Tuesday, March 08, 2011

Massaging Auster















Apropos of my
last essay about Robert Spencer's latest bridge-burning of a colleague (particularly its "Update" about Lawrence Auster), Auster has put up another analysis that requires massage.

First, while Auster implies that it would make a difference to have seen the original article by Aymenn al-Whatever which was apparently more critical than the current published version on American Thinker -- it makes no difference. Even if that article had been more critical -- even (gasp!) harshly critical -- Spencer still has no justification for behaving like an overgrown baby about it. Spencer should have simply written a rebuttal (which would have been readily published by the fair and reasonable editors there), and awaited al-Whatever's counter-rebuttal; at which time the debate would have proceeded -- until such time as they mutually agreed to "agree to disagree". That's how grown-ups do it.


Secondly, Auster, spends an inordinate amount of time taking Aymenn al-Whatever seriously; though I suppose someone has to do ditch-digging in the still-inchoate Anti-Islam Movement. It doesn't take much reading of al-Whatever to see he's a lightweight sophomore, and exceedingly (and on some points, rather eccentrically) asymptotic to boot. Were we to allow him into the Anti-Islam Movement, we could put him to use crunching numbers, doing light filing and answering phones, perhaps getting coffee for the staff. That's about it. (Surely there are others who can translate Spencer into Spanish, which is al-Whatever's claim to fame to date.)

Auster then does a fine job laying out the basics for the canard about the BNP and the EDL (no massage needed here).

However, he then falters significantly when it comes to Trifkovic. Here's how Auster
sums up the one (and only) supposedly antisemitic paragraph ever written by Trifkovic:

A critic of Jews who treats Talmudic Judaism, the Frankfurt School, and the state of Israel as a single entity that is waging a war of "escalating ferocity" on the West, is a person who is treating the Jewish people as The Enemy.


But did Trifkovic write this?

No. He
wrote:

"...since the late 1800’s the Jews have had a disproportionate impact on a host of intellectual trends and political movements which have..." [which culminates in a process that is acquiring, according to Trifkovic, an "escalating ferocity"]

Notice how Trifkovic's "have had a disproportionate impact on" slides into Auster's "waging a war of escalating ferocity".

Furthermore, as one reads Trifkovic's piece, it becomes clear that he expresses reasonable hope that Jews will recognize that they need to ally with "traditional Republicans" against the non-West, and that in their turn, "traditional Republicans" will welcome Jews as allies.


Auster in his analysis is either cleverly manipulating the source he is critiquing, or he has the reading comprehension of a freshman at a state college, or (to be generous) he was having a bad day the day he read Trifkovic's essay.

Notwithstanding the more reasonable and fair (not to mention elementary) reading of Trifkovic's putatively antisemitic paragraphs, they do still possess, for me, an uncomfortable hint of attaching too much Jewishness to the bad behaviors of certain modern Jews. Trifkovic calls it "disproportionate", but even if it could be proved that among the very small minority (comparatively) of Jews in the West, a high number did involve themselves in various "Gramscian"-type shenanigans (along with other murkier activities undermining society, like "Hollywood"), this still hasn't passed the test of being demonstrated to be due to the Jewishness of those Jews. Trifkovic in that infamous symposium even allowed for this -- if as fleetingly as a zooming car: "Spontaneously or deliberately..." But that, needless to say, is not quite good enough to allay our misgivings.

At any rate, after dialing down our discomfort with Trifkovic to a rational level below Auster's neurotic tendency to hyperventilate, I would certainly support expressing the desire to see Trifkovic further explain himself, but in no way should he be "put on notice" in any manner whatsoever (much less should he be inferentially smeared as Spencer has to date). Trifkovic remains a solid member of the still-inchoate Anti-Islam Movement -- even if its Emperor Spencer wants to publicly scold him (if not all but anathematize him).

Update:

Today, Auster published another article about this issue, after having received some email correspondence from Jawad (al-Whatever). Auster writes:

"Amazingly, Mr. Jawad, a citizen of Britain, is in fact 18 years old and a first year student at Oxford. Here is his website. Here are his articles at American Thinker. I told him that he writes much better than the average AT contributor."

Actually, that Jawad is 18 explains his sophomoric prose -- e.g.:

He describes Trifkovic's reception by others thusly:

[Trifkovic] is often upheld as a serious scholar with a genuine interest in promoting the cause of human rights in the face of jihadist ideology. For instance, he was interviewed in the documentary Islam: What the West Needs to Know and is described by Robert Spencer as having run "afoul" of the "busy propaganda arm" that forms part of the "jihad in the Balkans."

Unfortunately, however, such adulation...

