Heee's Back!!! Deranged Hitler Analogies Stage A 2020 Comeback After Failed 2016 Putsch

 

I’ve always found it somewhat mystifying why Donny Deutsch has had a presence in the world of broadcast journalism, since Deutsch has never actually functioned as a journalist, even in the most remote sense of the word. With this guest appearance on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” earlier today, however, I think some of the reasonable suspicions I’ve had about Deutsch were reasonably confirmed when he upbraided his “Jewish friends” for not seeing the historical threat that Trump represents. Deutsch is the perfect voice of what has been called “Resistance Journalism." He's long on attitude, short on facts and with little historical perspective --- other than an exaggerated sense of the role that ethnocentric victimization narratives from mid-century Mitteleuropa should play in contemporary American political consciousness. As Breitbart News  described Deutsch’s diatribe:  

Discussing Trump’s Tuesday night rally in Pennsylvania, Deutsch said, “Look at that crowd… there’s not one person of a color. Anywhere. Like, usually behind him, he puts one kind of token in there, a token person, if you scan this crowd, this is stunning. If you go not even behind him, but through the thousands and thousands of people. And this, to me, looked like a rally from the early ’30s. You know, Joe, I was watching the first hour and as Jeh Johnson was talking about, comparing to Hitler. And you know, that’s something you cautiously do, because we can use the word fascist, but then when you go, Hitler, you can’t — oh, everybody starts to go —but what was going on in early 30s Germany?”

“Well, basically, you had a destruction of the belief in the free press, you had a blurring between the executive branch and the Justice Department, you have creating an other, whether it’s Muslims, whether it’s Mexicans, whether it’s congressmen who weren’t born in this country,” Deutsch continued. “And then you have the destruction of free elections. And we’re here. And what is the difference between Adolf Hitler and Donald Trump? I’m not saying there’s a Holocaust, but when you look at the tactics, and that is where we are right now.”

He added, “I on a personal level — Joe, please indulge me for a second —want to talk to my Jewish friends who are voting for Donald Trump. How dare you? How dare you, with what our people have gone through in history, and you see a man who is a dictator, and once you give them an absolute power, he is possible of anything, and if you are a Jew in this country and you are supporting Donald Trump, you are not looking back at our history. And you are blind, and you are walking like a lemming off a cliff. It is time to wake up. I’m sorry, this is where we are. There is no difference from what Donald Trump is preaching from what Adolf Hitler preached in the early 30s. Let’s just say it once and for all.”

Sorrows of Woke: How 'Resistance Journalism' Might Re-Elect Trump

"Why Trump’s Negative Press Spurs Millions To Like Him Even More," by Augustus Howard, New York Post September 19, 2020

 

The Covid-19 economy being what it is, a lot of people are between jobs these days. New York Post contributor Augustus Howard seems to be between advanced degrees; it’s as if he’s a one-man credentialism convention. A William College graduate, Howard went on to get a masters from  Cambridge University, a law degree from Duke, and now a Cambridge PhD, punctuated somewhere along the line with a federal appellate court clerkship. 

 

But all that fancy book learnin’ hasn’t stopped him from developing a very grounded and incisive understanding of the politics of backlash operating in the 2020 Trump Biden race---and the media’s role in stoking it. Trump has kept a step ahead of the hounds baying behind not in spite of the media onslaught against him but because of it. Writes Howard:  

 

With Election Day in sight, the mainstream media is reaching a fever pitch in its quest to malign, discredit and defeat Donald Trump. The media’s disinformation campaign against Trump, however, may not be achieving the desired results. Joe Biden maintains a lead in public polls, but according to the Real Clear Politics polling averages, the gap is closing both nationally and in battleground states. Evidence of enthusiasm on the ground is also real: Thousands are again attending MAGA rallies, as Trump takes Air Force One on a “whistle-stop” tour of the country.

One can almost hear the collective gasp from establishment-media quarters: Can this really be happening again? Won’t any of our Devastating Reporting ever catch up with the Donald?

