Newsletter Special: Bret Stephens, New King of the Jews!
David Shasha
Ashkenazi Ubermensch: Bret Stephens, New King of the Jews!
The Straussian Neo-Con Bret Stephens has been on my radar since 2005, when I posted his Wall Street Journal HASBARAH mess “A History of Violence: How Did the Palestinians Descend into Barbarism?” in SHU 183:
https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB112993509985576201
Here is what I said about him back then:
How you feel about the following article will basically determine where you stand politically on the issue of the Israel-Palestine conflict. Mr. Stephens speaks in a language that I often hear in the Jewish community. There is a kind of moral blindness in this sort of argument that speaks of violence removed and de-contextualized from its sources. And the argument uses the moral absolutes that seem to be so persuasive in a theoretical sense.
The argument runs as follows: No matter what has been done to the Palestinians, they have no moral right to kill in the way that they do. This argument, as Stephens repeats it here, denies any linkage between the Occupation and the resultant violence. It denies that people can become so brutalized that they lose any sense of their own humanity. It sets these absolute moral categories in ways that never - ever - seek to address the actual political and existential context(s) that frame the conflict.
In essence, the argument is one-sided and determinative, much in the manner of the traditional Ashkenazi PILPUL that we have discussed so often. The basic idea is to remove the conflict from the confines of the rational and place it into a mystical place where all Palestinians are barbarians and all Israelis are defending themselves.
This obscures the very real problems that exist for those who seek to remove themselves from such carcinogenic forms of thinking.
We must decry violence from where it comes and try to find ways to deal with such violence that would once and for all put an end to the dangers it creates.
But with the forms of absolutism and essentialism that now control the discourse, there seems to be little chance that we can address the grievances on both sides of the divide; little chance that we can promote humanistic values that can be shared by all. There is simply too much of the particular that animates the protagonists.
In the end, Israelis and Palestinians suffer from violence. Each side - and here Stephens' argument becomes partisan - seeks to elevate its own victimhood to a noble and sanctified place. Jews according to Zionism must trust no one and continue to expect that Gentiles will kill them if only they had the chance. The Palestinians and other Arabs now see the Jews in the way that Jews see the Gentiles. Forms of Zionist paranoia infect all sides of the conflict. There is no trust and no humanity that can be shared with the Other.
The form of argument attempts to stifle all forms of alternative discourse by asserting that the Arab violence is so heinous that one cannot even speak to the Arabs because of it. It dehumanizes the Palestinians and makes their case one of pure unmitigated evil. Mr. Stephens ignores the pain and humiliation of the Occupation as the Palestinian suicide bombers ignore the fact that Jews are, as Shylock once said, human beings too.
Until this dismissive and ultimately unproductive form of rhetoric fades away, I am afraid that we are doomed to our antagonisms and our ways of mutual destruction.
Doing a word search on his name in the newsletter master TOC I find that he has been included in the SHU a total of 29 times since that first article over 15 years ago.
But I did not envision that he would become the New King of the Jews until very recently.
Indeed, my focus for many years – to the point of a very unhealthy obsession – was with New York Times House Conservative David Brooks, and his Social Science-addled, data-driven “humility.”
I saw his March 2013 column “The Orthodox Surge” as true Tikvah Fund Intersectionality; bringing together Rabbi Jonathan Sacks and Rabbi Meir Soloveichik with Brooklyn’s Midwood neighborhood in a real Zalman Bernstein reactionary fusion:
https://groups.google.com/g/davidshasha/c/mWz5T-eL9zo/m/SLC373oo0dwJ
But, for all my obsessiveness, I could not have been more wrong!
In 2018 we first learned that Brooks was calling himself a “Religious Bisexual”:
https://groups.google.com/g/davidshasha/c/J0bkJdXI5js/m/K6Zl6XvZAgAJ
A year later, we got a fuller iteration of the story from a very illuminating New Yorker profile:
https://groups.google.com/g/davidshasha/c/a2Ja4SffwlY/m/LLahnzrqAQAJ
Brooks is a very sensitive soul, and he chose to go quietly but firmly into the New Convivencia by marrying a Christian Fundamentalist woman, after divorcing his first wife who converted to Judaism and took on a Halakhic life:
https://religionnews.com/2019/06/10/david-brooks-religion-jewish-christian/
I suppose that would disqualify him from being the New King of the Jews!
