of Soviet Russia.

Of course, he was immediately accused of antisemitism in writing the book but anyone who reads it cannot fail to appreciate his efforts to provide a balanced view of a complex relationship. 

I found this section of his book about the Civil War of great interest. To quote:

The Civil War spilled over Russia’s borders. Let’s review that briefly (though the events in Europe are outside of the scope of this book).

The Bolsheviks invaded Poland in 1920 ... it appears that Polish Jews met the Red Army very warmly. According to a Soviet source, whole battalions of Jewish workers participated in the fighting at Minsk. Reading from the Jewish Encyclopedia: “on numerous occasions, Poles accused Jews of supporting the enemy, of `anti-Polish ́, `pro-Bolshevist ́ and even `pro-Ukrainian ́ attitudes.” During the Soviet-Polish war many Jews “were killed [by Polish Army] on charges of spying for the Red Army.”

The Soviets quickly formed a revolutionary “government” for Poland headed by F. Dzerzhinsky. In it were Y. Markhlevsky and F. Kon. Of course, they were surrounded by “blood work” specialists and ardent propagandists. (Among the latter we see a former pharmacist from Mogilev A. I. Rotenberg. Soon after the aborted Red revolution in Poland, he, together with Bela Kun and Zalkind-Zemlyachka, went on to conduct the deadly “cleansing” of the Crimea. In 1921 he participated in that glorious work again – this time “purging” Georgia, again under the direct command of Dzerzhinsky. At the end of 1920s Rotenberg was in charge of the Moscow NKVD.)

Not only Poland but Hungary and Germany as well were affected by the Red Revolution. An American researcher writes: “the intensity and tenacity of anti-Semitic prejudice in both the east and the center of Europe was significantly influenced by Jewish participation in the revolutionary movement.” “In the beginning of 1919, the Soviets, under predominantly Jewish leadership, started revolutions in Berlin and Munich,” and “the share of activist Jews was” disproportionately high in the German Communist Party of that period,” though “that party’s support in the Jewish community at large was not significant.” Four out of eleven members of the Central Committee were Jews with a university education.” In December 1918, one of them, Rosa Luxemburg, wrote: “In the name of the greatest aspirations of humankind, our motto when we deal with our enemies is: “Finger into the eye, knee on the chest!” 

Rebellion in Munich was led by a theater critic, Kurt Eisner, a Jew of “bohemian appearance.” He was killed, but the power in conservative and Catholic Bavaria was seized by “a new government made up of leftist intellectual Jews, who proclaimed the `Bavarian Soviet Republic ́”(G. Landauer, E. Toller, E. Muhsam, O. Neurath) In a week the republic “was overthrown by an even more radical group,” which declared the “Second Bavarian Soviet Republic” with Eugen Levine at the helm. [35] Let’s read an article about him in the Encyclopedia: born into merchant Jewish family, he used to be a socialist-revolutionary; he participated in the [Russian] revolution of 1905, later became German national, joined the “Spartacist movement” of R. Luxemburg and K. Liebknecht, and now he became the head of the Communist government in Bavaria, which also included the abovementioned E. Muhsam, E. Toller and a native of Russia, M. Levin. The uprising was defeated in May 1919. “The fact that the leaders of the suppressed Communist revolts were Jews was one of the most important reasons for the resurrection of political anti-Semitism in contemporary Germany.” 

“While Jews played a “quite conspicuous” role in the Russian and German communist revolutions, their role in Hungary became central.... Out of 49 People’s Commissars there, 31 were Jews,” Bela Kun being the most prominent of them; “the foreign minister (de-facto head of government),” he would orchestrate a bloodbath in the Crimea half a year later. Here we find Matyas Rakosi, Tibor Szamuely, Gyorgy Lukacs. “Granted, the prime-minister was a gentile, Sandor Garbai, but Rakosi later joked that Garbai was elected because someone had to sign execution orders on Sabbath days.” “Statues of Hungarian kings and heroes were knocked off their pedestals, the national anthem outlawed, and wearing the national colors criminalized.” “The tragedy of the situation was escalated by the fact that historically Hungarian Jews were much wealthier than their Eastern-European countrymen and were much more successful in Hungarian society.”