In fact, Trump has succeeded — and will likely continue to succeed — not in spite of the media campaign against him, but, at least in part, because of it. Voters have grown wise to the media agenda, and recognize stories crafted to fit a certain mold rather than to follow the facts. They know what a smear looks like, and they don’t like it. At the same time, the ceaseless onslaught has made Trump a permanent underdog. And Americans identify with and cheer for underdogs — an aspect of the national psyche that media and political elites, detached as they are, forget.

Understood in this light, one can see why negative Trump coverage may boomerang, including recent “bombshells” from The Atlantic magazine and Bob Woodward. Citing unnamed sources, The Atlantic claimed that Trump ridiculed American soldiers killed in war. The story, however, was soon undermined by reality. None of its sources came forward. Officials who did come forward — including former National Security Adviser John Bolton, a noted Trump critic — contradicted the account. Voters were left to wonder: Is The Atlantic more interested in harming Trump, particularly with his military supporters, than it is in the truth?

As for Woodward, who taped hours of interviews with Trump for the book “Rage,” almost any statement can be grounds for scandal. Speaking to Woodward on March 19, the president said of the novel coronavirus: “I wanted to always play it down. I still like playing it down, because I don’t want to create a panic.” On “60 Minutes,” Woodward, clearly eager to use the vocabulary of Watergate, suggested Trump was “going down the path of deceit and cover-up.” But attentive observers at the time intuited the president’s strategy — the fact that he wanted to take decisive action against the virus while instilling calm in the nation. Where Woodward sees a tragic cover-up, others will find a common-sense approach to an unfolding crisis, and leadership in the context of often conflicting scientific information.

While the Trump-bashing stories continue to mount, so, also, do Trump’s accomplishments. On Sept. 15, voters watched the signing of the Abraham Accords at the White House: agreements, facilitated by the Trump administration, that normalize and improve ties between Israel and two Persian Gulf states — the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain. Democrats and the mainstream media may dismiss the importance of these historic pacts — legitimate steps toward peace in the Middle East — but the American people won’t.

Nor will they disregard a stock market recovery, good news that a vaccine is likely near, or the president’s pressure on obstinate Democrat leaders to conclude another coronavirus relief bill. Trump’s record of action plainly belies his media coverage.

Many Americans see through the negative reporting and agenda-driven commentary. Lacking elite connections and influence, many voters also know, from their own lives, how it feels to be on the wrong side of power — as when their jobs were offshored, or when their businesses were kept closed by the same governmental elites who endorsed non-socially distanced mass protests during the pandemic.

These voters know, in other words, what it feels like to be the underdog, to go up against the establishment. They relate to their president.

It has been said before: Americans root for underdogs. Unfortunately for the nation’s media and political elites, they vote for them, too.

 

Sorrows of Woke: Bogus Black History Professor Fails 'Transcultural Negritude' At GWU

From NPR: George Washington Professor Resigns After Scandal Over Fake Racial Identity

George Washington University says associate professor Jessica A. Krug has resigned, after a blog post published under her name last week said she had invented several Black identities.

The blog post stated that Krug is actually a white, Jewish woman from the Midwest, who for years has "assumed identities within a Blackness that I had no right to claim: first North African Blackness, then US rooted Blackness, then Caribbean rooted Bronx Blackness."

Krug's apparent fabrications garnered swift criticism from the academic community. Krug worked in GWU's history department, focusing on politics and cultural practices in Africa and the African diaspora. GWU said in an email to the university community on Wednesday afternoon that her resignation is effective immediately. 

"Her classes for this semester will be taught by other faculty members, and students in those courses will receive additional information this week," the university said. It encouraged students, faculty and staff impacted by the incident to seek support. 

"We hope that with this update our community can begin to heal and move forward," the GWU statement read. 

Krug has not responded to NPR requests for comment about her resignation or whether she actually wrote the blog post. However, it's worth noting that she has not publicly distanced herself from the post since it was published on Sept. 3.

A day after the post was released, GWU said Krug "would not be teaching her classes this semester" while it reviewed the situation.

