Today at the Dreizin Report, we get Woke!
First, a factsheet on Critical Race Theory, which I created and sent to my (much smaller than today) mailing list, before I had a blog.
What is Critical Race Theory? How did it take over the U.S. military so quickly? How does it relate to Intersectionalism? Why are today’s leftists so obsessed with glorifying and propagandizing “gender-bending” persons and activities?
The answers are all here:
(This document is most relevant to an America/Canadian/UK audience, but others can use it to learn about the lunacy into which Anglosphere populations have descended.)
Wokism ends at the water’s edge (unless you are on a U.S. military base abroad, LOL)
Next, we come to Wokism as it relates to hegemonic-expansionist foreign policy. The key thing to remember is that Wokism DOES NOT APPLY to foreign policy.
That is, as an American, domestically, you may see signs of White Supremacy everywhere, it is the Number One Threat to U.S. National Security, and if some guy hangs his hand out his car window the wrong way, it must be a White Nationalist symbol…..
…..but when neo-Nazi street gangs are elevated to the status of a military unit (e.g. the Azov but not only) on the payroll of the Interior Ministry of a country that you are backing against Russia, well, you can let your guard down and relax!
When thousands of Ukrainian soldiers and militia choose to don (unofficially but nonetheless, there is evidently no policy enforced against unauthorized decorations) the skull insignia of the SS 3rd Panzer Division “Totenkopf“—the below video is one drop in an ocean, but just to give you an idea, look at his chest—that’s OK, it’s not happening, it’s a figment of Putin’s imagination.
When the shoulder patch of the largest Ukrainian armed unit (formerly) in Mariupol—which in fact operated as a business empire and a legal authority in the city, with its own prison for suspected disloyals—is a “Ukraine flag colors” version of the insignia of the SS 2nd Panzer Division “Das Reich“, well, you ignore it, no Nazis here, the Russians are nuts.
Then there’s this gem, where on the occasion of the most recent International Womens’ Day (March 9th), NATO posted on its Twitter account a photo of a Ukrainian army lady wearing a “black sun” swastika patch…..
…..which happened to be a favorite of the White Supremacist/Nationalist “Buffalo shooter” who targeted exclusively black people, last month, at a supermarket in Buffalo, New York, USA, killing ten…..
…..And was also featured in the headline photo of my March 27, 2022 post on this blog.
(Keep in mind, the media tells us, “Pro-Kremlin Influencers Are Using the Buffalo Shooting to Undermine Ukraine.” LOL.)
Then we have the matter of Bandera, a west Ukrainian partisan militia leader who supervised large-scale massacres of Poles (the Volhynia/Wolyn genocide) and Jews during World War 2, and then did a fabulous job of fighting the the Soviets after the war…..
…..to include killing several tens of thousands of civilians cooperating (or suspected of cooperating) with Soviet authorities—sort of a Ukrainian Vietcong, you know, come to the village and chop off limbs, “horror and moral terror” like Colonel Kurtz.
(Interestingly, the Wikipedia entry on Bandera’s militia had its “Jewish” section rewritten in recent years; it now cites completely marginal, obscure, unknown, and/or ridiculous sources to paint a somewhat incoherent but nonetheless fake picture of non-involvement in atrocities against Jews.)
Since 2010, Bandera has been an official “Hero of Ukraine.”
He is the subject of the most popular song among Ukrainian nationalists, Bat’ko Nash Bandera (“Bandera is our father”), which these schoolboys or campers are singing in music class, here:
What’s funny, is this is obviously a Yiddish melody, with the opening six notes being reminiscent (in a minor key and same rhythm) of Sisu Ve’simchu Be’Simchat Torah, a song for the Jewish “Simchat Torah” holiday!!!!!
The third bar of Bat’ko Nash Bandera is also possibly identical (if you can get past the awful singing, the kids can’t quite hit the notes) to the corresponding part (“…chalom she’chalamti…”) of Israeli singer-songwriter Uzi Hitman’s 1979 hit, Elohim Sheli, which is on the same Yiddish wavelength.
LOL. It’s all good! After all, the Ukraine has a “Jewish” (of Jewish descent) president. So, I can personally certify that Bandera is totally Kosher….. Not!!!!!
There is a Russian expression, Каковы герои, такова и страна, which means, very roughly (a literal translation is impossible), “every country can be judged by its heroes.”
The thing about Ukraine, it has very little history (and almost no high literature or culture) separate from that of Russia, with the exception of its far northwest, which was under Polish or Austrian rule for perhaps 600 years prior to 1939. Thus, any effort to radically break off Ukrainian consciousness from Russia’s, always automatically runs into a vacuum, which as a rule is filled by aggressive fascism (at the vanguard at least), as there is simply nothing else.
It’s like saying “let’s make the Arabs democratic!“, and then, whad’ya know!, the sole alternative to secular dictatorship becomes Al Qaeda or (at best) the Muslim Brotherhood. Again, nothing else on the menu.
Of course, the absence of any anchor to Ukrainian national consciousness other than a feeling of “we’re not Russian, damnit!”—with a strong, well-tolerated, “crazy aunt living up in the attic” fascist wing to keep the vigor going—is understood by the more intelligent in the West, but it’s all been aggressively glossed over and “fact-checked” away, as it obviously serves U.S. interests. After all, it was open fascists who were the footsoldiers on the Maidan in 2014.
Even my Israeli cousin—who employs a number of computer programmers in Kharkov, which has been hugely Nazified since the failure and suppression of its “Russian Spring” in 2014—had, until recently, ABSOLUTELY NO IDEA about any of it. As far as Israeli opinion-makers are concerned, it’s all good. Too much business at stake!
I’ve read there are (or were, before the war) around 20,000 Kharkov programmers and other infotech guys working for foreign, mostly Israeli, companies at 1/3 or less the price of Israeli labor. Why rock the boat?
On top of that, there was (is) a symbiosis or “division of labor” whereby Ukrainian Jews had (have) a far outsized role in the “commanding heights” of the economy, while the fascists and neo-Nazis were (are) allowed a great deal of political and ideological space to develop their organizations, their youth wings, and their influence in society, and neither side bothers the other at all.
It’s like two separate countries with a temporary, unspoken truce. It was always too touchy even for the Anti-Defamation League (the leading U.S. Jewish anti-hate group) to shine a strong spotlight and risk upsetting the balance.
In fact, I’ve spoken to Ukrainian expat Jews who think it is PUTIN who is “literally Hitler.” They are comfortable with their own particular “mom and apple pie” conception of the Ukraine, and they refuse to conceive or perceive of anything else going on.
If Jewry with its terrible suffering history didn’t want to make a fuss of it, or is willfully blind, how can we expect American Wokesters to care? They obviously have bigger fish to fry—like, for example, their domestic enemies! Not to mention, as I cover in my factsheet, they’ve all been signed on with the “Empire” since about 2016, and the Empire needs the Ukraine, now more than ever.
Of course, there is no Nazism or fascism of any sort in the Ukraine. It’s a myth. The Russians made it up. The fact-checkers say so. The Nazis are Trumpers and Republicans, and only Trumpers and Republicans are Nazis, and that’s the extent of it, and that’s all we’re going to talk about, please disperse and go home.
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Comments and any associated weblinks or other references must be directly relevant and tangential to my published material (not just to other comments.) THIS IS NOT A DEBATE PLATFORM TO DISCUSS IRRELEVANT HISTORICAL QUESTIONS. Please, no unrelated musings (e.g., about Putin’s family values, how Hitler could have won at Dunkirk or Normandy, rapes committed in Berlin in 1945, etc.), no trolling/baiting, no calling for the destruction or dissolution of the USA or its government, no calling for violence against U.S. Government officials, no nonconstructive or hateful ranting about Jews (or Joos, Jooz, Jooze, Juice, Juize, Jewz, Jewze, J-Dogs, J-Dogz, J-Dawgz, J’s, Chews, Choos, Chooz, Chooze, Zionists, Zio-Nazis, Anglo-American Zionists, Zionist Occupation Government, ZOG, IsraHell, Bibi SatanYahoo, “those of whom we cannot speak”, “your friends whom we can’t talk about”, “a certain small ethnic group”, the chosen, the tribe, the chosen tribe, the thirteenth tribe, the Khazarians, Khazarian mafia, Rothschilds, Khazarian Rothschilds, etc., etc.), no communists, and no being nasty to other commenters or to the sysop. Please share your ***CONCISE*** (2 smartphone screens of text is NOT concise), relevant, coherent, organized thoughts, and come back for my next post. Thanks!
Thanks Jacob, you continue to surprise me with the diversity and depth of your knowledge, truly rare these days.
I just want to comment on the “Nothing on the menu for the Arabs” in terms of governance (not democracy I concur) to which I say there is a lot on the menu actually but it has been relegated to the darkest corners of our consciousness and it’s existence has been largely forgotten except by very few powerless individuals.
Keep up the good work man
As another commentator mentioned, the guy firing the mortar has a Union Jack (British Flag) on his shoulder flash.
During the Battle for France 1940, the SS 3rd Panzer Division “Totenkopf“ murdered almost 200 British soldiers from the Royal Norfolks; who’d inflicted heavy casualties on them, but had been forced to surrender after using up all their ammunition.
SS Division symbol on chest and British Insignia on his shoulder. Such a disgusting clown. His father and grandfather forgot to educate him how SS Panzer Division army killed hundreds of Brits.
Dear Mr Dreizin,
In my new post in Telegram channel I’ve made a reference to one of yours brilliant observations. I hope you do not mind.
Prof. Alexander L Dvorkin, PhD https://t.me/iriney_center/1508
Excellent points, however have you considered that perhaps the reason the mainstream liberal political elites have grabbed on to CRT theory is that they recognize that their economic and geostrategic plans have been failing for the last 20 yrs and are afraid that the larger public will eventually try to force through reforms that will end their Neoliberal wonderland of offshoring production, importing cheap migrants to suppress labour costs and constant asset inflation. The CRT people don’t seem to care about who is in charge or what terrible things they do as long as they get their graft. Similar to how the church “used” to sell indulgences to rich sinners (want forgiveness for murdering your cousin to seize the throne? the Pope can solve your problem today, for $$$!). the Church of CRT can even be used to tar their political opposition, those nasty Republicans are racists, the church of CRT says so. There certainly seems to be a whole air of desperation in Western countries for a while now, nothing seems to have improved since 2008 and I would think eventually people would want something that could be called a success
Great stuff.
Thank you for your masterly factsheet, Jacob.
Brilliant analysis of CRT!
Love the contrast between Maoism and CRT.
Why “critical race theory” can’t be explained in ONE paragraph ???
Mr. Dreizin, you should check out Mr. Caleb Maupin and the Center for Political Innovation. Also please check out the Infared Collective with this guy named Haz. Just putting it out there. They are Marxists who, I believe, would agree with your CRT factsheet. Just a thought. Thank you for your work.
Zelensky and Ukraine propaganda have leant into CRT after 2000 Azov prisoners and started a women’s home guard called BLM (Banderite’s Lives Matter) and their militant offshoot Anti-Puti. Zelensky also donated to “Land Rights for Black Sea Transgender Sperm Whales” to boost his appeal to LGBTQ and Soccer-Moms.
I know they’re old jokes but poking fun at the rediculusnuss of “woke” and CRT is one way I push back on this corrupt and dangerous cult like rise. A merit based society should be the goal.
Your spoof actually sounds credible, such is our madness.
Early on in this debacle back in February the Head of MI6 issued a tweet saying that the fight for Ukraine was to stand up for LBGT+ style values that we have but Putin does not. Not the precise language but the meaning was clear. British MoD press releases (which are increasingly fictional) now have a Pride flag as their logo this month too.
The Duke of Wellington and Ian Fleming must be very happy to see all this!
The fact sheet is great! I had not connected the trans ideology explicitly with CRT before but it makes sense.
These people are totalitarians, as you say. This is also more dangerous than economic Marxism because the corporate elite think it does not threaten them so feel much more able to play along. Climate change “science” and health “protectionism” are arguably similar too. One glance at Linked In these days is enough to see!
I agree with you that these totalitarian movements which feed on rootless and disconnected people who seek meaning through them (to paraphrase Arendt) do always eventually get put back into the bottle. But occasionally the dislocation is particularly immense. 1930s Nazism was also really driven by intellectuals and corporate types in many countries acted as groupies. Similar to this.
Question is how much dislocation / evil gets committed before CRT gets back in the bottle.
About Ukraine: things are much more complicated and there is a German/Vatican angle. American regime is like an elephant in a porcelain store,while Germans/Vatican are playing much more subtle and long-term game in this part of Slavic world.The same in the Balkans.
From a “non-white” perspective, another aspect of woke ideology is that unless you agree to be a woke partisan then you don’t get a voice, you will be muzzled as well. There are sane people on all sides but they are the silent majority.
Wokeism is a symptom of decaying post-modern society. Terry Eagleton nailed it decades ago. Postmodernism was born out of fear and animosity toward revolution, what it takes to understand and realize one. Additionally, Postmodernism in the early 1970s coincided with capitalism’s first post-WWII crisis and what Pasolini astutely identified as the political, economic, cultural and emotional scramble to deal with a world the West eventually would no longer dominate, a West which eventually would no longer be the center of anything. Postmodernism thus produced mutations otherwise known as pseudo-scholars who escaped the hard academic work necessary for a scholar to truly know what she or he was talking about. Conclusions and assertions are supposed to be the result of not only many, many years of research(without printing a word), but also the fortune of having the right scholars who trained you on how to research. Postmodernism psychotically took the easy way out, just as the US psychotically went into denial about its future reality by abandoning a US currency based on the gold standard. Now we have a fictitious economy of casino capitalism, and we are tormented by scholars with advanced degrees in what some old guard, European scholars call “Interpretation Studies,” producing books which will be fit for the fireplace in a few years. Truly worthless.
Yes, good point. And i would say the next is moving to transhumanist society from that. But one that is not post scarcity. And its not like they hide that want, rather they preach it openly and proudly. It would still be by default based on profits, profits for the few, so essentially never ending growth and population growth plus maximizing efficiency. But now with ever tighter control of the people made possible by high technology/implanted technology by ever fewer centralized centers of power. To a point where average peoples lives are controlled akin the way the lockdowns were. You just have to train people slowly and getting them used to more and more restrictions and control, all for the greater good of the planet and humanity. The crazy part is, most seem to be for such society as long as they have some bread and circuses still. Even if the bread was artificial and circus virtual.
