It’s a masterpiece. Congratulations! I’m so impressed with the depth and soundness of your research. I was born and raised in Kiev and I heard my parents and their friends quietly, urgently discussing some of these issues. I remember seeing the ugly cartoons in the news. My family was lucky enough to immigrate in the late 70’s, a few years after my dad submitted our papers. (My dad’s knee jerk reaction to my coming home with a black eye - best friend’s response to finding out I was Jewish.)
I was horrified to find my ‘friends’ flooding social media with updated versions of Soviet propaganda in May, 2021. You’ve filled in so many holes in my knowledge and understanding! Thank you!
Kudos to you and my heartfelt congratulations on your pregnancy ❤️
Wow, thank you so much. I am so sorry you went through that. I cannot imagine the sense of betrayal and upheaval they would come from your best friend punching you for finding out that you are Jewish. It is sadly reminiscent of the infuriating ongoing case today of a 12 year old girl being raped because she hid from her boyfriend that she was Jewish. The hate and cruelty of people like that is unimaginable.
An anecdote that I didn't include in this post, but that I read in one of the books I used for research, was of a Harvard study done in the 1950s or 1960 showing that the immigrant group with the highest rates of antisemitism were from Ukraine. People now have no idea about the reality of Jewish life in Eastern Europe. Your story reminded me of that study, which now I'd like to track down again.
Anyway, I really appreciate your kind words. I so wish that we taught history much more comprehensively than what I've seen in contemporary academic history departments: a truncated, cherry picked selection of histories based on fads and only identifying villains and narratives in alignment with the departments' political ideology.
And thank you on the pregnancy well-wishes! Pregnancy is rough but the results are worth it. My 1.5 year old daughter is the best thing to ever happen to me, looking forward to baby #2!
Thank you so much. At the time, I had a very fuzzy understanding of what ‘Jew’ meant. It’s funny how that one sucker punch changed my life. I am very grateful to that little racist. My grandfather used to tell me a very long anecdote about a freezing bird, that included ‘not everyone who shits on you is your enemy, an not everyone who pulls you out of a pile of shit is your friend’.
Yes, you’re exactly right. Ukraine has been a strange home for us. I have very mixed feelings, like every refugee, something between unrequited love and Stockholm syndrome. Of course, when Ukraine was attacked, my first thought was to join the resistance.
My father had a very brutal time of it, as a post war kid in a small village. He only survived because he tested into a special boarding school and got away from the neighborhood thugs who beat him mercilessly (ironically, as ever, according to them - for the Jews starting WW2). My dad broke down when I came home asking why my friend hit me and what the particular ethnic slur she called me, meant. He put us in the lottery to leave.
Like Victoria, I am so thrilled to find writing of this caliber and honesty.
Great analysis! It’s horrifying to me how the left in America are now copying the soviet playbook. I always say that while my soviet childhood sucked, but at least I see propaganda a mile off.
I have several friends who grew up in the soviet bloc or socialist aligned countries like Cuba, and I have seen for year now how they are some of the most alarmed at what is currently happening in the West. Likewise with some friends from Iran, and Mizrahi Jews who left the middle east and north Africa. Yet young students with some of the most fortunate and comfortable upbringings of any time or place throughout history are so religiously convicted of the ideologies and propaganda that have brought so much pain to so many people.
It is really crazy watching how effective Soviet propaganda has become.
Yes, it saddens me greatly. I look forward to reading more of your insightful articles! To be honest, before substack I thought the journalism and academic writing was long dead under the rubble of propaganda, the accounts like yours bring back my faith that rational thinking may yet prevail!
A very compelling window into how the past is driving the present. Many thanks for this thorough overview, which is worth returning to again and again.
One of my daughters is a high school history teacher. She does a good job. I sent her your treatise. My grandmother remembered the pogroms. Two of my radio engineers, Jewish, emigrated from Russia in the 1970's. The Bagel Broker is pretty okay.
