Colleges should start a new study abroad program. Exchange each hostage for a hundred Pro-Hamas students and professors from US universities. Everyone wins: America, Israel, and education.
Richard wonders how the Nazi regime could have happened. He is in good company. In 1945, just before his death at the hands of the Nazis, Dietrich Bonhoeffer wonder the same. His answer is in his essay on Stupidity. Read it. In the 1930's, Hitler developed the process. It explains why a small vocal slogan spouting minority can dominate. Essentially, a human individual, being a social animal, wants to belong to a group. The trade off is loss of independent thought. Thought is replaced by slogans and catchwords. The individual is rendered stupid. They become the tool of the regime, "capable of any evil and at the same time incapable of seeing that it is evil". Currently, this process has been co-opted by the Left. In the current case, oppressor and oppressed, racist, loss of agency, CRT, DEI, DSG, etc. Clever slogans + Stupid People = The results that we see now.
I am reminded of Men in Black when I think about how humans are in large groups: A person is smart. People are dumb, panicky dangerous animals and you know it.
Yes, and anyone paying attention since 9/11 should have noticed the over compensation given to the Muslim religion (in order to prevent Islamophobia) to the detriment of Christianity and the (white?) west.
Being a Christian is now considered an extremist view according to many in Hollywood, the news media and politicians.
Overcompensation to the extreme.
Read Ayana Hirsi Ali.
Watch hollywoods depiction of catholic priests in Yellowstone’s 1923.
Wonder how the LA dodgers would honor a drag group who debase Jesus and nuns in the most vulgar way.
Jen psaki called Mike Johnson an extremist because of his religion.
School administrators calling any association with a Christianity as dangerous to students. (Somewhere in Arizona)yet insist on allowing satan clubs?
The signs are all around, no bad thought is allowed against Muslims. Why?
As Omar whined about being "discriminated against" just because on September 11th "some people did something....." Why is this reptile still in the US House of Representatives?
Just as with Tlaib, she is elected by unreconstructed Middle Eastern, Islamic Jew haters whom our own government invited in as a fifth column. This may not be pretty but it is the ugly truth of our immigration "policy."
The population of Omar's district in only about 12% Muslim, so there clearly are a lot of non-Muslim leftists in the Twin Cities who are down with her Jew-hatred.
Overlooked in all this is that the Congresswoman in the adjacent district - Betty McCollum - is as rabid a Jew-hater and lover of Islamonazis as Omar.
There's an expression, "Minnesota Nice," because Minnesotans are known for being polite, friendly, and welcoming. I found this in my experience. I also discovered something else. I call it, "Minnesota Stupid." Unfortunately, the two seem to overlap. There are many nice, decent people who support really bad things. They mean well, but they are just deep-bone down-to-the-marrow stupid.
I would remind Dr Fish that Brandeis was one of the founding members of cancel culture, when in 2014 it withdrew the honorary degree it had planned to grant to Ayaan Hirsi Ali. That reinforced my decision never to give Brandeis a nickel.
I was actually surprised to see she works there (knowing how progressive it is), but I believe that’s a good thing. As I believe it’s a good thing that Thomas Sowell is at Stanford. Light in the darkness. I’m sure it isn’t easy to hold opposing viewpoints at Brandeis. I wish Dr. Fish well.
Just to be clear, Dr. Sowell is with the Hoover Institution, located on the campus of Stanford University. He has never taught at Stanford but hasn't been loafing, as he recently published his 40th book, Social Justice Fallacies, at age 93.
The repeat of the Holocaust on October 7th is gut wrenching. But in its wake is another horror—the anti-semitism which far from being on the wane appears to have lain dormant waiting to blossom in all its ugliness. I used to wonder how the Nazi regime with its death camps could have grown out of a culture that gave us Mozart. Puzzled I would nonetheless console myself with the thought, Well, it couldn’t happen here. But in those rallies on American campuses cheering for Hamas, I can hear those Nuremberg rallies cheered on by Goebbels. Sadly it could happen here. And I mourn this sad fact along with all that Israel has suffered and continues to suffer.
At one point I went down Umberto Eco's list of the characteristics of Fascism and showed how they applied to the modern Left. I thought I had saved it in a text file, but I can't seem to find it at the moment.
Eco's essential mistake in his list was not recognizing that other doctrines than nationalism could be used as a unifying principle. If you plug Woke ideology in as the doctrine, the list becomes a perfect description of the Left.
That is why Hitler was so adamant in destroying the communists in germany, they were his main competitor for the hearts and minds he needed.
