Insanity....

Over on Palmer's blog, his latest thread, Insanity.... uses an offhand post by Rockwell re Rice and some mayor, as yet another launching point to engage in over the top attacks on LRC and crowd. He also keeps repeating the claim that Joe Sobran is anti-semitic. He cut off posting before I could make my last post, so here it is.

Palmer wrote:

"As to Mr. Kinsella, we must have different standards of what constitutes anti-Semitism. If [Joe Sobran's] writing about "The Jewish Party" and appearing at neo-Nazi conferences isn't evidence of anti-Semitism...well, what can one say?"

 

What exactly are the standards for anti-semitism, Mr. Palmer? As far as I know, it would be clear evidence of hatred for Jews as Jews; the view that Jews are evil or should be killed, maybe; or something like this. I really don't know exactly what anti-semitism is, especially givent he ridiculously low thresholds and standards implicitly adopted by liberals and PC types ...  anyway, as I'm from Louisiana, we never obsessed over Jews like the Beltway types and yankees do, never even learned the Jewdar trick so popular amoung New England yankees and Europeans and DC cocktail party types of always trying to spot a Jew by his last name, facial features, etc.).

 

"Mr. Kinsella's standards of argumentation and inference have been shown in many other cases. (I'll set aside the tactic of posting comments on my own web site under my name and the names of other actual people, which is certainly indicative of his views about veracity.)"

 

Oh, God, let it rest. Posting under your name or whatever was just a juvenile prank. Obviously, I knew Palmer would catch it and fix it. Palmer seems to think playing a prank is equivalent to intentionally or recklessly making false statements that someone is pro-Nazi or insensitive to victims of the holocaust.

 

"So for Kinsella the only evidence that would show that Sobran is an anti-Semite is to find a sentence in his writings that reads as follows: "I, Joe Sobran, am an anti-Semite.""

 

This is simply false. I neither stated nor implied this. One's writings can make it clear one is an anti-semite without any kind of direct admission of it. If one is an anti-semite and publishes as much as Sobran does, and is outspoken as he is, then you would expect to find things he says that are anti-semitic. Surely you could find anti-semitic statements in the published work of your typical anti-semitic writer. He may have shown poor judgment attending a given conference. So what? Mistakes do not imply anti-semitism.

 

To claim someone is an anti-semite is a serious charge, especially today (though admittedly, its force has been blunted and diluted precisely because of overuse by people like Palmer). It requires that the burden of proof be on the person making this claim. Palmer would need to (a) define his standards for what makes one anti-semitic, and defend these standards if they employ PC hair-trigger thresholds; and (b) adduce proof that Sobran has expressed any views, or taken any actions, that are clearly anti-semitic, that is, that clearly demonstrate that Sobran hates all Jews, or Judaism, or wishes all Jews to be harmed or discriminated against, etc. I have seen neither (a) nor (b) done. And from my reading of Sobran, I doubt (b) is possible.

 

"I'm glad that Kinsella's not my lawyer. If he were to apply that kind of standard in his legal practice, he'd be laughed out of court."

 

I didn't apply the standard Palmer disingenuously attributes to me. And here we see the inefficious aspect to Palmer's cackling critiques that I predicted earlier, for he just knows not of what he speaks when he implies my legal skills are lacking ...I hate to toot my own horn (notice these types always make it about me ... egads, it's so boringly predictable), so will not do so here, as my reputation is impeccable and does not need defending. Anyway, I wish Palmer were my client--the more "interesting," in the Chinese-curse sense, the better.

 

"And as to his attempt to parse the term "hang out," I leave it to the reader to notice what an evasion that is."

 

There was no evasion. I flat out denied it (as would my 2 best friends, a Muslim-Jewish couple--whose Jewish wedding I stood in as best man, and whose son I served as Godfather for at his Jewish naming ceremony), while also implicitly critiquing Palmer's vague, undefined, hypocritical, and ever-shifting standards. Surely I can fail to be an anti-semite and also disagree with Palmer's disingenuous, ridiculous standards.

 

"Finally, Vinteuil is a rather famous name, in a way that Kinsella (based only on the behavior of this particular bearer of that name; there must be others who do it more honor) is unlikely ever to be."

 

Mr. Palmer, go ahead, feel free to make this about me, Norman Stephan Kinsella of Houston Texas, born Prairieville, Louisiana. Yes, that's what this is all about, it's about me. Funny how this always happens with these types. Go ahead, hurl more invective and insults at me -- it's no skin off my back, and seems to make Palmer feel better, which is what the law and economics types call a Pareto superior move, I believe. I wish I were an actual loser so I could give Palmer some better fodder; absent that, he might as well just make up some more stuff, that should do in a pinch.

Comments

[John T. Kennedy]

Rockwell blogged a kook theory based on a phantom interview. No one is going to be able to produce an interview of Brown saying Rice warned him about 9/11.