I am sure your daughter is a fantastic high school history teacher and her students are lucky to have her! I still think of my own high school history teachers who were fantastic, and wish that was the norm across the country.
I once saw Dara Horn speak and she pointed out something I had never thought about, but that is truly tragic. Germany and Austria were considered the most progressive, enlightenment-based countries at the turn of the 20th century, with jews largely living in a golden age of acceptance. Many eastern European Jewish refugees who survived the pogroms moved to places like Vienna and Berlin as a result. And then, they experienced a second and even more brutal campaign of ethnic cleansing. I cannot imagine the trauma of living through two genocides targeted at yourself. Many of those who survived both genocides later moved to Brooklyn and holed themselves up away from the world, stating only with others like themselves, only speaking Yiddish, and otherwise filled with mistrust. People can be so critical of some of the chassidic sects in places like Brooklyn, but learning about the deep trauma that went behind the creation of some of those communities gave me a new perspective and sympathy towards those communities.
I am so glad your grandmother survived the pogroms. I know many of my relatives did not, though my great grandfather had been a czarist Jewish military conscript/slave and was able to escape after his service to come to the US and still start a family here. We as a people have been remarkably resilient despite unspeakable horrors. I'm glad we are all here today.
When a sinner finally arrives in hell he notices Hitler is neck deep in shit, while Stalin is standing only waist deep. He turns to the devil and says “why does Stalin get to stand above the river of shit?”
The devil answers: “Because Stalin is standing on the shoulders of Lenin”
I remain opposed to the disgusting Zionism of the Torah/Bible, either way, as I do not condone genocide, infanticide, ethnic supremacist movements, slavery, or p*dophilia.
But yes, accusing all folks of Jewish lineage (genetic) of being evil and then supporting state war machines crushing them is also the same kind of pure evil. Hopefully people on all sides will soon realize statism is a scam.
So you were right about a radical shift in your feelings. I guess les extremes touchent. Regardless your writing is always a pleasure and I appreciate diverse, intelligent points of view!
Thank you for this exemplary post. My partner recently visited Guatemala and went to a museum there that discussed the history of Indigenous genocide. He read that Israel had (allegedly) funded and trained the government’s military that enacted the genocide. He then said that “Zionism seems to lead to reactionary behavior/Imperialism”. I am sad that he equates the current (or even past) governments of Israel to Zionism. They are not the same.
Except that this condemnation of "Zionism" started long before October 7th. In my PhD program but in the 2015s, the language and hatred was still the same.
And as I said, there are plenty of ways to, if one wants, criticize the way Netanyahu is conducting this was war without resorting to using "Zionism" as a pejorative or otherwise using antisemitic blood libel tropes that stem from the Protocols. As I mention in the article, one example is the Gazan writer Ahmed Faoud Alkhataib, who is extremely nuanced and balanced in his geopolitical and regional assessment of the war. I may disagree with much of his content and analysis, but he is certainly not antisemitic and is the reasonable sort of voice of dissent that should be the norm for anyone serious about peace. "Zionism" as a pejorative that is a stand-in for the evils of the day is, as I pointed out in this article, inherently antisemitic and stems from a 100+ year campaign of demonizing the word "Zionism."
I would also disagree with your "babies burned alive" content, in the sense that such a statement tries to exceptionalize Israel's war against Hamas and Iran into something uniquely demonic as opposed to in the context of the fact that all war has casualties and is generally a tragedy for all involved. Luckily, John Spencer, the director of the Urban Warfare department at America's top military academy, West Point, has pointed to the fact that Israel has actually set a new humanitarian standard in urban warfare that will be difficult for other nations to live up to, having close to a 1:1 civilian to combatant mortality rate, whereas standard modern urban warfare has a 9:1 rate.
But repeating emotive statements meant to elicit visceral reactions against Israel, regardless of the facts behind it, is precisely the topic of my article - how this was a Soviet strategy still in employ today - and is as such, an inherently antisemitic trope derived from the Protocols of the Elders of Zion.
