StephenKMackSD's Blog

Headline:In this Cold War between Trump and China, beware the enemy within

Sub-headline: As tensions rise across the Pacific, whose side are US socialists on?

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/edition/comment/in-this-cold-war-between-trump-and-china-beware-the-enemy-within-zz87wk2js

As preamble to my comment on the above, recall Mr. Ferguson’s stern warning from February 24, 2019:

Headline: Let me give you the real news about hate crime

Sub-headline: Those who fabricate racist attacks will only help re-elect Trump

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/let-me-give-you-the-real-news-about-hate-crime-96gpsrsr5

The featured protagonist in this essay was ‘gay African-American actor Justin (“Jussie”) Smollett‘. In sum, Mr. Smollett wanted a raise from his $1800 per episode salary. And staged  an attack, as part of an utterly misguided attempt to somehow get the raise he wanted: this scheme demonstrates an utter lack of maturity, in fact it was the act of a child!

The real targets for Mr. Ferguson’s withering contempt were two prominent Senators Harris and Booker, who sided with Mr. Smollett, their only real ‘mistake’ was to have trusted Mr. Smollett? There exists a built in solidarity with black people that Mr. Ferguson will never understand? Call it a lack of Moral Imagination! Another possibility is that Mr. Ferguson hasn’t yet read ‘The New Jim Crow’ ? The other very pressing question that begs to be discussed  is that both Harris and Booker are presidential candidates, to engage in cynicism.

Further into his diatribe on the subject of ‘The Left’ and Fake Hate Crimes Mr. Ferguson offers this:

The problem is that there is not enough of the right kind of hate crime to validate the narrative, so cherished by the left, that Trump’s election unleashed a wave of white supremacist violence. Only half the known offenders in US hate crimes in 2017 were in fact white. Anti-semitic acts often turn out to be by non-white perpetrators, though you would need to read between the lines of The New York Times to work that out.

Mr. Ferguson is relentless in his attacks on Harris, with the addition of the 47 year old Southern Poverty Law Centre, another manifestation of ‘The Left’ 

Democrats such as Harris want to talk only about white extremism — rather in the way that the phoney civil rights organisation the Southern Poverty Law Centre used to publish a list of “anti-Muslim extremists” but never a list of Muslim extremists. Ironically, Nawaz and my wife both appeared on that list — until he sued them.

Look to the Southern Poverty Law Centre website here :

https://www.splcenter.org/

Here is the most recent example of Mr. Ferguson’s Anti-Left Paranoia, that framed the beginning of my essay. He garnishes it with a reference to Fukuyama’s monument to Starussian historical mendacity The End of History. Nothing impresses American Hicks, and their fellow travelers, more that a labored reference to Hegel and prolixity on a grand scale!

Headline:In this Cold War between Trump and China, beware the enemy within

Sub-headline: As tensions rise across the Pacific, whose side are US socialists on?

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/edition/comment/in-this-cold-war-between-trump-and-china-beware-the-enemy-within-zz87wk2js

But Mr. Ferguson has found a New Prophet in Graham Allison and his Destined for War and his Thucydides’s Trap, that reaches back to the Greeks, for a rhetorical fame for this expression of Declinism, that is Mr. Ferguson’s obsession. It even outranks ‘End of History’ merde as a way to fear monger, in a more highfalutin key.

But Mr. Ferguson ends his carefully framed essay with an attacks on ‘left-wing firebrand Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’ ‘congresswoman Ilhan Omar’ , ‘ Council on American-Islamic Relations’. What is the patient reader to make of this not so veiled accusation of potential treason. Mr. Ferguson is ignorant of American history!  At the beginning of the Cold War in America, the Party Line of the Republicans was that the New Deal was a Generation of Treason. Mr. Ferguson attempts to rehabilitate this lie, as some how viable in the New Cold War with China, via Mr. Allison’s nihilist polemic. Mr. Ferguson’s obsession with the left, is a function of his search for political apostates, while the American Political Class’ failures are manifested in the Trump presidency!

Old Socialist

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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

Andy Divine has the habit of  public moralizing on the political conduct of others,  from his column of March 08, 2019.

