If I were Israel, I’d say “No thanks” to any offer from VDH to defend me. He’s a member of the racist organization CAPS. And that bit at the end making an analogy between Israel and Sarah Palin is insulting.
Yeah, the Sarah Palin reference was gratuitous. But if I recall correctly, VDH was one of the members of PJ Media that did not pile onto Charles when many others did.
Yeah, the Sarah Palin reference was gratuitous. But if I recall correctly, VDH was one of the members of PJ Media that did not pile onto Charles when many others did.
Gratuitous is too kind.
VDH did not pile on with the others, but I’m pretty sure he wouldn’t hesitate now.
No comment on VDH being a member of CAPS’s advisory board?
Never heard of the organization, but if it promotes hatred or racism, I am against it. As for VDH, I have disagreed with him on certain issues, but on this one (the subject of my post), I think he is right. I agreed with Al Sharpton on Trayvon Martin, but have found him to be a racist onanistic other issues.
Never heard of the organization, but if it promotes hatred or racism, I am against it. As for VDH, I have disagreed with him on certain issues, but on this one (the subject of my post), I think he is right. I agreed with Al Sharpton on Trayvon Martin, but have found him to be a racist onanistic other issues.
VDH promotes hatred and racism, through that organization as well as other ways. Why aren’t you against him? Does promoting VDH help him promote racism? I think so, which is why I keep bothering you here.
The world is not black and white … Is everyone whoever expressed an opinion you agree with 100% pure? VDH has some positions with which I disagree. And some others that make sense to me. I like you and agree with you on many issues. But I’m sure you have agreed with certain opinions of people that I find objectionable, but as long as your body of work is largely positive, I won’t pin that on you.
The world is not black and white … Is everyone whoever expressed an opinion you agree with 100% pure? VDH has some positions with which I disagree. And some others that make sense to me. I like you and agree with you on many issues. But I’m sure you have agreed with certain opinions of people that I find objectionable, but as long as your body of work is largely positive, I won’t pin that on you.
I’m not looking for purity. I don’t even agree with some of the opinions I myself held in the past. But I believe racism requires flawed thinking, and I won’t trust a racist’s thinking on any subject. In this case, I wouldn’t trust VDH to continue his support for Israel if liberals came to power there and were able to make peace with the Palestinians.
I’m of two minds re Hanson, but this opinion piece he is spot on.
Does the world much care about the principle of occupation? Not really. Consider land that has been “occupied” in the fashion of the West Bank since World War II. Russia won’t give up the southern Kurile Islands it took from Japan. Tibet ceased to exist as a sovereign country — well before the 1967 Middle East War — when it was absorbed by Communist China. Turkish forces since their 1974 invasion have occupied large swaths of Cyprus. East Prussia ceased to exist in 1945, after 13 million German refugees were displaced from ancestral homelands that dated back 500 years.
The 112-mile green line that runs through downtown Nicosia to divide Cyprus makes Jerusalem look united in comparison. Over 500,000 Jews have been ethnically-cleansed from Arab capitals since 1947, in waves of pogroms that come every few decades. Why are they not considered refugees the way the Palestinians are?
The point is not that the world community should not focus on Israel’s disputes with its neighbors, but that it singles Israel out for its purported transgressions in a fashion that it does not for nearly identical disagreements elsewhere. Over 75 percent of recent United Nations resolutions target Israel, which has been cited for human rights violations far more than the Sudan, Congo, or Rwanda, where millions have perished in little-noticed genocides. Why is the international community so anti-Israel?
The point is not that the world community should not focus on Israel’s disputes with its neighbors, but that it singles Israel out for its purported transgressions in a fashion that it does not for nearly identical disagreements elsewhere. Over 75 percent of recent United Nations resolutions target Israel, which has been cited for human rights violations far more than the Sudan, Congo, or Rwanda, where millions have perished in little-noticed genocides. Why is the international community so anti-Israel?
That Hansen has opinions that I disagree with in no way invalidates this piece.
I read Ezra Klein despite his vicious attack on Tim Russert, over matters far less significant.