I think you are confusing correlation with causation. And it seems to me you are trying to make Israel exceptional. The idea that the Israeli military is ethical is ludicrous. Do not try to gaslight me. Burned babies carry moral weight. To the extent that Zionism entails claims to land and to absolute control of geography both physical and moral, it is basically a version of Manifest Destiny and just as evil. Now go find some analogy from the Ching dynasty and claim it as causal. I suspect the point of the Soviet analogy is to tar criticism of Israel as « communist, » which obfuscates how charges of Communism were used against Jews.
I notice you are unable to respond to the points I actually brought up, and also do not know much about the history of Zionism or what the term means, or even that there have been multiple competing philosophies behind what Zionism would entail. I think it is telling that people will create their own definitions of what is or is not antisemitism, and create their own definitions of historical Jewish movements and philosophies, while ignoring the actual Jewish history and voices behind them. The general progressive concensus is that the minority knows best what is or is not a form of bigotry directed against them, but that gets thrown out the window when it comes to jews, who under our current paradigm, do not count.
Interestingly, the concept that Zionism is an "expansionist" ideology was also a KGB fabrication after the 1967 war that was broadcast via Novosti abroad. I wish now that I had included some of the cartoons on that topic.
I did no such thing. What world do you live in where you get to have such poor thinking skills ? It’s as though you were in a cult. I’m going to mute you now because this is pointless and tiresome.
It’s a masterpiece. Congratulations! I’m so impressed with the depth and soundness of your research. I was born and raised in Kiev and I heard my parents and their friends quietly, urgently discussing some of these issues. I remember seeing the ugly cartoons in the news. My family was lucky enough to immigrate in the late 70’s, a few years after my dad submitted our papers. (My dad’s knee jerk reaction to my coming home with a black eye - best friend’s response to finding out I was Jewish.)
I was horrified to find my ‘friends’ flooding social media with updated versions of Soviet propaganda in May, 2021. You’ve filled in so many holes in my knowledge and understanding! Thank you!
Kudos to you and my heartfelt congratulations on your pregnancy ❤️
Wow, thank you so much. I am so sorry you went through that. I cannot imagine the sense of betrayal and upheaval they would come from your best friend punching you for finding out that you are Jewish. It is sadly reminiscent of the infuriating ongoing case today of a 12 year old girl being raped because she hid from her boyfriend that she was Jewish. The hate and cruelty of people like that is unimaginable.
An anecdote that I didn't include in this post, but that I read in one of the books I used for research, was of a Harvard study done in the 1950s or 1960 showing that the immigrant group with the highest rates of antisemitism were from Ukraine. People now have no idea about the reality of Jewish life in Eastern Europe. Your story reminded me of that study, which now I'd like to track down again.
Anyway, I really appreciate your kind words. I so wish that we taught history much more comprehensively than what I've seen in contemporary academic history departments: a truncated, cherry picked selection of histories based on fads and only identifying villains and narratives in alignment with the departments' political ideology.
And thank you on the pregnancy well-wishes! Pregnancy is rough but the results are worth it. My 1.5 year old daughter is the best thing to ever happen to me, looking forward to baby #2!
Thank you so much. At the time, I had a very fuzzy understanding of what ‘Jew’ meant. It’s funny how that one sucker punch changed my life. I am very grateful to that little racist. My grandfather used to tell me a very long anecdote about a freezing bird, that included ‘not everyone who shits on you is your enemy, an not everyone who pulls you out of a pile of shit is your friend’.
Yes, you’re exactly right. Ukraine has been a strange home for us. I have very mixed feelings, like every refugee, something between unrequited love and Stockholm syndrome. Of course, when Ukraine was attacked, my first thought was to join the resistance.
My father had a very brutal time of it, as a post war kid in a small village. He only survived because he tested into a special boarding school and got away from the neighborhood thugs who beat him mercilessly (ironically, as ever, according to them - for the Jews starting WW2). My dad broke down when I came home asking why my friend hit me and what the particular ethnic slur she called me, meant. He put us in the lottery to leave.