Let’s get this out of the way first: Using the phrases “all about the Benjamins” and “allegiance to a foreign country” when referring to the Israel lobby in D.C., as freshman Democratic representative Ilhan Omar recently did, is anti-Semitic. It should be possible to criticize Washington’s relationship with Israel without deploying crude and freighted language like this. But it got me wondering: Is it possible to write honestly about the Israel lobby’s power in D.C. without using any anti-Semitic “tropes” at all?

The basic facts are not really in dispute. A very powerful lobby deploys the money and passions of its members to ensure that a foreign country gets very, very special treatment from the U.S. Many of its supporters are Evangelical Protestants who want to accelerate the Second Coming. Others spring from an older and very American form of Christian Zionism. Many others are also American Jews with a commitment to Israel that has its roots both in the Torah and in a vow never to allow a second Holocaust.

Mr. Divine presents himself as an authority on bigotry, the ‘Anti-Antisemitism’ of Rep. Omar. Yet the reader with a memory reaching back to 1994 can’t forget Andy’s advocacy for The Bell Curve, and here is a link to a collection of responses published in The New Republic:

https://newrepublic.com/article/120890/responses-new-republics-bell-curve-excerpt

This devastating review in the New York Review of Books by Charles Lane:

The Tainted Sources of ‘The Bell Curve’

A link to Max Reed’s 2011 Gawker essay:

https://gawker.com/5863453/a-readers-guide-to-andrew-sullivans-defense-of-race-science

The one thing that Andy depends upon is the ignorance of his readership , the younger readers might think that he is an Idiosyncratic Centrist, that advocates the use of hallucinogens, while still advocating the Centrist idea of political moderation. Those readers don’t recall Andy’s ‘evolution’ from Thatcherite , to Neo-Conservative to Neo-Liberal  : never forgetting his unquenchable bellicosity in Foreign Policy and his advocacy for a Eugenics for a New Age. His condemnation of Rep .Omar is the product of his self-infatuated mendacity all dressed-up in Pundit Drag.

Old Socialist

http://nymag.com/intelligencer/2019/03/how-should-we-talk-about-the-israel-lobbys-power.html

Headline: Two Dozen House Republicans Oppose Anti-Hate Resolution for Some Reason

Mr. Chait proves himself to be a true ‘Centrist’ , the current alliance between the Neo-Cons & The New Democrats, by focusing on the minority Republican response to the ‘Anti-Hate Resolution’.
What he ignores is that the New Democrats, in the person of Pelosi ,could not identify Rep. Ilhan Omar as the ‘reason’ for this ‘Resolution’ . So it was couched in a generic condemnation of ‘hate’, that made some of the Republicans rebel against what they perceived to be ‘political correctness’ that the Republicans (Dixiecrats almost to a person) find to be a Leftist Dogma.

The most salient points Mr. Chait avoids, at all political costs, is a frank discussion of the power of AIPAC, and its strangle hold it has on American Politics. In that regard the whole of American Politics is strictly controlled by this Lobby. Rep. Ilhan Omar deviated from the acceptable discourse, to put it the mildest terms. In the spirit of frankness she is an Apostate who needs to be rebuked, shamed into conformity. Has it worked?

Pelosi can no longer control the Party, as Sanders, Warren, and even AIPAC  loyalist Harris support Rep. Omar. The New-New Dealers are the future of the Party, and the New Democrats are its past.  Even though they control of the Party apparatus ,peopled with their apparatchiks like Wassermann-Schultz, Schumer etc., the political agents of the New-New Deal, are now an unpleasant fact of political life for the Old Guard Clintonites: who will stop at nothing to try to kill this newest iteration of a New Deal, re-imagined by Rep. Omar and her sisters in the House.  Mr.  Chait is an Old Guard loyalist/apologist, whose allegiance to that coterie is always manifested in his carefully crafted propaganda interventions.

Old Socialist

http://nymag.com/intelligencer/2019/03/house-resolution-anti-semitism-republicans-oppose.html

Headline: Quantitative easing was the father of millennial socialism

Sub-headline: Federal Reserve’s bid to stave off depression sowed the seeds of a generational revolt

Welcome to Mr. David McWilliams and his brand of Political Economy, that is obsessed with a search for the cause of  the New-New Deal : a cunning blend of Herbert Spencer , Oscar Wilde, and Walt Disney. His  Enemies List begins with Ben Bernanke and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. With additional actors : quantitative easing, millennials , leftwing politics, 2008 crash, unorthodox monetary policy, and other villains too numerous to mention, allied with a host of suggestive economic data, bathed is withering sarcasm.

