New Article: Tikvah SAPIR Straussian Bret Stephens Triumphant: “Liberal”Jews Against Liberal Values!
David Shasha
Tikvah SAPIR Straussian Bret Stephens Triumphant: “Liberal” Jews Against Liberal Values!
It seems that Bret Stephens is making a very serious play for a prominent place in the White Jewish Supremacy hierarchy.
He has written stirringly against the New Racial Consciousness:
https://groups.google.com/g/davidshasha/c/gPteGeyFAsA
And he has taken the helm of a Tikvah-fueled project called the SAPIR Journal, which reinforces his hatred of the New Racial Consciousness:
https://groups.google.com/g/davidshasha/c/9sNvRGoAK4E
SAPIR Intersectionality was immediate, with both Tikvah Mosaic and Rabbi Gil Student re-posting its articles to their Neo-Con reactionary websites:
https://www.facebook.com/TheReyd/posts/1502599060071537
The first item in the following eJewish Philanthropy e-mail newsletter alerted me to another Stephens-led Neo-Con project, the very inaptly-named Jewish Institute for Liberal Values:
https://mailchi.mp/8cb7e745d85e/your-daily-phil-4918198?e=400f0fcddb
It is another Cancel Cancel Culture SHANDA:
In their words:
We are a new organization that supports the free expression of ideas and helps Jewish organizations that care about true social justice prevent the encroachment of the Critical Social Justice (CSJ) approach in the Jewish world.
The description, as with SAPIR, is quite Orwellian, because the primary aim of the group is to stifle Free Speech, and ensure that only one point of view – that of the Straussian Neo-Con Jews – is heard.
The website description makes it pretty clear:
Currently, the response to Critical Social Justice has been mixed in the Jewish world. There are Jewish groups that firmly oppose or ignore CSJ. There are groups that enthusiastically endorse it. And there are many mainstream Jewish organizations—national and local—that have yet to develop a clearly defined position. The Jewish Institute for Liberal Values will help Jewish organizations and individuals hold constructive conversations about CSJ and insure a balanced approaches.
Their goals are laudable, if blatantly untrue from the Stephens-SAPIR-Straussian perspective:
- Enable, empower and equip Jews who support liberalism and oppose the imposition of CSJ to come forward
- Raise awareness in mainstream Jewish organizations on the complexities of social justice and encourage deliberation
- Ensure that Jewish civic culture does not become dominated by a single ideology
- Educate the larger Jewish community on the dangers of imposing CSJ and build a strong counter-movement
As we will shortly see, the group is closely tied to SAPIR and its Tikvah grounding:
Their Blog section leads off with an anti-1619 Project primer!
Here is the White Jew-approved “Alternative Reading Guide”:
https://jilv.org/the-alternative-reading-guide-for-the-1619-project-essays/
The usual disingenuous misdirection is given:
The danger in using only the 1619 Project as a guide to race relations and black American history is that it drowns out some of the voices of black resilience, strength and true heroism. Much of the 1619 Project focuses on oppression and grievance as the collective voice of the black American experience. The Alternative Reading Guide for The 1619 Project Essays offers supplemental essays to be read in tandem with each 1619 Project essay for a more complete picture of the black American experience and contribution to American society.
The idea is to negate the 1619 Project and replace it with something less “oppressive” and less focused on “grievance.”
Because Jews never complain about oppression in the form of grievance politics!
Only African-Americans do.
A number of the Blog’s articles come from our dear friend David Bernstein, founder of The David Project, and founder of JILV as well:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_David_Project
He is a man who knows a great deal about stifling Free Speech.
