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From: Greg Sandow <gsandow@prodigy.net>
Date: Wed, 26 May 1999 03:32:55 -0400
Fwd Date: Thu, 27 May 1999 02:49:51 -0400
Subject: Re: Protocol Bookburning Conspiracy


>Date: Tue, 25 May 1999 08:50:51 -0500
>From: Alfred Lehmberg <Lehmberg@snowhill.com>
>To: UFO UpDates - Toronto <updates@globalserve.net>
>Subject: Re: Protocol Bookburning Conspiracy

>Anti-Semitism (and UFO denial) flourishes in ignorance,
>ignorance is a result of censorship, and that would appear to
>make censorship a mechanism of ignorance, Mr. Sandow. Some of
>that ignorance may even be contrived. My bet is most of it's
>contrived. So yes -- there may (!?!) be a  "mechanism of
>censorship" that hides facts about anti-Semitism (and UFOs)! I
>didn't get any facts in my grammar school, high school -- and
>only a bit in college. I've an open and inquiring mind, and I'm
>at a loss to explain my ignorance regarding something
>(anti-Semitism) that I've researched with some diligence (will
>produce the paper, with references, on request). Like FOIA
>requests you have to know what you're looking for before you can
>find it, I suppose. As a certified public school teacher I am
>poised to appreciate the shortcomings of our educational
>philosophy in this regard. Ours is a school system that teaches
>the midnight ride of Paul Revere, untested faith in
>fictionalized founders, and a dynamic history made as boring as
>the observed growth of grass.

Possibly I know something about anti-semitism because I'm Jewish
and live in New York City. But on the other hand, my family was
entirely secular; we celebrated Christmas (well, we had a
Christmas tree, anyway), and paid no attention to Jewish
holidays. I don't think I learned about anti-semitism at home.

In recent years, my thoughts about anti-semitism have been
strongly stirred by watching "Schindler's List" (and then
reading the book the movie was based on), and by visiting the
Holocaust Museum in Washington, something I urge everyone with a
mind and heart to do. It's sad, I'll add parenthetically, and in
fact almost shocking, that we have holocaust museums in several
cities, but no major museum anywhere about slavery, but that's
another debate. The Holocaust Museum in Washington is a dramatic
experience, one that deeply shocked and moved me, even though
I'd read widely about the holocaust and related issues.

Early in the '90s, I was amazed to see the "Protocols of the
Elders of Zion" show up (as Stan Friedman noted here) in William
Cooper's book. I'd known about the "Protocols," as far as I
know, all my adult life. Knowledge of them certainly wasn't part
of my Jewish education, since I had none. But somewhere -- maybe
from studying political science in college, with an emphasis on
Russia (where the "Protocols" were forged), maybe from reading
about the Nazis, maybe just from wide reading more generally
about history and politics -- I'd learned about them, and had
absorbed their wretched history. Seeing them crop up again in
Cooper's book sent a jolt through me, I have to say.

But then I'd already seen them somewhere else, somewhere that
gave me an even more shocked jolt -- on tables set up on New
York streets, where people sell books on African-American
subjects, with an Afrocentric and often militant emphasis.
Seeing the "Protocols" there really scared me, especially since
I also saw copies of "The International Jew" (if I remember the
title correctly), an almost equally well-known anti-semitic
diatribe by no less than Henry Ford.

I'd learned something by then about the unfortunate
anti-semitism in the black community. I'd encountered it because
I was writing about pop music, and the very famous rap group
Public Enemy, whose music and politics I admired, turned out to
have an outspoken anti-semitic member. He was ultimately fired
from the group, but only because of strong outside protest. His
public comments about Jews were truly astonishing.

Sometime after that, Ice Cube, a leading rapper (with whom I'd
been quite friendly in Los Angeles), got close to the Nation of
Islam, and at a press conference held up a book the Nation had
published, about Jews and the slave trade. My friend Bill Adler,
who worked as a publicist for rap artists, was curious to know
what this book might be, and unearthed a copy. He was so shocked
that he xeroxed many copies, and circulated them in the music
business. He also hired a scholar to write a refutation, which
was needed -- because this book, a vicious essay in concentrated
hate, alleged that Jews bore main responsibility for the slave
trade, and claimed to prove that by only citing Jewish sources!
It turns out, of course, that the Jewish sources were all
misrepresented, but the main point was that the book exists, and
that despite Louis Farrakhan's public disclaimers, his group is
deeply, horribly anti-semitic, and that doubtless there are some
fair number of people in the black community who agree with him.

