Will Rabbi Kahane Be Proven Right Again (on Widespread American Antisemitism)?

The Impending Kristallnacht

Chananya Weissman

[Note: this article was censored by the Slimes of Israel on March 15, 2020 on an absurd pretext and they terminated my blog when I objected.]

The following is an excerpt from an article I wrote this past Tisha B’av, August 11:

“There are only two reasons why Jews will return to Israel: inspiration and desperation. Roughly half of the Jews in the world are already here, primarily because of inspiration. The rest of you will return eventually, one way or another, because that is the destiny of our people. It would be far preferable if you will return because of inspiration, but if you won’t do it for any other reason than desperation, that can be arranged.

Just consider what life in your foster home of choice looked like last Tisha B’av compared to today, just one year later. Even in America, the last stop on the train, the last year alone has seen the following: open anti-Semitism from the Wicked Witches of Congress the likes of which we have never seen before; normalization of open anti-Semitism within the Democratic party, major media outlets, and college campuses across the country; a surge of anti-Semitic attacks in Brooklyn and other major Jewish communities; multiple mass shootings in synagogues; Jews across the country getting used to the fact that their institutions require armed security and members require training to respond to attacks. All this in just the last year!

The country can no longer unite on even the most basic issues, like whether they should have borders, or babies should be allowed to live even after they are born, or whether America is good or evil, or whether the Constitution should be rendered irrelevant, or whether there should be celebration or disappointment if it turns out the President was not a Russian agent. Is America even a country anymore, or just a bunch of groups who loathe each other and are itching for a fight?

Maybe you would still be shocked if sometime in the next year we have a Kristallnacht in America, but I wouldn’t.”

Here we are just a few months later, and the America of Tisha B’av looks like Gan Eden compared to the America of today. Galus Jews – many of them extremely religious and devout – are desperately clinging to the belief that somehow this is all going to blow over and they can return to business as usual. Their faith in Galus continuing to tolerate them while they have a detached interest in Jewish destiny is rivaled only by their belief that moving to Israel “isn’t for them”.

My brothers and sisters in America, please listen to me. Unfortunately (or fortunately, depending on how you look at it) the life you knew in Galus is over, and it’s not coming back. You need to come to terms with this. Your lives are in real danger.

Even before the Corona virus became a serious problem, the situation in America was rapidly deteriorating. Criminals in New York have been emboldened by drastic changes to the law, allowing them to commit serious crimes and quickly be released back onto the streets. The police have themselves become targets, and have little incentive to risk their lives confronting criminals. On the national level, the country is more divided than ever before in its history. The Civil War, as bad as it was, was primarily over slavery and a few related points of contention. Today the country is polarized over every issue under the sun, including the very foundations of the country. The rift is irreparable, and Jews are front and center in every controversy and scandal. The Goyim don’t need a reason to hate the Jews, but they don’t have to work hard to fabricate reasons today.

Now the Corona virus is on the verge of devastating America. There are still those who are pooh-poohing everything, just as Jews pooh-poohed the death camps even as they were being led to the showers. That will change. Just a few days ago, everyone was saying it’s just a flu and making fun of people for overreacting. Now they are davening like it’s Yom Kippur, but they are neglecting to say Vidui. Yes, it’s that dire.

If they are lucky, it will still be a few weeks before there is an explosion of seriously ill people in the country and the hospitals are completely overwhelmed. Most likely it won’t take that long. Quarantines and lockdowns are going to become more severe, and will probably need to be enforced by martial law. The stock market won’t be able to be pumped up with helium anymore, and there will be an economic crisis unlike anything we’ve seen before.

The average American didn’t have a few hundred dollars saved up for an unexpected bill before the virus hit. A large portion of the population is about to be completely wiped out, if not by the virus then by financial ruin.

In the past when there were wars or financial downturns, Americans could escape their troubles by turning to their religion, sports and entertainment. Unfortunately, their god has been slain. No longer can they paint their faces, go to a ball game, and howl for a few hours to relieve their stress. No longer can they line up for the latest movie about a fantasy world or the end of this one to take their mind off their problems. They can’t even go to a bar and enjoy a few drinks with their friends.

When a Jew is quarantined or otherwise separated from his leisure activities, he will pick up a sefer, listen to a shiur, learn with a chavrusa, or simply pour out his heart to God. What do you think tens of millions of sick, scared, bored, frustrated, broke, angry, armed Americans are going to do? Pick up a Bible? Binge watch Netflix for days on end?