The post predicted that her apparent confession would cause pain: "People have fought together with me and have fought for me, and my continued appropriation of a Black Caribbean identity is not only, in the starkest terms, wrong — unethical, immoral, anti-Black, colonial — but it means that every step I've taken has gaslighted those whom I love."

"I am not a culture vulture. I am a culture leech," the writer said, adding that mental health issues probably contribute to why she assumed a false identity. 

Some members of the academic community have demanded more than Krug's resignation. Yomaira Figueroa, an assistant professor of global diaspora studies at Michigan State University, told NPR last week that she thinks Krug "took up some of the very few — very few — resources and spaces that there are available to Black and Latino scholars and use those to her advantage."

"There absolutely has to be a form of restitution for the things that she took. It's egregious," Figueroa added.

Lisa Betty, a doctoral candidate at Fordham University, echoed that call in a blog post. "Krug took up space, opportunity, time, and money. I call for reparations." 

Michelle Malkin Has Good Advice For Would-Be George Floyds & Jacob Blakes: 'Don't Wanna Be Dead By The Po-Po, Don't Fight With The Po-Po'

The alternative headline for this post could as well be: 'When the Alt-Right Ain't All Wrong,' by syndicated columnist Michelle Malkin, American Renaissance: 

Here we go again: Manufacture. Rinse. Repeat.

Everyone knows the cycle. Everyone knows it ends with false and incomplete narratives eventually being debunked by actual facts. Everyone knows that the racial mythmakers and political opportunists end up with fame, wealth and glory — but never any criminal punishments or moral accountability.

Everyone knows, yet on and on and on it goes.

Step 1: Spread out-of-context video clip of Black man subdued or shot by white cops across national media airwaves and social media platforms.

Step 2: Riot.

Step 3: Accuse law enforcement and America of “systemic racism,” decry police brutality and demand “justice” for fill-in-the-blank “victim.”

Step 4: Riot.

Step 5. Enter Al Sharpton, Benjamin Crump, Black Lives Matter chief propagandist Shaun King, and the rest of the racial hoax crime brigade.

Step 6: Persecute and prosecute involved police officers.

Step 7: Burn, loot and maraud nationwide.

Step 8: Demand more funding for “restorative justice,” “alternative” policing, sensitivity training and “anti-racism” programs.

Step 9: Bury all evidence of justified police action while screaming, “Racism!” ever louder.

Step 10: Lie in wait for the next opportunity to return to Step 1.

I’ve been covering this self-destructive ritual in American life since the very beginning of my journalism career in 1992, when the Rodney King beating video led to the acquittal of four Los Angeles police department officers, which led to the L.A. riots (60 killed, 2,000 injured, $1 billion in damages, $700 million in federal aid), which led to a federal civil rights settlement for King worth $4 million and prison sentences for two of the cops despite their previous acquittals.

On Sunday night, Jacob Blake became the latest overnight cause celebre of the Black Lives Matter brigade. He’s black. The cops, captured on video shooting him in the back seven times after arriving at the scene of a domestic incident, were white. Like the cops in the Rodney King case, Kenosha, Wisconsin, officers were dealing with a career criminal who was young, strong and troubled. Blake’s name, age and neighborhood match court records of a Jacob Blake who had an outstanding warrant for misdemeanor criminal trespass, felony third-degree sexual assault and misdemeanor disorderly assault associated with domestic abuse charges. Like the cops in the Rodney King case, Kenosha cops were confronted with a suspect who brazenly resisted arrest. At least four officers can be seen trying to subdue him. Blake continues to evade arrest and climb into his vehicle, where his children were. At least seven shots rang out.

The rest is a re-re-re-re-re-repeat of social justice history.

“Hands up, don’t shoot” was the foundational lie of the Michael Brown fatal cop encounter, as even the Obama Justice Department was forced to acknowledge. The primary perpetrator of that deception? Benjamin Crump.