The direct relation between the Hungarian Soviet Republic and our Civil War becomes more clear by the virtue of the fact that special Red Army Corps were being prepared to go to the rescue of the Hungarian Soviet Republic, but they couldn’t manage it in time and the Republic fell (in August 1919). 

The emphasis has been added by me to highlight one of the reasons for the rise of antisemitism in Europe in the 1920's and 1930's. While the Communist revolution failed to carry beyond Russia, the Zionists of course made use of this antisemitic feeling to make Europe an increasingly uncomfortable place for Jews to live. Ultimately it proved a poisonous place to live and the intention of course was to populate Palestine by as many Jews as possible by any means possible. Communism and Zionism were at that time two sides of the same coin. Following David Ben-Gurion's return in 1923 from a visit to the Soviet Union, he declared: "I am a Bolshevik.

Of course "the 1772 partial annexation of Poland and Russia which greatly increased the Russian Jewish population" is important to bear in mind because, prior to this annexation, Poland was a much larger and more powerful country and its rise and fall was intimately connected with its Jewish citizens. Figure 1 shows a map of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth at its greatest extent. 

Figure 1: source

Between 1772 and 1795, the country was partitioned three times and after 1795, it ceased to exist for 123 years. 

The Partitions of Poland were three partitions of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth that took place toward the end of the 18th century and ended the existence of the state, resulting in the elimination of sovereign Poland and Lithuania for 123 years. The partitions were conducted by the Habsburg Monarchy, the Kingdom of Prussia, and the Russian Empire, which divided up the Commonwealth lands among themselves progressively in the process of territorial seizures and annexations.

The First Partition of Poland was decided on August 5, 1772. Two decades later, Russian and Prussian troops entered the Commonwealth again and the Second Partition was signed on January 23, 1793. Austria did not participate in the Second Partition. The Third Partition of Poland took place on October 24, 1795, in reaction to the unsuccessful Polish Kościuszko Uprising the previous year. With this partition, the Commonwealth ceased to exist. Source.

I'm interested to find out more about the breakup of this nation, although E. Michael Jones does a good job of explaining the reasons in his excellent book "The Jewish Revolutionary Spirit". I've managed to acquire copies of Norman Davies' two volume "God's Playground" described as:

The most comprehensive survey of Polish history available in English, God's Playground demonstrates Poland's importance in European history from medieval times to the present. Abandoning the traditional nationalist approach to Polish history, Norman Davies instead stresses the country's rich multinational heritage and places the development of the Jewish German, Ukrainian, and Lithuanian communities firmly within the Polish context. Davies emphasises the cultural history of Poland through a presentation of extensive poetical, literary, and documentary texts in English translation. In each volume, chronological chapters of political narrative are interspersed with essays on religious, social, economic, constitutional, philosophical, and diplomatic themes. This new edition has been revised and fully updated with two new chapters to bring the story to the end of the twentieth century.

UPDATE: at the start of Chapter 21: During the Soviet-German War, the editor inserts a very important comment on the opening page (478) of that chapter:

"... readers should note that up until now the author has closely scrutinised all the sources and his own experience, and often found Jewish and Soviet sources to be full of exaggerations and outright lies, especially in relation to supposed hardships suffered by the Jews. However, in the case of alleged actions of Hitler and the Nazi’s (their sworn enemies), all Jewish and Soviet sources are taken by the author to be absolute truth."

Again, on the first page (504) of Chapter 22: From the end of the war to Stalin's death, the editor adds a comment to what Solzhenitsyn has written:

We have seen already that Soviet propaganda did not raise any alarm about the annihilation of Jews in Germany during the war; indeed it covered up those things, obviously being afraid of appearing pro-Jewish in the eyes of its own citizens. [ed: or maybe because it wasn’t actually happening?]

It's unfortunate that the author abandoned all objectivity in his account of German actions against Jews during the war years. Clearly, he felt that any attempt at objectivity would fuel accusations of anti-semitism. Such accusations were directed at him anyway. He would have done better to leave Chapter 21 blank and let readers of the book draw their own conclusions for its blankness.