The Goyim have been split across all racial and political lines for many years now, boiling with anger, itching for a fight. Now their world is about to come crashing down on them, and it’s going to be every man for himself, every tribe and gang for itself. This is not going to pass peacefully.

Meanwhile, the Jews generally have a higher standard of living, they are not armed, they don’t fight, they are not in shape, everyone knows where they live, and they hate you anyway. I know you defiantly proclaim “Never again”, and some of you took krav maga lessons, and a few of you even started carrying a gun. How long do you think you will be able to hold them off, Rambo?

The police are not going to be able to protect you, and many of them won’t want to. Despite all the outreach you do and appreciation you show, many of them don’t care for you at all. Even the good ones might be ordered to stand down to “deescalate tensions”, or they might be unwilling to risk their lives when the riots get out of control.

Rav Yissachar Shlomo Teichtal writes in Eim Habanim Semeicha that when Jews choose to stay in Galus for their money, eventually Esav takes away their money anyway. Esav is going to need a lot of money – and food, and medicine, and basic supplies – very soon, and they are going to do whatever it takes to get it. When they are finished ransacking and looting the stores like Black Friday on steroids, they are going to think about who to target next. It won’t be the Italians.

I am not a prophet, but we have been through this enough times in our history that it’s easy to predict how this plays out. The next time a good Galus doesn’t turn into a bad Galus is going to be the first time in history that happens. Those of you who think you will be the lucky exceptions are deluding yourselves and endangering your lives.

Reprinted from Chananya Weissman, over here.

Online Aliyah Seminar Draws 2,500 Jews

‘Virtual’ Mega Aliyah Event Draws 2,500 Participants In Face Of Coronavirus Crisis

JERUSALEM (JNS) — The annual Mega Aliyah Event, which provides potential new immigrants (olim) with an all-encompassing slate of resources for retirees, young professionals, medical professionals, families and singles, that was set to take place in New Jersey on Sunday, with an expected 1,500 individuals in attendance from 15 states across North America, was turned into a virtual meeting due to the recent coronavirus (COVID-19) outbreak worldwide.

And a record 2,500 participants joined online in real time.

The virtual event included multiple online lectures on a wide range of topics in order to provide potential olim with accurate, reliable and relevant information to help ease their aliyah process. The webinars were broadcast live, via Zoom, and delivered by Nefesh B’Nefesh experts as well as Israeli professionals in the medical, legal and financial fields.

“During this challenging time, we are directing our hearts and prayers to those affected by the coronavirus pandemic,” said Rabbi Yehoshua Fass, co-founder and executive director of Nefesh B’Nefesh. “In light of this complex situation, we refocused our approach and decided to use the best technological and digital tools available to provide potential olim with all of the same, necessary information, continuing our support in every situation on their way to fulfilling their Zionist dream of living in Israel.”

The online seminars included rights and benefits for new arrivals, converting a U.S. medical license to an Israeli license; Israeli tax payments for retirees and the general public; employment options in Israel; buying and renting apartments; the Israeli education system; and the Israeli health-care system.

During the online event, potential olim were able to ask questions via a chat function or call into the Nefesh B’Nefesh call center (1-866-4-ALIYAH), which was staffed by the organization’s aliyah and employment departments, to answer any inquiries and questions from participants.

Following the virtual fair, all lectures were saved on the Nefesh B’Nefesh YouTube page and are available to watch at any time.

From Vos Iz Neias, here.

Corona: Knowing Who To Trust Is Trickier Than You Think

Suddenly Everyone Is a Corona Expert

By 

March 13, 2020

In 2008, I ran for federal office in Illinois. I had the opportunity of spending every day speaking to voters.

It was an affluent and well-educated district, the most affluent and well-educated in all of Illinois.

Favorite places to campaign in the mornings were the commuter rail stations. Everyone there had a minute or two to spare as they waited for the train.

I observed a phenomenon that I wouldn’t have believed had I not observed it.

Every day of the week, including Thursday mornings, I would hear what was on the minds of the people I saw. By Thursday night, the weekend news cycle would start. A story would break, an idea would get disseminated. Friday, it would catch on a little more. Saturday and Sunday, it would be all over the networks. And by Monday, people would be radical and opinionated supporters of some idea that they literally didn’t know a thing about four days earlier.

Weekend-after-weekend, this would occur, like clockwork. And again, these weren’t grade school dropouts I was talking to.

There’s an aspect of confirmation bias that marketers have long understood as significant: the more education you have, the more successful you’ve been inside a system, the less likely you are to see contradictory information from unfamiliar sources as valid. Also, the less likely you are to approach the ideas presented to you by a trusted source in a circumspect fashion.

Basically, if you’ve got a PhD, you eat most of what’s fed to you, as long as it’s fed to you by the right people.

And the news doesn’t just have a way of getting people opinionated, it has a way of making one feel educated, almost expert on a topic.

Gary Johnson, bless his heart, appeared on TV during the 2016 election not knowing, gawd forbid, what Aleppo, Syria was. Few Americans know what Aleppo is. Many who are honest with themselves only remember the name of the city because of Gary Johnson. The great gaffe though was that he didn’t know Aleppo during a media educational blitz on Syria. Every well-heeled and educated person in America was quickly learning all the most important three to five talking points about Syria that the echo chamber media deemed important, allowing them to feel educated enough on the topic, but as anyone who actually knows the topic would realize: actually quite ignorant of it all.

Nearly all Americans were ignorant. Some were self-certain in their great knowledge, despite their ignorance. Gary Johnson made the mistake of being openly ignorant and unaware of the latest propaganda being used to manufacture consent.

He could hardly have done a better job proving himself an outsider worthy of derision. If you aren’t up to date on all the latest propaganda then you are clearly not in the know. And Gary Johnson, barely notable to more than 1 or 2% of voters, became known immediately by every know-it-all New York Times, New Yorker, and Weekly Standard reader.

How dare he not be able to recite the most important three to five talking points like it were the Gospel. How dare he!

The three to five talking points of every important topic is distributed weekly in the technocrat’s bible – The Economist. The Economist appears to have tremendous breadth and depth of knowledge. But that appearance has serious limitations. I’ve never once been impressed by The Economist’s coverage of a topic I knew intimately, and have long disliked the pretentious title of a publication that is practically anti-economics. But reliably, the technocrat learns everything he or she needs to know in its pages in order to sound smart to those who don’t know any better and to be able to uphold the status quo with certainty while actually knowing very little.

That is The Economist: not only the anti-economist but also propagandistic anti-thought snippets for the people who have had some of society’s most costly resources poured into developing their minds.

Having witnessed years of propaganda every weekend since 2008, after which people suddenly care with passion on Monday morning about things they knew nothing about the previous Thursday, the appearance of experts on the coronavirus is no surprise.

Virtually no one knows anything about this topic that they didn’t get from a sensationalized media source, and 75% of that, at the very least, is second- or third-hand information from the least reliable, least independent, most biased of sources: a government. Not just any government, the Chinese government.

SARS (2002) is still being figured out. MERS (2012) is still early in the process of being figured out. It’s possible it will never be fully understood. Yet three months into the WuFlu/Wuhan Corona/Covid-19 outbreak every know-it-all in my life is suddenly a corona expert?

Give me a break.

It’s all the same nonsense.

Some stuff we just don’t know. That means live your life as best you can, hope for the best, prep for the worst, love the people close to you, be mindful of them, and don’t let some know-it-all con you into their grand schemes. Chances are, they know as little as you do, but while your mistakes might impact the few loved ones around you, their mistakes may impact billions.

Medically, the establishment helped encouraged ideas that didn’t pass the sniff test: like unwashed hands being used by doctors to birth babies, lobotomies, X-rays to treat ringworm of the scalp, the Tuskegee patients thinking they were receiving medical care and being allowed to develop advanced syphilis in the name of research, thalidomide, standard episiotomies, standard hysterectomies, using nasty, dirty amalgams in dentistry and then topping it off with mercury, the swine flu vaccination debacle of 1976, asbestos in talcum powder. This list can be much longer. Every example on the list received the affirmation of lots of experts and caused harm to lots of overly trusting people.

Being able to make a mistake that may impact billions: That’s a power no one deserves. The more they claim to know, the less likely they are to know. The more they need to insist to people that they know, the less likely they are to actually know. Most of us have pretty good BS detectors. Trust your BS detector.

Now, more than ever, as more people get fearful, as the media stokes that fear, as the grocery store shelves get more empty, as the government steps in to say they are here to help, the more vital it is than ever to trust your BS detector.