I read an interesting book a few years back, “Travelers in the 3rd Reich”, compilation of letters and correspondence from all sorts of people who visited germany from 1920-45.
Many that visited germany and the Soviet Union in that period could not see much difference between them.
You nailed it. Leftist indeed. Big government is Left, and there's no more notorious an example of the horrors wrought by a big government than those of the Nazis. Stalin and Mao killed more, but they also lasted much longer. Evil is evil and can thrive when it wields the power of government. Ronald Reagan: "Government isn't the solution, it's the problem." Dennis Prager: "The bigger the government, the smaller the citizen."
It absolutely can happen here. Jordan Peterson talks extensively about how if we were Germans in the 1940’s most of would have been Nazis and many would have gladly been prison guards or worse at concentration camps. Eric Metaxas published a book in 2011 about Bonhoeffer, one of the few Christian priests who spoke out against the Nazi regime.
Had Hamas used the money they stole that was sent to palestinians FOR palestinians to create constructive happy productive lives free from danger and want, none of this would be happening. Somehow Hamas gets a free pass at every turn when THEY ARE THE SOURCE OF ALL THIS EVIL MISERY AND KILLING
Didn’t Lebanon’s Christian government falter when Jordan kicked out the PLO for armed insurrection (Black September 1970)? The PLO then moved into Lebanon contributing to the civil war (1975) that destroyed the country.
This article hits very close to home. This was almost exactly my experience at McGill University, in Montreal. Almost to the date, as my orientation was also in September 2001. It was the first time in my life I was hesitant to tell others that I was Jewish and an Israeli.
Canada has let in swarms of followers of the Satanic Verses. I well recall a confrontation with one of them at Trudeau airport. I guess he was used to getting away with pushing around Canadians. lol
Ironically Muhammad’s Islam is a stupendous example of colonization and settlement as it spread from Arabia into Spain and India and North Africa and Afghanistan and beyond in little more than a century.
Leftists carefully ignore that ugly and "problematic" fact. Only the British Empire might rival Islam as the chief colonizer of the planet, and only because they had a navy that could take their colonizers to more distant parts of the globe.
But, the British Empire also did much good: William Wilberforce began the abolitionist movement among Europeans, the Royal Army/Navy were the first to practice Rules of Engagement, the British built the infrastructure that did create modern India and all of the talented and well-educated Indians who now fill valuable positions across The West, the UK stood as the sole defender of Western values against the Nazis for two years, just to name a few. This doesn't excuse any bad it did. However, what great contributions are there from the Arabian conquests? Yes, there are some mathematical and scientific achievements associated with The Moors, for example. Ok, but what of the Arabian colonizers en masse? Where the British went there's a legacy of progress. Can you point to an equivalent from the Arab world?
This should be required reading for every American. The Koran should be read so that every non-Muslim understands that as an infidel their life has no value. What disturbs me watching the campus demonstrators spewing hate speech, encouraging violence and death to others, aren’t arrested. This is not free speech to be condoned, when it’s harmful to others.
Yes. I ran many hours with a friend, RIP, who as a Jew growing up in Iran, learned Arabic and read the original Koran. He drilled into me what you said.
Another factor helping to explain the spread of this reductionist, biased mind virus that has upended traditional liberal values is social media. In a generation we went from obtaining information from the printed word, including a canon of historical texts supplemented by a plethora of recent books, newspapers and magazines, to short digital bursts w emotion laden images. Youth today (unless required to do so) doesn’t read any print - no books, no newspapers. Nor do they spend the time and focus to read detailed on-line analysis. They receive and rely upon a stream of short, concise messages - often insinuations - supplemented w hip images or clips. Such “info” (combined w the “likes” of friends and celebrities, and the shunning of contrary messages) has powerful, even subliminal, effect. The old school method of reading widely to learn a subject, considering the views of scholars on both sides, seems long gone. My kids began cultishly reading tons of books when they were about eight years old, and used to love intellectual debate. Now in their mid-20s, after very expensive colleges, they know better.
The ability to 'long read ' is something that has been overlooked and lost. It has much value in both the time taken to absorb and read the information as well as reflect on it. But it's not zippy, fast, or condensed enough :(
If a university employed a teacher who stated that he found the mass murder of Blacks by a White Nationalist in a Black neighborhood of S. Africa to be "exhilarating" or who celebrated the mass murder, what would happen to that professor? And if the professor was not terminated by the university, what would happen to federal funds for the university?
I agree with everything Ms. Fish has stated, deplore and detest Hamas and stand with Israel.