The Cosmopolitans

Figure 1: Caricature of Rootless cosmopolitan.
1949 "Krokodil" magazine cover. Source

This is a hilarious article that I came across on THINKPROGRESS that illustrates the sensitivity of the Jewish lobby in the United States to remarks that are viewed as anti-semitic. It begins with the headline:

Missouri GOP Senator trots out anti-Semitic trope 

during speech before national conservative group

The article continues:

On Tuesday this week, freshman Senator Josh Hawley (R-MO) made an appearance at the National Conservatism Conference to deliver the keynote address. His remarks predictably targeted progressive lawmakers and the principles of liberalism in the United States — specifically, he focused his ire on the traditional enclaves of the country’s “elite,” the largest cities that tend to skew more Democratic and forward-thinking. 

Except Hawley didn’t use the term “city-dweller,” or “urban” or even “coastal elites” to describe the subject of his enmity. He used, repeatedly and often, the word “cosmopolitan.” 

On its face, the word is inoffensive and unremarkable. But in the wrong context — indeed, in the context in which Hawley used it on Tuesday — the word has deeply anti-Semitic subtext. 

In his prepared remarks, Hawley at various points decried the “cosmopolitan consensus,” the “cosmopolitan elite,” the “cosmopolitan class,” and the “cosmopolitan economy,” and more broadly took exception to the “cosmopolitan agenda” that is supposedly at the root of the country’s yawning political divide.

The executive director of the Jewish Community Relations Bureau-American Jewish Committee commented:

[References to a] shadowy elite class destroying the country from within, loyal only to ‘the global community,’ sound to many in the Jewish community eerily reminiscent of speeches from Germany in the 1930s.

Predictably "the state’s chapter of the Anti-Defamation League in St. Louis also took strong exception to Hawley’s remarks" as well. I think that many conservative politicians, who aren't committed Christian Zionists, recognise the threat the Jewish elite pose to the security and well-being of the United States. Probably many Christian Zionists recognise the threat as well but put the fulfilment of end-times prophecy ahead of their country's interest.

The problem for politicians is that it's political suicide to identify the "shadowy elite class destroying the country from within" as being comprised mainly of Jews. The issue has to be raised obliquely. This is what may YouTube alternative news sites resort to so as to avoid having their channel shut down. Terms like "the global elite", "the cabal", "the globalists", "the puppet masters" and so on are used. Hawley's use of the term "cosmopolitan" is in that vein. He is a "freshman" after all and at this early stage of his career he probably thinks he can make a difference.

However, the term "cosmopolitan" and specifically "rootless cosmopolitan" has a long history as I've now discovered. Figure 1 shows a caricature of the "rootless cosmopolitan" taken from a 1949 Soviet magazine cover. Here is an excerpt from Wikipedia about the use of the term:

Rootless cosmopolitan was a pejorative Soviet euphemism widely used during Soviet anti-Semitic campaign of 1948–1953, which culminated in the "exposure" of the non-existent Doctors' plot. The term "rootless cosmopolitan" referred mostly to Jewish intellectuals, as an accusation of their lack of patriotism, i.e., lack of full allegiance to the Soviet Union. The campaign against "rootless cosmopolitans" began in 1946, when Joseph Stalin in his speech in Moscow attacked writers who were ethnic Jews. The expression was coined in the 19th century by Russian literary critic Vissarion Belinsky to describe writers who lacked Russian national character.

The Wikipedia article is an interesting read and reveals how Uncle Joe went too far in his attacks on Jews and suffered the ultimate penalty.

The Jewish lobby's condemnation of Hawley's cosmopolitan remarks shows how humourless and fanatical it has become in defending "the Jews". The lobby is no longer helpful to Jewish interests and its witch-hunting is in fact becoming harmful. The Jews have always had a wry sense of humour that is well-illustrated by the flier shown in Figure 2, advertising a Jewish get-together in London (website).