When it comes down to it, you’re probably the only one who is actually motivated to protect your own interest. No matter how bad it gets, and no matter how much anyone claims expert status about a topic, you’re the only one who deserves credit for being the expert on you, and the only one who deserves permission to be “the decider” for you.

From LRC, here.

Proof Advertisers Can’t MAKE YOU Do Anything

Michael Bloomberg’s Failed Ad Blitz Reminds Us Advertisers Don’t Force People to Do Anything

By 

Mises.org

March 12, 2020

Michael Bloomberg dropped out of the Democratic Party’s primary this week, but not before he spent more than $500 on political advertisements. According to Bloomberg (the news service, not the man),

Through Friday [Feb 21], he’s spent $505.8 million on broadcast, cable, radio and digital ads, according to Advertising Analytics. That’s an average of $5.5 million a day since he officially became a candidate.

It’s also $190 million more than all of his active Democratic rivals combined, including billionaire hedge-fund founder Tom Steyer, have spent on political ads.

This all netted Michael Bloomberg a whopping twenty-seven delegates. That’s more than $18 million per delegate. This means Bloomberg didn’t even succeed in becoming a spoiler or a kingmaker at the Democratic convention this summer.

In short, the failed Bloomberg ad blitz serves as a helpful reminder that advertising doesn’t actually make people do anything. Ads on YouTube and TV—even when they are released in a veritable torrent as Bloomberg’s ads were—are not enough in themselves to convince people to vote for someone.

We saw a similar issue during the 2016 election, when Hillary Clinton outspent Trump 2 to 1. Indeed, among so-called outside groups (such as super PACs), “Pro-Clinton ads outnumbered pro-Trump ads 3 to 1—a mind-numbing 383,512 ads for Clinton compared to 125,617 supporting Trump.”

This isn’t to say that having $500 million lying around for advertising makes no difference. It may be that if Elizabeth Warren had had that sort of advertising budget, she might have been able to compete better with Bernie.

But the fact remains that if an advertisement asks a person to take some sort of action—whether it’s buying Acme zit cream or voting for Michael Bloomberg, that action has to be something that the person targeted by the ad is open to doing. That is, the person being asked to buy or vote must have been already “conditioned”/”brainwashed”/”socialized”/”educated” in such a way that the advertisement’s request for action seems like a good thing.

Often, ads simply stand no chance of succeeding because they’re not addressing what the target audience is inclined to desire.

Ludwig von Mises realized this long ago and noted,

It is a widespread fallacy that skillful advertising can talk the consumers into buying everything that the advertiser wants them to buy. The consumer is, according to this legend, simply defenseless against “high-pressure” advertising. If this were true, success or failure in business would depend on the mode of advertising only. However, nobody believes that any kind of advertising would have succeeded in making the candle makers hold the field against the electric bulb, the horse drivers against the motorcars, the goose quill against the steel pen and later against the fountain pen.

Examples of this phenomenon abound. In recent years, for example, we’ve seen articles on how so-called Millennials are uninterested in buying what the funeral industry is selling. That is, expensive coffins and funerals are highly profitable for funeral homes, but fewer people under fifty are interested in buying. They want less-profitable cremations. So, the funeral industry has had to change the way it does business. But this raises a question: why should the funeral industry change anything? Why not just run a bunch of advertisements telling people to buy $20,000 coffins? Then surely everyone will buy them, right?

But that’s obviously not how it works.

And then there’s the story of the American waterbed industry. Many people over forty may still remember the time in the 1980s when all the cool kids had waterbeds. But then they fell out of favor and waterbed stores collapsed in a heap of irrelevance during the 1990s. But why did the waterbed merchants allow that to happen? Why didn’t they just run a bunch of advertisements telling people to buy waterbeds?

People do what advertisers tell them to do, right?

After all,  we’re told that “Russian hackers” with some targeted online ads — many of which were little more than low-budget unsophisticated memes — “swayed” the 2016 election and somehow turned Hillary voters into Trump voters.

The next time a modern-day McCarthyite insists that the 2016 election was stolen by Russian memes, let’s keep in mind that with $500 million, Bloomberg couldn’t manage to convince more than a few voters to vote for him instead of for Joe Biden, who apparently thinks he’s running for the US Senate.

So, let’s just chalk up the failed Bloomberg campaign to yet another case of how all the ads in the world won’t convince people to buy a product — or vote for a candidate — they don’t like, don’t want, and generally regard as useless.

From LRC, here.