Friday, January 27, 2012

So, What's to be Done About That Pesky 1%?

No, no, not that 1%. I mean that minuscule group within the Occupy Vermont movement that, although they're no longer engaging in openly anti-Semitic chat on their Facebook pages, still provide a platform where with one click you can get to some of the most virulently, vile anti-Semitic crap that's comparable to the garbage spewed at David Duke's website. The Occupy Burlington-Vermont website was directly responsible for posting this Jew-bashing photograph that falsely and maliciously claimed that a baby and mother had been deliberately killed by Israelis. Read the whole story here.

One of the anti-Semitic posters at the Occupy Burlington-Vermont, Eamon James Cahall, no longer openly posts there under that name but from time to time posts appear that link back to his Amherst, MA based Facebook page (more on that below) for work based on the writings of the dead racist, anti-Semite, Eustace Mullins, (a true scumbag if there ever was one) for whom Cahall has been such a big booster. Mullins was the author of such bile as "Adolph Hitler: An Appreciation" first published in the October 1952 issue of National Renaissance Bulletin, which described itself as “the only Fascist publication in America.” Mullins was also a well-known perpetrator of anti-Semitic hoaxes like fabricating writings attributed to rabbis and this whooper, "Jews Mass Poison American Children" based on Mullins' claim that the polio vaccine, invented by Jonas Salk, was a poison because it contains live polio germs. During the 1950's Mullins also wrote frequently for the pro-Nazi, anti-Semitic publication Common Sense. From Mullins' self-published book "The Biological Jew":
"The Jew has always functioned best as a panderer, a pornographer, a master of prostitution, an apostle of sexual perversion, an enemy of the prevailing sexual standards and prohibitions of the gentile community."
(The above about Mullins comes from FBI documents and other investigative files that cannot be linked to, however extracts and a great deal additional information may be found here)

According to Chip Berlet of Political Research Associates, Mullins is "the most vicious anti-Semite on the face of the planet." You can read more about the unhinged nature of Eustace Mullins in this piece from The Atlantic here, reading that I'd recommend for those Occupiers who seem insistent about using anti-Semitic claptrap about the Federal Reserve as a part of what they like to call "dialogue."
HAMM: "You know who is behind all this shit... I just want the banking families behind all this shit taken down.. you know the names, we don't have to go into it here.."

OVB Admin: "I would LOVE to get those banking families pulled down.You should see how much flack I get for posting Rothschild expose stuff!"

HAMM: "Yeah I'm in the same boat... Rothschilds have been the death of a few conversations for me..people are unwilling to see the simple truth..they look for truth to be very complex and convoluted..these families of people are the problem..if people could just focus on that and on them.."

OVB Admin: "I've heard those concerns before.I don't think you're being unreasonable to suggest connecting the dots in that way. I've even heard it said that this movement was started to draw all of the thinkers and doers out in the open to get their information and cart em off."

HAMM: "amen brother"
Naturally, Mullins is something of a Holocaust denier as well:
"It wasn’t really an issue until the late ’50′s. All of the sudden, they remembered that six million Jews died in WWII. I’ve often said that after six million Jews died, most of them went on to own apartments in Manhattan and Tel Aviv. It’s not really a topic that interests me much beyond how it’s used as propaganda and mind control.”

Eustace Mullins
While I was looking into connections between the anti-Semitic leadership of the Vermont secession movement and their involvement with the Burlington occupiers, it was the comments at Occupy Burlington-Vermont Facebook page about Jewish "banksters" at the Federal Reserve there that first brought this troubling issue to my attention. I'd seen earlier reports of anti-Semitic aspects at the New York OWS camp at Zuccotti Park, as well as its origins having come the call made by Kalle Lasn's magazine, Adbusters, which has a history of publishing anti-Semitic screeds. The NYOWS Media Team began to produce what can only be described as a "the right wing is out to get us by falsely labeling our movement as anti-Semitic" false meme. This falsehood is also being churned out from various Occupy groups around the country that suggests that anti-Semites that had begun to permeate the Occupy movement from coast to coast were mere "outliers" and to say otherwise was to be labeled a part of some vast rightwing conspiracy to undermine the Occupy movement. Unsurprisingly, one prominent member of the NYOWS Media Team by the name of Justin Wedes has a history working with other groups like Yes Men and US Uncut, perpetrating media hoaxes which has been reported on here and here.