The Trayvon Martin hoax, as exposed by investigative documentarian Joel Gilbert, was built on an astonishing key prosecution witness switch-a-roo involving Martin’s real girlfriend, Brittany Diamond Eugene (who was on the phone with Martin before he assaulted George Zimmerman) and a ridiculous impostor, Rachael Jeantel, who was barely literate and apparently manipulated into coached testimony by none other than Benjamin Crump.

Three months after the death of George Floyd in Minnesota, we now know this career criminal — who robbed and beat a pregnant woman in a brutal home invasion — refused to comply with police officers from initial contact. He acted erratically, invoked common “please don’t shoot me” and “I can’t breathe” excuses before was put on the ground, lied about being claustrophobic and was told by one of his own passengers to stop resisting. We now also know that officers believed Floyd was on drugs and swallowed a fatal overdose of fentanyl, compounding his preexisting heart conditions and positive COVID results.

Benjamin Crump, who filed multimillion-dollar lawsuits against the city of Minneapolis on behalf of the Floyd family last month, is now also the lawyer for Jacob Blake.

BLM leaders say what’s left of Kenosha after the weekend’s riots will burn to the ground unless cops are fired and arrested. Al Sharpton, Shaun King, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Ilhan Omar, Bernie Sanders, Joe Biden, Kamala Harris, Nancy Pelosi, Hillary Clinton, LeBron James, NASCAR race agitator Bubba (Fake Noose) Wallace, Cardi B and Demi Lovato all immediately piled on as well, demanding “justice” and condemning police instead of the perps.

I’m reminded of what a black activist in Phoenix confessed to a local news station in 2015 upon seeing what it’s like to be in an officer’s shoes. Jarrett Maupin ended up being shot point-blank by one suspect and shooting another in the chest when both ignored his orders in life-or-death use-of-force scenarios. Maupin’s takeaway?

“I didn’t understand how important compliance was, but after going through this, yeah, my attitude has changed. This is all unfolding in ten to fifteen seconds. People need to comply with the orders of law enforcement officers for their own safety.”

That is the plain, simple truth. All else is racial extortion and deceit. How to save America and end this vicious cycle of smoke, mirrors and ashes? Stop the lies.

Sorrows Of Woke: Willy Brown Explains How Democrat Cluelessness on BLM's 'Peaceful Protests' Will Re-Elect Trump

Burning and looting in the name of justice will hand the 2020 election to Trump, says Former California Speaker Willy Brown. San Francisco Chronicle:

The biggest threat to a Democratic election sweep in November isn’t the Republican in the White House, but the demonstrators who are tearing up cities in the name of racial justice.

President Trump clearly plans to make the burning and looting in what he calls “Democrat-run” cities like Portland, Ore., Kenosha, Wis., and even Oakland a centerpiece of his law-and-order platform.

And it’s not just the presidential race that may be affected. Left unchecked, the mayhem could harm Democrats running for office all across the country.

A recent Harvard CAPS/Harris poll found that three-fourths of people surveyed were concerned about rising crime in the nation’s cities. Nearly half were worried about rising crime where they live.

Numbers like that have Democrats in a heck of a bind.

If they stand up and condemn the “demonstrators,” the left wing will label them as Trump flunkies and they’ll be in all sorts of trouble.

If they keep quiet or offer passive responses, voters will assume they’re OK with burning and looting.

What we need to do is have everyone, including the media, stop calling the after-dark destruction “demonstrations.”

The Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. did not cross the bridge at Selma under cover of darkness. You can’t even read a protest sign at night.

The demonstrations end when the sun goes down. After that, it’s trouble for trouble’s sake.

The people tearing up the cities don’t care about elections. Most of them don’t even vote.

Reflections on the Resistance in America: Why The ‘Black Lives Matter’ Revolution Will Be ‘Little Better Than The Flies Of Summer’

'Peaceful Protester' May 2020. 

From Edmund Burke’s Reflections On The Revolution in France:

“It is ordained in the eternal constitution of things, that men of intemperate minds cannot be free. Their passions forge their fetters.” 

“Rage and phrenzy will pull down more in half an hour, than prudence, deliberation, and foresight can build up in an hundred years.” 