Like Victoria, I am so thrilled to find writing of this caliber and honesty.
Great analysis! It’s horrifying to me how the left in America are now copying the soviet playbook. I always say that while my soviet childhood sucked, but at least I see propaganda a mile off.
I have several friends who grew up in the soviet bloc or socialist aligned countries like Cuba, and I have seen for year now how they are some of the most alarmed at what is currently happening in the West. Likewise with some friends from Iran, and Mizrahi Jews who left the middle east and north Africa. Yet young students with some of the most fortunate and comfortable upbringings of any time or place throughout history are so religiously convicted of the ideologies and propaganda that have brought so much pain to so many people.
It is really crazy watching how effective Soviet propaganda has become.
And thank you for the kind words!
Yes, it saddens me greatly. I look forward to reading more of your insightful articles! To be honest, before substack I thought the journalism and academic writing was long dead under the rubble of propaganda, the accounts like yours bring back my faith that rational thinking may yet prevail!
It's amazing how adding three little letters 'ist' to a word can cause so much trouble. Thank you for that dot connecting, history lesson.
Thank you so much for reading and commenting, I really appreciate it!
A very compelling window into how the past is driving the present. Many thanks for this thorough overview, which is worth returning to again and again.
Thank you so much, I really appreciate it.
Outstanding treatise. Should be required study for all 8th grade students. Bravo 👏 👏👏
Thank you so much, I'm truly touched by your comment. The current state of history eduction and academia is so unfortunate.
One of my daughters is a high school history teacher. She does a good job. I sent her your treatise. My grandmother remembered the pogroms. Two of my radio engineers, Jewish, emigrated from Russia in the 1970's. The Bagel Broker is pretty okay.
I am sure your daughter is a fantastic high school history teacher and her students are lucky to have her! I still think of my own high school history teachers who were fantastic, and wish that was the norm across the country.
I once saw Dara Horn speak and she pointed out something I had never thought about, but that is truly tragic. Germany and Austria were considered the most progressive, enlightenment-based countries at the turn of the 20th century, with jews largely living in a golden age of acceptance. Many eastern European Jewish refugees who survived the pogroms moved to places like Vienna and Berlin as a result. And then, they experienced a second and even more brutal campaign of ethnic cleansing. I cannot imagine the trauma of living through two genocides targeted at yourself. Many of those who survived both genocides later moved to Brooklyn and holed themselves up away from the world, stating only with others like themselves, only speaking Yiddish, and otherwise filled with mistrust. People can be so critical of some of the chassidic sects in places like Brooklyn, but learning about the deep trauma that went behind the creation of some of those communities gave me a new perspective and sympathy towards those communities.
I am so glad your grandmother survived the pogroms. I know many of my relatives did not, though my great grandfather had been a czarist Jewish military conscript/slave and was able to escape after his service to come to the US and still start a family here. We as a people have been remarkably resilient despite unspeakable horrors. I'm glad we are all here today.
Very good article. Thank you
Thank you!
Fantastic article!! I found this on Reddit thank you
No thank you so much!!
This lecture to the UN is powerful and compelling. Share it with all the morally confused pro-Palestinian supporters.
https://youtu.be/xTFV1t9_AuQ?si=pqm_D1Om8ksgqong
When a sinner finally arrives in hell he notices Hitler is neck deep in shit, while Stalin is standing only waist deep. He turns to the devil and says “why does Stalin get to stand above the river of shit?”
The devil answers: “Because Stalin is standing on the shoulders of Lenin”
I remain opposed to the disgusting Zionism of the Torah/Bible, either way, as I do not condone genocide, infanticide, ethnic supremacist movements, slavery, or p*dophilia.
But yes, accusing all folks of Jewish lineage (genetic) of being evil and then supporting state war machines crushing them is also the same kind of pure evil. Hopefully people on all sides will soon realize statism is a scam.
