WE live in a world of staggering deceptions. While the crude and offensive millionaire Donald Sterling, owner of the Los Angeles Clippers, one of many basketball teams which have elevated individual blacks to stardom and wealth, receives national condemnation and lifelong ostracism for stating that he did not want his crude girlfriend to associate with black people, proving that America is perfectly capable of outrage and believes fanatically in the moral superiority of non-whites, blacks who murder whites are sent to air-conditioned hotels for respite with almost no public indignation over their crimes. One of the latest victims is Judy Salamon, who was executed on the streets of East Oakland while on a neighborhood watch patrol. Salamon took action against crime in her neighborhood and for this she lost her life.

Judy Salamon

The idiocy of charging Sterling with racism is exposed by simply looking at photos of the Clippers.

— Comments —

James N. writes:

I understand Mr. Sterling’s taped remarks not as a sign of racism, but rather as the pleadings of an old fool turned inside out by his young mistress, a story as old as time.

He did not say that he didn’t want (generic) blacks at Clippers games. He said he did not want HER to bring a date to HIS games, which I took to mean games where he was present. He also told her why – because his fellow owners would throw it in his face, and he would be embarrassed. Presumably, his fellow owners, although paragons of racial virtue themselves, might have had some crude remarks not suitable for broadcast if HIS girlfriend brought a black date to HIS game.

As far as the mass hysteria over his “racism” – it shows how fragile and how threatened the General Theory of Race Relations to which all the great and the good subscribe really is. Obviously, “racism” as an explanation of the relentless deterioration in black communities since 1964 is false, since if it were true we would see improvement instead of what we do see.

A “racist” today is like a Jew in medieval Europe or a witch in the 1600s, making the inexplicable understandable. It appears, however, that the power of the “racism” explanation for what is in front of everyone’s eyes is fading – and, as usual, the frenzy of those searching for the Jew, or the witch, or the racist, must correspondingly increase.

 Laura writes:

Your “old fool” theory sounds right.

The analogy with medieval Jews is not quite right since Jews did have explicit hostility toward Christians, as outlined in the Talmud, that is not comparable to anything whites condone today toward blacks.

James N. writes:

I’m not an expert on the Talmud, but I’m pretty sure the rat flea had more to do with the Black Death than Jews poisoning wells. My point was that the current hysteria over “racists” as an explanation for the deteriorating conditions of blacks is false, even though there are actual racists. Similarly, even though there were medieval Jews hostile to Christians and willing to harm them, they did not cause plagues or lightning storms.

Rob writes:

Don’t waste any time on Sterling. His downfall may be over a minor transgression, maliciously blown out of all proportion. And if he was on the progressive side of politics it would be ignored or forgiven. But that is the nature of scandal, which can serve a useful social purpose of bringing down the powerful corrupt. He is clearly a repellent and depraved man, and deserves what he gets. Anne Coulter details some of his other behaviour, whilst married. He publicly deposed in relation to a previous long term prostitute girlfriend “I knew from the day she came in that she was a total freak and piece of trash.” Which was her attraction to him. His many enemies have finally got him, and we shouldn’t care.

 Laura writes:

I don’t feel for him, but the reaction, which is mostly from those who had nothing to do with him, is obscene.

May 5, 2014

Bill R. writes:

James N. writes, “I’m not an expert on the Talmud, but I’m pretty sure the rat fleas had more to do with the Black Death than Jews poisoning wells.” But Laura’s point that the analogy between medieval Jews and modern targets of accusations of racism is not quite right is well taken just the same, for 14th century Europeans had no idea that the vector of the Black Death was rat fleas. They were centuries from any real understanding of it at all. So an accusation we might now regard as born of utter irrationality might have been reasonable with only the knowledge of the 14th century in our heads, knowledge which did not include the real cause of the Black Death but did include real hostility of Jews towards Christians on record. And what is more natural for those suffering hostile consequences of unknown origin than to at least suspect those who have hostile intentions against them?

