Former NFL Player Tweets Wild Anti-Semitic Conspiracy Theories

Larry Johnson, a former NFL player, has been tweeting outlandish anti-Semitic conspiracy theories. This is part of a bigger problem. See the chapter of Bieganski dealing with black -Jewish relations. 

Full article here. 

Polish Women MPs Wear Rainbow-Colored Clothes to Protest President Duda's Homophobic Comments

"A group of Polish opposition MPs wore the rainbow colors of the LGBT flag in protest against President Andrzej Duda at his swearing-in ceremony on Thursday.

While some opposition leaders chose to boycott Duda’s inauguration, other MPs attended, wearing rainbow masks and bright colors to express their support for Poland’s LGBTQ community, whom Duda actively campaigned against.

In a campaign speech in June, Duda called LGBTQ rights an ideology “more destructive” than communism, prompting allegations of discrimination and hate speech from various international bodies, including the European Parliament.

Duda’s reelection bid has centered on “family rights and values,” and the belief that LGBTQ ideology undermines traditional family roles between men and women."

Read full article here

Source of this chart

Lives and Deaths that Don't Matter. Rage, Agony, Despair

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I've been feeling rage, agony, and despair.

My country is losing its mind.

I've already posted a lot about Trump and there is no reason to repeat objections to Trump here.

In recent months, America has been swept up in mass hysteria. This hysteria is captured in a quote from Orwell that is suddenly turning up everywhere. I used to see it in the Yahoo comments section – that was before Yahoo removed its comments section.

"Every record has been destroyed or falsified, every book rewritten, every picture has been repainted, every statue and street building has been renamed, every date has been altered. And the process is continuing day by day and minute by minute. History has stopped. Nothing exists except an endless present in which the Party is always right."

I've written a lot about this hysteria. See here, here, here, here, here, and here.

I've said that there is no indication that "Black Lives Matter" has anything to do with black lives or human life mattering.

Rather, I think that BLM is a tool wielded by "trained Marxists" eager to "burn this system down and replace it." I think BLM is followed by useful idiots, that is people who don't realize that they are being used, and, indeed, using. BLM's social media supporters exploit black pain to enhance their own social media profile as "woke."

If black lives matter to you, you work with black people. You teach, you heal, you provide legal services, you patrol the streets as a LEO. And you started doing these things years ago, with no camera present, and no social media to perform your wokeness before the world and harvest "likes" and Facebook friends lauding you how "woke" you are. BLM's supporters don't do these things.

I live in a majority-minority city and BLM has virtually no presence here. When I see photos of BLM protests, what I see are a lot of white kids. The most virulent BLM posts on Facebook that I've seen come from what appear to be lonely white women. When I go to their pages I see no friends commenting on their posts. I think a lot of lost rich, white females are desperately seeking a purpose for their lives, and exploiting black people's pain in that pathetic search.

Officer David Dorn was a 77 year old retired policeman who had given 38 years to keeping his community safe. He was killed in a Facebook livestream during a BLM riot. His black life did not matter to BLM.

Andrew Duncomb, a black Trump supporter, was stabbed by a white BLM protester in Portland for wearing a MAGA hat.

I've posted on Facebook numerous videos of whites screaming at blacks that the blacks should be part of BLM, and blacks saying, no, I don't want to be part of this movement, or you are doing this movement wrong. See here, here, here…too many others.

The real tell that BLM is not about black  people or lives mattering. BLM forbids anyone from mentioning the death toll from black on black crime, which kills magnitudes more black people than white police officers. The numbers are related: blacks commit a disproportionate amount of violent crime, and they commit those crimes against other black people. BLM forbids any discussion of this because black people killing black people is not a narrative that serves their true agenda. 

Patrisse Cullors, BLM co-founder, announces that she is a "trained Marxist."

Cullors' Marxism did not diminish BLM's support among its Rich, White, Liberal base.

Rage, agony, despair.

What if Cullors had said, "I'm a trained Nazi"? Would people get it then?

Yeah, but, Nazis killed six million Jews.

Communists killed an estimated one hundred million people in the twentieth century.

Those lives don't matter.

That indifference, that erasure of that massive body count from national consciousness, causes me rage, agony, and despair.

Our lives don't matter. I'm one of the populations the communists trained their guns on. Polish, Catholic, peasant stock.

Yes, some of my relatives joined the Party and they did okay. Better housing, better food.