So you were right about a radical shift in your feelings. I guess les extremes touchent. Regardless your writing is always a pleasure and I appreciate diverse, intelligent points of view!
Thank you for this exemplary post. My partner recently visited Guatemala and went to a museum there that discussed the history of Indigenous genocide. He read that Israel had (allegedly) funded and trained the government’s military that enacted the genocide. He then said that “Zionism seems to lead to reactionary behavior/Imperialism”. I am sad that he equates the current (or even past) governments of Israel to Zionism. They are not the same.
Today’s anti-Zionism comes from watching burned babies live streamed on our phones.
Except that this condemnation of "Zionism" started long before October 7th. In my PhD program but in the 2015s, the language and hatred was still the same.
And as I said, there are plenty of ways to, if one wants, criticize the way Netanyahu is conducting this was war without resorting to using "Zionism" as a pejorative or otherwise using antisemitic blood libel tropes that stem from the Protocols. As I mention in the article, one example is the Gazan writer Ahmed Faoud Alkhataib, who is extremely nuanced and balanced in his geopolitical and regional assessment of the war. I may disagree with much of his content and analysis, but he is certainly not antisemitic and is the reasonable sort of voice of dissent that should be the norm for anyone serious about peace. "Zionism" as a pejorative that is a stand-in for the evils of the day is, as I pointed out in this article, inherently antisemitic and stems from a 100+ year campaign of demonizing the word "Zionism."
I would also disagree with your "babies burned alive" content, in the sense that such a statement tries to exceptionalize Israel's war against Hamas and Iran into something uniquely demonic as opposed to in the context of the fact that all war has casualties and is generally a tragedy for all involved. Luckily, John Spencer, the director of the Urban Warfare department at America's top military academy, West Point, has pointed to the fact that Israel has actually set a new humanitarian standard in urban warfare that will be difficult for other nations to live up to, having close to a 1:1 civilian to combatant mortality rate, whereas standard modern urban warfare has a 9:1 rate.
But repeating emotive statements meant to elicit visceral reactions against Israel, regardless of the facts behind it, is precisely the topic of my article - how this was a Soviet strategy still in employ today - and is as such, an inherently antisemitic trope derived from the Protocols of the Elders of Zion.
I think you are confusing correlation with causation. And it seems to me you are trying to make Israel exceptional. The idea that the Israeli military is ethical is ludicrous. Do not try to gaslight me. Burned babies carry moral weight. To the extent that Zionism entails claims to land and to absolute control of geography both physical and moral, it is basically a version of Manifest Destiny and just as evil. Now go find some analogy from the Ching dynasty and claim it as causal. I suspect the point of the Soviet analogy is to tar criticism of Israel as « communist, » which obfuscates how charges of Communism were used against Jews.
I notice you are unable to respond to the points I actually brought up, and also do not know much about the history of Zionism or what the term means, or even that there have been multiple competing philosophies behind what Zionism would entail. I think it is telling that people will create their own definitions of what is or is not antisemitism, and create their own definitions of historical Jewish movements and philosophies, while ignoring the actual Jewish history and voices behind them. The general progressive concensus is that the minority knows best what is or is not a form of bigotry directed against them, but that gets thrown out the window when it comes to jews, who under our current paradigm, do not count.
Interestingly, the concept that Zionism is an "expansionist" ideology was also a KGB fabrication after the 1967 war that was broadcast via Novosti abroad. I wish now that I had included some of the cartoons on that topic.
Except the Jewish ones. You don't care about the Jewish ones.
That's how you tell on yourself.
That’s an utter falsehood. You have side-stepped the issue of how burned, decapitated, amputated babies in any way dignify Judaism. They don’t.
Like I said.
But you didn’t. You just whined and made baseless assertions.
You immediately denied empathy to Jews in your response.
I rest my case.
I did no such thing. What world do you live in where you get to have such poor thinking skills ? It’s as though you were in a cult. I’m going to mute you now because this is pointless and tiresome.