Figure 2

The Jews organising this were not afraid of seeing themselves as "rootless cosmopolitans" with the gathering described thus:

Jewdas’ countercultural revolution rumbled on with the incarnation of the rootless cosmopolitan yeshiva. Deep under London Bridge station, the shunt lounge became a hub of radical and subversive Jewish thought. Something between a salon, a beit midrash and a twisted cabaret club, the yeshiva was filled with those who like their Jewishness iconoclastic, countercultural and provocative. Debate filled the cavernous archways and argument reverberated into the night. Ears strained to hear the details of complex arguments and people mingled from table to table absorbing a dizzying range of ideas. The strains of dark accordion klezmer met those who stayed until the end. No one left unscathed.

A Yeshiva is apparently a school for Talmudic studies. Interestingly, one the speakers on the night was John Rose, speaking on the topic of "Liberating Jewish History from its Zionist Stranglehold". Doubtless the ADL would have condemned this "iconoclastic, countercultural and provocative" gathering as anti-semitic.

The Ghost of Anne Frank Stirs

An insane world gets even crazier as

Rome: Italy's soccer authorities, reacting to an anti-Semitic outburst by Lazio fans, ordered stadiums on Tuesday to hold a minute's silence at their next matches while a passage from the diary of Holocaust victim Anne Frank is read out. 

Stickers of Anne Frank wearing the jersey of Lazio's city rivals AS Roma were found on walls and bathrooms in a section of Rome's Olympic Stadium used by Lazio supporters during their Series A match against Cagliari on Sunday.The incident was sharply criticised by Italian politicians and media, with President Sergio Mattarella calling it "inhuman and alarming for our country". 

At the next match in all Italy's soccer divisions, a minute's silence will be held "to condemn the recent episodes of anti-Semitism and to continue to remember the Holocaust," the soccer federation said in a statement. 

Source 

As the article goes on to say, Anne Frank's diary is the "centrepiece of Holocaust literature" and, it might be added, virtually a sacred book. It's provenance can no longer be questioned. Politicians in Germany and Italy of course are very sensitive to perceived outbreaks of anti-semitism and are quick to speak out against them. Not to do so would be politically damaging. The contents of the book on the left can be found at Radio Islam. It's an interesting site with lots of information about the dastardly deeds of the Zionists.

The layout of the site is straight out of the noughties. However, it does have a YouTube channel that seems reasonably up-to-date. Oddly, there are only 594 subscribers. Ditlieb Felderer is an interesting character as the following brief biography indicates:

Felderer, at one time a prominent Jehovah's Witness, is known as an early researcher into the physical evidence in every major concentration camp in then Communist Eastern Europe. Felderer took over 30,000 photographs of every conceivable detail in the camps. He discovered that there was a swimming pool for the inmates in Auschwitz, modern hospital facilities, including a gynecological section, as well as an orchestra, live theatre, well-stocked library, and sculpting classes. He discovered the musical score of the "Auschwitz Waltz" in the secret archives accessible only with special permission. He found that an intimate role was played by Jehovah Witnesses in the camps, who cooperated with the SS-Administration, and he exposed the lie of the 60,000 Jehovah's Witnesses killed. (On his initiative and insistence, the inflated number was reduced to 203) [Trial Transcript Vol. 18, 4226 to 4229; 4645]. For his Revisionist work, Felderer was excommunicated -- that is, drummed out of the Jehovah Witnesses' sect. He has been persecuted by the Holocaust Enforcers ever since. Felderer is known for his weird sense of humour and outlandish, offensive cartoons. He believes that deliberate Holocaust liars and history falsifiers should not have their sensibilities spared. This idiosyncrasy of Felderer is being exploited by Holocaust propagandists in counter-attacks against him. Zündel advisor and witness in the 1985 and 1988 Great Holocaust Trials. Source.

Getting back to the Radio Islam site, there is an interesting page on Jewish control of the Internet. The extent of this influence becomes increasingly clear as the list of Internet power brokers is extensively examined. A list of books can be found on this page.

