CUNY Is Pervasively Hostile to Jewish Students: Complaint. The New York Post

 

The New York Post published an extraordinary article on July 23, 2022. 

The article alleges overt anti-Semitism at CUNY. That is astounding enough. Another astounding feature of the article is that it never mentions who is harassing, threatening, and fomenting hatred against Jews on the CUNY campus. Never. Who is doing this? The article does not say. Astounding. 

One can be certain that were the assailants Poles or Catholics or Polish Catholics the assailants' identity would appear in the headline and throughout the article. 

BTW, I have no idea who the assailants are. 

From the article: 

The City University of New York has become a “pervasively hostile environment for Jewish students,” according to a newly filed complaint to the US Department of Education that alleges violations of the Civil Rights Act.

“Some of the harassment on CUNY campuses has become so commonplace as to almost be normalized,” according to the complaint by the American Center for Law & Justice in Washington DC., which cites a litany of harassment going back to 2013.

Court papers cite incidents at Kingsborough Community College in Brooklyn where a Jewish professor “found swastikas carved into the door and her keyboard drenched in urine” and another Jewish professor from Israel was asked how many people she had killed.

The college’s former interim president complained there were “too many Jews” among the school’s faculty, The Post reported.

At Brooklyn College in 2016, students interrupted a Faculty Council meeting “to demand the removal of all Zionists from campus,” the Center said in its complaint, which noted students called the council’s chairman, who was wearing a yarmulke, a “Zionist pig.”

You can read the full article here 

***

I did a Google search and found this article from Tablet. Again, I did not find any perpetrator demographic identified. 

Rather, "Western Civilization" is to blame. Seriously? People urinating on a Jewish professor's computer are representatives of "Western Civilization" ? Brodsky is absurd. 

How, I wondered, had CUNY become like this? What was it about the politics of the institution, or the politics of the famously Jewish city that operated it, that had allowed the university to reach this point? David Brodsky, chair of the Jewish studies department at CUNY’s Brooklyn College and a fellow line-stander, was meticulously nonpartisan in his analysis. The problem is much bigger than CUNY: “Antisemitism is systemic in Western society. It manifests in ways that are under people’s radar,” the Talmudist explained. “Unless you recognize where it’s coming from systemically, you fall prey to it.”

***

I wrote to Prof. Brodsky. 

Dear Prof. Brodsky

I read a Tablet article addressing anti-Semitism at CUNY. You were quoted as blaming the harassment on "Western society." I find your statement to be unbelievable. I do not believe that, for example, whoever it was who urinated on a Jewish professor's computer, is a representative of "Western society." For many readers, I suspect, blaming these assaults on "Western society" is a less-than-courageous, less-than-accurate way of avoiding naming the actual assailants and their actual agenda, because those assailants, whoever they are, are members of a protected group.

I do not know who is behind these assaults, but given that Israel is frequently mentioned, I am guessing that these assaults have been carried out by Muslims. I am using the same technique to read about anti-Semitism at CUNY as I used to use to read Soviet-Era news. Something can't be said because it is politically dangerous to say it, so people are engaging in circumlocution.

I could be wrong, but I've read a couple of articles about anti-Semitism at CUNY, one in the Post and one in the Tablet, and neither makes clear who is carrying out these assaults, so I have to guess. Perhaps the assailants are not Muslims, but the media's and your declining to speak frankly is perhaps inadvertently placing the blame on Muslims.

If I am interpreting your comment incorrectly, please let me know. Thank you.  

A New Biography of a Lesser-Known Nazi Confounds the Reader. How to Explain the Evil of Reinhard Heydrich?

 

A New Biography of a Lesser-Known Nazi Confounds the Reader
How to Explain the Evil of Reinhard Heydrich?

 

Who's the most popular Nazi? I thought of asking this as a poll question on Facebook, but I've been in Facebook jail so many times I dared not risk it. I turned to Google. Adolf Hitler gets thirty-one million hits. Eva Braun, two and a half million. Joseph Goebbels, two and a quarter million. Heinrich Himmler, almost two million. Albert Speer, a million and a half. Hitler's dog Blondi, 638 thousand. Reinhard Heydrich is just slightly more represented in my Google search than Hitler's dog. Heydrich racks up 787 thousand hits. The numbers change day by day, but the proportions remain about the same. Heydrich's relatively low profile astounds me, given the immense evil this – entity – I can barely stand to call him a "man" – wreaked upon the world.

 

The Hangman and His Wife: The Life and Death of Reinhard Heydrich, is a May, 2022 book published by Knopf. The book is 656 pages long, with 570 pages of narrative followed by notes and an index. There are 110 black-and-white photographs. Author Nancy Dougherty knew Lina Heydrich, Reinhard Heydrich's widow, and interviewed her for the book, as well as other surviving Nazis, including Albert Speer. Dougherty is a gifted writer who can report horror in beautiful prose. I'd recommend this book to anyone curious about Nazism or simply about human evil. 

A Rabbi Not Being Helpful During a Difficult Time in America.

 If a Catholic priest singled out Jews for criticism during this difficult time in America, that priest would be raked over the coals, and deservedly so. 

Abortion and Anti-Catholicism on Facebook

 

After the SCOTUS decision overruling Roe v. Wade was announced, my Facebook page was awash in anti-Catholic rhetoric of the most primitive and hateful kind. 

Part of the raison d'etre of the Bieganski, Brute Polak Stereotype is Christophobia, as anyone has read the book, and this blog, knows. 

The essay, below, addresses the Christophobia flooding social media in recent days. 