And that's it. Still no intellectual freedom, no freedom to travel, still being surveilled 24/7. One foot out of line, they come down on you.

Others of my relatives remained faithful Catholics and lost a lot. One became a non-person.

These lives don't matter.

Because opinion-makers in America, largely, still, rich, white liberals, do not acknowledge, or don't want to know about, communism's crimes.

Deny, deny, deny.

Holocaust denial is a crime in many countries. Holocaust denial in the US would be a career-ender.

Denying what communism does to people is an act of faith for rich, white liberals. It's part of their unexamined, assumed creed.

Look at Bernie Sanders. Look at Alexandria Ocasio Cortez. If rich, white liberals faced the truth about communism, would either one have a career?

As I often remark to Sue, the daughter of a Polish soldier who fought in WW II, "Wear a swastika or Hitler t-shirt and be thrown out of public places, find yourself in court, be assigned a therapist, go on a watch list, be abandoned by friends. Wear a red star, Mao, Che, Stalin, or a hammer and sickle on a t-shirt, and face zero consequences."

Our lives don't matter.

Below are some images from the 1920s famine in Soviet Russia. Here's the thing. Marxism says, "From each according to his ability, to each according to his need." Put that into practice, you take things away from people, things for which people have worked. If you take things away from people, they fight back.

Some of the people the communists tried to take things away from were farmers. They didn't want to surrender their grain, their animals, their land, to the state. The state retaliated.

Of the 1921-22 famine, Wikipedia writes,

"The Bolshevik government had requisitioned supplies from the peasantry for little or nothing in exchange. This led peasants to drastically reduce their crop production. The rich peasants (kulaks) withheld their surplus grain to sell on the black market…

Aid from outside Soviet Russia was initially rejected. The American Relief Administration, which Herbert Hoover formed to help the victims of starvation of World War I, offered assistance to Lenin in 1919, on condition that they … hand out food impartially to all. Lenin refused this as interference in Russian internal affairs."

The 1921-22 famine killed five million. The one in the thirties killed perhaps ten million, including "forty percent of all Kazakhs."

But don't worry. Those lives don't matter. They died for communism, and communism is benign. American supporters of Bernie Sanders, Alexandria Ocasio Cortez, and BLM have decided that.

As If By Magic, Jurek Leder Appears in My Inbox, with a Virtuti Militari

Andzrej Stankiewicz provides this caption:
Józio, son of Artur, Jurek, son of Stach, my aunt Irena, Janek, younger brother of Jurek, and Seweryn Jan, my father. 

"Józef Piłsudski decorates officers with the Virtuti Militari cross for disarming the Germans in 1918"
Source

Five years ago, on November 18, 2015, Piotr Rybak, a troublemaking buffoon, burned a Jew in effigy in Wroclaw, Poland.

As reported by the JTA: "Rybak's defense attorney reminded the court that the effigy — which included a black hat, beard, side curls and black clothing — was burnt during a demonstration against the taking in of Muslim refugees and not against the Jewish community. Rybak had previously told the court that the effigy was meant to represent philanthropist George Soros, an American Jewish billionaire."

The prosecuting attorney, Katarzyna Zagwojska, saw things differently. "For everyone living in Poland after World War II it is a clear statement of the terms 'burning' and 'a Jew.' This gesture should be read as a threat of annihilation, eg. by burning."

Rybak was sentenced to ten, then three months in prison. The judge, Robert Zdych, said, "It was a shameful act because he showed Poland in the eyes of the world as a country of xenophobes."

Rybak remains active, and he continues to commit crimes. See here.

When I heard about Rybak burning a Jew in effigy, I was distraught. I have no way of responding to powerful haters who makes headlines around the world. I have no way of reaching the Jews who were offended, frightened, and disgusted by Rybak's crime.

I just did not know what to do, but I knew I had to do something.

I posted about Rybak's hate crime, here.

I decided to post ten posts dedicated to Polish Jews. That series of posts begins here. I posted salutes to Jankiel, Queen Esterka, the Slovak Jew who saved my mother's life, Hayom Salomon, Abraham Prochownik, and Saul Wahl. I am very grateful to Michal Karski for his guest blog posts saluting to Marian Hemar, Adam Aston, and Henry Vars.

I also saluted Jurek Leder.

When I was doing the research for Bieganski: The Brute Polak Stereotype, I encountered many remarkable stories that I could never reference in my work or share with anyone. They were destined to remain in my memory. As I wrote in 2015:

I was doing a massive amount of reading that would inform the book Bieganski. I read Polish history, Jewish history, Polish-Jewish history. I read about stereotypes. I read about the Holocaust and I read about other atrocities including the Rwandan and Cambodian genocides. I read memoirs, scholarly and newspaper articles and internet postings by average Joes. Thousands of pages. Authors long dead and very much alive and still punching. I eventually received emails or phone calls from many of the players in Polish-Jewish relations. I was swimming in an ocean of words so vast that I could not see dry land.

In all that verbiage, I have forgotten plenty of things. Sometimes I stumble across a book, think, "I should read this book," and realize that I'd read it, reviewed it, and quoted it.

There are passages that, for whatever reason, moved me so much I have never shaken them. One concerned Jurek Leder, mentioned in Mary Berg's Warsaw Diary. Mary Berg wrote:

Jurek Leder, my close friend, who now works for the Jewish police, is also a passionate Polish patriot. 'If only I could get out and join the partisans!' He says. 'At least I could fight for Poland then. I love my country and even if a hundred anti-Semites try to convince me that I am not a Pole I'll prove it with my fists if not my words.' Leder's father is a captain in the Polish army and is presently interned in Russia. [One must assume that Leder's father was murdered, along with other Polish military officers, at places like Katyn.]

There are many such Jews who would gladly sacrifice their lives for Poland who, at present, are working in the underground. There are many Jews who grit their teeth and keep silent, and blush with shame and humiliation when, as sometimes happens, a Pole throws a stone from the other side of the walls into the ghetto. Recently, on Chlodna Street, Poles passing by in trucks hurled stones at showcases and windows of private apartments, emitting wild cries of triumph as they rode by.

Some Jews are ashamed to admit that Poland is their fatherland, although they love it, because they remember how often their Polish co-citizens have said to them, 'Go back to Palestine, Jew,' or how, at the University, the Jewish students were assigned to the ghetto benches and were often attacked by many Gentiles students for no other crime than their Jewish faith. It is a fact that many Gentiles in Warsaw have been infected by Hitler's propaganda. Naturally, there are people who see the error of such ways, but they are afraid to say anything because they would at once be accused of having a Jewish grandfather or grandmother or even of having been bribed by the Jews.

Only a few, and these are members of the working-class parties, speak up openly, and these, for the most part, are fighting in the partisan units. If all the Aryan Poles got together and tried to help the Jews in the ghetto, they could do a great deal for us. For instance, they could procure Aryan certificates for many Jews, give them shelter in their homes, facilitate their escape over the walls, and so on and so forth. But of course it's easier to throw stones into the ghetto."

My blog post saluting Jurek Leder contains further resources addressing Berg's charges about Poles not helping enough. You can see that here.

After I posted that blog post, Jurek Leder retreated back into my memory. He was a real person, not a fictional character, and he was not famous, so I never thought I'd ever encounter any mention of Jurek again. He would, of course, continue to live in my memory and my heart, as a Jew who faced Polish anti-Semitism and wanted to fight for Poland, a country he and I both love.

Imagine how surprised and moved I was late last year when I received an email, out of the blue, from Andrzej Stankiewicz, who is related to Jurek Leder. Andrzej was kind enough to send me photos, so I could put a face to the name, and a brief account of how Jurek passed. I asked Andrzej permission to share this material on the blog, and Andrzej kindly granted permission.

It's been seven months since we corresponded, and I'm only posting this material now. Why did it take me so long?

I knew I would get choked up. In fact I am holding back tears right now.

There has been so much suffering, and so much injustice, on planet Earth. I read about it for my dissertation. One of the most haunting sentences I read was about the Cambodian genocide. It appeared in the New York Times many years ago. Prisoners in the Tuol Sleng prison were tortured till they confessed to anything their captors wanted them to confess to. As at Auschwitz, the demons at Tuol Sleng kept detailed notes, and photographed their victims. The New York Times reported that there is so much documentation on the Cambodian genocide that no one will probably ever read all of it. In fact, my spell check underlines the words "Tuol Sleng" in red, as if I am misspelling them. That is how little attention has been paid to this prison, where over 18,000 people were tortured to death.

That sentence – about no one ever reading all the documentation on the Cambodian genocide – broke my heart. It's bad enough to be tortured and murdered by madmen. It's somehow worse, in my mind, never to have your story heard by any single other human being.

The least I could do is remember the name of one person, the story of one person, and I have tried to do that. Thus, I remember Jurek Leder. When Andrzej reached out to me with is actual photo and a bit more of his story, it moved me deeply.

Andrzej's photos and email text are below.

Here is the promised photograph of Jurek Leder and his cousins.

In the photograph, from left to right: Józio, son of Artur, Jurek, son of Stach, my aunt Irena, Janek, younger brother of Jurek, and Seweryn Jan, my father. The picture was taken shortly before the war. Of those five only my aunt and my father survived, because my grandmother decided to flee Łódź with her children in November 1939, on the very day when Jews were told to start wearing the yellow armbands. They went to the East and after an illegal night-crossing of the German-Soviet border they reunited with my grandfather who was already there. My great grandmother Ewa refused to go with them and perished in the Warsaw ghetto two or three years later.

In the other photograph you can see the grave of Jurek Leder at the Brodno cemetery in Warsaw. The headstone was funded by his father, Stach, who had survived the war and emigrated to Israel where he died in 1966.

Within the family, there are two versions of the circumstances of Jurek's death. One says that he was shot by the Germans during an action in the neighborhood of Plac Zbawiciela in Warsaw. The other says that he was captured by the Germans and committed suicide, in order not to disclose his comrades. He was posthumously distinguished with the Virtuti Militari cross.

About the Virtuti Militari cross awarded to Jurek Leder: "The War Order of Virtuti Militari (Latin: "For Military Virtue", Polish: Order Wojenny Virtuti Militari) is Poland's highest military decoration for heroism and courage in the face of the enemy at war. It was created in 1792 by Polish King Stanisław II August and is one of the oldest military decorations in the world still in use." (Wikipedia)

Marshal Józef Piłsudski decorates with the Silver Cross of the Order of Virtuti Militari the banner of the 1st Krechowiecki Lancers Regiment, Tomaszów Lubelski, 20 March. Leonard Winterowski

The New York Times and Anne Applebaum: The Scary, Bad People Are All on the Right

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My book, Bieganski the Brute Polak, and this blog, focus on stereotypes of Poles and other "Bohunks" in Western media. 

My book doesn't have much to say about contemporary Polish politics, and neither does this blog. 

After the recent election, I invited Polish friends to weigh in on my Facebook page. I did not voice an opinion because I do not have a right to an opinion. I live in the US, my Polish language skills are limited, and I don't read reams of material on internal Polish politics everyday. 

Half of my Polish Facebook friends appeared to be pro-Duda. Half of my Polish Facebook friends were anti-Duda. Some sharp words were exchanged. 

Here's the thing: I like both sets of friends. I think they both made good points. I'm in no position to determine which team is righteous in a way that cancels out the other team's righteousness. 

I do live in the US. I know Trump is a personality-disordered con artist and unfit to be president. I don't reject all Trump supporters, though. Some of them are very nice people. When asked, they give what they think are very good reasons for voting for Trump. One quick answer: they see the alternative as Alexandria Ocasio Cortez or Ilhan Omar, Democratic extremists. 

I disagree; the choice was never Trump v. Cortez. Trump supporters could, at any point, including right now, tap a moderate and sane Republican like Mitt Romney or John Kasich. I'd vote for either of those candidates. 

But their larger point is correct. The American left has gone too far left. The Democratic Party is now the party of "Goddamn America," rioting, looting, and tearing down statues of Hans Christian Heg, Ulysses S. Grant, and Abraham Lincoln. I don't like that party,  either. 

Anne Applebaum has come out with a new book, "Twilight of Democracy." The New York Times summarizes it with the subheading, "Why intellectuals support dictators." 

The book makes everything so easy for us. All the bad guys are on the right. Those rural, Christian, patriotic people who support two-parent families and working for a living are all bad and wrong. The gender-fluid urban elites with university degrees, kaffiyeh scarves and eyebrow piercings are all correct and  blameless. 

About the latter group. I remember seeing a post on the "Notes from Poland" facebook page. The page is very anti-Polish. A guy whose picture showed him with long, unkempt hair said that he was so happy that he could now purchase "Muslim sausage" in Warsaw. 

Now. Poland and neighboring Germany are both sausage hotbeds. It's really not that hard to find a wide variety of sausage in Poland. But this enlightened being celebrated because he could now purchase *Muslim* sausage. 

Really, Anne? Really, New York Times? Really, "Muslim sausage" lover? Is it really all that easy? Oh, to be rescued from thought, and from self-reflection, so easily. To be rescued from the information that confronts one when one looks in the mirror. 

What am I talking about? Here's what I'm talking about. The posts preceding this post on this  blog concern powerful African American celebrities voicing the most vile of anti-Semitic propaganda, propaganda that would cheer the black, infernal hearts of Julius Streicher and Joseph Goebbels .

"Hitler was right," one black celebrity said. "Jews control everything." "Jews stole our identity." And on and on.

Where is Anne Applebaum? Where is her shock and outrage? Where is the New York Times? Where are the protests?

If a  Polish, Catholic politician-farmer or politician-priest said what these black celebrities said, it would be on the front page of the New York Times. It would be an international incident. But black celebrities are saying these heinous things, so it's okay. 

From the Times review of Applebaum's new book bemoaning right-wingers destroying Democracy: "Resentment, envy and above all the belief that the ‘system’ is unfair — not just to the country, but to you — these are important sentiments among the nativist ideologues of the Polish right, so much so that it is not easy to pick apart their personal and political motives."

Well, it's good to know that no one on the left feels "resentment, envy, and that life is unfair." Phew. Dodged a bullet, there. 

Applebaum bemoans the loss of a "shared narrative." Interesting. In recent days, left-wingers in the US have been pursuing a cultural genocide, wiping out hundreds of years of American and world history and literature, as commemorated in statues -- Miguel de Cervantes, Tadeusz Kosciuszko, Hans Christian Heg, -- have all been defaced or destroyed. Welcome to year zero. 

Thanks to the left's cultural genocide, an Orwell quote is now popping up repeatedly in comments section under Yahoo news articles: 

"Every record has been destroyed or falsified, every book has been rewritten, every picture has been repainted, every statue and street and building has been renamed, every date has been altered. And that process is continuing day by day and minute by minute. History has stopped."

Applebaum writes, "As polarization increases, the employees of the state are invariably portrayed as having been ‘captured’ by their opponents. It is not an accident that the Law and Justice Party in Poland, the Brexiteers in Britain and the Trump administration in the United States have launched verbal assaults on civil servants and professional diplomats."

So, Duda = Trump = Brexit. 

Nothing like lumping people together. Some would call that arrogant and dismissive. 

Applebaum goes on. She says that right-wingers fantasize a world "where universities teach people to hate their country, where victims are more celebrated than heroes, where older values have been discarded." 

Let me be frank. Part of how Applebaum makes her case is by lying. She bemoans that right wingers fantasize that universities teach people to hate their country. Anne, it's true. Anne, read this. Anne, denying basic truths does not strengthen your case. 

Ya know,  we all hate Hitler and we all hate Nazism. But that hate doesn't prevent anyone from looking at the Versailles Treaty, the Depression, and the rise of the Soviet Union as factors that helped push Germany over the edge. This reassessment of past "benevolent" extremism is so consequential that it inspired the Marshall Plan. Allies defeated Germany in WW I and rubbed Germany's nose in dirt. Allies defeated Germany in WW II and, in spite of Germany's pure evil in WW II, sent Germany buckets of cash.

Anne, Duda and Trump and Brexit are every bit an expression of the left as they are an expression of the right. Sir Isaac Newton had something to say about this. To each action, there is an equal and opposite reaction. Don't want the world to go too far right? Don't push it too far left. 

Neither the left nor the right has any monopoly on virtue today. Both have dirty hands. Both need a mirror. You too, Anne. 

Ice Cube Doubles Down on Black Anti-Semitism after Kareem Abdul-Jabbar Condemns It

Rapper Ice Cube has doubled down on expressions of black anti-Semitism after Kareem Abdul Jabbar criticized it. Story here

The Bieganski chapter on black anti-Semitism would be helpful to anyone attempting to understand it. 

American Celebrity Nick Cannon Spreads Anti-Semitic Conspiracy Theories; Blacks Are the "Real Jews."

Forbes reports that the American celebrity Nick Cannon is spreading the anti-Semitic conspiracy theory that Blacks are the "real Jews" and that Jewish people "stole" their identity from black people. Read more here. This conspiracy theory is not isolated. It has some purchase among some African Americans. It was the belief of the African Americans who committed terrorist acts against Jews in Jersey City, NJ late last year. 

The chapter in Bieganski the Brute Polak that focuses on Black-Jewish conflict is helpful in understanding this conflict.