That's why seeing the "Protocols" for sale with other, much more
responsible black literature dismayed and frightened me. Here
was anti-semitism come to light, rearing its head right on the
streets I walked down every day.

This may seem like a long, discursive, and perhaps not quite
relevant comment on Alfred Lehmberg's latest entry in our
debate, but I'm giving lots of details to clarify two further
points that he raised.

>Where did _you_ first hear about them? You imply that you were
>unaware of them yourself. Were you reminded of them as a result
>of the Rense brou-ha, and compelled to look up their history?
>Perhaps you owe Mr. Rense a modicum of thanks in your own
right.

I was, as I've just explained, very much aware of the
"Protocols" before this Rense stuff started. I knew their
history, but hadn't reviewed it for 20 years, to take a wild
stab at how long it's been. Besides, Jeff had posted something
about needing more investigation. So I wondered if there might
be something in the Columbia Encyclopedia, which sits on one of
my bookshelves. That's my first stop for any reference question
outside pop music (which isn't well covered there). Turns out
there was a reasonably detailed entry, which told me that my
memory of the history of the "Protocols" was correct. It also
gave me an opportunity to post that history here, for Jeff
Rense's information (since he'd called for an investigation),
and also for the benefit of anybody else here who wondered what
the story was.

I've already said that I don't know exactly where I heard about
the "Protocols." It's my experience that people of my generation
(I'm about to turn 56) tend to know about them, at least if they
read widely about history. I understand that not all people know
the same things, and that I'm ignorant of many things other
people know about. But to some extent this whole debate baffles
me, because I've known about the "Protocols" for as long as I
can remember. I'm not saying that others are ignorant because
they don't know about them, only that I might possibly be at a
disadvantage here because they're so familiar to me.

Of course, when Alfred Lehmberg responded to my tongue in cheek
post about Russian conspiracy theories, he said my quote (of a
remark made by Zhirinovsky, a Russian nationalist extremist) was
quite arcane. To me, it was more like common knowledge, because
I found it in a front-page story that had just appeared in the
New York Times. So maybe here we have a difference -- with no
blame on either side -- for some of the differences in our
reaction to this Jeff Rense issue. I really do read the New York
Times every day (or most days, anyway). I imagine that anyone
else who's done that for 40 or more years, as I have (and who
reads the Times Book Review on Sundays) would run across some
mention of the "Protocols" at some point.

Again, I'm not patting myself on the back for this. I'm just
saying where I get some of my information. The Times covers a
lot of ground, and if you read it regularly, you tend to
accumulate a lot of information. The "Protocols" might have
entered my mind at some point because the Times had reason to
describe them and their history.

>Anything providing me data I
>was ignorant of is preferable to anything I seem to get from Dan
>Rather. You prefer your pap pre-digested by officious talking
>heads (Perhaps assume that role yourself?) and I do not. My
>admonition to Mr. Goldstein was to widen his field of view, not
>dote on Mr. Rense as the sole fount of his informational acumen.
>I fold my arms at your unclever misdirection, simultaneously
>rolling my eyes skyward at the proud sneer present in your
>preceding question. The question is all the news that _fits_,
>not all the news that's fit.

For what it's worth (and leaving aside the offensive tone of the
above) , I almost never watch TV network news. As I mentioned
earlier, I read the New York Times most days. If Mr. Lehmberg
wants to sneer (proudly?) at that newspaper, he might tell us
how often he reads it. If he hasn't read it, he might be in for
a surprise.

Each day I also read the New York Daily News, our best tabloid,
so I can learn some things the Times isn't telling me,
particularly about life in New York City. I often also read the
Wall Street Journal, one of the very best sources for anyone who
wants to learn about the seamy underside of business.

And then, because I don't fully trust establishment media, I
read alternative sources. I think, generally, that the
establishment media mislead by omission, not by commission. That
is, what they say is usually accurate. It's what they don't talk
about that can be troublesome. (Though there are exceptions to
this. Coverage of UFOs is obviously an example. After my recent
visit to Cuba -- and after doing some reasonably thorough
reading about Cuban history and current affairs, from both
scholarly and journalistic writers -- I've come to feel that
casual coverage of Cuba, at least when the baseball game between
the Orioles and the Cuban team happened, is another subject
where the information printed can be misleading. But that's
another story.)

What alternative sources are useful? Well, in the past, I've
read various left-wing magazines, since my politics are left --
the Nation, for instance, or Monthly Review (a venerable journal
of socialist economics). In New York we also have the Village
Voice, an alternative weekly that publishes all sorts of news
the NY Times won't touch, and also for years has had a column
that monitors the Times. Reading that column has been very
helpful in sorting out what I can trust in the Times, and what I
can't.

More recently I've gotten weary of the left, which seems
moribund these days. And so I tend to read the New York Review
of Books. Each issue is like a year in college -- deep scholarly
looks at a multitude of subjects, along with political articles
which very definitely say things that aren't in the
establishment press. I'm also lucky to do volunteer work,
reading to a blind sociology professor. He reads political books
and magazines, and I learn a lot from that. I also read books on
my own -- and, everyone, please forgive me if this sounds
self-righteous, or merely boring, but there really is a point to
it.

The point is this. Between network news on one side, and Jeff
Rense on the other (along with other websites), there's quite a
lot of information available, much of which doesn't support the
"pap" (good word, Mr. L.) we get from Dan Rather and the like.
This information tends to be readily available -- not, maybe, on
newstands in mid-America, but in libraries, and certainly in
major cities. To quote an old phrase, it's "hidden in plain
sight." If you want to know what's going on that the networks
don't tell you (public TV is even worse, in my opinion, but that
too is another story), you won't have trouble finding it, not if
you really look. To give an extreme example, the Communist Party
has a bookstore two blocks from my apartment. If I want a
viewpoint very different from the New York Times, I can just
take a short walk.

So...while I don't want to be critical, I don't know (returning
to Mr. L's opening remarks) what to do with somebody who wants
to learn about anti-semitism but can't find the information.
There are books on it. There are organizations dedicated to
fighting it (the Anti-Defamation League, the Simon Wiesenthal
Center). The Holocaust Museum has exhibits devoted to it. There
may well be magazines and scholarly journals about it. Regular
reading of the New York Times and the New York Review of Books
will uncover information on it.

Yes, schools should teach about it (my own elementary school
did), but then schools should also teach more about science,
about classical music, about jazz and blues, about black and
Latino history, a world of subjects. (At least they all, at
least around here, celebrate Kwanzaa each holiday season!) But
if we think we don't know enough -- and which of us does? -- why
don't we dedicate ourselves to reading books and magazines,
strongly critical of the established order, which are already
out there?

>>Which means he didn't know that they'd been investigated
>>generations ago. He wasn't fighting censorship to bring us
>>important information about anti-semitism. He just made a
>>mistake, and linked to anti-semitic trash without knowing what it
>>was. Now we're getting this retroactive gloss, when we're asked
>>to believe that Rense has done us all a great educational favor,
>>and that his motive all along was to expose the anti-semitic
>>horror. No way.

>So -- what are we left with here, Jeff Rense is an ignorant
>anti-Semite who provides nothing but a misdirecting,
>UFO-credibility-damaging obfuscation as a result of his web-site
>and radio program? I'll see your "no way," and call. If Rense
>was in this game -- I bet he'd raise.

That's utterly ridiculous. I said no such thing. If I may quote
the very words the careless Mr. L cited before so badly
misrepresenting them, I said that Jeff Rense "just made a
mistake." That hardly makes him ignorant or an anti-semite. Nor
does it mean he provides "nothing" but "obfuscation." If this is
an example of how Mr. L. deals with data right before his eyes
-- data he's even willing to share with us -- then I'm not
surprised at anything he says about conspiracies.

To repeat: I said, in what looks to me like plain English, that
Jeff Rense made a mistake, and that then, instead of admitting
it, he tried to cover his ass, with a little help from some of
his friends. That, too, is not exactly a crime against humanity.

Can we keep a sense of proportion about all this?

Greg Sandow