The word "adulation" is wholly out of place here, particularly as the sole basis for such an adjective which he provides is Trifkovic's being interviewed in a documentary and then Spencer's description of Trifkovic as having been a victim of anti-Serbian pro-Balkan-Muslim propaganda-mongers. Using an inflated and exaggerated word like "adulation" in this context bespeaks an exceedingly immature writer -- either an 18-year-old (whether at Oxford or elsewhere); or someone who has a penchant for hyperbole (like Auster, or Spencer).

Another problem with Auster's latest update on the "Spencer-Jawad fight" is that he takes at face value Jawad's self-description:

Mr. Jawad informs me that his parents come from Iraq, and that he himself has no connection with Islam and does not identify as an Arab.

Auster would do well to read through the comments of that original Jihad Watch article where this first blew up, and pay attention to what Jawad says when one of his many hobbyhorses comes up -- the supposed "anti-Arab" bigotry of too many Jihad Watch readers. Jawad strikes me as one of these Middle Easterners who are purveying the "Assyrian" meme. While certainly there are non-Arab peoples in various parts of the Middle East, it is also reasonable to assume that after 1400 years of Arab-Islamic conquest, dhimmitude, kidnapping of little girls to "wed", and rapes, the ethnic composition of any non-Arabs in the region has become seriously compromised. Ironically, one motivation of this quasi-mythological exaggeration of "Assyrianism" in places like Iraq among mostly Christians is often an implicit anti-Arabism: and yet, Jawad in the Jihad Watch comments was condemning Jihad Watch readers for (among other things) precisely anti-Arabism (a charge, by the way, which, like his other charges that riddle that thread, is unfounded). This incoherence and gullibility for propagandizing mythic memes is another sign of immaturity on Jawad's part (though many older people exhibit those symptoms as well).

At any rate, Auster evidently hasn't combed through that comments thread and read all of Jawad's comments, because once one has digested them, no reasonable person who sincerely supports the anti-Islam movement (such as it is) would feel comfortable having such an asymptotically fussy ally as Jawad. Example: an 18-year "citizen" of the UK who hails from Iraq can't possibly know enough about the EDL (let alone the BNP) to so roundly and apodictically condemn them, as he does with that fresh certitude of which only the young freshman is capable.

7 comments:

lava snit said...

Hesperado,

The following is not meant to be an endorsement of Aymenn Jawad, but I'd like to take issue with your post on several points.

1. Those of us (which seems to include Robert Spencer) for whom a thoroughgoing rejection of antisemitism in every form and to any degree is the sine qua non for forming political alliances, are not disinterested in what sort of inclinations or sympathies prominent critics of Islam may have displayed in this matter. Thus Jawad's exposure of Trifkovic's less than palatable writing (or even the mere fact of Trifkovic's association with the website on which said writing appeared) is a valuable service.

2. Jawad's less than precise use of the word "adulation" does not seem indicative of anything more than commonplace sloppiness that pervades most internet writing. It doesn't become one to criticize Jawad so harshly (including calling his prose "sophomoric") on this basis.

3. I'm somewhat puzzled by this:

While certainly there are non-Arab peoples in various parts of the Middle East, it is also reasonable to assume that after 1400 years of Arab-Islamic conquest, dhimmitude, kidnapping of little girls to "wed", and rapes, the ethnic composition of any non-Arabs in the region has become seriously compromised.

First, by "ethnic composition" do you not actually mean "racial composition"? Ethnicity, as I understand it, consists primarily of such things as language, culture, religion, and nationality. If you think race is important, then why use a euphemism? Conversely, if race is not important why bring this up at all?

Second, it seems reasonable to assume that the Arab genetic stock mixed with the conquered Arabized populations. But this process would not have affected non-Muslims (i.e., descendants of those elements of the indigenous population which refused to convert to Islam). The anti-Arabism of these peoples cannot be refuted on the ground that they themselves are Arab or part Arab.

4. I'm not sure it is reasonable to claim that an 18-year old can't possibly know enough about BNP and EDL to have an informed opinion. An exceptionally intelligent and cultivated 18-year old, as Jawad seems to be, surely has more right to an opinion that many 30 and 40-year olds. FWIW I sympathize with the EDL, and I don't care about the BNP one way or the other.

Hesperado said...

lava snit,

I'll try to address your points one by one.

1. I'm not convinced that Trifkovic is antisemitic. Spencer hasn't even mounted an argument to demonstrate it; he has merely, as he did with Vlaams Belang and Filip Dewinter, fluttered with fear that he may be tarred with same brush and so fled the opposite direction for safety from the PC MC Monster. Jawad didn't prove it either; he merely quoted the one and only quote we have apparently of Trifkovic's, as though that quote by itself suffices to prove his antisemitism. Auster, in trying to mount an argument, used monstrous hyperbole and so cannot be trusted to handle simple data. I eagerly await someone actually presenting an argument to the effect that Trifkovic is antisemitic.

2. The "adulation" lapse was only one example. Right after that, he glides into the phrase "many of Trifkovic's despicable views" when neither up to then, nor afterwards, has he demonstrated anything "despicable". That again is a word of strength wholly out of place here, and tendentiously biases the rhetoric, but so transparently only an already hyperventilating reader (like Auster) wouldn't notice, but would go breathlessly along. I won't spend time finding more examples; they are readily visible.

3. On the "Assyrianism" meme I mentioned which Jawad seems to purvey, you wrote:

...by "ethnic composition" do you not actually mean "racial composition"? Ethnicity, as I understand it, consists primarily of such things as language, culture, religion, and nationality.

It's not a good sign when the mere 15-second consultation of an unremarkably standard dictionary (in this case, American Heritage) refutes one's interlocutor:

Of or relating to sizable groups of people with a common, distinctive racial, national, religious, linguistic, or cultural heritage.

Furthermore, it's Jawad who thinks his Assyrianism is important, and who has a bone to pick about Jihad Watchers and their purported "anti-Arab" bigotry.

You went on to write:

"Second, it seems reasonable to assume that the Arab genetic stock mixed with the conquered Arabized populations. But this process would not have affected non-Muslims (i.e., descendants of those elements of the indigenous population which refused to convert to Islam)."

The problem is that "non-Muslim" in regions which Muslims have invaded and conquered is not a static demographic: over time in any given region where Muslims have invaded, the non-Muslim slowly over time becomes the True Believer in the Islamic Big Brother -- Persians, millions of Hindus; and so forth. We have the grotesque spectacle in ensuing centuries (right into our own) of people whose ancestors were the raped and pillaged Persians or Hindus, now turning around -- in the name of the Islam that has infected their souls -- and hating, raping, lynching, massacring their own ancestral people. Certain groups in the Middle East -- Copts, Iraqi Christians (and others) try to erect myths about an ethnic purity, as a way to cope with the horrible fact that Arab Muslims raped them for centuries -- in every horrible way that word, "rape", means. As a coping mechanism, it's understandable; but it's not the honest truth; and the truth shall set free.

lava snit said...

Thanks for your response.

Regarding Trifkovic, in my estimation his Alt Right symposium piece is sufficient to condemn him. His view of Judaism is an antisemitic caricature. Of course, Jews do not see themselves as a race locked in a zero-sum struggle against the gentiles: such concepts hardly existed before the advent of Darwinian racialism in the late 19th century. And it's not just his views about the Jews: when Trifkovic attributes the disintegration of the West to such things as Marxism (more a symptom than a root cause, and its ultimate effect outside of Russia is often exaggerated), neoconservatism(!), Freudianism(!), the Frankfurt School, and so forth, he betrays a very questionable conception of Western history. At best, such views show a tendency toward extreme partisanship. This lowers, for me, his credibility on other issues (e.g., Islam).

Regarding "race" vs "ethnicity", the dictionary definition you so helpfully included in your reply only confirms that, indeed, one of the uses of the word "ethnicity" is as a euphemism for "race." If I have understood correctly, you seem to be saying that an "Assyrian Christian ethnicity" (say) cannot, or should not, be held in opposition to an Arab ethnicity because the two populations have mixed to some extent from the time of the Arab conquest. Yet if Assyrian Christians have had a common and continuous culture, religion, and historical memory, then it would be entirely reasonable to identify them with the original Assyrian Christians, even as the remnant of the original Assyrian ethnic group. To deny the identification on the grounds that Assyrians have some Arab blood is to give race as biological fact unwarranted importance. An ethnic group, in order to be one, need only see itself as such.

Nobody said...

Does Trifkovic actually have to be Jewish in order not to be smeared as anti-Semitic? I've seen Debbie Schlussel unapologetically assault Jews across the spectrum who pander to Muslims and undermine the West. Her criticism of them is not different from Trifkovic - if anything, it's far more aggressive.

She does condemn pro-Muslim Jews as self-hating as well as other things in the book. So obviously, it's not the Jewishness of those people that bothers her. And the problem is not of Jews as either a religion or race, but rather, of Jews as a voting bloc in the US, who tend to vote heavily democratic, and yet have been unable or unwilling to keep that half of the political spectrum from being pro-Muslim.

lava snit said...

Nobody,

Are we allowed to express a negative view of any writer based on what he has written without being characterized as "smearing" said writer? In the relevant excerpt Trifkovic says nothing about "pro-Muslim" Jews or the voting habits of the Jewish demographic in the US. But it seems if I have to justify what I've said I'm going to be going in circles. I'm not about to attempt a watertight proof, citing all sorts of facts and history and conceptual definitions, of the assertion that "Trifkovic is an antisemite," as though this would be of any use to anyone even if it could be done convincingly in a reasonable amount of time. If you can dismiss my explanation out of hand, then it is quite obvious we are too far apart on this subject to come to an easy understanding.

Hesperado said...

lava snit,

"His view of Judaism is an antisemitic caricature. Of course, Jews do not see themselves as a race locked in a zero-sum struggle against the gentiles: such concepts hardly existed before the advent of Darwinian racialism in the late 19th century."

If Trifkovic was using the term "racial" -- when he wrote "Talmudic Judaism’s insistence on the Jews’ racial uniqueness" -- according to the second definition under "race" in the American Heritage dictionary:

A group of people united or classified together on the basis of common history, nationality, or geographical distribution...

-- then he would not be guilty of the Darwinian anachronism you imply.

Further, your phrase "locked in a zero-sum struggle against gentiles" is tendentious veering into a straw man. What Trifkovic actually wrote was that not all Jews, but those "steeped in" the Talmudic tradition would partake of the "elaborate survival mechanism" of which that tradition was a "form", which was "based on the zero-sum view of a world divided into “us” and “them.” "

This kind of "view" (or "worldview") which Trifkovic describes need not express itself in a "struggle" in which anyone is "locked". Your rhetorical exaggeration is only a milder form of Auster's transmutation of Trifkovic's "Jews have had a disproportionate impact on a host of intellectual trends and political movements" (which trends and political movements have been gaining cultural ground in the West with "escalating ferocity") into Auster's caricature of Trifkovic as accusing the "the state of Israel as a single entity that is waging a war of "escalating ferocity" on the West" (which, of course, leads the hyperventilating Auster to consider Trifkovic "a person who is treating the Jewish people as The Enemy"). The only problem is that nowhere in that essay does Trifkovic mention Israel -- except in favorable terms:

...the survival of the West, which is recognizably Christian in spirit and European in genes, is "objectively" becoming the optimal survival strategy for the Jewish community as a whole, Israel included.

You then wrote:

"And it's not just his views about the Jews: when Trifkovic attributes the disintegration of the West to such things as Marxism (more a symptom than a root cause, and its ultimate effect outside of Russia is often exaggerated), neoconservatism(!), Freudianism(!), the Frankfurt School, and so forth, he betrays a very questionable conception of Western history."

He didn't mention the "disintegration" of the West, and he didn't use the term "root cause" to describe those "trends and movements". He simply wrote about

...intellectual trends and political movements which have fundamentally altered the civilization of Europe and its overseas offspring...

[continued next]

Hesperado said...

[continued from previous]

Whether he's being simplistic or erroneous or hyperbolic about this or that "trend" which he lists is, at any rate, entirely another matter from whether he is to be vilified as a persona non grata on the basis of a charge of antisemitism. One can vilify Marx(ism) and Freud(ianism) as having had deleterious effects on the West without being an antisemite, surely. Of course, as I mentioned in my original article, there remains an uncomfortable association implied between the lines of Trifkovic's essay -- an association between the Jewishness of the Jews who have contributed to these bad trends that are hurting the West, and those bad trends themselves. It would be silly to deny that Jews have done bad things: after all, they are human. The issue is whether this happens directly because of their Jewishness (however that is measured) and whether this Jewish factor is malevolent. I myself happen to think that a preponderance of Jews are PC MC (and it certainly seems they are) simply because PC MC itself is a sociopolitical movement on the crest of the Zeitgeist of modern Western ethical progress, and Jews have a culture that fosters ethical progressivism. As PC MC is a good thing taken to excess, the preponderance of Jews through their culture have participated in it, and contributed to its growth. However, so has nearly everyone else in the West. The Jewish factor in this case, for me, then seems virtually indistinguishable from being a redudancy (since I also believe that most Jews in the West are not at all "ghettoized" from their surrounding popular culture but rather are profoundly enmeshed in it), except insofar as one might be interested in anthropological fine points.

You wrote:

"Regarding "race" vs "ethnicity", the dictionary definition you so helpfully included in your reply only confirms that, indeed, one of the uses of the word "ethnicity" is as a euphemism for "race." "

No, it's not merely a euphemism for race. The word "race" connotes a delimitation to biology; "ethnicity" expands that to include other cultural factors that are relevant as well.

"If I have understood correctly, you seem to be saying that an "Assyrian Christian ethnicity" (say) cannot, or should not, be held in opposition to an Arab ethnicity because the two populations have mixed to some extent from the time of the Arab conquest."

No, I am only saying that certain Iraqi Christians or Christian Copts (for example) exaggerate their ethnic purity to a point where they maintain they are "not Arab" at all, when it's highly likely their people contains innumerable degrees of Arab miscegenation.

Besides, we have the additional oddity of Jawad propounding the Assyrian meme while at the same time castigating Jihad Watch readers for their supposed "anti-Arab" bigotry. (This is not only odd on logical grounds, but goes against the grain, in my experience, of other self-styled "Assyrian" Christians who are rather strongly anti-Arab themselves.)