If I were Israel, I’d say “No thanks” to any offer from VDH to defend me. He’s a member of the racist organization CAPS. And that bit at the end making an analogy between Israel and Sarah Palin is insulting.
Wow, how long has Hanson been a member of CAPS? Is that a recent development?
I haven’t paid much attention to his articles for a while, but I’m a little surprised that he’s associating with people like that.
Wow, how long has Hanson been a member of CAPS? Is that a recent development?
I haven’t paid much attention to his articles for a while, but I’m a little surprised that he’s associating with people like that.
I only found out after watching the last Colbert video you posted, which caused me to revisit the CAPS website. I was a tiny bit surprised, but it confirms the hints I’ve seen about his racist attitudes, starting with Mexifornia.
I only found out after watching the last Colbert video you posted, which caused me to revisit the CAPS website. I was a tiny bit surprised, but it confirms the hints I’ve seen about his racist attitudes, starting with Mexifornia.
I didn’t see Mexifornia as racist. I saw it as someone concerned about uncontrolled immigration changing the place where he lives, and not for the better. VDH couldn’t care less what color mexicans are, and he does not want mass expulsions, but he does want their entry into the US controlled and reduced. And that is not unreasonable or racist.
I quite understand the concern about legitimating VDH, a man I am not too gone on myself.
For me, it works both ways, though. I do not look at someone’s uninformed or malicious take on Israel and then give them a break because of their excellent liberal credentials, and how generally well-meaning they are. If you’re capable of buying into a convenient package (like the one Hanson deftly outlines), why should I assume you’re telling me the truth about anything else?
I’m not looking for purity. I don’t even agree with some of the opinions I myself held in the past. But I believe racism requires flawed thinking, and I won’t trust a racist’s thinking on any subject. In this case, I wouldn’t trust VDH to continue his support for Israel if liberals came to power there and were able to make peace with the Palestinians.
I actually haven’t a clue how he would react in such a case. (Nor do I much care. It’s Hanson.) I am fairly sure, however, that the anti-Israel activist community would not come to tolerate the existence of the state of Israel under a more liberal government than the current one, and they would protest any peace that did not include the dismantling of Israel. The anti-Israel crowd turns out to protest Tzipi Livni and Shimon Peres when they appear abroad, same as Netanyahu. They are described as ‘war criminals’.
This doesn’t have a lot to do with Hanson, but I mention it because it’s really, really important to me that people understand that the kind of anti-Israel voices I, and many other people who aren’t VDH call anti-Semites are not just opposed to Binyamin Netanyahu, or Israel’s ‘policies’. They’re opposed to Israel, period.
VDH markets himself to the wingnut crowd, in order to re-sell, over and over, certain memes that allows him to push his books and cruises, etc.
As such, anything VDH writes I take as something I would find at WND. Now and then something factual might leak through, but for the most part everything should not be taken on face value.
For example, I note that Economist changed the title of article:
Editor’s note: The original headline of this blog post was inappropriate and has been changed at the instruction of the editor in chief. No offence was intended and we apologise unreservedly.
Far be it for VDH to acknowledge this.
Oh, and the “empire” thing? The blog entry is explicitly reference Gorenberg’s The Accidental Empire: Israel and the Birth of the Settlements, 1967-1977 , something that VDH ignores, because then he’d have to actually deal with what was meant, and that the term was used by a Jew living in Israel.
Far be it for VDH to actually inform his audience.
VDH is selling outrage to the outrage-consumers of wingnut-ville.
VDH markets himself to the wingnut crowd, in order to re-sell, over and over, certain memes that allows him to push his books and cruises, etc.
As such, anything VDH writes I take as something I would find at WND. Now and then something factual might leak through, but for the most part everything should not be taken on face value.
For example, I note that Economist changed the title of article:
Far be it for VDH to acknowledge this.
Oh, and the “empire” thing? The blog entry is explicitly reference Gorenberg’s The Accidental Empire: Israel and the Birth of the Settlements, 1967-1977 , something that VDH ignores, because then he’d have to actually deal with what was meant, and that the term was used by a Jew living in Israel.
Far be it for VDH to actually inform his audience.
VDH is selling outrage to the outrage-consumers of wingnut-ville.
I disagree, the “Israel as an Imperial Power” meme has been around longer than I’ve been alive. Hansen’s not off the mark to refer to it generally. Nor is he equal to WND, as he does not make insane comparisons and does not post the sort of hate speech found on WND.
VDH markets himself to the wingnut crowd, in order to re-sell, over and over, certain memes that allows him to push his books and cruises, etc.
As such, anything VDH writes I take as something I would find at WND. Now and then something factual might leak through, but for the most part everything should not be taken on face value.
For example, I note that Economist changed the title of article:
Far be it for VDH to acknowledge this.
Oh, and the “empire” thing? The blog entry is explicitly reference Gorenberg’s The Accidental Empire: Israel and the Birth of the Settlements, 1967-1977 , something that VDH ignores, because then he’d have to actually deal with what was meant, and that the term was used by a Jew living in Israel.
Far be it for VDH to actually inform his audience.
VDH is selling outrage to the outrage-consumers of wingnut-ville.
VDH markets himself to the wingnut crowd, in order to re-sell, over and over, certain memes that allows him to push his books and cruises, etc.
As such, anything VDH writes I take as something I would find at WND. Now and then something factual might leak through, but for the most part everything should not be taken on face value.
For example, I note that Economist changed the title of article:
Far be it for VDH to acknowledge this.
Oh, and the “empire” thing? The blog entry is explicitly reference Gorenberg’s The Accidental Empire: Israel and the Birth of the Settlements, 1967-1977 , something that VDH ignores, because then he’d have to actually deal with what was meant, and that the term was used by a Jew living in Israel.
Far be it for VDH to actually inform his audience.
VDH is selling outrage to the outrage-consumers of wingnut-ville.
Sure, the Economist changed it. How much credit would any of us give a wingnut publication for doing the same? So they backed off. Is anyone really supposed to give a flying fuck?
He’s probably deliberately misrepresenting the Gorenberg phrasing. It IS Hanson.
Overall, his analysis, while not particularly original, new, or well-executed, is hardly outrageous.
Believe me, this won’t even register with the outrage consumers of Wingnutville. They have stronger meat to feast on daily.
I didn’t see Mexifornia as racist. I saw it as someone concerned about uncontrolled immigration changing the place where he lives, and not for the better. VDH couldn’t care less what color mexicans are, and he does not want mass expulsions, but he does want their entry into the US controlled and reduced. And that is not unreasonable or racist.
As a fourth-generation California, I think he’s pretty well full of shit—his notion that if all these people stayed home, it would improve Mexico’s democracy is especially touching and ridiculous.
Well, let’s fill out the entire article, which would not be exclusively sourced from WND.
Not long ago, The Economist ran an unsigned editorial called the “Auschwitz Complex.” The unnamed author blamed serial Middle East tensions on both Israel’s unwarranted sense of victimhood, accrued from the Holocaust, and its unwillingness to “to give up its empire.” As far as Israel’s paranoid obsessions with the specter of a nuclear Iran, the author dismissed any real threat by announcing that “Iran makes an appealing enemy for Israelis,” and that “Israelis have psychologically displaced the source of their anxiety onto a more distant target: Iran.”
It is hard to fathom how a democracy of seven million people by any stretch of the imagination is an “empire.” Israel, after all, fought three existential wars over its 1947 borders, when the issue at hand was not manifest destiny, but the efforts of its many enemies to exterminate or deport its population. I would not otherwise know how to characterize the Arab promise of more than a half-century of “pushing the Jews into Mediterranean.”
While it is true that Israeli forces stayed put on neighboring lands after the 1967 war, subsequent governments eventually withdrew from the Sinai, southern Lebanon, and Gaza — areas from which attacks were and are still staged against it. The Economist’s choice of “appealing” is an odd modifying adjective of the noun “enemy,” particularly for Iran, which has both promised to wipe out Israel and is desperately attempting to find the nuclear means to reify that boast.
The Economist article is fairly representative of European anger at Israel, a country that is despised by most of the nations that make up the UN roster. Or as Nicky Larkin, an Irish documentary filmmaker and once vehement anti-Israel activist, recently confessed, “An Irish artist is supposed to sign boycotts, wear a PLO scarf, and remonstrate loudly about The Occupation. But it’s not just artists who are supposed to hate Israel. Being anti-Israel is supposed to be part of our Irish identity, the same way we are supposed to resent the English.”
What then are the sources for widespread hatred of Israel? Such venom cannot be explained just by political differences with its Arab and Islamic neighbors. After all, take any major issue of contention — occupied land, refugees, a divided Jerusalem, cross border incursions — and then ask why the world focuses disproportionately on Israel when similar such disputes are commonplace throughout the globe.
This would be the first part of the article. You are saying it’s referencing another book, meaning that a footnote would be needed. However, he is not wrong about the existence of a common reference that Israel is some type of Empire. If so, my goodness they are bad at it. England had an empire, as did Rome, as did Ghengis Khan. Israel has suburbs.
I know that this ‘empire’ reference exists because someone posted an article with this phrase on LGF, and the article was from the Atlantic.
I would ask this question, who would have to write this article before you would take the content seriously?
Can anyone give me a short breakdown of VDH-CAPS facts? I don’t like VDH ideologically, but that was that until ww’s comment above. What’s his role, was he associating with it in full knowledge, etc.?
The reason I’m “giving benefit of doubt” is this passage in his 2009 defense of Charles:
Out of curiosity I went to the site today. All I discovered different was a change in emphasis, but not necessarily attitude. He still is strongly anti-jihad; the difference is that he now worries just as much about creationism, paleo-right tribalism, and the white supremacists’ piggy-banking onto efforts to stop radical Islam. Those are legitimate worries for any liberal (as in 19th-century liberal) minded. Almost monthly I am smeared by the far far right for defending the Anglo-American effort in World War II or support for the melting-pot traditional of racial integration and intermarriage. So I understand some of his concerns.
This just doesn’t sound like someone knowingly involved in a racist venture, perhaps he’s been used? (Faint hope, I know…)
Can anyone give me a short breakdown of VDH-CAPS facts? I don’t like VDH ideologically, but that was that until ww’s comment above. What’s his role, was he associating with it in full knowledge, etc.?
The reason I’m “giving benefit of doubt” is this passage in his 2009 defense of Charles:
This just doesn’t sound like someone knowingly involved in a racist venture, perhaps he’s been used? (Faint hope, I know…)
All I can find is some evidence that his association goes back a few years.
We recently formed the first chapter of the Crowdifornia Book Club, a group of educated and concerned women who
meet regularly in Santa Barbara. The first selection read was Mexifornia by CAPS Advisory Board Member, Victor
Davis Hanson. This club was the suggestion of two well known Santa Barbara philanthropists, recruited by Director
of Membership/Development, Marion Stewart.
That’s from CAPS’s 2007 Annual Report (it’s a .pdf file). At the end of that document, he is listed as a member of their Advisory Board, as he is currently. In their Fall 2004 Newsletter, he’s listed the same way in a sidebar (another .pdf).
Save The Date!
CAPS Presents
Victor Davis Hanson, author of
Mexifornia: A State of Becoming*
Luncheon
January 10, 2004
11:30-1:30 PM
Montecito Country Club
920 Summit Road, Montecito, CA 93108
Please send checks for $30 each to:
Californians for Population
Stabilization
1129 State Street, Suite 3D
Santa Barbara, CA 93101
or
Call or email with
credit card information: [no phone numbers allowed]
info@capsweb.org
Seating is limited so RSVP early!
He’s had 10 years to figure out what CAPS represents. He’s not stupid, although I asserted in a comment above that racism takes defective thinking…. What do you think, Mr. FTAF?
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_RememberTonyC
Frank says: