The Atlantic Attacks the Rosary. A Catholic Who Prays the Rosary Daily Responds

 The Atlantic, a prominent American publication, published an attack on the rosary. I respond here

Andrew Torba, "Christian Nationalist" and Alleged Anti-Semite

 I'd not heard of Andrew Torba till just now. I was watching a Stephen Colbert monologue on YouTube and Colbert mentioned Andrew Torba. My ears perked up for a couple of reasons. "Torba" is a Polish word meaning "bag." And Colbert said that Torba is a Christian nationalist and an anti-Semite. 

I searched online. If what I found is accurate, Torba is of Polish descent. He is from the coal mining region near Scranton, Pennsylvania, again, if what I found is accurate. 

I don't know how much power Torba has. 

The article about Andrew Torba is here

Below is his statement, as featured in the Media Matters article. Torba singles out Jews as a problem and pretends that all Christians are like him. I am a Christian and I have nothing in common with a man who speaks like this. I hope any increased visibility brings with it increased condemnation of so-called "Christian nationalism" and all anti-Semitism. 

ANDREW TORBA (GAB CEO): This is a Christian nation. Christians outnumber you by a lot. A lot. And we're not going to listen to 2%. You represent 2% of the country, OK? We're not bending the knee to the 2% anymore. The 98% of the rest of us — you know, 70, 75% of which are Christians, self-identifying Christians — we're not taking it anymore, bud. We are taking back our culture. We're taking back our country. We're taking back our government. So deal with it.

You know, there's nothing you can do to stop us because what has been set into motion, it's snowballing now. Right? We have Marjorie Taylor Greene openly saying that she's a Christian nationalist. We have Matt Gaetz kind of flirting with it a little bit today with his tweet on Christian nationalism. You know, we have Paul Gosar. We have like people in Congress right now, members of Congress right now who are openly, openly saying that they're Christian nationalists. We have multiple candidates for governor who won their primaries in a landslide, are winning in the polling right now, and are going to win the governorships of multiple states who are Christian nationalists. 

We have officials not only at the state level, not only at the federal level, but also at the local level. People who are running for school boards — Christian nationalists who are running for school board and by Christian nationalists, I mean like concerned Christian parents who are done, who are done, done with this, done, done being controlled and being told what we're allowed to do in our own country by a 2% minority or by people who hate our biblical worldview, hate our Christ, hate our Lord and savior. Done. It's over. So you better deal with it. 

You can — you can demonize me individually. You can try and attack me. But guess what? You know, I am just one of hundreds of millions of Christians in this country, bud. So guess what? It's inevitable. Sorry.  

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.