“Wise men will apply their remedies to vices, not to names; to the causes of evil which are permanent, not to the occasional organs by which they act, and the transitory modes in which they appear. Otherwise you will be wise historically, a fool in practice.” 

“I should therefore suspend my congratulations on the new liberty of France, until I was informed how it had been combined with government; with public force; with the discipline and obedience of armies; with the collection of an effective and well-distributed revenue; with morality and religion; with the solidity of property; with peace and order; with civil and social manners. All these (in their way) are good things too; and, without them, liberty is not a benefit whilst it lasts, and is not likely to continue long. The effect of liberty to individuals is that they may do what they please: we ought to see what it will please them to do, before we risk congratulations, which may be soon turned into complaints. Prudence would dictate this in the case of separate, insulated, private men; but liberty, when men act in bodies, is power. Considerate people, before they declare themselves, will observe the use which is made of power; and particularly of so trying a thing as new power in new persons, of whose principles, tempers, and dispositions they have little or no experience, and in situations, where those who appear the most stirring in the scene may possibly not be the real movers.” 

“Thus these politicians proceed, whilst little notice is taken of their doctrines; but when they come to be examined upon the plain meaning of their words, and the direct tendency of their doctrines, then equivocations and slippery constructions come into play.” 

“People will not look forward to posterity who never look backward to their ancestors.” 

“You will smile here at the consistency of those democratists who, when they are not on their guard, treat the humbler part of the community with the greatest contempt, whilst, at the same time they pretend to make them the depositories of all power.”

“Those who attempt to level, never equalize.” 

“To give freedom is still more easy. It is not necessary to guide; it only requires to let go the rein. But to form a free government; that is, to temper together these opposite elements of liberty and restraint in one work, requires much thought, deep reflection, a sagacious, powerful, and combining mind.” 

“Better to be despised for too anxious apprehensions, than ruined by too confident a security.” 

“The effect of liberty to individuals is that they may do what they please; we ought to see what it will please them to do, before we risk congratulations which may be soon turned into complaints.” 

“But when the leaders choose to make themselves bidders at an auction of popularity, their talents, in the construction of the state, will be of no service. They will become flatterers instead of legislators; the instruments, not the guides, of the people. If any of them should happen to propose a scheme of liberty, soberly limited, and defined with proper qualifications, he will be immediately outbid by his competitors, who will produce something more splendidly popular. Suspicions will be raised of his fidelity to his cause. Moderation will be stigmatized as the virtue of cowards; and compromise as the prudence of traitors; until, in hopes of preserving the credit which may enable him to temper, and moderate, on some occasions, the popular leader is obliged to become active in propagating doctrines, and establishing powers, that will afterwards defeat any sober purpose at which he ultimately might have aimed.” 

“Your literary men, and your politicians, and so do the whole clan of the enlightened among us, essentially differ in these points. They have no respect for the wisdom of others; but they pay it off by a very full measure of confidence in their own. With them it is a sufficient motive to destroy an old scheme of things, because it is an old one. As to the new, they are in no sort of fear with regard to the duration of a building run up in haste; because duration is no object to those who think little or nothing has been done before their time, and who place all their hopes in discovery.” 

“But one of the first and most leading principles on which the commonwealth and the laws are consecrated, is lest the temporary possessors and life-renters in it, unmindful of what they have received from their ancestors, or of what is due to their posterity, should act as if they were the entire masters; that they should not think it amongst their rights to cut off the entail, or commit waste on the inheritance, by destroying at their pleasure the whole original fabric of their society; hazarding to leave to those who come after them, a ruin instead of an habitation - and teaching these successors as little to respect their contrivances, as they had themselves respected the institutions of their forefathers. By this unprincipled facility of changing the state as often, and as much, and in as many ways as there are floating fancies or fashions, the whole chain and continuity of the commonwealth would be broken. No one generation could link with the other. Men would become little better than the flies of summer.” 