Laura writes:

I do not know much about the accusations regarding the Bubonic Plague, but it would not be “reasonable” to suspect Jews of starting the plague if there was no evidence that they had anything to do with it.  These accusations, I assume, had their origin in the cult of witchcraft.

Buck writes:

I cringed at reading Bill R.’s seemingly glib justification for the massacre and persecution of Jews as “at least”, and only, a mere and natural suspicion. Suspicion is just an idea. What am I missing? Did Christianity pass this test?

Laura writes:

I am not knowledgeable about the massacres that occurred in connection with the plague. Are you familiar with them?

I’m not sure what you mean about Christianity passing a test. Accusations inspired by a belief in witchcraft had nothing to do with Christianity. The cult of witchcraft and related superstitions were opposed by the Church in medieval Europe. 

Buck writes:

I’m certainly no expert, but from what I read, the massacres of whole Jewish communities (some say “hundreds”) in a host of eastern European cities, towns, villages; seem well chronicled and not in dispute. It’s said that the mass killings were being done by Christians; “certain Christians, seduced by that liar, the devil, are imputing the pestilence to poisoning by Jews,” Pope Clement VI, who is said to have written when he urged the protection of Jews in a Papal Bull: “Quamvis Perfidiam, dated July 6, 1348.” Quamvis Perfidiam is cited repeatedly, and like so many regurgitated web citations, searching for it takes you in circles. It’s not at any Vatican site or at any Catholic site that I can find.

I find dozens of sources, not all Jewish, that describe the wide ranging massacre of Jews by Christians during the years of the Black Death, circa 1348. I find no sources that deny it or point to any real efforts to stop it.

Laura writes:

The Jewish Virtual Library, hardly an impartial or pro-Catholic source, cites Quamvis Perfidiam.

Bill R. writes:

Buck writes, “I cringed at reading Bill R.’s seemingly glib justification for the massacre and persecution of Jews…” And I cringed at reading Buck’s glib misinterpretation of what I said and his glib willingness to accuse someone else of trying to justify massacres and persecutions. First of all, understanding is not justification. One can understand and acknowledge a real provocation without condoning or justifying actions that may have subsequently been taken because of it. Secondly, the discussion specifically regarded accusations, not massacres and persecutions. This subtopic emerged from Laura’s very mild criticism or clarification of James N.’s attempt to compare accusations against Jews during the Black Death (when Jews were already on record with hostility toward Christians) with modern accusations of racism (where invariably the targets of such accusations have no record at all of any racial hostility). My point was that, given such recorded hostility toward Christians on the part of Jews, it was not unreasonable to suspect or perhaps even accuse Jews of having some complicity in what was happening given the knowledge of the 14th century. One might also add to that knowledge the stress and terror people were experiencing at the time in the face of a cataclysm far beyond anything they had ever encountered before, and their struggle to make some sense of it. I also suggested that such an accusation, given our knowledge now, would be “utter irrationality.” Attempting to understand suspicions and accusations is not the same as attempting to justify them, let alone the same as attempting to justify massacres and persecutions. I said not one word about justifying massacres or persecutions of anyone, anywhere, at any time, period, and to suggest that I did is not only a glib, but indeed a grotesque, distortion of my words and meaning.

Having said that, I am dubious about reports of “wide ranging massacres of Jews” at a time when the people who would have been in a position to know such things were hardly going to be standing around making such observations and calmly recording them in journals when they were far more busy caring for and burying parents, children, and siblings. Reliable records for periods that remote are rare even when conditions were at their best, let alone during the most horrific catastrophe Europe has ever experienced. Perhaps many of these so-called massacres of Jews were simply Jews themselves dying of the plague. The massacre of an entire village is no easy task even for a healthy, well-trained, well-organized army, such as Joshua’s when he slaughtered ever man, woman, and child in Jericho; how much more so for scattered, sick villagers caring for farms and dying families of their own? However, massacres of entire villages were not at all difficult for Yersinia pestis.

