Saturday, January 13, 2007
Paul Eisen - What is wrong with these people?
Sometimes trouble begins with a cloud no bigger than a man’s handAn item appeared on the blog ‘Jews Sans Frontieres’
http://jewssansfrontieres.blogspot.com/2006/12/countering-counterpuncher-atzmon.html
The piece "Countering the Counterpuncher Atzmon" by Jewish activists Tony Greenstein and Roland Rance is primarily an attack on Gilad Atzmon but, as is now obligatory in such pieces somewhere towards the end is the standard reference to “Eisen the Holocaust denier” or “Eisen the racist” etc., etc. I try as best I can to take no notice but then I notice the following:
To give but a flavour of Eisen’s works:
“World War II - that is, the war against the East - was really a preventive/defensive war against Communism, which was Jewish.”
The phrase in quotation marks is from “The Holocaust Wars” Fair enough, except that I didn’t write those words. Those words are quoted by me from a letter written to me by Ingrid Rimland and she, in fact, is in turn quoting something said to her. Leaving aside all the usual smears in the rest of the piece, this was a clear error.
A mistake? Perhaps. Tony Greenstein has always seemed to me to be a rather tortured, impassioned soul and maybe a little erratic. But Roland Rance? I don’t think so. Roland Rance is as cold an ideologue as one could meet and every bit as much now as a Revolutionary Marxist, as I’m sure he was when he was a Zionist. He’s also well known for his meticulous use of references and sources, often ticking others off when they fall short of his exacting standards. Well whatever, I wrote to Greenstein asking that he check the quote, amend the piece and perhaps write me and publish a brief apology.
He replied that ‘hell would freeze over’ before he would apologise to me and, in support of his stand went on to alter the formatting of the quote to make it look as if I had in fact written it. He then concluded his email with some more abuse.
No joy from Tony, but if Tony won’t help perhaps the owner of the blog, Mark Elf can help?
“Dear Mark
I am forwarding to you an email exchange I have had with Tony Greenstein.
It refers to the piece in your blog "Countering the Counterpuncher Atzmon". It is clear to me that, either advertently or inadvertently, Tony and Roland have falsely attributed a quote to me. I'm not sure what his grounds are, but as you can see, Tony has refused to put this small point right. Can you put it right?
Paul”
Mark Elf’s answer? To date, no answer.
I am habitually abused by these people. They call me a racist, a Holocaust denier and a ‘neo-Nazi and, more often than not, all three.
They call me a racist. Variations on this theme have been: “the veteran racist, Eisen” and “Eisen, the racist polemicist”. But what do they mean? Recently I heard one child call another child ‘racist’ (both were white) in an argument over a game of cards. In this case ‘racist’ meant ‘cheat’.
So if I am a racist what kind of racist am I? Am I the racist elderly couple in the inner city neighbourhood who, in the privacy of their own home, confess to each other their occasional feelings of bewilderment at the huge changes in their surroundings caused by the influx of so very many people who look, speak and even behave, so differently to them? Or am I the racist hooded Klansman who lynches a black man and douses with petrol and sets light to his still living body? Or am I the perfectly ordinary folk who gather round and watch?
They call me a Nazi. But the Nazis are dead and gone so I cannot be that kind of Nazi. I suppose I could have been the medium-grade office clerk who joined the party because his boss did or the besotted housewife at a party rally. I could perhaps be the old Nazi who, like any old Bolshevik dreaming of revolutions past, sits and dreams of past glories. But I don’t think so. National Socialists, like any number of other ‘-ists’ are usually folk who know for sure how the world should be ordered and aren’t afraid to use force to make their point – and I’m not like that at all.
They call me a Holocaust denier. But “Holocaust denier” is just an abusive term for a Holocaust revisionist - the slur being that Holocaust revisionists are like flat-earthers - people who have lost all touch with reality and deny that anything unpleasant at all happened to Jews at the hands of the National Socialists and that Auschwitz was just an early-forties holiday camp. They do not. ‘Holocaust denier’ along with ‘racist’ ‘neo-Nazi’, anti-Semite and all the rest is just one more non-definable term of abuse used rather like the word ‘witch’ - used in the Middle Ages as a curse to silence those with whom one does not agree.
But let's set the record straight about my own "Holocaust denial". I wasn’t at Auschwitz, so I don't know exactly what did or did not take place there. I am also no scholar, but I have had a fair look at the evidence and as far as I can see, the revisionists, at the very least, need to be taken very seriously indeed. But that’s not the point. I am not in the slightest bit interested in the hydrogen cyanide traces in brickwork or how long it takes to burn a corpse but the fact is that there is a strong possibility that a distortion of massive proportions is being peddled big-time and savagely enforced. The Holocaust narrative and its enforcement are major arms of Jewish or Zionist power, a power which is the gravest and most pressing threat facing humankind today, a power which I want to defy and resist wherever and whenever I can.
Not only is the Holocaust narrative used to sacrelise Jewish suffering and so make it possible for Jews to do anything they like in Palestine and elsewhere, but the enforcement of the Holocaust with its marginalization, criminalisation and even incarceration of offenders is used as a frightener. “Watch it!” they say to any wanabee resistor, “If we can enforce this, we can enforce anything.” And the result is a world which will think, say or do anything, anything, anything rather than be called a Holocaust denier.
