Before you read Stephen’s polemic, or my comment, it might help the reader to view Brian Lamb’s revelatory interview of 2006 with Bret Stephens.
Q&A
Bret Stephens
Bret Stephens discussed how he became a member of the editorial board at the Wall Street Journal, his interest in political philosophy, his thoughts on the various opinions about the Iraq war, and other topics in the news.
Headline: The Anti-Israel Left Needs to Take a Hard Look at Itself
Mr. Stephens is insufferably arrogant, I will save the word ‘hubris’ for its place in the critical evaluation of Greek Drama. Mr. Stephens is a propagandist, who was Editor of the Jerusalem Post, the propaganda arm of The Zionist State. And then a member of the Editorial Board for the Wall Street Journal. Then to the New York Times, where he demonstrated that talent for arrogance, by no longer posting at twitter. He was used too having that ego stroked- the unsparing, unvarnished critical evaluations of the lesser beings of Planet Earth, sent Mr. Stephens into a tizzy!
Note: The first three paragraphs of Bret Stephen’s … where he walks among ‘The Great Unwashed’:
On Saturday morning in southern Israel, Hamas murdered hundreds of people at a music festival and kidnapped others at gunpoint to serve as human shields in Gaza. On Sunday afternoon in Midtown Manhattan, a speaker at a rally of pro-Palestinian and left-wing groups celebrated that atrocity — one of thousands suffered by Israelis over the past few days, which we later learned included the killing of babies and toddlers.
“As you might have seen, there was some sort of rave or desert party where they were having a great time, until the resistance came in electrified hang gliders and took at least several dozen hipsters,” a speaker said. “But I’m sure they’re doing very fine despite what The New York Post says.” He was met with cheers.
I went to see the rally for myself: Would there be even perfunctory condemnation of Hamas’s methods? A brief nod of sympathy to Israel’s anguish? Some banal nod to the cause of peace and nonviolence? Not that I heard. What I saw was giddiness and gloating, as if someone’s team had won the World Cup. Hamas had perpetrated the largest single-day massacre of Jews since the Holocaust, and the crowd was euphoric.
Before you read Stephen’s polemic, or my comment, it might help the reader to view Brian Lamb’s revelatory interview of 2006 with Bret Stephens.
Q&A
Bret Stephens
Bret Stephens discussed how he became a member of the editorial board at the Wall Street Journal, his interest in political philosophy, his thoughts on the various opinions about the Iraq war, and other topics in the news.
Headline: The Anti-Israel Left Needs to Take a Hard Look at Itself
Mr. Stephens is insufferably arrogant, I will save the word ‘hubris’ for its place in the critical evaluation of Greek Drama. Mr. Stephens is a propagandist, who was Editor of the Jerusalem Post, the propaganda arm of The Zionist State. And then a member of the Editorial Board for the Wall Street Journal. Then to the New York Times, where he demonstrated that talent for arrogance, by no longer posting at twitter. He was used too having that ego stroked- the unsparing, unvarnished critical evaluations of the lesser beings of Planet Earth, sent Mr. Stephens into a tizzy!
Note: The first three paragraphs of Bret Stephen’s … where he walks among ‘The Great Unwashed’:
On Saturday morning in southern Israel, Hamas murdered hundreds of people at a music festival and kidnapped others at gunpoint to serve as human shields in Gaza. On Sunday afternoon in Midtown Manhattan, a speaker at a rally of pro-Palestinian and left-wing groups celebrated that atrocity — one of thousands suffered by Israelis over the past few days, which we later learned included the killing of babies and toddlers.
“As you might have seen, there was some sort of rave or desert party where they were having a great time, until the resistance came in electrified hang gliders and took at least several dozen hipsters,” a speaker said. “But I’m sure they’re doing very fine despite what The New York Post says.” He was met with cheers.
I went to see the rally for myself: Would there be even perfunctory condemnation of Hamas’s methods? A brief nod of sympathy to Israel’s anguish? Some banal nod to the cause of peace and nonviolence? Not that I heard. What I saw was giddiness and gloating, as if someone’s team had won the World Cup. Hamas had perpetrated the largest single-day massacre of Jews since the Holocaust, and the crowd was euphoric.
Note: It doesn’t quite reach Stephens’ consciousness, whatever that might be? that cell phone recordings of Israeli Soldiers kidnapping children, attacking Palestinian worshipers, Israelis Invading and desecrating al-Aqsa Mosque, shooting to death Palestinians in the street, and letting them die, denying them lifesaving Medical Aid, settlers eviting Palestinians from their homes, and myriad other Crimes against other human beings- this collection of savagery goes against the deeply held beliefs of human beings across the World! Should it surprise that a propagandist, Stephens is unable to connect, to that singular belief in the dignity of the person, as the sine qua non of the Human Endeavor? And that the Story of a Victory of The Slaves, over their Masters is a part of the Jewish, Christian and Islamic religious traditions. That Slave/Master dialectic is even an intergyral part of Hegel’s Phenomenology of The Spirit.
Stephen’s favorite role is to play victim, yet as David Klion points out, he is a child of privelidge,
…
Conservative pundit tropes weren’t the only thing young Bret absorbed while growing up in Mexico City. Speaking at an interfaith conference in Jerusalem in 2003, Bret recalled being raised by secular Jewish parents and receiving no religious education or Bar Mitzvah, but nonetheless confronting “a hostile environment for Jews.” This, at least, was how Bret justified what to me reads as contempt for the vast majority of Mexicans. According to Israel Insider, “Stephens saw Catholicism as practiced in Mexico with its heavy pagan influences as ‘primitive.’” He changed his mind when he left Mexico for university and met American Christians.
“It was a revelation to me that you could be a sincere Christian and not be a peasant,” he said. According to Israel Insider, “As he became more committed to Israel, it was hard not to notice […] that it was Christian conservatives who were amongst the most supportive of Israel.”
In other words, Bret came around on Christians after he met some who were white (and pro-Israel). But while Bret’s views on Christianity may have evolved, his subsequent publicly expressed opinions of Arabs and Muslims seem to echo his earlier attitude toward the “primitive” Mexican “peasants.”
Bret spent most of the first 14 years of his life in Mexico, but then attended an elite boarding school in Massachusetts, followed by the University of Chicago. He initially hoped to major in anthropology (he wanted to be Indiana Jones) but found his first course in the discipline “kind of grim and political and tedious.” He therefore opted for political philosophy, which allowed him to stay comfortably within the Western canon under the mentorship of the neoconservative scholar Leon Kass, who would eventually become known for advising George W. Bush to ban stem-cell research.
Rootless cosmopolitan,down at heels intellectual;would be writer.
'Polemic is a discourse of conflict, whose effect depends on a delicate balance between the requirements of truth and the enticements of anger, the duty to argue and the zest to inflame. Its rhetoric allows, even enforces, a certain figurative licence. Like epitaphs in Johnson’s adage, it is not under oath.'
https://www.lrb.co.uk/v15/n20/perry-anderson/diary
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