I've received criticism for having focused too much on a small group of anti-Semites that has attached itself to the Vermont Occupy movement. In most cases the criticism parrots in some way the false meme that has been created by the NYOWS Media Team. Fact is that here in Vermont I'm not the only critic of, not only the anti-Semitism, but of the occupy movement's failure to adequately address the presence of anti-Semitism based, in large part, on the works of a known Nazi sympathizer and proponent of the modern day neo-Nazi movement in the US, Eustace Mullins. Here's but one example of concern raised in Vermont from an opinion piece published in UVM's The Vermont Cynic by Peyton Rosenthal, a local Occupy supporter:
"By (occupiers) allowing and not condemning (the anti-Semitism) says something to me and, I'm sure, a multitude of other people..."

"...I propose OWS condemns anti-Semitism or any message remotely racist or bigoted. The movement should at least make it clear whether they do not care, or are not affiliated with it..."

"...I know it's been said repeatedly that Occupy Wall Street is a leaderless movement, but it needs to be acknowledged that the anti-Semitic incidents are becoming a problem. Until then, I don't think I and others who are Jewish, have a place in the movement."

Source
To which I'd add, you don't have to be Jewish to have no room for anti-Semitism attached to anything in which you're involved.

But for the moment my hope for a refutation of anti-Semites in its midst isn't very high for the local Occupy movement. A recently proposed statement by one local Occupy group seeking the end to various isms has one ism, under the circumstances, glaringly missing. Care to guess which one was missing? Maybe it's just another example of activists not wanting to do anything that might undermine their anti-Zionist cred. Since their argument essentially is that concerns about anti-Semitism are an attempt to silence criticism of Israel, I suppose that it's only fair to throw similar crap back at them, only of a fact based sort of crap that is not a meme.

There are people who I like and admire that are involved with the Vermont occupy movement, and at some point they are all going to need to address and condemn the politics of hatred that has established a firm and visible foothold in Occupy Vermont movement.

On a brighter note, Eamon James Cahall, page owner of the Eustace Mullins inspired, viciously anti-Semitic "We Know The Secrets of the Federal Reserve" Facebook page has announced that he's got a problem:
This facebook page has recently received some warnings in regards to our wall posts. We have been threatened with termination, however facebook failed to inform us as to which post was against the facebook terms and conditions."

"This facebook page has recently received some warnings in regards to our wall posts. We have been threatened with termination, however facebook failed to inform us as to which post was against the facebook terms and conditions."

"Have a great weekend everyone and thanks for reading/sharing/liking!"
Naturally, his comments section contain the usual inaccurate assertions about bullshit free speech violations. Facebook has every right to prohibit some forms of speech under its terms of service, as they do with hate speech. Maybe if Cahall hadn't based his page entirely on the hateful expressions of a well known anti-Semite and Hitler lover like Eustace Mullins he wouldn't have violated FB's well publicized terms of service proscribing hate speech, no? Good riddance.

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For the archive of the Free Vermont Framework listserv, click here.

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8 Comments:

At Monday, January 30, 2012 at 7:25:00 AM EST , Blogger Harold Thomas said...

There are legitimate policy reasons for reforming or abolishing the Federal Reserve Bank that have nothing whatsoever to do with anti-Semitism. Unfortunately people like those you describe are unfairly painting those who want to do so with the brush of anti-Semitism.

This is a point that the non-anti-Semitic Occupiers should be bringing up, if they truly want to support the cause of the "99%"

 
At Monday, January 30, 2012 at 10:06:00 AM EST , Blogger Thomas Rowley said...

Whether "there are legitimate policy reasons for reforming or abolishing the FRB" is undermined by not only the anti-Semitic motivations of some proponents of reform or abolishment but the fact that early proponents were almost uniformly so. Much of the present day historical revisionism coming from the current reformers/abolishers ignore that fact.

The abolishment claptrap coming from Ron Paul camp is an example of the willful ignorance of modern day realities by libertarian paradisists. Tea Partiers don't have a monopoly on muddled thinking.

But my point really is that like the Teabaggers, Occupiers must do more to root out and condemn the bigoted outliers who have taken the opportunity to attach themselves to a larger movement. The UVM student's piece isn't the only one here that I found expressing such concern. And while the Jew baiters have toned down their hateful garbage as a direct result of the posts here, they remain committed to their goals.