Annals Of Orwell: NBC News & Google Team Up To Deplatform 'The Federalist' For Honesty On Looting, Rioting & Woke White Delerium

(picture courtesy of New York Times) 

Is looting a racial trope to be avoided because it encourages unhealthy stereotypes about “vulnerable and underrepresented groups?” Or is it a racially-inflected reality that merely makes woke newsrooms uncomfortable---and gives the lie to media narratives about “peaceful” protests? Judging from NBC News’s efforts to get Google to demonetize the conservative website the Federalist for the journalistic sin of accurately reporting on the looting across the country during last week’s George Floyd riots, it’s the latter. Here’s the Federalist’s reporting & commentary on the looting. Below is a description from today’s Wall Street Journal, written by the Federalist’s co-founders on how NBC News’ “Verification Department” teamed up with Google and the Center for Countering Digital Hate, a British anti hate website to act the censor. And how NBC compounded that bit of intellectual reprehensibility by reporting inaccurately on the whole sorry affair before walking back its initial report. 

*****

NBC Tries To Cancel A Conservative Website 

by Ben Domenech and Sean Davis 

NBC News attempted this week to use the power of Google to cancel our publication, the Federalist. The effort failed, but it should serve as a warning about the unchecked power of big tech companies, particularly when they can be manipulated by partisans, including partisan journalists.

On Monday we received a request for comment through our general media email account from NBC reporter Adele-Momoko Fraser. The message asserted that Google had demonetized our site—preventing us from earning money through Google ads—for violating its rules.

On Tuesday, NBC published an article claiming that Google had made a formal decision to demonetize the Federalist, that we had been formally warned that we were in violation, and that our content—specifically, articles criticizing the Black Lives Matter movement and media coverage of recent riots—was a violation of Google’s rules.

Google subsequently sent a statement to NBC saying all these claims were false. The network updated but hasn’t retracted the story. Ms. Fraser, who works for an NBC division with the Orwellian name “Verification Center,” tweeted her story and expressing thanks for the “hard work and collaboration” of a London-based advocacy group, the Center for Countering Digital Hate, which promptly issued a fundraising appeal based on its purported deplatforming of a conservative media organization.

Whatever the network or the center knew about Google and the Federalist, it was more than Google told us. Google never formally notified us that we had run afoul of any of its rules. Only when we sought guidance from Google about the NBC News story were we told that our comments section—which is run by a third party and isn’t monitored or moderated by us—violated its policies. We asked if adjusting the comments section would address the alleged rule violation and were told that it would. For now our comment section doesn’t appear on our site. We intend to bring it back.

NBC News colluded with a foreign left-wing group in an attempt to destroy us because it disagrees with our political commentary and media criticism. The episode illustrates how dangerous the combination of partisan media and monopolistic tech companies is to America. We survived the attack because our organization is well-known. 

This is only the latest example of media outlets using social-media platforms to attack and destroy Americans who don’t kowtow to left-wing orthodoxy. Ask Brendan Eich, who was fired from a Silicon Valley job in 2014 for contributing to a referendum against same-sex marriage six years earlier, or Nicholas Sandmann, who at age 16 was labeled a bigot by journalists for CNN and other outlets for attending a pro-life rally in D.C. and politely staying silent while an adult berated him and his classmates. 

These attacks target not only individuals but free speech itself. 

Sorrows of Woke: Extraordinary Popular Delusions & The Madness of Crowds

From Extraordinary Popular Delusions & The Madness of Crowds, by Charles MacKay, 1841

Men, it has been well said, think in herds; it will be seen that they go Like mad in herds, while they only recover their senses slowly, and one by one.

*****

We find that whole communities suddenly fix their minds upon one Like object, and go mad in its pursuit; that millions of people become simultaneously impressed with one delusion, and run after it, till their attention is caught by some new folly more captivating than the first.

*****

During seasons of great pestilence men have often believed the Like prophecies of crazed fanatics, that the end of the world was come.

*****

Credulity is always greatest in times of calamity. Prophecies of all sorts are rife on such occasions, and are readily believed, whether for good or evil. During the great plague, which ravaged all Europe, between the years 1345 and 1350, it was generally considered that the end of the world was at hand.