So what the hell was that about?

[Stephan Kinsella]

Who knows? Who cares? He heard or saw somtething potentially interesting, and blogged it. That's what blogs are for. Relax.

[Jonathan Dingel]

I have no familiarity with the issue at hand, so perhaps I am mistaken, but Mr. Kinsella's comment strikes me as quite glib. "Who knows or cares" if Rockwell has no evidence for his claims in regards to this phantom interview? Clearly Mr. Kinsella sees blogs as serving a vastly different purpose than most members of the blogosphere. As such, I don't plan to spend time reading Mr. Kinsella's blog.

[John T. Kennedy]

What the hell is wrong with this blog? These comments were orginally to another post. Now this Gay Question thing is posted multiple times.

[John Lopez]

It's just a "weblog malfunction", Kennedy. Move along now, nothing to see here...

[R.P. McCosker]

The "smoking gun" of Palmer's accusation of anti-Semitism against Joe Sobran seems to be that Sobran gave a speech before a conference of the Institute for Historical Review (IHR) a few years ago. Palmer baldly describes the IHR as a neo-Nazi organization. Perhaps I can lend some insight into this.

Let me note that I am not and never have been a member of the IHR. I've never purchased materials from or contributed anything to the IHR. The only of its literature I've ever read were a few things archived without charge on its website. I don't personally know nor have I ever corresponded with its employees or others affiliated with it.

I live in Northern California. In early 2004, I learned that the IHR was co-sponsoring a low-cost conference in Sacramento. (The other co-sponsor was the Adelaide Institute, apparently a similar kind of group based in Australia.) As a longtime reader and admirer of Sobran, and curious to get a sense of what kinds of people made up the IHR, I registered and made the 90-minute drive to attend.

The conference was originally supposed to be two full days, but the local ADL got wind of it and successfully pressured the facility where the event was to have been held to cancel its contract. A makeshift half-day conference was quickly arranged at a nearby suburban community center, with about two thirds of the speakers cut or withdrawn, including a Jewish Israeli who reportedly was eager to convince Holocaust revisionists that they're wrong.

So, did the IHR appear to be Nazi?

Not in any manifest way. None of the speakers--about ten of them--or attendees--about sixty, as I recall making a headcount--displayed swastikas. Or wore paramilitary garb, or had odd haircuts or facial hair. (Though I recall one audience member whom I'd describe as a middle-aged skinhead.) No salutes, no praises exclaimed for Hitler or the Third Reich. There were even a couple of nonwhites in the audience. If I'd entered a coffeeshop and this same crowd had been the customers there, I wouldn't have given it a second thought.

So what was the conference about?

To my surprise, there was only the most occasional mention in passing of the Holocaust. (I got the feeling there was a been-there, done-that attitude toward that subject.) Instead, the speakers--whom I might mention were all well-groomed and well-spoken--seemed to have a variety of bones to pick with organized Jewry--Zionists in particular--and with governments that persecute people who publicly do that.

One speaker, a Canadian with a hilarious dry wit, mainly painstakingly described the great difficulty he had leaving his country to attend this conference. He was detained and questioned for hours, and all his written materials were confiscated.

Another man, an ordained Protestant minister, discussed his research into an annotated Bible that is supposedly very popular with evangelicals. He believed that certain annotations in it were decisive in convincing millions of American evangelicals that God commands the existence of the modern state of Israel.

(The story went something like this: About a century ago, a former con artist who started, and became minister without ordination of, a Midwestern church moved to Paris and lived there a few years preparing an annotated Bible. Just prior, club records indicate he was lunch guest several times of a very wealthy Jewish financier in New York who is well-known to have provided much funding for early Zionist efforts. When the minister returned to the US, he was quickly able to have his annotated Bible prominently published and distributed, and it remains a popular evangelical Bible to this day. The annotations tell the reader that certain of the Old Testament passages about the ancient Israelites mean that a modern-day Jewish state in Palestine must be supported. Oddest of all, though the author died many years before the establishment of the state of Israel, those annotations were mysteriously revised in later printings to reflect that establishment, even though nothing in the Bible's copyright page or credits indicates that any revision had occurred, much less by whom.)

I don't have any opinion about this stuff--I'd have to commit a lot of time sorting through the evidence to form conclusions--but, like Joe Sobran, I find it outrageous that these kinds of topics can't be openly discussed in Western society, in many cases driving those who do want to look into them to seek refuge in "disreputable" organizations.

I have no doubt there were some anti-Semites (defined reasonably) at this conference. There were a couple of white nationalist tables (along with other tables) at the side of the room with literature that appeared contemptuous of those who aren't white gentiles. But where else are those, like Joe Sobran, supposed to go to discuss issues related to Zionism and organized Jewish power that don't reflect society's official line?

I can't tell whether Sobran exercised good judgment in appearing before that other conference. But I'd like to hear Palmer explain why it should be rated "Nazi."