 
At Monday, January 30, 2012 at 11:31:00 AM EST , Blogger Harold Thomas said...

The second paragraph of your comment suggests that you have some bigotry issues to overcome yourself, given that you did not provide a scintilla of evidence in support of your position. However, I will give you the benefit of the doubt.

Based on your comment, I take it that you consider a 30.6% decline in the value of the dollar since 2000 (according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics) is a good thing.

A fundamental principle of economics is that the principal cause of an inflation is pumping large sums of money into the economy. The Federal Reserve does just that with "quantitative easing," which it acknowledges in its own statistics.

I have to assume that you are unaware of American economic history without a central bank (1837-1913). I would also have to assume that you either are unaware of historical inflation in the German Weimar Republic and in Zimbabwe, or are deluded into thinking that it can't happen here.

And yes, I got your point about purging bigoted outliers within the Tea Party and Occupy movements, as recently as the first comment to this post.

 
At Monday, January 30, 2012 at 2:26:00 PM EST , Blogger Thomas Rowley said...

I see. When you offered no evidence for your assertion that there exist "legitimate policy reasons for reforming or abolishing (I'm guessing that you'd prefer the second option) FRB" without "provid(ing) a scintilla of evidence in support of your position" that's just because your "facts" are unchallengeable. But I might be a bigot when I do the same.

I'm shocked, Harold, shocked that you could try such a lame slam.

You're welcome to chug as much Ron Paul Kool-Aid as you want but spare me the poorly connected dots that I'm supposed to assume amount to something. Libertarian fallacious reasonings aren't for me. "I have to assume that you are unaware" that during the period you cited (1837-1913) the US experienced one of its highest inflationary spikes, second only to the Revolutionary War period. Give it a rest, Harold.

Here in the real world we know that there isn't going to be a President Paul (Ron or Rand), a Vermont Republic (first or second, but that's another story), an Ohio Republic, an Occupy or Tea Party takeover, or sugar plum fairies.

I could just as easily argue that the US was economically more secure during the post WWII period when regulations were tighter and taxes were higher but I won't because I think all that glurgy bullshit is just that - bullshit.

Step into the light, Harold. Join us in the real world. There are real problems to be solved, just as there have always been and will continue to be. Shortcuts like libertarianism or secession are dead ends.

 
At Thursday, February 2, 2012 at 7:24:00 AM EST , Blogger Harold Thomas said...

You're right, Thomas, that was a lame slam. Note to self: Never respond to Rowley within twelve hours of first reading him

Factual clarification. The inflation spike you refer to in the 1837-1913 period happened to be the Civil War, and much of that had to do with the fact that the South printed currency without backing, and that certain goods were scarce and therefore expensive, everywhere.

There is just one thing that perplexes me about what you have said in these comments: Am I to assume that if an idea can be shown to be economically sound and beneficial to the people (such as currency backed by precious metals), but a minority of those who support it are racist or anti-Semitic, that the idea itself is to be condemned?

 
At Thursday, February 2, 2012 at 1:27:00 PM EST , Blogger Thomas Rowley said...

"Factual clarification. The inflation spike you refer to in the 1837-1913 period happened to be the Civil War..."
Ding, ding, ding, ding, we have a winner! And whatever the reason, your statement suffers the result.

Here's a dandy chart for take home study. See what you can learn. No need to report back - it's for self-study. There are also other spikes during that period that undermine your contention about all that stability that comes with a gold standard.

You must admit that among the golders there're are a decidedly disproportionate number of racists, homophobes, anti-Semites and their enablers - Franklin Sanders (convicted gold scheme felon), Thomas Naylor, nearly everyone at Lew Rockwell.com, Ron Paul, Rand Paul, you get the idea.

Not to be a nudge but I seem to recall that you've required that comments be on topic - care to try here?

Don't be a stranger.

 
At Saturday, February 21, 2015 at 6:52:00 PM EST , Blogger Heather Jo Flores said...

This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.

 
At Sunday, February 22, 2015 at 5:01:00 AM EST , Blogger Thomas Rowley said...

There's an additional post here: http://vermontsecession.blogspot.com/2011/12/new-occupy-vermont-burlington-anti.html

If character is a part of your dispute, he's a beaut.

Rowley

 

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