*****

Thus did they nurse their folly, as the good wife of Tam O’Shanter did Like her wrath, “to keep it warm.”

*****

Nations, like individuals, cannot become desperate gamblers with Like impunity. Punishment is sure to overtake them sooner or later.

Annals of Anarchy: 'Crowds & Power' Still Rocks

From Crowds and Power, Elias Canetti (1960) 

It is always the enemy who started it, even if he was not the first to speak out, he was certainly planning it; and if he was not actually planning it, he was thinking of it; and, if he was not thinking of it, he would have thought of it. 

*****

The Crowd is the same everywhere, in all periods and cultures; it remains essentially the same among men of the most diverse origin, education and language. Once in being, it spreads with the utmost violence. Few can resist its contagion; it always wants to go on growing and there are no inherent limits to its growth. It can arise wherever people are together, and its spontaneity and suddenness are uncanny. 

*****

The Crowd, suddenly there where there was nothing before, is a mysterious and universal phenomenon. A few people may have been standing together-five, ten or twelve, not more; nothing has been announced, nothing is expected. Suddenly everywhere is black with people and more come streaming from all sides as though streets had only one direction. Most of them do not know what has happened and, if questioned, have no answer; but they hurry to be there where most other people are. There is a determination in their movement which is quite different from the expression of ordinary curiosity. It seems as though the movement of some of them transmits itself to the others. But that is not all; they have a goal which is there before they can find words for it.  

*****

It is only in a Crowd that man can become free of this fear of being touched. That is the only situation in which the fear changes into its opposite. The Crowd he needs is the dense crowd, in which body is pressed to body; a crowd, too, whose psychical constitution is also dense, or compact, so that he no longer notices who it is that presses against him. As soon as a man has surrendered himself to the crowd, he ceases to fear its touch. Ideally, all are equal there; no distinctions count. Not even that of sex. The man pressed against him is the same as himself. He feels him as he feels himself. Suddenly it is as though everything were happening in one and the same body. 

*****

First there is the lying in wait for prey; the prey is marked down long before it is aware of our designs on it. With feelings of pleasure and approval it is contemplated, observed and kept watch over; it is seen as meat whilst it is still alive, and so intensely and irrevocably seen as meat that nothing can deflect the watcher's determination to get hold of it. Already while he is prowling round it he feels that it belongs to him. From the moment he selects it as his prey, he thinks of it as incorporated into himself. 

*****

A murder shared with many others, which is not only safe and permitted, but indeed recommended, is irresistible to the great majority of men. 

There Are Dead Rabbis All Over Jersey But The NYT Hasn't Done The Story & Won't Say Why

To: Clifford Levy, Metro Editor NYT

Fr: William McGowan

Date: April 7, 2020

Re: NYT COVID Coverage of Orthodox Jews in Lakewood, NJ

Hi Cliff: I'm a journalist and author in NYC. Wrote Coloring the News and Gray Lady Down, among others.  Contribute to a variety mainstream publications. Doing a freelance piece (either for CJR , WSJ or City Journal) focused on how identity politics has infected mainstream media coverage of Coronavirus. 

Looking at the NYT lack of coverage abt Orthodox Jews in Lakewood NJ and the anti Semitism it has triggered in the form of social media outrage, FB deplatforming and at least one arrest. Five rabbis from Lakewood have died, among more than two dozen rabbis in the Metro area of NY and NJ. Police say enforcing stay-at-home orders are a "daily" challenge. Ambo drivers taking Orthodox Jewish corona victims (I use the term "victims" advisedly) to Philadelphia bc area hospitals are overflowing and local med staff not in the best of moods given the defiant, irresponsible conduct of their Jewish neighbors who just haven't demonstrated that they believe "We're all in this together."  

Questions, for the record:

*Has the ADL put any pressure on you, personally or institutionally, not to report this story in a timely and unbiased manner? If so, who? Oren Siegel? Jonathan Greenblatt?

*Is there a certain ethnocentric anxiety on the part of you or any other Times editors that has fed a reluctance to do what shd be an obvious story in the timely manner it shd be done given the urgency of the crisis and the need for the public to have this kind of information? 