Then we had Brooks’ former NYT colleague Bari Weiss and her meteoric rise from The David Project to Tikvah Tablet to the WSJ to the NYT, and now as a go-getter Substack entrepreneurial macher:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1SxkLo73G_WmdoQeRsZbS0ZCKOOSDPUl5yl6BxOaxObQ/edit
Weiss is yet another young reactionary firebrand who is now firmly ensconced in the Neo-Con Anti-Woke world, as we can see from her latest Substack entry, a laughable “debate” on whether Critical Race Theory should be banned from Public Schools; sensitively posted to mark the centennial of the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre:
Having Manhattan Institute racist Chris Rufo and National Review Never Trumper David French discuss the matter is sort of like having Lester Maddox and George Wallace discuss the Civil War!
https://www.loc.gov/item/98514115/
Adding his name to the New King of the Jews discussion was Rabbi Meir Soloveichik, who made a Neo-Con religious name for himself by deploying his First Things Catholic connection wisely:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1_fs8wonYLfhONdKPKTgFt_aoi6GPoJ2uhDFcWOfKuTk/edit
This became an important Tikvah stepping stone, as he embraced the Jewish Atavism of Michael Wyschogrod under the watchful eye of Leora Batnitzky:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1vkNZusv09KazmHUp3BNcBGIe9TEZEMcKsZXfbBFMm4Q/edit
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1ytYVvsu-He-LACFKWcSsYGguR5uX33u9/view?ths=true
Just for good measure, Soloveichik, currently erasing the Sephardic heritage at Congregation Shearith Israel, proudly embraced Trump and Trumpist Senator Mike Lee:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1sUvnfXMeduh00CKAuDD30NiRwbD-5Q147YrMHbGs7Q0/edit
Here is the picture that will forever live in infamy:
https://static.timesofisrael.com/www/uploads/2017/12/AP17342065547859.jpg
Soloveichik is currently writing a monthly column for Commentary magazine:
https://www.commentarymagazine.com/author/meir-soloveichik/
As the rabbi of a historically Sephardic Synagogue, I was particularly struck by his praise of Yiddish as the true Jewish language:
https://groups.google.com/g/davidshasha/c/ev45soBQRNY
But, like Weiss, he has not been anointed King of the Jews!
Finally, there is Tikvah Tablet Liel Leibovitz whose racist White Jewish Supremacy bona fides are second to none, as we have recently shown:
https://groups.google.com/g/davidshasha/c/0-jn8Lyo4vc/m/pSz_gWn6BQAJ
https://groups.google.com/g/davidshasha/c/0-jn8Lyo4vc/m/pSz_gWn6BQAJ
Leibovitz is a pugnacious Alana Newhouse pitbull whose aggression and ambition fully matches Weiss, but who is far more on the Ross Douthat Poptrash Idiocracy side of things, as we saw when he praised Jordan Peele’s Separatist movie “Get Out”:
https://groups.google.com/g/davidshasha/c/IF6-vLJ1dvg/m/vx56NcU-BwAJ
He is a big fan of Stan Lee’s “Black Panther” and its Yiddn connections:
https://groups.google.com/g/davidshasha/c/TcIDvNf1Fac/m/rBf_7N6iAAAJ
Indeed, Leibovitz’s White Jewish Supremacy is closely related to the New Black Separatism, as it forces us to consider what is actually going on with Ta-Nehisi Coates and his Garveyite pals:
https://groups.google.com/g/davidshasha/c/c2jXMsW0ZyI/m/oRSqhH1-BAAJ
In spite of this, Leibovitz, like Weiss, is likely too much of a loose cannon when it comes to the Jewish institutional machers who have now coronated Stephens.
As we can see in this special newsletter, Stephens found his way into the Jewish elite with an important statement of the Jewish Ubermensch, in his deplorable column “The Secrets of Jewish Genius”:
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/12/27/opinion/jewish-culture-genius-iq.html
Indeed, Stephens received a rare public rebuke from his editors, who were forced to print a retraction and edit the piece when it was discovered that the soon-to-be New King of the Jews cited a racist eugenics “scientific” academic study to bolster his dubious argument:
https://www.imediaethics.org/bret-stephens-secret-of-jewish-genius-column-gets-editors-note/
Immediately, the very aptly-named Algemeiner proudly rose to Stephens’ defense, publishing articles by Shmuley Boteach and Ira Stoll to do the usual PILPUL Gaslighting.
The racist Ashkenazi Jews surely took special note of Stephens after his column to mark the recent Derek Chauvin verdict:
Reveling in the fact that the NYT did not cancel him after the Eugenics fiasco, and that he managed to outlast Bari Weiss as the last real Jewish Straussian Neo-Con at the paper, Stephens deployed his very slick okey-doke to turn the George Floyd matter into a frontal assault on Black Lives Matter, Anti-Racism, the Biden presidency, and Cancel Culture, as I discuss in my article “Bret Stephens’ Trolling the Libs Racism: From White Jewish Supremacy to White Supremacy.”
It was not long for those elite institutional Jews to bring Stephens to the very pinnacle of their publishing wing, with the SAPIR Journal:
https://sapirjournal.org/news/announcing-sapir-a-journal-of-jewish-conversations/
SAPIR launched with a week-long series of announcements in the Jewish Insider, as Stephens was preparing yet another important initiative, the anti-liberal Jewish Institute for Liberal Values (JILV):
Indeed, the potent combination of SAPIR and JILV is a powerhouse of White Jewish institutional Supremacy that is a warped fulfillment of the “Jewish Genius” article, which apparently made a deep impression on the Ashkenazi leadership. The two entities are focused, as is Weiss, on attacking Woke Culture and Critical Race Theory in a fulsome HASBARAH context.
It all makes sense when you look at the Stephens CV:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bret_Stephens
He began his Neo-Con Straussian career – where else? – but at the University of Chicago’s Political Science department!
https://leostrausscenter.uchicago.edu/about/
Next, it was straight to Norman Podhoretz and Commentary magazine in 1995:
https://www.commentarymagazine.com/author/bret-stephens/
In 1998 he moved to The Wall Street Journal as Op-Ed editor:
https://www.wsj.com/news/author/bret-stephens
In 2002 he became editor-in-chief of The Jerusalem Post:
https://www.timesofisrael.com/4-things-to-know-about-the-new-jewish-ny-times-columnist/
And finally, in 2017 he left for the much-despised NYT:
He is a member in good standing of The Tikvah Fund:
https://tikvahfund.org/faculty/bret-stephens/
Stephens is very much an under-the-radar kind of Neo-Con; someone who tries to soft-peddle his toxic brand of White Jewish Supremacy, which, as we have seen, often becomes White Supremacy outright.
It is possible to see Weiss’ and Stephens’ careers in lockstep, as they both spent time at WSJ and then moved to the NYT:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bari_Weiss#Career
But Stephens has a Pulitzer, and is seen as the epitome of Straussian Neo-Con values in a way that speaks to the current upheaval in the American Jewish community that has been shown in the new Pew Research Report:
https://groups.google.com/g/davidshasha/c/lBGTbMeFt90
The Pew Report showed that American Jews are now more fractured and dysfunctional than ever. But within that historic collapse the Orthodox and political Right Wingers have emerged as decisive and determinative factors in what is considered Jewish Continuity.
We have seen how The Tikvah Fund, under the deep-pockets leadership of the late Zalman Bernstein, has sought to consolidate the various Right Wing factions – both religious and non-religious – in a way that brings together the old Reagan coalition in a post-Trump era:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1y8UrV67wrZUghBRZimf_5PeQTkQbzXsufntJtD6Y1EM/edit
And in Stephens the Neo-Con Jews have found their New King.
He now oversees two important new initiatives that integrate the various strands of the Tikvah world, from Tablet magazine to The Jewish Review of Books to Commentary magazine, to Mosaic.
He is a figure who has been chosen to unify these entities, and link them to the ongoing Right Wing takeover of the Jewish community.
It is interesting to note how Peter Beinart, once a rising young star in the institutional Jewish firmament, under the now-deposed New Republic HASBARAH poobah Martin Peretz, has lost his mojo:
https://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/30/magazine/30Peretz-t.html
Beinart simultaneously joined The New York Times as an Op-Ed columnist, and the neo-Marxist Jewish Currents as editor-at-large:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Beinart
His defection from Zionism raised the ire of the Neo-Con establishment:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Dpxcr99jDRYBqbJD42RPbP4F57xz8TyjgMt82Upcvvs/edit
David Horowitz’s Front Page Stalinist rag recently included Jewish Currents and Beinart as part of the New Anti-Semitism:
https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2021/05/jewish-studies-has-antisemitism-problem-daniel-greenfield/
Now, both Beinart and Stephens are White Jewish Supremacists, but in this case what kind of WJS you are makes all the difference!
You could be Noam Chomsky:
https://www.bu.edu/articles/2010/noam-chomsky-rails-against-israel-again/
Or you could be Alan Dershowitz:
But do not worry.
Unlike Chomsky acolyte, and Dershowitz bete noire, Norman Finkelstein, Beinart runs no risk of losing his gainful employment; as his career has been carefully crafted:
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2007/jun/11/internationaleducationnews.usa
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2007/jun/14/finkelsteinthecaseagainst
As we have learned, Cancel Culture has always been endemic to the Neo-Con Jewish Right, in spite of their current protestations:
https://groups.google.com/g/davidshasha/c/PLuAZxjJYO0
But in the battle between Beinart and Stephens, it is clear who the Jewish institutional leaders have chosen.
What we are seeing is a realignment of the White Jewish Supremacy, which has elevated Bret Stephens on the strength of his secret understanding of “Jewish Genius.”
At the very core of this process is a massive effort to destroy the New Racial Consciousness, and to mark White Supremacy as the primary value in American Jewish life.
David Shasha
Ashkenazi Ubermensch: Bret Stephens, New King of the Jews!
By: David Shasha
The Ashkenazi Jewish Genius Scam and the “Idiot Sephardim”: What Bret Stephens Has Wrought
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The Secrets of Jewish Genius
By: Bret Stephens
New York Times Editors Falsely Blame Bret Stephens for ‘Mistake’ in Column on Jewish Genius
By: Ira Stoll
Defending Bret Stephens
By: Shmuley Boteach
Bret Stephens’ Trolling the Libs Racism: From White Jewish Supremacy to White Supremacy
By: David Shasha
Bret Stephens and the SAPIR Journal on Jews and “Social Justice”: Another Racist Tikvah Triumph in the White Jewish Institutional World
By: David Shasha
Tikvah SAPIR Straussian Bret Stephens Triumphant: “Liberal” Jews Against Liberal Values!
By: David Shasha