But back to those comments. The net is just full of them - “Eisen the Holocaust denier”, “Eisen the racist”, “Eisen the Nazi sympathizer”, “Eisen the Nazi”, “Eisen the Zundel- lover” and Eisen the anti-Semite” and all made by people who have neither met nor spoken to me, have not met anyone who knows me or has spoken to me and, I’m sure in most cases, have not read anything I have written except selected quotes presented out-of-context to them by others. As I have wearily come to say; if someone will tell me what a Holocaust denier, an anti-Semite and a racist is, I will gladly say whether I am one.
If you click the links of these and similar comments you will be immediately transported to Sue Blackwell’s website – and specifically to “ Sue's famous pages on Palestine and Israel”. Please do visit it (it’s a riveting read), and while there don’t forget to click onto Sue’s “Nazi Alert” feature http://www.sue.be/pal/nazis.html, where, after consultation with her ‘Jewish friends’ (her words – “I have now had a chance to take a closer look at this site and consult Jewish friends on their views of it."), Sue selects those suitable for public pillorying. Do go there and do read a selected catalogue of my crimes.
A little while ago I wrote to Sue saying that, since she had never met me, spoken or written to me, she couldn’t possibly know very much about me, so why did she label me so publicly and so terribly and with such terrible results? Like Mark Elf, Sue’s answer was no answer. Sue did not reply. I imagine it is part of Sue’s principled stand on racism never to talk to Nazis.
Finally, one more comment, also on Jews Sans Frontieres:
“I would agree that Paul Eisen is not a good thing, but don't think that people talking about the need for a Palestinian perspective should be lumped in with him, or on the other hand seen as 'anti-Semitic'
‘Not a good thing’! ‘Paul Eisen is not a good thing”! My goodness, what am I - a cheeseburger from McDonald’s, an outbreak of bird flu, high cholesterol?
What’s with these people? Why do they behave this way? Why do Tony, Roland and Mark misquote me but refuse to correct this small error. “Dear Paul, You are a racist and a Nazi but we misquoted you. Sorry.” There, was that so hard? Why does Sue Blackwell, who has never met me, spoken nor communicated with me in any way, using selected and out-of-context evidence, put me in a public pillory where anyone who wishes may, at their leisure, smear and malign me? Why, when you Google my name will you find any number of meaningless slurs about some character called ‘Paul Eisen’ – a brand-name for an individual who I, and anyone who knows me, will find completely and utterly unrecognizable?
Who are these people? Who are these Jewish ethnic campaigners, these ‘secular’, ‘left-wing, and ‘anti-Zionist’ folk who, the more secular, left-wing and anti-Zionist they are the more they attack me! Who are they? Why do they do this? What does this all mean?
Amongst all the smears – Eisen-the-this or Eisen-the-that, there is one accusation you will never see. This is: “Eisen the traitor”, “Eisen-who-went-against-his-tribe”, “Eisen-who-likes-to-tell-the-Goyim-what-Jews-really-think, Eisen who said (gasp) that Zionism is Jewish, that (shhh…not so loud) Jews are not suffering, that there is such a thing as Jewish power, that (stop, stop) people sometimes dislike Jews for (wait for it…) a reason.
Are these people stupid? They sometimes seem so with their predictable, repetitive slogans and smears. All this is that! All that is this! Racist! Racist! - Nazi! Nazi! Strange, because they appear educated (I understand that Sue Blackwell is a lecturer in a university) and they’ve certainly all read a lot. (A lot goes in, a lot comes out, but does much happen in-between?)
And boy, do they know a lot.. Never in my life have I met people who know so much.
“You insist on locating your worldview in the centre of any possible discourse. Why do you do it? Because you are a supremacist Jew. You must believe that you know better. You must believe that you know better than the SWP what is important for the British working class. You must think that you know better than the Palestinians what is right for the Palestinian people. Are you familiar with the notion of modesty? Just contemplate over the remote possibility that you may not know better.....”
Gilad Atzmon ‘in conversation’ with Tony Greenstein
A supremacist Jew? No Gilad no! Surely not! This cannot be! Or could it? Could it be that for these secular, leftist, anti-Zionist Jews knowing everything about everything and enforcing it is their particular brand of choseness and supremacism? That these secular, leftist, anti-Zionist Jews who no longer worship God but who now worship Jewish victimhood and the Holocaust in fact now worship themselves?
And could it be that the ferocity, the mindless savagery with which they, collectively (always collectively) pursue and hound their prey, is the same impulse we see prescribed in Deuteronomy, re-enacted in Palestine and Lebanon and now policing the net? And could it be that the justification - whether for laying waste to Lebanon, ethnically cleansing Palestine, bombings, assassinations, silencing critics in the U.K., smearing opponents on the internet, or just refusing to put right a tiny little error in an article on a blog - is the same:
We are special. We are chosen. We have suffered.
We know what is good for you.
We can do anything!
Paul Eisen
December 2006
Paul Eisen is a director of Deir Yassin Remembered