But.....let's not let this obscure the fact that the corrupting influence of money and power is not limited to the forces of anti-Semitism. How about the pernicious and deep influence of the Peoples Republic of China on our universities and colleges? That malign influence threatens not just our ally and friend in the Mideast, but America, itself. If you think that the legions of America-hating anti-Semites chasing down American Jews on campus is an accident - think again. The vicious little Red Guards have been taught to hate all that is good and just in the world - including America, itself.
The main point here is that nobody in the Jewish establishment helped Rachel. She did it all by herself will some help from friends behind the scenes. She should be a top leader of our people now.
I’ve been trying not to direct my anger at other Jews right now, but I believe most non profit leaders have been near criminally negligent about their failures in Holocaust education and combatting antisemitism on the left. They’ve been living in a bubble for the last two decades and we need young leaders who will clean up this mess.
Tenure is to blame for much of this radical antisemitism and anti American views. This must be changed and all of these antisemitic professors must be purged.
Colleges should start a new study abroad program. Exchange each hostage for a hundred Pro-Hamas students and professors from US universities. Everyone wins: America, Israel, and education.
Is this a permanent exchange or are we gonna let them come back in a week when they realize how much it sucks?
One way ticket
I love it!
Richard wonders how the Nazi regime could have happened. He is in good company. In 1945, just before his death at the hands of the Nazis, Dietrich Bonhoeffer wonder the same. His answer is in his essay on Stupidity. Read it. In the 1930's, Hitler developed the process. It explains why a small vocal slogan spouting minority can dominate. Essentially, a human individual, being a social animal, wants to belong to a group. The trade off is loss of independent thought. Thought is replaced by slogans and catchwords. The individual is rendered stupid. They become the tool of the regime, "capable of any evil and at the same time incapable of seeing that it is evil". Currently, this process has been co-opted by the Left. In the current case, oppressor and oppressed, racist, loss of agency, CRT, DEI, DSG, etc. Clever slogans + Stupid People = The results that we see now.
The people at rallies repeating the slogans being shouted by the rabid rally leaders literally sound like they’re hypnotized.
I am reminded of Men in Black when I think about how humans are in large groups: A person is smart. People are dumb, panicky dangerous animals and you know it.
Yes, and anyone paying attention since 9/11 should have noticed the over compensation given to the Muslim religion (in order to prevent Islamophobia) to the detriment of Christianity and the (white?) west.
Being a Christian is now considered an extremist view according to many in Hollywood, the news media and politicians.
Overcompensation to the extreme.
Read Ayana Hirsi Ali.
Watch hollywoods depiction of catholic priests in Yellowstone’s 1923.
Wonder how the LA dodgers would honor a drag group who debase Jesus and nuns in the most vulgar way.
Jen psaki called Mike Johnson an extremist because of his religion.
School administrators calling any association with a Christianity as dangerous to students. (Somewhere in Arizona)yet insist on allowing satan clubs?
The signs are all around, no bad thought is allowed against Muslims. Why?
And I am not even religious. I can see it.
As Omar whined about being "discriminated against" just because on September 11th "some people did something....." Why is this reptile still in the US House of Representatives?
I guess she has voters who support her or maybe vote counters that Stalin said was the key ;)
Just as with Tlaib, she is elected by unreconstructed Middle Eastern, Islamic Jew haters whom our own government invited in as a fifth column. This may not be pretty but it is the ugly truth of our immigration "policy."
The population of Omar's district in only about 12% Muslim, so there clearly are a lot of non-Muslim leftists in the Twin Cities who are down with her Jew-hatred.
Overlooked in all this is that the Congresswoman in the adjacent district - Betty McCollum - is as rabid a Jew-hater and lover of Islamonazis as Omar.
There's an expression, "Minnesota Nice," because Minnesotans are known for being polite, friendly, and welcoming. I found this in my experience. I also discovered something else. I call it, "Minnesota Stupid." Unfortunately, the two seem to overlap. There are many nice, decent people who support really bad things. They mean well, but they are just deep-bone down-to-the-marrow stupid.
"no bad thought is allowed against Muslims. Why?
Because there are enough Muslims out there that will literally try and call you
I would remind Dr Fish that Brandeis was one of the founding members of cancel culture, when in 2014 it withdrew the honorary degree it had planned to grant to Ayaan Hirsi Ali. That reinforced my decision never to give Brandeis a nickel.
Anything changed on campus since then?
Yitzhak Klein, Brandeis '79.
I was actually surprised to see she works there (knowing how progressive it is), but I believe that’s a good thing. As I believe it’s a good thing that Thomas Sowell is at Stanford. Light in the darkness. I’m sure it isn’t easy to hold opposing viewpoints at Brandeis. I wish Dr. Fish well.
Just to be clear, Dr. Sowell is with the Hoover Institution, located on the campus of Stanford University. He has never taught at Stanford but hasn't been loafing, as he recently published his 40th book, Social Justice Fallacies, at age 93.
Fair point. Thank you for the clarification.
And, as Thomas Sowell says, "Never underestimate the damage smart people can do."
The repeat of the Holocaust on October 7th is gut wrenching. But in its wake is another horror—the anti-semitism which far from being on the wane appears to have lain dormant waiting to blossom in all its ugliness. I used to wonder how the Nazi regime with its death camps could have grown out of a culture that gave us Mozart. Puzzled I would nonetheless console myself with the thought, Well, it couldn’t happen here. But in those rallies on American campuses cheering for Hamas, I can hear those Nuremberg rallies cheered on by Goebbels. Sadly it could happen here. And I mourn this sad fact along with all that Israel has suffered and continues to suffer.
Really, at the end of the day, how different is National Socialism from Democratic Socialism?????
Let’s see
Totally compliant media
Social media complying under the hammer of regulation
Industry in lockstep for rent or punishment
I see very few differences
At one point I went down Umberto Eco's list of the characteristics of Fascism and showed how they applied to the modern Left. I thought I had saved it in a text file, but I can't seem to find it at the moment.
Eco's essential mistake in his list was not recognizing that other doctrines than nationalism could be used as a unifying principle. If you plug Woke ideology in as the doctrine, the list becomes a perfect description of the Left.
Fascism has always been an ideology of the left.
That is why Hitler was so adamant in destroying the communists in germany, they were his main competitor for the hearts and minds he needed.
I read an interesting book a few years back, “Travelers in the 3rd Reich”, compilation of letters and correspondence from all sorts of people who visited germany from 1920-45.
Many that visited germany and the Soviet Union in that period could not see much difference between them.
Interesting read.
You nailed it. Leftist indeed. Big government is Left, and there's no more notorious an example of the horrors wrought by a big government than those of the Nazis. Stalin and Mao killed more, but they also lasted much longer. Evil is evil and can thrive when it wields the power of government. Ronald Reagan: "Government isn't the solution, it's the problem." Dennis Prager: "The bigger the government, the smaller the citizen."
Voters of today's Democratic Party remind me of the German people in 1945, after WWII.
They "had no idea" was their common refrain.
In 1933, it was the Nazi Party who:
Used thugs to silence their critics
Censored their critics
Banned books
Banned statues
Use crazy science to advocate their party
Used state government to go after opponents
Imprisoned their critics
In 2023, guess who's doing the same thing?
Antifa
BLM
Trans Ideology
FBI, CIA
Banned books
Banned statues
Use crazy science to advocate their party
Used state government to go after opponents
Imprisoned their critics
Guess who will be saying the same thing as the Germans, around the year 2040, they "had no idea."
Yep, you guessed it.
scary!
"We are Socialists. Enemies - mortal enemies of the present capitalist system"
Written in a Nazi newsletter in 1927 by Gregor Strasser. Hitler was the editor of that newsletter.
As Thomas Sowell has written: Freedom is not the same as democracy although the two are often confused.
There is an old joke by conservatives: What is the difference between Naziism and Marxism?
One is missing the letters "Inter-"
It absolutely can happen here. Jordan Peterson talks extensively about how if we were Germans in the 1940’s most of would have been Nazis and many would have gladly been prison guards or worse at concentration camps. Eric Metaxas published a book in 2011 about Bonhoeffer, one of the few Christian priests who spoke out against the Nazi regime.
and the vice president (lower case intentional) has a grave concern for islamaphobia...
does anyone remember what happened to Lebanon? IT WAS A CHRISTIAN COUNTRY BRUTALLY TAKEN OVER BY ISLAM!!!!
1.4 B muslims in the world and 50 muslim majority states
15 M Jews and 1 Jewish State WITH UNBROKEN HISTORICAL ROOTS GOING BACK 4000 YEARS!!!
Big difference...... Israel allows the practice of Christianity and Islam. The Islamic Republic of Whateverstan? Not so much.
Excellent point
Had Hamas used the money they stole that was sent to palestinians FOR palestinians to create constructive happy productive lives free from danger and want, none of this would be happening. Somehow Hamas gets a free pass at every turn when THEY ARE THE SOURCE OF ALL THIS EVIL MISERY AND KILLING
Didn’t Lebanon’s Christian government falter when Jordan kicked out the PLO for armed insurrection (Black September 1970)? The PLO then moved into Lebanon contributing to the civil war (1975) that destroyed the country.
This article hits very close to home. This was almost exactly my experience at McGill University, in Montreal. Almost to the date, as my orientation was also in September 2001. It was the first time in my life I was hesitant to tell others that I was Jewish and an Israeli.
Canada has let in swarms of followers of the Satanic Verses. I well recall a confrontation with one of them at Trudeau airport. I guess he was used to getting away with pushing around Canadians. lol
Ironically Muhammad’s Islam is a stupendous example of colonization and settlement as it spread from Arabia into Spain and India and North Africa and Afghanistan and beyond in little more than a century.
Leftists carefully ignore that ugly and "problematic" fact. Only the British Empire might rival Islam as the chief colonizer of the planet, and only because they had a navy that could take their colonizers to more distant parts of the globe.
But, the British Empire also did much good: William Wilberforce began the abolitionist movement among Europeans, the Royal Army/Navy were the first to practice Rules of Engagement, the British built the infrastructure that did create modern India and all of the talented and well-educated Indians who now fill valuable positions across The West, the UK stood as the sole defender of Western values against the Nazis for two years, just to name a few. This doesn't excuse any bad it did. However, what great contributions are there from the Arabian conquests? Yes, there are some mathematical and scientific achievements associated with The Moors, for example. Ok, but what of the Arabian colonizers en masse? Where the British went there's a legacy of progress. Can you point to an equivalent from the Arab world?
Good point...
Like the Moorish invasion of Spain?
This should be required reading for every American. The Koran should be read so that every non-Muslim understands that as an infidel their life has no value. What disturbs me watching the campus demonstrators spewing hate speech, encouraging violence and death to others, aren’t arrested. This is not free speech to be condoned, when it’s harmful to others.
Yes. I ran many hours with a friend, RIP, who as a Jew growing up in Iran, learned Arabic and read the original Koran. He drilled into me what you said.
I hope everyone reads this - we need to shed light on this important topic
Another factor helping to explain the spread of this reductionist, biased mind virus that has upended traditional liberal values is social media. In a generation we went from obtaining information from the printed word, including a canon of historical texts supplemented by a plethora of recent books, newspapers and magazines, to short digital bursts w emotion laden images. Youth today (unless required to do so) doesn’t read any print - no books, no newspapers. Nor do they spend the time and focus to read detailed on-line analysis. They receive and rely upon a stream of short, concise messages - often insinuations - supplemented w hip images or clips. Such “info” (combined w the “likes” of friends and celebrities, and the shunning of contrary messages) has powerful, even subliminal, effect. The old school method of reading widely to learn a subject, considering the views of scholars on both sides, seems long gone. My kids began cultishly reading tons of books when they were about eight years old, and used to love intellectual debate. Now in their mid-20s, after very expensive colleges, they know better.
The ability to 'long read ' is something that has been overlooked and lost. It has much value in both the time taken to absorb and read the information as well as reflect on it. But it's not zippy, fast, or condensed enough :(
If a university employed a teacher who stated that he found the mass murder of Blacks by a White Nationalist in a Black neighborhood of S. Africa to be "exhilarating" or who celebrated the mass murder, what would happen to that professor? And if the professor was not terminated by the university, what would happen to federal funds for the university?
I agree with everything Ms. Fish has stated, deplore and detest Hamas and stand with Israel.
But.....let's not let this obscure the fact that the corrupting influence of money and power is not limited to the forces of anti-Semitism. How about the pernicious and deep influence of the Peoples Republic of China on our universities and colleges? That malign influence threatens not just our ally and friend in the Mideast, but America, itself. If you think that the legions of America-hating anti-Semites chasing down American Jews on campus is an accident - think again. The vicious little Red Guards have been taught to hate all that is good and just in the world - including America, itself.
And all that Chinese influence is on TikTok. It’s being spread like wildfire.
The main point here is that nobody in the Jewish establishment helped Rachel. She did it all by herself will some help from friends behind the scenes. She should be a top leader of our people now.
I’ve been trying not to direct my anger at other Jews right now, but I believe most non profit leaders have been near criminally negligent about their failures in Holocaust education and combatting antisemitism on the left. They’ve been living in a bubble for the last two decades and we need young leaders who will clean up this mess.
We just published a whole book of essays on the failure of Jewish leadership. "Betrayal" on Amazon. with Dershowitz and others
Just ordered and will recommend to my friends. Thank you!
Tenure is to blame for much of this radical antisemitism and anti American views. This must be changed and all of these antisemitic professors must be purged.
They are all communists as well
Double reason for clean sweep
Thank you for this excellent piece. A lucid, credible analysis of a subject so baffling and dispiriting.