A Jewish Joke Shared by the Australian Jewish Association on Facebook

 The joke, below, appeared on the Australian Jewish Association Facebook page. The joke supports the main ideas of my book Bieganski The Brute Polak Stereotype. 

In that book I argue that Poles and all other Christian and peasant-descent Eastern Europeans are stereotyped as large, strong, stupid, violent, and hateful, and Jews are stereotyped as smart, less physical, crafty, and money-oriented. 

Not only do others stereotype Poles and Jews this way. Poles and Jews stereotype themselves this way. 

The difference is that when stereotyping one's own group, one places a positive, as opposed to a negative, spin on the stereotype qualities. 

Poles may stereotype themselves as earthy, strong, reliable, and straightforward -- good qualities. Jews may stereotype themselves as being intelligent in a way that serves a good end rather than a negative one (world domination, in the most extreme stereotypes.) 

In the joke below, Jews stereotype themselves as clever, crafty, tricky, insincere, and money-oriented. Also, of course, as oppressed, and as oppressed by persons less intelligent than themselves, whom they can trick. But all these qualities serve a very good final result. 

Anti-Catholic and Anti-Semitic (or Anti-Smoking?) Nazi Der Sturmer Cartoon

 

According to the Jewish Virtual Library, (see here,) this is an anti-Catholic and anti-Semitic cartoon from Der Sturmer. The caption reads, "They belong to the church, she belongs to Satan. Both are lost to the German race."

Weirdly, Quora identifies this as an anti-smoking ad (see here). 

"Force Ten from Navarone" and Brute Yugoslavs

 

I'm a big fan of Golden Age Hollywood movies. I recently re-watched "The Guns of Navarone," an all-star World War Two war adventure and heroism epic made in 1961. Gregory Peck, David Niven, Anthony Quinn, Anthony Quayle, James Darren, Irene Papas, Gia Scala, and Richard Harris star. John Lee Thompson directed. The plot: a crack team of commandos must take out some huge Nazi guns in order to allow British ships to enter a battle area. The story is not true, but it does reflect, if an exaggerated way, WW II fighting in Greece.

Each star tries to steal the screen from the others. I have to award points to David Niven for being unforgettable but also understated. Not easy given the rest of the powerhouse cast. And boy oh boy but was Irene Papas hot. The story is not very believable but it's a fun watch. Lots of expansive shots of Greek scenery. The ending when navy ships make their "whoop, whoop" sounds always gives me chills. You can watch that scene here. Maybe it will give you chills as well.

 

They really don't make movies like that anymore, and when I learned that there was a sequel, "Force Ten From Navarone," I knew I wanted to see it. It's directed by Guy Hamilton, who also directed James Bond films. Harrison Ford, Robert Shaw, Carl Weathers, Franco Nero, Edward Fox, and Barbara Bach star. It's not as good as "Guns of Navarone," but it offers lots of gorgeous Yugoslav scenery. And it also offers Bieganski, the Brute Polak stereotype.

 

As I make clear in my book, "Bieganski: The Brute Polak Stereotype," this stereotype is applied to all Eastern European, Christian, peasant-descent populations.

 

Bieganski-style characters are found in pop culture, media, academia, folklore, and other venues.

 

Bieganski-style characters are brutal, violent, stupid, hateful, and bigoted.

 

And of course Bieganski is to blame for Nazism's crimes. Not German Nazis, but Slavic, Christian peasants.

 

In "Force Ten from Navarone," the heroic team is menaced by perfidious Slavs lead by Richard Kiel. Kiel suffered from gigantism. He was 7'2" tall. He famously played a Bond villain. In "Force Ten from Navarone," Kiel played Drazak, a Yugoslav collaborator with the Nazis. He tricks and betrays the film's heroes and hatefully menaces a black American soldier, (Carl Weathers), and calls him "Blackie." He threatens to slice off the man's face. Drazak is so evil the Nazi in charge urges him to be "gentle." The Nazis are, of course, civilized, clean, neat, orderly, intelligent, and not shown doing any sadistic mayhem.

 

Barbara Bach plays Maritza, a Slavic woman who has sex with a Nazi officer. She is shown nude. Her having sex with a Nazi and her nudity debase her. She's a female Bieganski. Drazak eventually beats her, because that's what Bieganski types do. She is killed by a Nazi who is disguised as a Yugoslav, because, hey, what's the difference. A loser all around.

 

The use of the Bieganski Brute stereotype in "Force Ten From Navarone" is especially vile given how hard Yugoslavs fought against the Nazis. From Wikipedia, "The five largest resistance movements in Europe were the Dutch, the French, the Polish, the Soviet, and the Yugoslav; overall their size can be seen as comparable, particularly in the years 1941–1944."

 

Yes, some Eastern European, Christian, peasant-descent populations did collaborate with the Nazis. That's an historical fact that deserves to be taught, as all history deserves to be taught. "Force Ten from Navarone" does not deal in historical facts. When it comes to Slavs, it deals in stereotypes.

 

The movie's story was by Carl Foreman. Foreman was born to a Jewish family in Chicago and was eventually blacklisted, and later was rehabilitated. He was, for a time, a member of the Communist Party. The Communist Party, of course, did circulate the Bieganski stereotype to justify its post-war occupation of Poland. I have no idea if Foreman introduced the Bieganski stereotype into the script or if it is found in the book on which the movie is based. When the commandos finally meet up with some good Slavs, those Slavs all have bright red stars on their big, furry hats. Commie Slavs are good.