My episode in the Independent Film Channel’s Media Project Series has found its way online. The 30 minute mini-doc (sandwiched between two barely palatable promotional segments) is an exploration of the Tea Party movement, its funders, leadership, and the role of Fox News in branding and promoting it as a grassroots expression of anti-government resentment. See it for yourself:
Max Blumenthal goes inside the Tea Party from Ram Bam on Vimeo.
Informative as usual Max. It’s baffling that these people are working so hard against their own interest and for the interest of the usual suspects.
Just saw your video on the Flotilla as well on youtube and I have a question. How do you deal with people misinterpreting your videos as the anti-semitic (though they are clearly not)? Some of the comments left on your videos have an obvious anti-semitic slant or are downright hateful.
hooray….max back to doing what he does best…making fun of the wingnuts
as to the above question….max doesnt care if he appears to be anti semitic…
and max has a vid on the flotilla? this i have gotta see…
well, all i could find is max being interviewed by dem now and his vid on the idf supporters in tel aviv….nothing new
Ajax151 wrote “How do you deal with people misinterpreting your videos as the anti-semitic (though they are clearly not)?”
walt kovacs wrote “as to the above question….max doesnt care if he appears to be anti semitic..”
Well Max is technically Jewish, so I guess what walt and Ajax are really discussing is how max deals with being called a self-hating Jew.
Ad-hominem attacks are of no value logically. If Bin Laden released a video tomorrow stating that “2+2=4″, it would make that statement any less true.
Those who rely on ad-hominem attacks clearly do not have a point to make. So logically, it is best just to ignore them.
It is also important to note that the notion of a “self-hating Jew” is a stereotype, and hence antisemitic, in and of itself.
For many decades Israel top human rights activist was Dr Israel Shahak. Dr Shahak was a holocaust survivor, and many of his family members were exterminated by the Nazis. He was professor of Chemistry at Ben Gurion University, until his death in 2001.
When people used to try to silence him by calling him a “self-hating Jew” he would remind them that “that is a Nazi expression. The Nazis called Germans who defended Jewish rights self-hating Germans.”
Unfortunately this tactic, is now widespread. The American government and their supporters refer to its criticals as anti-American. The Iranian government and their supporters refer to their critics as “self-hating Iranians” or anti-Iranian. The Russians and Turks do it too.
It is instructive to keep Dr Shahak’s comment in mind.
Good post, poyani. The “self-hating jew” and “anti-semitic” labels are just a way to completely avoid having to rationally and honestly look at information someone is giving. It’s so much easier for them to say – “If you disagree with me, you must hate me, so I don’t have to answer anything you say.” It’s a complete cop out and used by people who obviously know they have something to hide, and don’t want to deal with the truth.
I posted something on facebook recently about the attack on the flotilla, and how it’s time we told our elected representatives to stop funding Israel and their actions. I’m a free American citizen, and have the right to express my feelings on politics openly and freely, and if someone disagrees with me, they have the perfect right to say so and explain why we should go on paying 5.5 billion dollars a year so Israel can continue it’s belligerent violence and help feed the anti-americanism in the mid east. But an old (jewish) friend posted back:” So, the ugly head of anti-semitism rears up once again, I’m sorry I was ever your friend, and I’ll never talk to you again.” That’s the mentality I’ve seen over and over again, and Max has certainly documented some of the worst of this “Israel can do no wrong” mentality. It’s like a virus that affects the brain, and no rational, moral evidence or argument can penetrate it.
I know it’s linked to a history of persecution, and God damn the Catholic Church for it’s centuries of evil-doing against the jews, but it just doesn’t float that because you were mistreated, you get to mistreat others. That’s a child’s thinking. And it’s time we did whatever we must to stop it. Just like South Africa, BOYCOTT ISRAEL.
to answer both poyani and wlonw…i suggest you read the following
http://www.americanthinker.com/2004/10/jewish_antisemitism.html
and wionw….forget the catholic church, forget the nazis, forget the europeans, forget early american history
why dont you crack open a book and read how the jews were really treated in arab lands
google dhimmi
read about the forced conversions….or death
read the history of maimonedes
it is ignorance that breeds your hate….the same ignorance that breeds max’s…that leads him to make videos speaking to israeli’s whose first language is not english, which then allows him to mock their statements and lead them into saying things they wouldnt say if they truly understood the questions.
and im sorry….but being one who has spent his entire life as a jew and in the jewish community, and who has self hating jews in his own family….i will call it as i sees it.
walt – thanks for illustrating my points so well.
wlonq and poyani insight posts. Sometimes criticism from within is harder to accept but a people who don’t engage in such dialog lacks a conscience.
walt,
I read the article you posted. It’s complete bullshit.
Make no mistake about this. As Dr Shahak said, saying “Jews who oppose the Israeli government are self-hating Jews” is absolutely no different than saying “Iranians wo oppose the actions of the theocratic government of Iran are self-hating Iranians” or saying “Germans who opposed Nazi policies are self-hating Germans”.
The statements are equivalent, in that they try to silence critics of the policies of a government by pretending there is a complete congruence between the government and the race of people it claims to represent.
No such congruence exists!
You are absolutely right in saying Islamic governments have (and continue to) discriminated against Jews and other non-Muslims. Today for example, Iran discriminates against its Jewish minority. It comes no-where near what Israel does to Palestinians (Iran is not ethnically cleansing its Jewish minority) but it does happen. This is absolutely no justification for racism.
Also you should note that all of Israel’s current allies were far more anti-Semitic than the Muslim world. In fact, the very notion of Zionism and the creation of a Jewish state was a complete surrender and total collaboration with European antisemitism.
Zionist leaders, heard the cries of the European antisemites (cries like “Jews out of Europe” or “Jews go back to Palestine”) and decided to make them their own slogans. They took note the European projects of colonialism and murder, and accepted them as legitimate. In the process they spat in the face of people who were calling for tolerance and human decency.
They even adopted the slogans of their antisemitic enemies, towards the colonized (slogans like “a land without a people”, which is what the Europeans considered the Americas to be) and made them their own.
Zionism is founded on religious bigotry, outright racism, and nationalist imperialism. The same three ingredients also happen to be the building block of antisemitism.
In the end, the Zionists became closely allied to their anti-semitic enemies.
Whereas yesterday, Jews were murdered by Spanish inquisitors and right-wing Nazis, today Israel is allied with Christian fundamentalists and right-wing nationalist governments.
They became what they hated most!
[...] American film-maker Max Blumenthal recently premiered on US TV a documentary on the use of fear in the Tea Party movement, ably funded and backed by the Republican party and Fox [...]