For the reader without the patience to read this whole tedious essay there is the last paragraph:

For the purist, capitalism without default is a bit like Catholicism without hell. But we have confession for a reason. Everyone needs absolution. QE was capitalism’s confessional. But what if the day of reckoning was only postponed? What if a policy designed to protect the balance sheets of the wealthy has unleashed forces that may lead to the mass appropriation of those assets in the years ahead?

https://www.ft.com/content/cbed81fc-3b56-11e9-9988-28303f70fcff

The patient reader might ask what has this amalgam of  Herbert Spencer, Oscar Wilde and Walt Disney have in common with a Catholicism, that more closely resembles Calvinism? In the most simplistic terms Bernanke is the Devil and Ocasio-Cortez is his Apostate. The rise of a New-New Deal is the foundation of Mr. McWilliams’ search for the cause of this political manifestation/misfortune that is reduced to a vulgar pastiche of theology.

Old Socialist

https://www.ft.com/content/cbed81fc-3b56-11e9-9988-28303f70fcff

The headline writers at The Financial Times worked their dark magic to confect this:

The fallen superpower: US foreign policy from triumph to hubris

Veteran diplomat William Burns details shifts under five presidents in ‘The Back Channel’

Who better than Posh Boy Lionel Barber to write this meditation on the career of William Burns ? His very impressive  C.V. is available here:

https://carnegieendowment.org/experts/1014

In the memoir of his diplomatic career, titled The Back Channel , is reviewed by Barber. Mr. Burns left the Diplomatic Service in 2014, and became the president of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and is a graduate of Oxford University.

In the Age of Trump, the points of agreement between Barber and Burns are presented here:

Burns correctly singles out the elder Bush’s administration as the model. The national security team that managed the end of the cold war was top drawer. James Baker was a shrewd secretary of state who enjoyed the trust of the president. Bush Sr understood the importance of restraint. His decision not to topple Saddam Hussein in the first Gulf war looks even wiser given the debacle after the second Gulf war.

But, as Burns recognises, the US stood at the pinnacle of power in 1991. One year later, as Bill Clinton prepared to enter the White House, Burns warned in a prescient memo that victory in the cold war masked more malign developments. The forces of fragmentation were on the rise, with the risk of a retreat into nationalism or religious extremism or a combination of the two.

“Ideological competition was not over — it was simply reshaped,” Burns wrote, “In much of the world . . . Islamic conservatism remains a potent alternative to democracy as an organising principle.”

The Adults in the Room is subject to a political resuscitation. It is more of the same defense of The American Empire, the bleak headline is just the hysterical frame, as a caution not to abandon the fiction of America as benign hegemon. In its round- about way it is the re-rendering of Huntington’s ‘Clash’ in more palatable terms, for easier consumption.

Headline: The Great Myth of the So-Called “Adults in the Room”

The leading myth of the mainstream media over the past year has been the idea that there were “adults in the room” in the Oval Office of the White House. These so-called adults were for the most part general officers, both active duty and retired, who were going to restrain the excesses of Donald Trump by providing moderate and authoritative advice that he couldn’t get anywhere else.

Thus far, we have witnessed two Army generals who have served as the national security adviser, and two Marine generals who have served as Secretary of Homeland Security, Secretary of Defense, and even chief of staff to the president. The past two weeks have been two of the most immoderate weeks in the brief history of the Trump administration, demonstrating that the adults are either AWOL (Absent without Leave) or unable to broadcast on Trump’s frequency.

It was fatuous to assume that general officers could provide the kind of support that such an inexperienced president required. The example of Secretary of Defense and Secretary of State George C. Marshall in the Truman administration was singular because he was an unusual soldier-statesman. The examples of Generals Brent Scowcroft and Colin Powell are not particularly useful because they had high-level civilian mentors such as Henry A. Kissinger, Frank Carlucci, and James Baker. Generals H.R. McMaster, John Kelly, Michael Flynn, and James Mattis lacked civilian guidance in the White House; they had no background for offering the sophisticated guidance needed on the geopolitical issues that bedevil our president.

…

https://www.counterpunch.org/2018/03/21/the-great-myth-of-the-so-called-adults-in-the-room/

Old Socialist

https://www.ft.com/content/34bbaa0e-3e79-11e9-9bee-efab61506f44

While Macron’s Napoleonic Ambition never seems to be in contact with the wholesale rebellion that is tearing France apart: his Neo-Liberalization of France has met defiance by the seeming leaderless ‘The Great Unwashed’:

https://newleftreview.org/II/115/didier-fassin-anne-claire-defossez-an-improbable-movement

In lieu of National Leadership Macron’s propaganda campaign concentrates on the Leadership of the EU. Unable to lead his home country, he puts his energy to leading a Mythical Europe. With a Plan

The Brexit ‘trap’ — but no contentious eurozone reforms

Sharing refugee burden in exchange for stronger borders

Olive branch to UK on security

‘Buy European’ idea is back — again

Treaty changes

Macron presents himself as The Leader of Europe, while he has proved that he is incapable of leading France, except by police violence. His popularity ratings Jan. 2019, 28%, 32 % as of Feb 2019.

Old Socialist

https://www.ft.com/content/5b4db15c-3f56-11e9-b896-fe36ec32aece

March 05,2019 attempted to post this in the comments section of The Financial Times, but the link for The New Left Review is designated as ‘malformed content’

O.S.

That Macron was ‘elected’ with a 36.5% of the voters, in the final round, rendering their ballots ‘spoiled’ or otherwise uncountable was the beginning of the end for Macron.His ‘Jupertarian Politics’ , the coded language for authoritarianism, and his ‘La République En Marche’ that began with ‘Rule by Decree’ .
Even now as his Finance Minister Muriel Pénicaud announces to Financial Time, of January 22, 2019 the House Organ of a collapsed Neo-Liberalism, the headline & sub-headline describe the intransigence of the ideologues:

Headline: Paris vows to extend labour reforms despite ‘gilets jaunes’

Sub-headline:Macron aides say protests have spurred government to redouble liberalisation efforts

…

According to Ms Pénicaud, between 300,000 and 400,000 jobs in France cannot be filled because of a lack of qualified applicants — 80,000 of them in the information technology sector.

“Our challenge is upskilling the nation,” she said, adding that entrepreneurs and employers appreciated last year’s reforms to simplify the labour code but that half of companies complained of recruitment problems. “They say: ‘We are no longer scared of hiring but we can’t find the skills’,” she added.

In Mr Macron’s overall programme, Ms Pénicaud said, “in order to reform France to give it a future, to give it economic and social momentum, one of the big priorities is the step-by-step transformation of the labour market”.

https://www.ft.com/content/3e2bce58-1e57-11e9-b126-46fc3ad87c65

There will be no social peace in France for the foreseeable future, because of the gilets jaunes, but what better way to deflect attention away from this internal crisis, prefigured by that 36.5 % of ‘spoiled ballots’, than to engage in a campaign of misdirection, factoring in the verbal attack on the notorious Neo-Conservative Alain Finkielkraut in Paris, as proof that there is an Anti-Semitism crisis in France that needs to be addressed by the force of Law. But how are these prophets of political virtue to handle the fact that Netnayahu is embracing Orban?

Headline:Anti-Semitism doesn’t bother Benjamin Netanyahu if it comes from his political allies

Sub-headline: Why Israel is cozying up to Viktor Orban’s Hungary and overlooking Poland’s Holocaust law

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has now joined the likes of his sworn enemies, Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas and former Iranian leader Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, by engaging in Holocaust revisionism to promote his own political interests. The leader of the Jewish state signed an agreement with Poland late last month that absolves Poland of its role in the extermination of its Jewish population during World War II, despite ample evidence of passive and active collaboration — as was the case throughout Europe.

Netanyahu spun the accord as a sign that he had forced Poland to soften its law about the country’s role in the Holocaust, but it really shows that maintaining power matters more to Netanyahu than fighting anti-Semitism.