The David Project was a radical Right Wing HASBARAH Cancel Culture organization, whose claim to fame was the famous “Columbia Unbecoming” debacle that introduced us to Bari Weiss:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/15yQlqUlCeKPfaqW2Ty3KyjA2lEIZAYLMe9r5ChQAK_0/edit
I have indeed pointed out the irony of Weiss becoming a proud champion of Free Speech, when in fact her career has been rooted in Cancel Culture:
Destroy MEALAC!
http://volokh.com/2005/03/31/columbia-report-on-mealac/
There was also the DP production and promotion of “The Forgotten Refugees” documentary, which is a virulently anti-Arab piece of HASBARAH propaganda dealing with Middle Eastern Jews:
https://www.jimena.org/resources/forgotten-refugees/
Yehouda Shenhav has responded to the matter in bracing detail:
I was quite impressed with Bernstein’s impassioned article “Who Decides What’s Racist?”:
https://jilv.org/when-diversity-eats-diversity/
Indeed, it is Bernstein who decides what’s racist!
The Blog section also includes an article by Tikvah SAPIR contributor and JILV board chair Pamela Paresky attacking Gavin Newsom and the California Ethnic Studies Curriculum:
https://jilv.org/critical-ethnic-studies-curriculum/
Because the Neo-Con Jews hate the California Ethnic Studies Curriculum!
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1SBkVBFplCWMowuOs6V_0aJ1ZDh6JQd8vtwz22A_xdvA/edit
We will notice that the JILV Resources section is led by Self-Hating Sephardi David Suissa and his Jewish Journal of Los Angeles:
Here is the link to his world-renowned podcast:
https://www.listennotes.com/podcasts/the-david-suissa-podcast-david-suissa-TkqB9rzt4jX/
It affirms Suissa’s desperate desire to be an Ashkenazi, as he defiantly turns his back on the Sephardic heritage and our cosmopolitan Jewish Humanism:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1c1l0_eK349whup0o6s-Gy_dtWeVCZVQOZC3Q-UFwSQM/edit
Of course, we can see here the Intersectional HASBARAH linkage between The David Project, SAPIR, David Suissa, and the Ashkenazi-run JIMENA under the rubric of Cancel Cancel Culture.
Critical to the JILV project, unsurprisingly, is the work of the deplorable Jonathan Haidt:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1wRa-UjQrGtOZOcPTN75mjGsA_dlpzoCxMulxk4Xvo-c/edit
Their website provides a convenient link to purchase his vile book The Coddling of the American Mind:
Then we have University of Illinois Sociology Professor Ilana Redstone:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1uIRdJchnOmtjo7u35e_gtO6Gctbz3WZJ/view
I had never heard of her before, but she is apparently a critical Neo-Con Jewish point person on the Cancel Cancel Culture.
She is Tikvah Tablet:
https://www.tabletmag.com/contributors/ilana-redstone
And Buckleyite National Review:
https://www.nationalreview.com/author/ilana-redstone-akresh/
She runs a McCarthyite “snitch” organization Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, where “victims” of the PC mob can go to “report” Racial Crimes:
The following interview with Chris Martin for the very aptly-named Heterodox Academy helps illuminate things:
https://heterodoxacademy.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/03/073_IlanaRedstone_transcript.pdf
The conversation addresses Police Brutality in a very revealing way:
Chris Martin: Right. I think it might be different in public and private universities because there was that famous incident at Brown University where there was a small riot of sorts when a Police Chief of the New York Police Department gave a talk.
Ilana Redstone: Right.
Chris Martin: That was 8 or 9 years ago now I think.
Ilana Redstone: Right. No, I do. I remember reading about that. Yeah.
Chris Martin: Yeah. That’s interesting.
Ilana Redstone: I mean again, this was sort of –but again, this was something that they asked for and this is someone local.
Chris Martin: Right.
Ilana Redstone: And they did ask her. Like there was a student who said –who basically said, not rudely but she just said, “Why should we ...” and she was saying we, members of minority communities, “Why should we trust you?” meaning you, the law enforcement. And so, she just asked that question and then the woman had an answer and they just –I mean I don’t know that they necessarily came to an agreement but there was at least a conversation.
Chris Martin: Right. Did the police officer talk about the need to shoot in self-defense if you are a police officer?
