-Caveat Lector-
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Dennis âJustinâ Raimondo, proprietor of the âantiwar.comâ website,
has reveled in his status, after September 11, as
Fascism and, especially, Jew-baiting, are distinguished from other political phenomena by their unvarying banality. There are no new forms of Jew-hatred, and its purveyors must therefore endlessly troll through the dustbin of history, seeking castoffs to recycle. Dennis Raimondo has added to this the role of historical vampire, digging up long-buried corpses with names like John T. Flynn and Garet Garrett â justifiably forgotten partisans of American defeat in World War II â hoping to breathe the semblance of life into them to further his career as the rescusitator of the âAmerica Firstâ cult. Necrophilia is his eroticism of choice. But he engages in numerous other forms of perverse political
quackery. One fairly recent example was his attempt to exploit the past writings
of the historian Ronald Radosh on isolationism, while denouncing Radosh as a
âBolshevik,â even though Radosh departed from the radical left a quarter century
ago. Another, in which he has
numerous imitators (including his mentor Patrick Buchanan and Buchananâs
longtime companion Robert Novak) consists in the mendacious use of a brief and
essentially innocuous 1996 document on Israeli security, âA Clean Break,â
claiming it is a virtual blueprint for the
âA
Clean Breakâ recommended action against
Dennis Raimondo is not an intellectual, or a journalist, or even much of a writer. He seems to consider himself a revolutionary, who believes he can gain the attention he craves, and the mass adulation he dreams of, by imitating the most repellent methods of the Stalinists. These consist of reducing everything to the lowest personal innuendoes and insults, and promoting obscure figures like Murray Rothbard, as canonical sources. This method dates back to the epoch when the followers of Joseph Stalin defamed their leftwing critics by labeling Trotsky an agent of Hitler and Mikado. I will deal lightly, for now, with such other Raimondian habits as the amalgam of Milosevic, mass killer of Muslims, and Saddam, purported champion of Muslims, in his pinup catalogue of beefcake brutes, or his incessant use of âTrotskyiteâ as a slur. I am a former Trotskyist, and would rather be known as a âTrotskyiteâ than a Saddamite, any day of the week. Dennis Raimondo has refined political and moral inconsistency, if not
pure hypocrisy, to a level that is almost unique. He has smeared me for being a
neoconservative and, at the same time, a defender of unions, but the
neoconservative movement always included union leaders. I have never defended
strikebreaking, and cannot be accused of ever supporting union-busters. By
contrast, Dennis sees nothing peculiar in being a flamboyant gay liberationist
while fronting for Buchanan, one of
Dennis Raimondo and his cohort would like Americans to believe that
their affection for people like Milosevic and Saddam has nothing to do with
their own natures. That is, they claim to merely oppose âempire,â and stand for
an In his slow-dance with destiny, Dennis has tripped over his own feet, with notable consequences. A
column he wrote a mere month before September 11th has come back to
haunt him. Under the repellent title, âHiroshima Mon Amour: Why Americans Are
Barbarians,â posted to his site on August 8, 2001, Raimondo declared, with his
customary modesty and decency, âthe
idea that America is, in any sense, a civilized country is easily
dispelled.â Of course, one wonders how a person who holds such an
opinion, especially one from the ultra-sensitive side of the psychological
spectrum can stand living in this country, much less posturing as a patriot of
the He continues, âJust think:
if we all woke up one day living in some alternate history, as in Phillip (sic)
K. Dickâs The Man in the High Castle, our cultural malaise
would disappear overnight. Instead of listening to the latest loutish lyrics of
Eminem, American teenagers would be contemplating the subtle beauty of the
Japanese tea ceremony. If contemporary
Numerous ordinary Americans
denounced Dennis for these grotesque comments. We cannot expect much in
the way of erudition from Raimondo, whose idea of acute political commentary
consists of repeating, âWhatâs up with that?â But this is a text that justifies a much
closer reading. A number of points immediately cry out to someone who knows
something more about But I also learned some 35 years ago about a phenomenon few have
discussed until recently: the role of the Japanese Zen sect, and other Buddhist
adherents, in the promotion of Japanese militarism. A shibboleth repeated widely in Western
media, holding that Japanese imperialism was mainly supported by the Shinto
religion, serves to exempt Buddhists from criticism. But recent publications in Western
languages reveal the horrific promotion of Japanese atrocities in
I seriously doubt Dennis Raimondo has ever gone anywhere near a
Japanese tea ceremony, although he may have eaten a few fortune cookies at the
Japanese Tea Garden in San Franciscoâs Golden Gate Park, or had some tea while
eating sushi. Suzuki, who tried to blame the crimes of Japanese imperialism on
Shinto, wrote, on the tea ceremony, âHad the art of tea and Zen something to
contribute to the presence of a certain democratic spirit in the social life of
But Suzuki also wrote, of the role of Zen in the Japanese order, âReligion should, first of all, seek to preserve the existence of the state.â A really shocking quote comes from Suzukiâs own master, Shaku Soen: âEven though the Buddha forbade the taking of life, he also taught that until all sentient beings are united together through the exercise of infinite compassion, there will never be peace. Therefore, as a means of bringing into harmony those things which are incompatible, killing and war are necessary.â There is, simply, no difference whatever between this frightful assertion, used to justify the massacre of the Koreans and Chinese by the Imperial Japanese army, and the arguments advanced by Nazi mystics who acclaimed genocide as a means of improving humanity, or by Saudi-backed Wahhabis who recruit for suicide terrorism by promising that mass murder will lead the world to embrace a purified Islam. This illuminating topic has been thoroughly discussed in Zen at
War, by Brian A. Victoria, the kind of demanding volume we may be sure
Dennis Raimondo will never pick up, no matter how labored his picture-postcard
musings on Japan. After all, a person like Dennis, who refuses to contemplate
the Serbian atrocities at Srebrenica, cannot be expected to take a serious
attitude toward the ideological underpinning of the Rape of Nanking. In that 1937 incident, Japanese
troops, over a period of six weeks, murdered hundreds of thousands of Chinese
civilians and raped tens of thousands of women. Or would
Dennis-the-wannabe-Menace argue that in that, too,
Knowing Japanese culture as I do, I would also point out that the
country suffers quite a bit of cultural malaise all its own. Obscene
manga comics are a part of the Japanese cultural environment that owe
nothing to the West, and are not unique.
The 1976 movie In the Realm of the Senses, which includes a
castration, was not conceived as a Japanese Western. While
The idea that life in
The Man in the High Castle is an alternate-universe yarn based
on what But there are other, more sinister features of the
Frank Frink is the key here, of course. The main character in The Man in the High Castle is a Jew, a very distinguished Jew, as a survivor. In the alternate universe, Jews have vanished from the North American continent. Whether he actually read it, or just skimmed it in a bookstore, that is what Dennis really meant when he wrote, âJust think: if we all woke up one day living in some alternate history, as in Phillip (sic) K. Dickâs The Man in the High Castle.â This poseur dreams of waking up in an America prostrate, segregated, and from which all Jews have been removed, in which he can play the role he must have imagined from about the time he decided it was better to be âJustinâ than âDennis:â that of a collaborationist functionary in a fascist occupation regime. Thank God war was waged to prevent such a nightmare from descending upon us. Thank God war will be waged anew to prevent its realization by other fascists, and that while Dennis is still talking only a handful of misguided American conservatives and communists are listening to him. www.ctrl.org DECLARATION & DISCLAIMER ========== CTRL is a discussion & informational exchange list. Proselytizing propagandic screeds are unwelcomed. Substanceânot soap-boxingâplease! These are sordid matters and 'conspiracy theory'âwith its many half-truths, mis- directions and outright fraudsâis used politically by different groups with major and minor effects spread throughout the spectrum of time and thought. That being said, CTRLgives no endorsement to the validity of posts, and always suggests to readers; be wary of what you read. CTRL gives no credence to Holocaust denial and nazi's need not apply. Let us please be civil and as always, Caveat Lector. ======================================================================== Archives Available at: http://www.mail-archive.com/[EMAIL PROTECTED]/ <A HREF="">ctrl</A> ======================================================================== To subscribe to Conspiracy Theory Research List[CTRL] send email: SUBSCRIBE CTRL [to:] [EMAIL PROTECTED] To UNsubscribe to Conspiracy Theory Research List[CTRL] send email: SIGNOFF CTRL [to:] [EMAIL PROTECTED] Om |
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