…

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/posteverything/wp/2018/07/13/anti-semitism-doesnt-bother-benjamin-netanyahu-if-it-comes-from-his-political-allies/?utm_term=.2bda391c9af1

StephenKMackSD

France’s Macron leads the way as western leaders malevolently confuse anti-Zionism with antisemitism

Headline:Labour party to back second referendum on Brexit

Sub-headline: UK opposition party favours public vote ‘to prevent a damaging Tory Brexit’

After years of political hysterics, coming from this newspaper, and all the other publications of whatever political persuasion i.e. bourgeouise respectability is the key issue, The Second Referendum should have been the headline of this issue @FT, but Mrs. May’s vain attempt at self-rescue, demonstrates the politics of this newspaper’s attempt at producing unconvincing propaganda.

Mrs. Thatcher is still the ghost that haunts British politics, with her penchant for passing out Road to Serfdom like a party favor, and declaring that ‘there is no such thing as ‘Society’ , a concept out of Hayek’s ‘evolution’ from Economist to Social Theorist, such was her political nihilism. Markets and Prices , Social Darwinism masquerading as Economics, were/are the measure of the Human Endeavor. Thatcher even fought with her male hirelings! Mrs. May has all of Thatcher’s arrogance and hauteur, not to speak of mean-spiritedness, but remains unconvincing as political actor. While Cameron was just another Posh Boy given to the expression of ugly snobbery, , as a political position against Labour’s Left Wing Social Democracy.

Old Socialist

https://www.ft.com/content/028b90ca-3925-11e9-b856-5404d3811663

Headline: Tom Bower on Jeremy Corbyn: he left for Jamaica an academic failure and came back a fanatical Marxist

Sub-headline;  Throughout his career the Labour leader has used tactics learnt from the communist playbook. His biographer Tom Bower charts his cultivation of a ‘good guy’ image — and ruthless elimination of moderate rivals

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/edition/news-review/tom-bower-on-jeremy-corbyn-he-left-for-jamaica-an-academic-failure-and-came-back-a-fanatical-marxist-csxbmcr7w

This is a condensation of Mr. Bower’s book, for easier consumption by the Sunday Times readership, who already believe that Corbyn is Satan! Corbyn is here portrayed as a ‘fanatic’, ‘academic failure’ a political purist in the mode of Lenin or Stalin, in his ruthless elimination of his rivals, while not resorting to murder. (Yet the complete absence of the vexing question of Anti-Semitism remains where? in this biography.) Corbyn

has evolved into a Left-Wing Social Democrat, that in the bleak world that the collapse of The Neo-Liberal Swindle created, and the dismal politics of the Tories and New Labour, that now defines ‘The Political Center’ of British life. Only it that political setting could Corbyn be defamed as anything like a ‘Radical’ The citizens of that Political Center are panic stricken by the rise of Corbyn and his returning the Labour Party to its roots, he is the antithesis of the for sale Tony Blair. But The Sunday Times provides a ‘review’  by Dominic Sandbrook that follows The Party Line on this political monster.  

Headline:  Review: Dangerous Hero: Corbyn’s Ruthless Plot for Power by Tom Bower — portrait of a monomaniac

Sub-headline: If Jeremy Corbyn became prime minister, he would easily be the most dangerous, most indolent and least intelligent holder of the office in history

This is one of the most depressing books I have ever read. It is a forensically detailed portrait of a man with no inner life, a monomaniac suffused with an overwhelming sense of his own righteousness, a private schoolboy who failed one A-level and got two Es in the others, a polytechnic dropout whose first wife never knew him to read a book.

It is the story of a man who does not appear to have gone to the cinema or listened to music, takes no interest in art or fashion and refused to visit Vienna’s magnificent Schönbrunn Palace because it was “royal”. It tells how he bitterly opposed the Anglo-Irish Agreement, deeply regretted the fall of the Berlin Wall and praised the men who attacked New York on September 11, 2001, for showing an “enormous amount of skill”. In some parallel universe, this man would currently be living in well-deserved obscurity. In reality, Jeremy Corbyn is the leader of Her Majesty’s opposition and the bookmakers’ favourite to become our next prime minister.

For the veteran biographer Tom Bower, whose previous subjects include Mohamed al-Fayed, Richard Branson, Simon Cowell, Tony Blair and Prince Charles, Corbyn is the easiest target imaginable. The details of his life are well known. Born in 1949, the son of a skilled engineer and a maths teacher, he was brought up in a large 17th-century farmhouse in Shropshire called Yew Tree Manor. At school he was a loner and an underachiever, so lazy that his headmaster told him: “You’ll never make anything of your life.”

…

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/review-dangerous-hero-corbyns-ruthless-plot-for-power-by-tom-bower-portrait-of-a-monomaniac-8x0spp3d8

In this political moment when May’s  policy/governmental incompetence are on full display, this held together by a slim majority:  Corbyn is about to become Prime Minister, which precipitates panic in both the Tories and New Labour. This book  condensation, and its review in The Good Grey Times is a clear demonstration of that political panic. The Independent Group that has taken shape in the last week, whose majority comes from The Labour Friends of Israel, is also indicative of that panic and trades on the lie that Corbyn is an Anti-Semite. Look to Jonathan Freedland’s Guardian essay as the titular beginning point of  the concerted defamation of Corbyn, by the Blairite New Labour faction.

Almost Marx

Mr. Foer collects a series of Newspaper Headlines, but he mixes reports on Police Records and Ben Judah: Europe’s ubiquitous anti-Semitism,  Mr Judah a member of a ‘Think Tank’ funded by perpetual bad actor George Soros: one of the coterie of callbos that brought about the Ukrainian Coup of 2014.  That has since installed the fascist Azov Battalion as its National Guard, not to speak of the active participation of  Right Sector and Svoboda in the Coup. With the help of American Neo-Con Diplomat Victoria Nuland.

On the ‘victim’ Alan Finkielkraut: Neo-Con, Racist and defender of Roman Polanski:

Controversies

His interview published in the Haaretz magazine in November 2005 in which he gave his opinion about the 2005 French riots stirred up much controversy. Finkielkraut’s remarks that the France national football team was “Black, Black, Black” (as opposed to the expression “black-blanc-beur“—meaning “Black, White, Arab”—coined after the 1998 World Cup victory to honor the African and Afro Caribbean, European and North African origins of the players) were seen as “racially insensitive”.

Israeli filmmaker Eyal Sivan took legal action against Finkielkraut after the Frenchman said Sivan “is, if you will, one of the actors in this particularly painful, particularly alarming reality, the Jewish anti-Semitism that rages today.”^[5]

60 researchers and professors at the École Polytechnique signed a petition in 2006 to protest his alleged colonial views.^[6]

In 2009, he was criticized for his strong defence of Roman Polanski, arrested in Switzerland for the rape of a 13-year-old girl. Finkielkraut claimed that she was a “teenager”, “not a child”.^[7]

On 16 February 2019, Finkielkraut was verbally assaulted on the street by a group of yellow vest protesters in Paris when they chanced on him in Boulevard du Montparnasse.^[8][9] He previously expressed his sympathy for the yellow vest movement.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alain_Finkielkraut

No one should suffer attacks about who they are, but Mr. Finkielkraut is hardly an innocent in the matter! The gilets jaunes are a politically diverse opposition to the Macron’s Neo-Liberalization of France.  As a Neo-Con Finkielkraut cultivates controversy, it is his reason d’etre, and some anonymous members of this political collective used this demonstration to attack this polemicist with Anti-Semitic slurs. Its called political opportunism.

Monday, February 18

“Seven Lawmakers Quit Britain’s Labour Party Over Brexit and Anti-Semitism” (The Washington Post)

In order to read this, the reader must be a subscriber to The Washington Post.  But a reader, who has followed this concerted attack on Jeremy Corbyn, and ‘The Left’ (BDS) only need to look to the original accusation of Anti-Semitism made in the Guardian (2016), by Anti-Semitic fabulist Jonathan Freedland, as an operative of the Blairite faction of New Labour. In a concerted effort to defame Corbyn, that backfired, even with the Labour Friends of Israel consistent defamation, succeed by the the ‘Independent Group’ :

Headline:Labour and the left have an antisemitism problem

Sub-headline: Under Jeremy Corbyn the party has attracted many activists with views hostile to Jews. Its leaders must see why this matters

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/mar/18/labour-antisemitism-jews-jeremy-corbyn

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Headline:The Independent Group needs to call by-elections, though it will lose them

Sub-headline: Beyond the loss of Luciana Berger, the rest of The Independent Group launch consisted of vapid snipes and an absence of policy. The right thing to do would be to call by-elections, which it will inevitably lose, argues Michael Segalov

I hadn’t expected the fundamental message of this morning’s Labour splinter group press conference to unify those from all corners of the party, which, until this morning, the assembled seven MPs called their political home. Lined up on a stage in London’s County Hall, Westminster’s worst-kept secret was finally confirmed to the nation: a small handful of “centrist” MPs – most of whom you’ve probably never heard of – were leaving the party once and for all. The basis of their decision? Labour had changed beyond recognition from the party it was when they each joined. But that is in and of itself by no means a bad thing, as its 500,000-plus members supportive of a radically progressive policy platform would no doubt confirm.

In what was quite a dull event for something billed as marking a seismic shift in British politics, the seven now independent MPs – Chuka Umunna, Luciana Berger, Gavin Shuker, Angela Smith, Chris Leslie, Mike Gapes and Ann Coffey – each set out their positions and said their goodbyes.

Beyond well-crafted assaults on Corbyn (which, let’s be honest, most have spent years practising), the whole affair was somewhat vapid. There was much talk of “values” and “change” and the need for a “better future”, but beyond the buzzwords there was little more than hot air and fluff.

…

https://www.gq-magazine.co.uk/article/the-independent-group

This quotation from Highbrow Magazine from February 23, 2019 gives a vital clue as to the paternalist thinking, that aptly describes Mr. Foer’s uncritical polemic made entirely of headlines, that suggest crisis, some very real, others politically manufactured :

… following a Lippman-esque model of shaping public discourse (Lippman believed the masses were a “bewildered herd,” and that their views should be shaped by experts and elites – the types of people who worked at The New Republic – people who could, in Lippman’s own words, tell readers “what to think about”)

https://www.highbrowmagazine.com/2737-brief-history-new-republic-lippmann-peretz-hughes

But Foer ignores the actions of Netanyahu in exacerbating ‘Anti-Semitism’ :

Headline:Netanyahu’s flirtation with the far right

Sub-headline: As the extreme right continues its rise across Europe, Israel’s prime minister has decided to get closer. This decision, in the name of the fight against Islamism, means turning a blind eye to his new friends’ antisemitism.

…

The guiding principle of Netanyahu’s ostentatious seduction campaign among rightwing populist and neo-fascist circles in Europe is ‘their antisemitism doesn’t matter so long as they are Zionists’. All this cannot be dismissed as just realpolitik: it is part of Netanyahu’s personal and political DNA. Personal, because his father, Benzion Netanyahu, had always been close to Zeev Jabotinsky, leader of rightwing revisionist Zionism, and was in fact his assistant. Political, because the precursors of Likud — the Irgun, Betar and Lehi (‘Stern Gang’) – were already involved with fascism and Nazism. With much-publicised reminders of the deeds of the mufti of Jerusalem, Amin al-Husseini, who had travelled (alone) to Berlin and created two (Bosniac) SS legions there, it’s easy to forget that the Lehi itself offered to ally itself with the Third Reich in 1941. And that the Betar, then the Irgun, in the early 1920s, had the political support of Benito Mussolini, who admired Jabotinsky: ‘In order for Zionism to achieve its goal,’ said il Duce, ‘you’ll need a Jewish state with a Jewish flag and a Jewish language. And the person who understands that best is your fascist, Jabotinsky.’

https://mondediplo.com/outsidein/netanyahu-s-flirtation-with-the-far-right

What is abundantly clear is that Foer exploits real manifestations of Anti-Semitism, while ignoring other manufactured propaganda, in an American Political Culture awash in paranoia of many varieties: Trumpism, Anti-Russian hysterics, recited at once respectable Newspapers,TV Networks and the Internet.  And a rampant Xenophobia: this framed by two of Samuel P. Huntington’s books, ‘The Clash of Civilizations’ and ‘Who Are We? The Challenges to America’s National Identity’ .In sum, American Anglo-Protestant Virtue is under threat from a world made of ubiquitous enemies.

Political Observer