Ilana Redstone: She –no, that specific case of shooting in self-defense didn’t come up. But there were questions about –someone did ask at the end of the time that she was there, they asked something about what is your advice or something to be safe? And she said –or what is your advice in terms of improving these relationships between the communities and some of these communities and law enforcement? And her answer was I thought reasonable but certainly something that some people might find offensive. Her answer was mutual respect. There has to be mutual respect. If you are stopped, again, I’m sort of channeling her, “If you are stopped by the police, you should not be questioning what they are saying. You should be doing what they are telling you to do, not talking about, and they will in all likelihood respond in kind.” Again, a controversial position but that was –but it was a useful conversation. And it led to a lot of other conversation.
She runs something called Diverse Perspectives Consulting, which sounds an awful lot like a Right Wing response to the Robin DiAngelo and Ibram X, Kendi’s Corporate Anti-Racism training cash machine:
https://www.diverseperspectivesconsulting.com/who-we-are
Indeed, it is always about the money!
It has become quite apparent that the New Racial Consciousness movement seeks to wipe out the old Buckley/Reagan Jim Crow consensus, and that the members of that consensus are very worried.
As evidence of that fear, we would do well to read Stephens’ vitriolic New York Times column “Biden’s Plan Promises Permanent Decline,” which seeks to put the Blacks back in their proper place:
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/03/opinion/biden-spending-economy.html
It begins, in true Reagan fashion, with an attack on government-run Single-Payer Healthcare:
Years ago, Alexis Tsipras, the party leader of Greece’s Coalition of the Radical Left, surprised me with a question. “Here in the United States,” the soon-to-be prime minister asked me over breakfast in New York, “why do you not have this phenomenon of passing money under the table?”
The subject was health care. Greece has a public health care system that, in theory, guarantees its citizens access to necessary medical care.
Practice, however, is another matter. Patients in Greek public hospitals, Tsipras explained, would first have to slip a doctor “an envelope with a certain amount of money” before they could expect to get treatment. The government, he added, underpaid its doctors and then looked the other way as they topped up their income with bribes.
And makes the point emphatically clear with a direct assault on the efficacy of government and the need for a social safety net, which would protect underserved and oppressed minorities, such as the African-Americans:
Take a close look at any country or locality in which the government offers allegedly free or highly subsidized goods and you’ll usually discover that there’s a catch.
“Free Stuff” – where have we heard that one before?
https://www.foxnews.com/transcript/bill-oreilly-americans-who-want-free-stuff-from-the-government
Oh yeah, that’s right!
https://variety.com/2017/tv/news/bill-oreilly-fired-sexual-harassment-fox-news-timeline-1202372546/
Stephens then continues to discredit European social largesse:
France’s subsidized day care is, by all accounts, fantastic for working parents who get their children into it. Except there’s a perpetual shortage of slots. In Sweden, a raft of laws protects tenants from excessively high rent. Except wait times for apartments can be as long as 20 years. In Britain, the National Health Service is a source of pride. Except that, even before the pandemic, one in six patients faced wait times of more than 18 weeks for routine treatment.
Before he attacks LBJ and the New Society programs:
These examples are worth bearing in mind as President Biden charts a course toward the largest expansion of government since Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society. After signing a $1.9 trillion Covid-19 relief bill in March and proposing a $1.5 trillion discretionary budget in April (a 16 percent increase from this year, on top of what’s likely to be at least $3 trillion in mandatory spending on programs like Medicare and Medicaid), the president wants $2.3 trillion more for infrastructure and $1.8 trillion for new social programs.
He then appeals to Republican ally Joe “Keep the Filibuster” Manchin:
Maybe those bets will pay off. And conservatives would be foolish to dismiss the sheer political appeal of the progressive pitch. But before the U.S. takes this leap into a full-blown American social-welfare state, moderates in Congress like Senator Joe Manchin or Representative Jim Costa ought to ask: What’s the catch?