But let me turn the question around and assume these massacres occurred. What is the alternate explanation for them? That white European gentiles are simply possessed of some inexplicable, congenital desire to murder Jews for no reason and jump at the slightest excuse to do so (presumably because of the inherent hatefulness and wickedness of white European gentiles, for what other explanation could there be for such a desire)? Strange, though, if they had such a desire, and given how greatly they outnumbered Jews, that, first of all, they would have even needed an excuse, and secondly, that they didn’t manage to kill all the Jews in Europe centuries before even the Black Death occurred. It is also strange that many of the same people who balk at the notion of anything ethnically prejudiced about Jews as a group, seem to think nothing of viewing white European gentiles this way. To put it another way, it’s odd how it seems so much easier for some to think white European gentiles capable of actually massacring an entire village of Jews rather than that Jews themselves might have made up such stories to validate their own hostility toward Christians. For in regard to the claims about these massacres, what stands out to me more than the claims themselves, which, after all, have been around for some time now, is, on the one hand, the passion with which certain people today defend the idea that they did indeed happen, and, on the other, by the equal passion with which any attempt to understand the motivations that might have been behind them, if indeed they did occur, is attacked, as if such an attempt is equivalent to justification. I submit that such a passion bespeaks an obsequiousness toward Jews I refuse to share. It implies that, as a group, they are somehow pure and could never be guilty of provoking anything untoward against themselves, so that when such untoward things happen it can only be the fault of some magically inexplicable animus that just seems to befall Jews and only Jews out of nowhere save, of course, the malicious heart of the white European gentile as they, meanwhile, go forever sweetly and innocently about their way.

The fact is that I do know that a great many Jews, particularly those of the left and members of the intelligentsia, have made it abundantly clear that they have every intention of continuing to impugn white Western European gentile civilization (even as they continue to live in it) as the world’s central villain of anti-Semitism and racism, and if truth is one of the casualties of such propaganda then so be it (and after such relentless and vicious accusations of their own they wonder how anti-Semitism emerges in the first place), just as they have promoted propaganda that has turned the Holocaust from a crime committed by Nazi Germany to one for which the whole of white gentile civilization is responsible. I ask, can a people who so glibly abandon the solemn truth about the murder of millions of their own (an event they continue to campaign ferociously to maintain as the central moral lesson of our time), changing it from the responsibility of a single evil dictator and the regime he represented to that of all white Christian civilization be suddenly somehow conscience-stricken and incapable of the much milder lie of claiming that six and a half centuries ago earlier generations of those same Christians massacred some Jewish villages during the Black Death, if in fact they didn’t? Hardly. And it shows that if they’re willing to lie about who is responsible for the big massacre they would certainly be willing to lie about who was responsible for the small one and for the same reason, making doubts about these Black Death massacres understandable even if ultimately incorrect. And, finally, it shows something else as well: It shows the measure of this people’s gratitude for the civilization that not only was not responsible for the Holocaust but delivered them from it.

Laura writes:

A long dialogue on this issue with Bill and another commenter has been removed. The latter commenter had originally sent me a long response to this post. I sincerely believed she wished it to be posted. She has since informed me that it was a private correspondence and did not wish for it to be posted. I stand by my response to her and do not retract it in any way but have removed it because she did not want her e-mail public.

Most people who send me responses to posts expect them to be posted and I do post them unless they specifically state they do not want them published or unless for other reasons I decide to leave them out. I did not get the impression from the commenter that she wanted to keep the exchange private. I would have been happy to keep it private. I felt obliged to post it, especially since she strongly objected to my comments, and I spent time responding as best I could. I then informed her it had been posted. I am sorry for this misunderstanding, and wish we could make the exchange public because I think it was of interest.

Please follow and like us: