Literary Self-Criticism (re: "Damn the Jews!")

Posting an article headlined “Damn the Jews!”—even in quotation marks—is asking for trouble. An old friend emailed me with the subject header: “IN REGARD TO DAMN THE JEWS—sad to see you descend into dehumanized hatred.” She pointed out: “There are good Jews ....and bad Jews....good Muslims and bad muslims....good Christians and bad....Good Hindus and bad... Don't you think, Kevin, we are also individually each a mixture of good and evil?”

A colleague and occasional radio guest wrote: “Conflating Jews with Zionists is what Zionists do best. How could you?!!! You are, effectively, on THEIR side when you repeat their most important fundamental lie.” Other commentators made similar points, arguing for “damn the ZIONISTS!” instead.

My initial response was: “Did you read the article? The title is in quotes! It is a translation of the Houthi slogan! The article is (dark) humor!!!” My old friend admitted she hadn’t read the article and was just reacting to the headline. Others had read it but still found it offensive. I asked whether I should engage in some “literary self-criticism.” Several said “yes!” So here we go.

Literary Self-Criticism

Some writers, like Joyce, Kafka, and Pynchon, have whole industries of scholars interpreting their oeuvres. Others, like me, are condemned to self-exegesis, which I suppose is better than having no exegetes at all.

As Mikhail Bakhtin might say if he were alive and employed by a university that paid him to interpret the works of Kevin Barrett, “Damn the Jews!” is polyphonic. That means that the same phrase (“damn the Jews!”) includes echoes of different, opposing voices that impose different meanings on those words. In the title of my article, I put that phrase in quotation marks, a sign that someone else is saying them, to help readers figure that out.

From a Houthi perspective, and indeed from an Arab and Muslim perspective generally, “damn the Jews” or “a curse upon the Jews” or however you want to translate اللعنة على اليهود isn’t shocking or controversial, any more than a circa-1944 American saying “damn the Germans” would have been to American ears of that era. The Arab and Muslim worlds have effectively been at war with Israel and organized Jewry ever since the Jewish State’s genocide of Palestine began in earnest in 1947-1948—just like the American state was at war with the German state in 1944.

If you were an American who said “damn the Germans” in 1944, would anyone have taken offense? Would they have insisted “you should damn the Nazis, not all Germans! After all, there are good Germans and bad Germans…” I doubt it. Though there was and is a theoretical distinction between the German nation, consisting of all ethnically-German people, and the German state, few Americans cared much about that distinction in 1944, any more than most Arabs and Muslims care about the distinction between “the Jews” and the Jewish State today. That’s why saying “damn the Jews” in an Arab or Muslim context is uncontroversial.

Though I’m living in Morocco, where few are bothered by the Houthi anti-Jewish slogan, I write for an international anglophone audience dominated by Americans, but including a fair number of Arabs and Muslims from around the world. So I am hyper-aware that a phrase like “damn the Jews” is going to sound very different to different ears.

Americans, whose government underwrites the genocidal Jewish State, and who get their views from the Jewish-dominated media, have been trained to be hypersensitive to mythical “anti-Semitism.” In the USA, say anything remotely negative about Jews and your career and reputation will be destroyed. Americans internalize this taboo against “anti-Semitism” and start sweating bullets when they hear something like “damn the Jews.” It’s a Pavlovian, emotionally-driven reaction. (Oddly, the same people who freak out about “damn the Jews” are muttering “damn the Russians” at cocktail parties. Don’t they know that it isn’t all Russians?!)

Polyphony, specifically the tension between conflicting understandings of the same words, easily shades into humor. It’s darkly funny, when you think about it, that Americans and Arabs/Muslims react to “damn the Jews” in such radically different ways. (It’s also rather hilarious that Americans have been so completely and utterly brainwashed by the Jewish cowboys running herd on their goyim cattle, in the immortal words of Revilo P. Oliver—but that joke is on the Americans…and the Jews, sorry, I mean the cowboys, are laughing all the way to the bank.)

So to recap: My article “Damn the Jews!” playfully addresses the humorous incongruity between the way two cultures “hear” the Houthi slogan in general, and its fourth line in particular. The standard translation “A curse upon the Jews” is hilarious, as my article attempts to convey, because it is simultaneously so clunkily archaic and so “anti-Semitically” transgressive. That’s why I offered the Houthis tongue-in-cheek PR advice, and solicited my readers to offer more.

The Moral of the Story

So my article did not damn all Jews. It skewered Americans and Westerners for their complicity in Zionist genocide, sought to help them become conscious of the pro-Jewish brainwashing that has led them to complicity in genocide, gently teased the Houthis and their translators, and generally sought higher awareness through laughter, sort of like Swami Beyondanonda does, but in a darker key.

Excerpt from Yesterday’s Richie Allen Interview (whole show archived above)

Richie Allen: You converted to Islam, you're a Muslim. What does it mean to you knowing, does it mean anything, that so many Jewish people completely condemn and abhor this and say not in their name and yet they never get a chance when talk TV shows here in the UK and radio shows want to discuss it. As far as people are concerned Jewish people are all for this (genocide) but they're not Kevin, not the Jewish people I know.

Kevin Barrett: Not the Jewish people I know either. I have probably a disproportionate share of Jewish radio guests. People who are always concerned about issues related to Jewish power often harp on the disproportionate presence of Jews in this or that sector, with of course the media being the number one focus. But hey, my radio show is part of the media, and I'm pretty sure that more than 2% of my guests have some kind of Jewish background.

And I suppose that's just because I look for the most interesting people who have something worthwhile to say that's outside the box. And there are probably, it's just going to be a little bit disproportionately people of Jewish background. And that's cool with me. And the vast majority of those people are pretty much as horrified as I am, if not more so.

I think this does illustrate, Richie, the way that Jewish tribal power has always had a kind of an inner layer as well as an outer layer that kind of bleeds off into the surrounding communities. And the inner layer is fanatically tribal and utterly brainwashed. That's “our Uncle Mortimer who reads the New York Times every morning and the only thing he cares about is, is it good for the Jews?” And then there's somebody else in the family that is a much more critical thinker and much more open-minded and probably is going to go off and marry a non-Jewish person. And in another couple of generations, their descendants may not even count themselves as Jewish anymore, but the descendants of Mortimer certainly will.

And so you've had this tribal power configuration passed down through the centuries. And today let's face the fact, Richie, that yes, if we poll Jewish people in the West, we're going to find a very large number that are against this genocide. Not so in Israel, of course. But at the same time, the powerful part of the Jewish tribe, let's say Jewish tribal power, is pro-genocide. That is, the Biden administration, as liberal and democratic as it's supposed to be, is pro-genocide. They have power. And on the other side, the Republican Jews, who are getting vast amounts of (Jewish-Zionist) money, are even more rabidly pro-genocide. So the Jews with power are largely pro-genocide, and the Jews without power are largely anti-genocide.

Check out the stories False Flag Weekly News will cover, then watch the show after 1 pm Eastern tomorrow, HERE. Cat McGuire will be the commentator.

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Poll Result: No Paywall Wins!

The comments and emails were overwhelmingly anti-paywall. I was moved by the people whose financial circumstances make it hard for them to support my work. Here is one example:

Hi Kevin, we have met on a number of occasions and events but not for some time. I live in Seattle. I was at an event on Mercer Island  and later at a Methodist church in the university district the last time. It has been at least 10 plus years. Before that I saw you at a couple of 9/11 events. I gave you some cash at those times.  I agree you should earn an income. Now I live on a pension and savings so I'm stingy with my money. So what's the solution.

The best solution I can think of is to go no-paywall, and trust the honor and generosity of the people who can afford to subscribe. If you’re one of my paid subscribers, from now on you’ll be a patron, not a customer, and your subscription fee will be a gift, not a purchase. You’ll be helping me reach a larger audience, and you’ll be helping those among my audience who are hard-up to read and spread my work. So…thank you! May your kindness and generosity be rewarded.

This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit kevinbarrett.substack.com/subscribe

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit kevinbarrett.substack.com