The column closes with a defiantly Reaganite flourish, accusing Biden and the Democrats of creating a “Permanent” American Decline in the wake of Progressive policy initiatives designed to help the poor and needy, rather than maintaining Corporate Welfare and the permanent regime of Tax cuts for the wealthy, as the Gipper did:
But investments like these, once made, are almost never reversed. The spending will become permanent. Beyond the gargantuan cost, Congress should think very hard about the real catch: transforming America into a kinder, gentler place of permanent decline.
This is Stephens’ hate-filled story and he is emphatically sticking to it.
In this vein, JILV has published a letter to “Our Fellow Jews” on “Equality and Liberal Values”:
It is an extraordinary text written in the cleverly coded language of the Neo-Con Straussians, which seeks to provide cover for the current Jewish Racism in the face of Progressive values.
Here is the offensive statement, unexpurgated:
A letter to our fellow Jews on equality and liberal values
The American Jewish community is facing a challenge to the liberal principles that have long defined Jewish civic life and America’s democratic tradition.
Among our country’s blessings is an unparalleled protection of freedom of expression. This freedom is among the essential tools by which American minorities––including Jews––have made progress in advancing the causes of equality and justice.
Today this freedom is being threatened. An ideology is taking hold across the country that insists there is only one way to look at the problems we face, and those who disagree must be silenced.
This suppression of dissent violates the core Jewish value
of open discourse. Jewish tradition cherishes debate, respects disagreement,
and values questions as well as answers. In ancient times, the Beit Midrash––the
House of Study––encouraged
passionate argument “for the sake of heaven.”
Jewish tradition has also long insisted that we only
judge and be judged by our own deeds. “A son shall not bear the iniquity of the
father, and a father shall not bear the iniquity of the son; the righteousness
of the righteous shall be upon himself,
and the wickedness of the wicked shall be upon himself” (Ezekiel 18:20). The
dominant social justice ideology, however, holds that individuals bear
collective moral guilt or innocence based on the current conception of group
identity.
Because this dominant narrative creates a worldview in which groups are only oppressors or oppressed, it encourages pernicious notions of “Jewish privilege,” even implicating Jews in “white supremacy.” This presents many Jews with an impossible set of political choices.
On issues of racial justice, powerful groups in the Jewish world have foreclosed the usual deliberative process. Rarely do Jewish organizations encourage discussions that include differing perspectives, even from within the Black community. In some cases, Jewish leaders have even denounced Jews for expressing unpopular opinions.
America was born with what Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. termed a “birth defect,” continuing the institution of slavery decades after the nation’s founding. Through Reconstruction and Jim Crow, America continually failed to live up to its ideals, engaging in rampant discrimination and the disenfranchisement of Black Americans. Despite substantial progress since the civil rights movement of the 1960s, much remains to be done to right the profound injustices of America’s legacy of racism.
In the wake of George Floyd’s killing, many Americans,
including American Jews, redoubled efforts to create a more just society. But
the way to fight racism is not to do away with essential tools. The way to
fight racism isn’t to cease discussion and debate.
To do so is antithetical to American ideals and antithetical to Judaism. The way to fight racism is to insist on our common humanity––and to engage in dialogue, including with those who dissent. That is what Judaism demands.
We members of the Jewish community add our voices to the growing chorus supporting our liberal principles, opposing the imposition of ideology, encouraging open discussions of challenging topics, and committing to achieving a more just America.