*Has NJ Gov. Phil Murphy's office played any role in this lack of reporting? If so, is this accession to censorship? 

*Has AG Sulzberger had any convos on this with you or other editors in the running to succeed Dean Baquet? 

Pls know, I'm not alleging any kind of conspiracy theory or tropes here, al la the Protocols. Just looking for answers that any journalist worth is salt wd ask in the face of the Times lack of attention here. Other than a story a few weeks ago abt the FDNY busting up a Hasidic wedding in Williamsburg, the only Times person who has gone near this issue is Bari Weiss and she did so only in the most ethnocentric and ethnically defensive manner.  

Thanks. Stay safe.

William (Bill) McGowan

It's No Joke: April Will Be 'The Cruellest Month'

The view outside my window in Hell's Kitchen, April 1, 2020 

I. The Burial of the Dead

April is the cruellest month, breeding

Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing

Memory and desire, stirring

Dull roots with spring rain.

Winter kept us warm, covering

Earth in forgetful snow, feeding

A little life with dried tubers.

Summer surprised us, coming over the Starnbergersee

With a shower of rain; we stopped in the colonnade,

And went on in sunlight, into the Hofgarten,

And drank coffee, and talked for an hour.

Bin gar keine Russin, stamm’ aus Litauen, echt deutsch.

And when we were children, staying at the arch-duke’s,

My cousin’s, he took me out on a sled,

And I was frightened. He said, Marie,

Marie, hold on tight. And down we went.

In the mountains, there you feel free.

I read, much of the night, and go south in the winter.

 What are the roots that clutch, what branches grow

Out of this stony rubbish? Son of man,

You cannot say, or guess, for you know only

A heap of broken images, where the sun beats,

And the dead tree gives no shelter, the cricket no relief,

And the dry stone no sound of water. Only

There is shadow under this red rock,

(Come in under the shadow of this red rock),

And I will show you something different from either

Your shadow at morning striding behind you

Or your shadow at evening rising to meet you;

I will show you fear in a handful of dust.

                      Frisch weht der Wind

                      Der Heimat zu

                      Mein Irisch Kind,

                      Wo weilest du?

“You gave me hyacinths first a year ago;

“They called me the hyacinth girl.”

—Yet when we came back, late, from the Hyacinth garden,

Your arms full, and your hair wet, I could not

Speak, and my eyes failed, I was neither

Living nor dead, and I knew nothing,

Looking into the heart of light, the silence.

Oed’ und leer das Meer.

Madame Sosostris, famous clairvoyante,

Had a bad cold, nevertheless

Is known to be the wisest woman in Europe,

With a wicked pack of cards. Here, said she,

Is your card, the drowned Phoenician Sailor,

(Those are pearls that were his eyes. Look!)

Here is Belladonna, the Lady of the Rocks,

The lady of situations.

Here is the man with three staves, and here the Wheel,

And here is the one-eyed merchant, and this card,

Which is blank, is something he carries on his back,

Which I am forbidden to see. I do not find

The Hanged Man. Fear death by water.

I see crowds of people, walking round in a ring.

Thank you. If you see dear Mrs. Equitone,

Tell her I bring the horoscope myself:

One must be so careful these days.

Unreal City,

Under the brown fog of a winter dawn,

A crowd flowed over London Bridge, so many,

I had not thought death had undone so many.

Sighs, short and infrequent, were exhaled,

And each man fixed his eyes before his feet.

Flowed up the hill and down King William Street,

To where Saint Mary Woolnoth kept the hours

With a dead sound on the final stroke of nine.

There I saw one I knew, and stopped him, crying: “Stetson!

“You who were with me in the ships at Mylae!

“That corpse you planted last year in your garden,

“Has it begun to sprout? Will it bloom this year?

“Or has the sudden frost disturbed its bed?

“Oh keep the Dog far hence, that’s friend to men,

“Or with his nails he’ll dig it up again!

“You! hypocrite lecteur!—mon semblable,—mon frère!”

---TS Eliot, The Wasteland