The Jews

It's interesting to read what various people have said about the Jews over the centuries. This site collates such information: http://www.biblebelievers.org.au/repute.htm. Clearly, there is a Christian bias here but the statements speak for themselves. Let's begin with that old cigar-chumping bastard, Winston Churchill. In a 1920 article regarding the Russian Revolution, he praised "the national jews" of Russia but then went on to talk about International Jews:

In violent opposition to all this sphere of Jewish efforts rise the schemes of the International Jews. The adherents of this sinister confederacy are mostly men reared up among the unhappy populations of countries where Jews are persecuted on account of their race. Most, if not all, of them have forsaken the faith of their forefathers, and divorced from their minds all spiritual hopes of the next world. This movement among the Jews is not new. From the days of Spartacus-Weishaupt to those of Karl Marx, and down to Trotsky (Russia), Bela Kun (Hungary), Rosa Luxemburg (Germany), and Emma Goldman (United States), this world-wide revolutionary conspiracy for the overthrow of civilisation and for the reconstitution of society on the basis of arrested development, of envious malevolence, and impossible equality, has been steadily growing. It played, as a modern writer, Mrs. Webster has ably shown, a definite recognisable part in the tragedy of the French Revolution. It has been the mainspring of every subversive movement during the Nineteenth Century; and now at last this band of extraordinary personalities from the underworlds of the great cities of Europe and America have gripped the Russian people by the hair of their heads and have become practically the undisputed masters of the enormous empire. There is no need to exaggerate the part played in the creating of Bolshevism and in the actual bringing about of the Russian Revolution by these international and for the most part atheistic Jews. It is certainly the very great one; it probably outweighs all others. With the notable exception of Lenin, the majority of the leading figures are Jews. Moreover, the principal inspiration and driving power comes from the Jewish leaders . . . In the Soviet institutions the predominance of Jews is even more astounding. And the prominent if not the principal part in the system of terrorism applied by the extraordinary Commissions for combating Counter Revolution has been take by Jews, and in some notable cases by Jewesses. The same evil prominence was obtained by Jews in the brief period of terror during which Bela Kun ruled in Hungary. The same phenomenon has been presented in Germany (especially Bavaria), so far as this madness has been allowed to prey upon the temporary prostration of the German people. Although in all these countries there are many non-Jews every bit as bad as the worst of the Jewish revolutionaries, the part played by the latter in proportion to their numbers in the population is astonishing.  

"Zionism versus Bolshevism: A Struggle for the Soul of the Jewish People." ILLUSTRATED SUNDAY HERALD, London, February 8, 1920.

Churchill states that Lenin was not a Jew but later accounts claim that he was. On this same website, the following is quoted in this regard:

World famous men of the past accused the Jews of founding Communism. This charge is well founded. The Communist philosophy was drawn up by Karl Marx who descended from a long line of Rabbis. His ideology of anti-Christian and Socialist thought is outlined in the Jewish "TALMUD" which is the "bible" of the Jews. Of the four political groups which overthrew the Christian Czar of Russia two were 100% Jewish. They were the Mensheviks and The Jewish Bund. The other two were the Socialist Revolutionary Party and the Bolsheviks. Both were headed by Jews but had some Gentile members. Today we now know that Lenin was Jewish and all of the leaders of his first government were Jews. They were Trotsky, Zinoviev, Kamenev and Sverdlow. The wealthiest Jewish banker in the world at that time, Jacob Schiff of Kuhn, Loeb investment bank of New York City, gave Trotsky and Lenin $20 million to overthrow the Czar and establish the Soviet tyranny. 

"NEW YORK JOURNAL-AMERICAN" of February 3, 1949.

However, I was led to the above-mentioned website because of a quote attributed to Benjamin Franklin in a 1787 speech. It was a prophetic speech that struck me as phoney as soon as I'd read it. The source was from the diary of someone who had been in attendance at the supposed speech. It turns out that this prophecy is very probably a forgery. To quote from Wikipedia:

The Franklin Prophecy is a forgery. It was first published in February 1934 in William Dudley Pelley’s publication, Liberation. It refers to an anti-Semitic speech which Benjamin Franklin is alleged to have made at the Constitutional Convention of 1787, written down by Charles Pinckney of South Carolina and preserved in his journal. In a letter to John Quincy Adams dated 30 December 1818, Pinckney said he had kept a journal of the proceedings at the Convention. Pelley claimed that Pinckney published the Journal "for private distribution among his friends" under the title Chit-Chat Around the Table During Intermissions.

It was circulated during the 1930s however, and the following gives some idea of its impact and of the receptivity to such ideas amongst the general population:

Following its publication in Liberation, the "Prophecy" was widely circulated throughout the United States. In the 1930s it was disseminated by chain letters, and printed copies of the speech were placed in trains, buses, railway stations and similar public places. It appeared in the propaganda press and broadcasts of Nazi Germany and fascist Italy, and a version was included in the 1935 edition of Handbuch der Judenfrage ("Handbook On The Jewish Question"), a political publication by Theodor Fritsch, first written several decades earlier, that went on to become a Nazi "bible". 

In the United States, anti-Semitic groups such as Chicago’s We The Mothers Mobilize For America used the Prophecy as their raison d'etre. Gerald L. K. Smith and other anti-Semitic propagandists argued strongly in favour of its authenticity, and it was printed in Women’s Voice (31 July 1952) and the Political Reporter (July 1953). In May 1954 it was published in The Point, put out by Roman Catholic Father Leonard Feeney of St Benedict’s, Cambridge, Massachusetts. 

If we go back to the Churchill quote however, we see that he wasn't criticising Jews per se. In fact, he had praised the Jews in Russia itself and instead had targeted a sinister confederacy are mostly men reared up among the unhappy populations of countries where Jews are persecuted on account of their race. Most, if not all, of them have forsaken the faith of their forefathers, and divorced from their minds all spiritual hopes of the next world.

It's clear that anti-semitism was rampant not only in Europe but also in the United States prior to World War 2. Of course, following Germany's defeat and the hugely successful marketing of The Holocaust, this changed. The stage was set for the creation of the state of Israel and all the subsequent problems arising from that. To my mind, it seems that the history of the Jews in Britain is critical to an understanding of how things have gotten to this current sorry pass. Israel owes its existence to Britain. There is a Wikipedia article on the History of the Jews in England. The article begins as follows:

The history of the Jews in England goes back to the reign of William the Conqueror. The first written record of Jewish settlement in England dates from 1070. The Jewish continued until King Edward I's Edict of Expulsion in 1290. After the expulsion, there was no Jewish community, apart from individuals who practised Judaism secretly, until the rule of Oliver Cromwell. While Cromwell never officially readmitted Jews to Britain, a small colony of Sephardic Jews living in London was identified in 1656 and allowed to remain.

Of course, once the Jews were readmitted, a sinister confederacy quickly gained control of the levers of financial power and never relinquished them. Over the next two centuries, Britain became the world's dominant nation and as its power faded, control of the United States financial system, was gained in 1913 with the creation of the Federal Reserve. Jewish control of Hollywood and the entertainment industry followed until total control of the country was achieved in the second half of the twentieth century. In the 1970s, the cabal reached out to China and successively brought it in from the cold to where it had been deliberately banished in 1949. The stage is now set for it to attain dominance over the entire world and not just single, powerful nations. Here are some of the key dates:

• 1066: first Jews arrive with William the Conqueror
• 1290: all Jews expelled from England under decree of Edward 1
• 1655: Jews are readmitted to England thanks to Oliver Cromwell's support
• 1753: Jewish Naturalisation Act passed but repealed the next year due to opposition
• 1798: Rothschilds establish business in Manchester and bank in London
• 1858: Lionel de Rothschild is the first Jew to become a member of parliament
• 1868: Benjamin Disraeli (a Christian Jew) becomes Prime Minister
• 1884: Nathan Mayer Rothschild becomes first Jewish member of House of Lords
• 1917: Walter Rothschild sets up the conditions for the Balfour Declaration, which promises a homeland in Palestine for Jews in a new Zionist State

Interestingly, the Jewish populations in Britain and the United States swelled from the 1880s through the early part of the 20th century because of massive pogroms in Europe: 

Of the East European Jewish emigrants, 1.9 million (80 percent) headed to the United States, and 140,000 (7 percent) to Britain. The chief mechanism was chain migration in which the first successful member(s) of the chain send information, local currency (and sometimes tickets or money for tickets) to later arrivals. Source

However, antisemitism is still alive and well in the world. The following statistics are interesting. Note how Greece, most affected by the banksters, shows the highest rate of antisemitism.