The following is a list of signatories to the letter; many of whom will already be familiar to SHU readers:
Original Signatories
Bion Bartning | Foundation Against Intolerance &
Racism (FAIR)
Emily Barton | Des Moines
David L. Bernstein | Founder, Jewish Institute for Liberal Values
David E. Bernstein | University Professor, Antonin Scalia Law School, George
Mason University
Daniel Bouskila | Rabbi, Sephardic Educational Center
D. Malcolm Carson | Pacifica, California
Mona Charen | Policy Editor, The Bulwark
Eliot Cohen | Dean, Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies
(for identification purposes only)
Mark Dratch | Executive Vice President, Rabbinical Council of America, New
York, NY
Joel Finkelstein | Director Network Contagion Research Institute
Blake Flayton | Co-founder, New Zionist Congress
Daniel Gordis | Shalem College; Jerusalem, Israel
Jonathan Greenberg | Jack Miller Family Foundation
Jonathan Haidt | New York University - Stern School of Business
Samantha Harris | Samantha K. Harris, Esq., Philadelphia, Pa.
Moshe Hauer | Executive Vice President, Orthodox Union
David Ingber | Founder and Senior Rabbi, Romemu
Lee Jussim | Distinguished Professor of Psychology
David Kaufman | Rabbi, Des Moines, Iowa
James Kirchick | Writer
Ben Kramer | Rabbi, Moriah Congregation, Deerfield, Illinois
Josh Kraushaar | Annandale, VA
Liel Leibovitz | Editor at Large, Tablet Magazine, New York, NY
Yuval Levin | American Enterprise Institute
Holli Levitsky | Los Angeles, CA
Nicole Levitt | Domestic Violence Attorney Philadelphia, PA
Bethany Mandel | Editor, Ricochet and Columnist, Forward; Silver Spring, MD
Seth Mandel | Executive Editor, Washington Examiner magazine
Daniel Newman | Jewish Institute for Liberal Values, Columbus, OH
Monica Osborne | Writer and Scholar of Jewish Studies
Pamela Paresky | Psychologist
Steven Pinker | Johnstone Professor of Psychology, Harvard University,
Cambridge, MA
Scott Roland | Rabbi, Scott B. Roland, Beachwood, Ohio
Thane Rosenbaum | Distinguished University Professor, Touro College, New York,
NY
Dave Rubin | The Rubin Report
Jeffrey Salkin | Rabbi, Temple Israel, West Palm Beach, FL
Hal Schevitz | Rabbi, Congregation Or Atid, Henrico, VA
Ira Sheskin | Hollywood, FL
Maxim D. Shrayer | Brookline & South Chatham, MA
Abigail Shrier | Independent Journalist
Joshua Snitzer | Student Leader
Christina Hoff Sommers | Resident Scholar, American Enterprise Institute
Bret Stephens | Op-ed columnist, The New York Times
Nadine Strossen | John Marshall Harlan II Professor of Law Emerita, New York Law
School - New York, NY
Izabella Tabarovsky | Scholar, writer/journalist
Gil Troy | Distinguished Scholar of North American History, McGill University
Aaron Weil | Executive director and CEO Central Florida Hillel, Orlando Fla
Eric Weinstein Ph.D. | Host of The Portal Podcast / Managing Director, Thiel
Capital
Bari Weiss | Los Angeles
David Wolpe | Sinai Temple, Los Angeles
Cathy Young | Arc Digital
Concerned Friends of The American Jewish Community (Signatories)
Adv. Michal Cotler-Wunsh, Former Member of Knesset
Michael Oren | Former ambassador, MK, Deputy Minister, Jewish Journalist/Writer
Natan Sharansky | Former Head of the Jewish Agency
The whole thing serves to confirm my current obsession with the Cancel Cancel Culture and its well-remunerated Jewish institutional proponents.
Rather than seeing the ongoing implosion of their Republican Party under its Fascist leader and the possible destruction of the American democracy in the wake of the January 6th Insurrection as the primary problem, this despicable group of Right Wing Jewish ditto-heads has chosen to parrot the Trump-Miller-Bannon talking points on Race, and ignore the actual perils that now face us as a civilization.
It is a testament to the clever way in which Neo-Con Jews have made the pivot to a new post-Reagan, post-Trump world that they see as deeply threatening to their reactionary ethnocentric interests.
There is certainly nothing “Liberal” about them.
And let us never think otherwise.
David Shasha