Holy war tourist on a pike, this fact sheet might be the most conclusive write-up I’ve seen so far. Thank you, Sir, I’ll be finally able to understand what conservatoids are talking about, without hurting my brain.
Coopting yiddish culture is a very popular past-time where pseudo-aristocrats can pretend be cultured, but all the do is an unironic LARP of Manasseh Bueno Barzillai Azevedo da Costa. Besides, the tunes are as catchy as the best Rythm’n’Blues ever produced.
I do have one qustion though, why do westoids keep using expat instead of migrant?
CRT is just simply designed to shatter people’s psychology, probably a form of trauma-based mind control.
If you are white, you are supposed to be saddled with a perpetual guilt complex.
If you are not white, you are supposed to be saddled with a perpetual inferiority complex. After all, how can I ALWAYS be the victim without being inferior.
Modern manifestations can always change and partisans are interchangeable. The important thing is to create a narrative for people and divide ‘n conquer.
“Indeed, Pharaoh ˹arrogantly˺ elevated himself in the land and divided its people into ˹subservient˺ groups, one of which he persecuted, slaughtering their sons and keeping their women. He was truly one of the corruptors.”
They just refuse to acknowledge their Mother which is Russia. I.E. 1922 Soviet Constitution that declare Ukraine a Republic. one of Lenin’s major mistakes creating all these Republics. He was dead by then Stalin was against it but he bowed to the wishes of the Party at the time specially after the debacle partly led by him with the War against Poland which in his eyes he took sweet revenge with the non aggression pact with NAZI Germany and he took over Easter Poland after WW 2 started and he took revenge on the Military officers killing executing over 4,000 of them.
Каковы герои, такова и страна
my tranlsation:
whatever/whichever the hero such is the country
Learned a lot. And you gave me now a definition of Ukrainian nationhood (I was struggling for a while about how the Ukrainians define themselves?). Of course, their only point of reference is – ‘we are not Russian’. That’s it, nothing else. Thank you
You always bring up interesting things that I’d otherwise never encounter. Thanks! og
Thanks for summarizing and gathering all these examples of nazism into one post. Makes it much easier for sharing!
Most of your paper, except for a small part of the early history. on Critical Race Theory matches with what I’ve read about it from Dr. Gerald Horne or Adolf Reed among others. They posit there is a (former Trotskyist branch of) Neo-Conservative historical element to it.
Why the Right Attacks Critical Race Theory – Gerald Horne – theAnalysis.news
I read a portion of the remarks by Gerald Horne.
He seems to dodge the reality of how CRT is currently being applied, and by whom. Many blacks actually think the CRT types are full of nonsense and make actually racist assumptions about them, such as that they can’t figure out when and where to cast their votes.
And, he only focuses on the issues of racism in the USA. Maybe I didn’t read enough of the comments, but they seem to present CRT as an effective way to counter actual racism in the USA.
Not as, basically, a set of attitudes that are intended to empower certain groups of people to control, to an extreme degree, the ideas and actual words that other people are allowed to utter.
Horne’s expertise is in American History, it’s good he restricts himself to the area he studies, I wish more did. I posted the link sic historical use, it’s not his product so it’s current abuse isn’t his concern. Adolf Reed is more willing to speak to abuses done in it’s name. See Reed’s Matt Taibbi interviews for short cut.
Sebastian Haffner wrote of how he’d had to attend a NAZI indoctrination camp in the early ’30’s. Apparently you couldn’t get to qualify as a lawyer else. It didn’t stick with him. For those younger who went through the Hitler youth camps it assuredly did stick with many of them. For good. Or at least until 1945.
Just wondering how much of what you write about will stick with the young who’ve gone through Biletsky’s youth camps.
I have similar questions too.
The story one hears was that nearly everyone in Germany in February 1945 was still a Nazi (or outwardly said they were) but by June 1945 nobody was. Including the youth that were indoctrinated. There was also no post surrender insurgency by “believers”, although I believe the Allies had contingency plans for it.
The only places that had Nazi inspired ultra Nationalist insurgencies after WW2 were where outside powers influenced them. The Ukraine is a case in point.
Thanks for the very illuminating fact sheet, which I have downloaded and read.
The ensuing discussion is also interesting.
Although i am not sure that the whole “ostrich” or total disconnect phenomenon in the USA among fairly otherwise intelligent people concerning Neonazis is completely explained here (Trumpers = nazis; no neonazis in Ukraine!
I have friends who never fell for the covid psy-op but are all in (so far) with the blue-yellow-victim-Ukraine-Putin-Thug madness.
How to explain this
It really seems to me that the Ukrainian Nazis are essentially caricatures of the original German Nazis. In other words, if you would distill out any of the “plausible” origin stories of the German Nazis, down to just pure hatred, you’d be left with the Ukie Nazis. I mean, am I missing the “plight” of the Ukie Nazis that “forced” them to become this??
Or did they just decide to emulate the parts of German National Socialists that served their agenda of hatred for Russians? It’s like that Star Trek episode of the half-black/half-white beings from whatever planet. The left-white people hated the inferior right-white people because reasons (or vice versa, I forget).
The other baffling aspect to me is that (AFAIK), if you would take 50 Ukrainians and 50 Russians and put ’em in a room, the vast majority of the people in the USA couldn’t tell the difference between any of them to save their life. Outside of people with Ukie/Russian ancestry, we don’t share anything in common with either and both are equally foreign to the “baseball, hot dogs, apple pie, and Chevrolet” Americans.
Don’t get me wrong, my mother’s side of the family (Hungarians) emigrated from Yugoslavia after WW2, I’m first generation “red, white and blue”. I love Slavic, Serbian, Hungarian culture and wish we could not have to hate Russians or Ukrainians. But wokeness demands that we hate whomever and support those who hate as a way of life.
If you allow people motivated by hate to govern your society, you become Ukraine or USA.
USA & Ukraine are an international crime syndicate. With nukes. Not looking good for the world these days.
Ghosts or echoes of ww2 are still present. The trauma and psychological effect of it was really never processed properly in europe. This is why till to this day we talk about nazis every day like it was yesterday. Often in vague and overly simplistic ways so that we dont have to process it properly. But regarding Ukraine, i think in general in situation where deep seeded corruption even at the highest levels and general pauperism rules, it is fertile ground to all kinds of groups and movements and outside influence/control.
I would wager the various ukie larper nazi movements would have not been formed and been a thing at least to the extent they were if lets say Ukraine would have been socio economically on the levels of Denmark for example. When you listen to the interviews of ordinary ukrainians, they just want to work and live normal lives. Not interested in any extreme or even alternative stuff. As the sane ones of us see, pauperism is coming back to europe by force in very near future. We already know many of “our” politicians and elites are corrupt. Some less, some way more. Some just straight up puppets. So 2+2 is and so on. I mean west saw the usefulness of ukie nazis to “weaken” Russia, what makes one think they wont see usefulness of example finno nazis to “weaken” Russia.
“…It was always too touchy even for the Anti-Defamation League (the leading U.S. Jewish anti-hate group) to shine a strong spotlight and risk upsetting the balance….”
But of course. This is typical. Especially when it comes to miliking the donors for more money to keep up the operation. Why tip over the goodies boat! There’s money to be made and who cares whose “slavemaster” holds the whip so long as it’s MY slavemaster.
Sorry to put this here, but I’ve tried signing up several times for notification emails (now checked the box, so hope that works).
Thanks for the good sense and great analysis. My husband and I read your posts, as well as watch your videos, so you can assume “likes” for previous videos going back a while. It’s good to listen to someone who has a clue.
Hello, Jacob. Thank you for your insightful work!
A lot of people would argue, that “those are just songs and pictures”, nothing for evil Putin to start killing poor innocent people over. That’s not what civilized nations do. Sadly, I hear a lot of statements like that even inside Russia. Follows perfectly the woke culture line, I guess. Na*is are also claimed to be the minority within the Ukrainian society (if you manage to squint hard enough to see them at all).
Jacob, you have hidden depths. I was impressed by your Byron reference.
And the widows of Ashur are loud in their wail,
And the idols are broke in the temple of Baal;
And the might of the Gentile, unsmote by the sword,
Hath melted like snow in the glance of the Lord!
Amen.
Talented artists associated with Russia were in fact Ukrainian by birth – just saying. Examples include long-term Bolshoi Ballet superstar, Svetlana Zakharova, and Mr. Sergei Prokofiev, actually.
Associated with Russia…LOL. Just because someone was born on the territory of what is now the Ukraine, doesn’t mean they are/were “Ukrainian.”
By your logic, half of the pre-Gorbachev generations of USSR leadership were Ukrainian and merely “associated with Russia.” Does Ukraine want responsibility for them, too?
What does it mean “Ukrainian by birth”? The fact is that there was no such country/state as Ukraine before 1918. That territory was Russian for centuries. Both individuals have Russian names, they were talking and thinking in Russian. Ukrainism in itself is a western idea used to try to devide and conquer Russia. People do not understand that Russian is not a nationality in its pure meaning.
“Ukrainism in itself is a western idea used to try to devide [sic] and conquer Russia. ”
Certainly “Ukrainianism” has been used by many people for many purposes.
However, this does not mean that historically there is no such thing as Ukrainian culture. As I discussed in my comment concerning Nikolai Gogol and his relationship to Ukrainian and “mainstream” Russian culture (first defined as a “regional Ukrainian writer” until he was later redefined as an influential figure who influenced all of the Russian and other literature that followed, including Jewish authors such as Sholem Aleichem; in fact, one Jewish literary historian is named Dreizin!)
However, that comment has not appeared yet.
Hello! Most regretfully, that comment was deleted per my comments policy due to its excessive length (much if not most of which seemed to be long quotes/excerpts from Wikipedia.) As for the literary historian you mention, I think he would have been surprised to be called a historian, but in any case, he was my (late) father.
I don’t pretend to be a literary expert, but I do find Gogol to be a fascinating figure who seems to epitomize longstanding (since at least the early 19th C) preoccupation among educated Ukrainians with the relationship between regional Ukrainian and “metropolitan” Russian culture. The Wiki article is actually quite a good, detailed intro, with lots of references (and includes this mention:
“Felix Dreizin and David Guaspari, for example, in their The Russian Soul and the Jew: Essays in Literary Ethnocentrism . . .” ) Obviously Jewish traditions, like any “folklore” such as Ukrainian, have contributed to mainstream Russian literary and other culture. Such as this film of Gogol’s classic horror tale, The Vih:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kYk595cZeKw (trailer).
Regarding the Jewish reception of Gogol,
” Despite his portrayal of Jewish characters, Gogol left a powerful impression even on Jewish writers who inherited his literary legacy. Amelia Glaser has noted the influence of Gogol’s literary innovations on Sholem Aleichem, who
“chose to model much of his writing, and even his appearance, on Gogol… What Sholem Aleichem was borrowing from Gogol was a rural East European landscape that may have been dangerous, but could unite readers through the power of collective memory. He also learned from Gogol to soften this danger through laughter, and he often rewrites Gogol’s Jewish characters, correcting anti-Semitic stereotypes and narrating history from a Jewish perspective.”
Kafka was another Jewish writer who was deeply influenced by Gogol.
My 2c/ regarding the assertion that there is no such thing as Ukrainian culture.
Cheers, Jane
No one said there is no Ukrainian culture. There is simply very little if any Ukrainian high literature or artistic or cultural achievements (outside of Galicia, anyway) that was/is truly distinct or separate from the broader Russian culture. Even their national poet spent his salad days in St. Petersburg and wrote mostly in Russian.
Yes, I noticed that you said “high culture.”
“High culture” always draws heavily on “low culture.”
The line between high and low is in a gray zone, is somewhat arbitrary, and also its “location” has political uses.
Viz.,virtually all of the classical and romantic composers drew heavily on the “indigenous” music, dances, instrumentation etc. of the peasantry of Central Europe.
Generally only music scholars understand this. The same goes for the pirating and reworking of design motifs.
One could call this appropriation if the actual source is not acknowledged.
But has been latched on to and bolstered many nationalist movements. E.g., in Bohemia and Moravia in the 19th C.
But not only in Europe.
IMHO your comment about Ukrainian “high culture” seems a bit gratuitous as a way to invalidate anyone’s identification as Ukrainian, regardless of what this identification might actually be based on or how politicized their identification actually is.
Just my 2c/ worth!
Cheers, Jane
Too pedantic. A painter might paint a peasant festival, a composer might elaborate on a folk melody (this hardly applies at all to the Russian greats), but the school where they learned to paint or compose is in a given city where the people speak a given language, not to mention these artists almost all spoke Russian (or German or in a few cases perhaps Yiddish) as their first language. For the attention or reading-impaired, this is why I clearly said that (ex Galicia) there is very little if any Ukrainian high culture TRULY SEPARATE OR DISTINCT FROM RUSSIAN CULTURE. Please read again carefully and don’t waste my time further with your cultural studies sophistry nonsense.
We hear from MSM that “Ukraine is losing artillery war”.
How is that possible when they suppose to have longer range guns?
The inarguable fact of nazi power and influence in Ukraine doesn’t negate the fact that the party of Trump is hostile to the intetests of African Americans, Latinos and Asian Americans even if some individuals from these groups hqve signed on for whatever reasons they may have.
Trump set out to starve Venezuela, threatened North Korea with “obliteration” and kicked off the cold war against China, scapegoating it for his own failures on Sar- C19.
Trump hostile to “Asian Americans”, yeah lol ok. Get outta here.
Eugene, you are smoking something. You sound like MSM. Complete garbage without evidence. Clearly low information voter.
Right which is why 40% of Hispanics voted for him. As for the GOP being hostile to blacks well that is an outright lie. An enemy of working people maybe, but blacks? BS
Seriously, I’ve come to the conclusion that the only “crime” that Trump and Putin are guilty of is not being Globalist. Full stop. All BS flows downhill from that.
Yes, you confirmed what I think a lot of people had suspected. It’s rediculus that they pushed this scam and politicians were part and parcel to it. They can’t be that stupid. Or are they ? It ran parallel to the absurd BLM movement. Nicely summed up article.
Actual critical race theory is just history, including history of laws and policies, which does not omit racism or bigotry, and flows out of critical theory, which is college level law school material. It has nothing to do with Marx or Marxism, but has been referenced as part of right wing nonsense.
I did not allege (and don’t care) what it “flows out of”, rather I describe what it has functionally replaced or substituted for. Perhaps you should read more carefully.
Reading is racist. The Black font does all the work and the white background does nothing but gets equal credit.
Thanks for your research work on the SMO and your work to inform.
On the CRT document, I’d be interested in finding out the source(s) as I would attempt to do some research for myself too.
The source is me.
That doc is pretty confusing, since it admits what’s being politically branded as “cultural marxism” by conservatives is nothing like actual marxism. It also calls university staff leftists, when american liberals are entirely neoliberal and differ little from said conservatives outside of wedge culture (ie internal political power struggle) issues.
No, it does not “brand university staff leftists.” It states that many academics moved from economic Marxism to a corrupted, “cultural” mutation of Marxism after the fall of the Socialist Bloc. It also explains at length how this “cultural” Marxism is something new and contrived and a great departure from proper Marxism. Why don’t you wake up, wash your face to include your eyes, clean your filthy eyeglasses, and read it again?
Again, pretty sure nearly all liberal/”left” academics are neoliberals who read the NYT and listen to NPR, which is rather why they support the US capitalist empire against russia/china/etc.
” It also explains at length how this “cultural” Marxism is something new and contrived and a great departure from proper Marxism. ”
I mean, it’s a great “departure”, ie very different because it literally has no connection with marxism outside of Fox News claiming that for political impact. Just found it odd because you’re aware it has little ideological similarity with actual marxism.
It’s also worth pointing about “Intersectionalism is intended to foster a victimhood mentality” etc. Victimhood and most of our moral values a la “freedom/equality” are largely from christianity, whereby its initial adherents were the underclass & slaves who were “victims” and yearned for those things for obvious reasons.
The connection is that it was the next great hope for academics who were shocked and confused by the fall of the Socialist Bloc. I go into great detail about how the new religion appropriated but corrupted Marxism’s oppressed-oppressor dichotomy. It’s quite obvious you haven’t read past the first half-page.
As to modern fake leftists whom Marx would not have accepted, yes that’s EXACTLY what I am saying. Again, you clearly did not read more than a half-page of the four page document.
Go read the rest, you gadfly, and stop wasting my time.
A personal anecdote…
Back in the Late Pleistocene, my high school girlfriend & I went to a STEM heavy university. The Arts Faculty was small, but they’d built a huge new building and parachuted in an international rockstar faculty to establish it in the Social Sciences.
She had enrolled there and so we both got introduced to the Marcuses, Fromms, Gramshis et al as I obligingly listened to recounts of the salient points of her lectures and readings. She was thrilled. I didn’t get it, even though I read a fair bit of their scribblings.
The stuff WAS controversial. It got strong push back from within the Psych Dept, but also from other Arts Depts. The miniscule Philosophy Dept was particularly dismissive, and the rockstars challenged them to public debate. The rockstars were expected to triumph and I was obliged to attend.
In the event, the Philosophers flayed ’em alive. Caught them in one non sequitur after another, exposed their shape shifting definitions, trapped ’em in internal contradictions and generally reduced them to forelock tugging sophomores. After the first 2 debacles, the remaining debates were called off.
I later learned that the movement started with a bunch of disappointed old Bolsheviks. After the glorious overthrow of Tsarist Russia, they’d failed utterly to make any headway in Europe. They concluded that class struggle was simply not gonna happen when the working classes had full bellies, leisure time and enjoyed an ever improving standard of living. They fell upon “Race” as the great social divide to be exploited and the academics set up shop at Goethe Univ. in Frankfurt ca. 1930. Hitler threw them out, and they migrated to the US where they settled at Columbia U.. Columbia was the home of the Technocracy movement, from whom they learned of the scientific management techniques they could exploit. We’re seeing the results of that unhappy convergence today.
And all credit to you, Jacob, for a very sophisticated analysis.
Please excuse me, I don’t mean to be rude but I am impressed by how one so young managed to work all this out.
I’m older, I lived through the emerging of ‘Cultural Marxism’ and I even knew some of the key people.
I have some criticisms of course.
1. ” n true Marxism, the oppressed are one big undifferentiated mass—so
undifferentiated that they are referred to, in the singular, as “the proletariat.” In true
Marxism, there is no identity beyond class identity—you’re either a worker (perhaps
further categorized as peasant or city dweller) or an oppressor.” this too simplistic.
2. You overstate the influence of ” true Marxists” in universities.
I’m sure we disagree on many things but you’re obviously a very serious and thoughtful person.
Best wishes.
Orwell was asked about 1984 before he died, he said 1984 is what could happen and that it’s up to all of us to make sure that it doesn’t.
Orwell was a socialist who snitched on the left just before he died.
Another excellent Zinger-of-a write-up, Jacob. It clarifies how two groups, who each have it in them to totally despise the other, somehow can leap the cognitive dissonance hurdle (together!) and ignore each other so much it almost looks like tolerance. It’s amazing what sort of contortions a human mind can undergo just to make reality a little easier to look at…
Critical Race Theory in a nutshell. Learning at university how to hate the white races, and particularly the white male. It’s the S pillar of the Great Reset … whites need not apply,.
Greeting Jacob,
The following is a critique of CRT from the hard-left:
Although the purpose of the article is ideological , it well reasoned
https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2021/08/30/crit-a30.html
Skip to the first bold head-line – “The Roots of CRT”
A few of quotes:
Whatever the intentions of the adherents of this theoretical framework, it must be said at the outset that these conceptions in themselves are not without patronizing and frankly racist implications. It is as if to say: “Facts and logical reasoning about objective reality are for white people, so people of color use personal storytelling instead.”
This central precept of critical race theory is like arguing that a doctor has no business diagnosing a patient because the doctor has not personally experienced the subjective personal discomfort resulting from the patient’s condition. According to this postmodernist framework, the patient would be the only person “presumed competent” to opine regarding his or her condition, because the patient has experienced the symptoms, while the doctor’s diagnoses would be regarded as presumptively illegitimate on account of the doctor’s “standpoint.”
The book Me and White Supremacy, by Layla F. Saad, offers one such four-week course of study for the repentant white reader … This 200-plus page tract, which future historians will catalog as a specimen of a disoriented intelligentsia going utterly out of its mind, is characteristic of a whole cottage industry of self-flagellating “self-help” books now being issued for the alleged benefit of white people, along with corporate leadership seminars and diversity workshops, which are designed to force white people to “confront” their own alleged unconscious racism.
There is good money to be made for those who have hitched their wagons to this tendentious nonsense.
I believe the second symbol is kolovrat, although a bit similar to black sun is not the same thing. It is old Slavic pagan symbol and is lately used by Pols nationalist although it isn’t Polish by origin…
Azov is wearing exactly the same “black sun” simbols and totoos as that Buffalo shooter. Many many photos are available.
Being neonazzi Azov is wearing all kinds of swastikas and SS insignia including the “black sun” but I was talking about the old Slavic symbol on the wall that is different and it seems to be misused now because of it similarity…
I disagree with one thing in its article. Thing is that this two groups Ukrainian oligarchs and fascist paramilitary groups did not/do not exist separately from one another in some sort of a truce. Ukrainian oligarchs were financing and actually owning those groups. Kplomoisky and right sector is just one example.
Yes, thanks. But Kolomoisky is one particularly odious character. I did not want to equate all remaining Ukr Jewry with him, and go down that rabbit hole. Although of course, he has hugely financed the community with his philanthropy.
Different perspective:
All of this regalia is “cosplay”
How many tattoos did actual SS soldiers have ? One ?
These are a parody of Nazis – Nazi leadership at least understood politics:
They imprisoned Bandera when he attempted to declare Ukrainian independence
In the “camps” there were those imprisoned who wore the red star – politicals – kept on ice for later deployment, not killed en-mass
They were capable of reason:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commissar_Order
“When the Commissar Order became known among the Red Army it provoked stronger resistance to German forces.[18] This unwanted effect was cited in German appeals to Hitler (e.g. by Claus von Stauffenberg), who finally cancelled the Commissar Order after one year, on 6 May 1942.”
Compare to the Ukrainian “Nazis”
Acres of tattoos
No discipline – even their torture of surrendered Russian soldiers is on tik-tok
No political perspective
One critical result, the May 2014 Odessa massacre galvanized complacent Donbass and Russians to join the rebels.
These “Nazis” are insane chauvinistic nihilistic death worshipers who in defeat do not have the good taste to follow the example of the WWII leaders.
History, first tragedy, then farce
So many things that match the Zelenskyy regime in Kiev with a lamentable regime of long ago in Berlin. Anyone have a suggestion about who in Ukraine could play the part of Ernst Rohm? Knowing so many Nazis of the original iteration had inclinations in that direction, it’s a safe bet that is the case in the Uky iteration.
Monica Zelensky : Drag Queen Comedian?
Isn’t Arestovich said to have worked as a male escort when he was younger?
That’s a new one for me. If true, then he gets to wear the SA commander’s uniform…. with Zelenskyy’s high heels!
Thanks for the “insider” context on the Bandera tune origins. The sheer irony gave me a good ol’ chuckle. Whatever God one believes in, it’s hard to deny He has an amazing sense of humour in moments like these.