Who Killed the Jews?

The synagogue on St. Andrew's Street

Perhaps it is just the algorithm, or perhaps it is the culture, but suddenly Nick Fuentes is everywhere in my YouTube feed. So I listened to a bit more of him.

He claims that Jews blame “white people,” by which I presume he means Christians, for the Holocaust. And we “white people” should stop feeling guilty about it.

That hit me out of left field. It had never occurred to me to feel guilty about the Holocaust. I had always considered myself one of the group targeted by Hitler, someone who might have been in the death camps—along with St. Maximilian Kolbe, St. Edith Stein, Corrie Ten Boom, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Claus von Stauffenberg, and many Polish priests. We Canadians, we Christians, were the ones who stood up to Hitler, and liberated the camps. Why would I feel guilt?

Of course, it is equally nonsensical for “white” Canadians to feel guilt over slavery...

Now that Fuentes has pointed it out, however, it does seem true that Jews feel differently: that they do, wrongly, blame Christians for the Holocaust. I recall a Jewish fellow grad student informing me solemnly, as a Catholic, that all Catholic children are taught that the Jews killed Christ. I assured her she was wrong; I had never heard this in Catholic schools. Her response was that I must have gone to a particularly progressive school. Invincible prejudice--on her part.

Another Jewish friend once pointed out as a dark irony that the old synagogue in Kensington Market was on St. Andrew’s Street. I admit that is mildly amusing, but why not? Is this any darker than a synagogue being on Ulster Street?

And I recall Jewish protests over a Catholic convent being located near Auschwitz. As though it were offensive to pray for or acknowledge the Christian victims of the Holocaust.

I may feel at one with my Jewish brothers and sisters. But that is only half the equation. Do they feel at one with me?

This is more or less what Scott Adams concluded about blacks: there was no point trying for solidarity, so long as blacks were determined to hate whites.

I think this is the essential point being made by Fuentes. While his views might sound reprehensible, all he is doing is applying the same standards across the board. If it is reprehensible for “whites” to talk like this, it must be equally reprehensible for blacks or Muslims or Somalis or Jews to talk like this. If it is reprehensible for men to talk like this, it must be equally reprehensible for women to talk like this about men. That is now the only possible equality. If blacks and Jews and Muslims and everybody else are tribalist, segregationist, and openly racist, then whites have to be the same, or face extinction. Fuentes uses the term “genocide” here, which is outrageous; but he is using it just the way all other groups are now using it. On the same logic, if women are entitled to special privileges, men must demand the same, or be steamrolled.

It is an ugly world, but it is not a world Fuentes made. Churchill was not the warmonger. One cannot unilaterally declare peace. 

Why the Jews?

He said it.

It seems clear that the right has won the bitterly fought war for the culture, at least in the US, which probably means everywhere in time. There are and still will be struggles, assaults, riots, government overreaches, and assassinations, but the outcome is no longer in doubt. 

But now the right in turn seem to be increasingly delusional. I think of Tucker Carlson and Candace Owens, as examples.

This may be an overreaction to the atmosphere of thought policing, of cancel culture and deplatforming, being lifted. We saw something like this in the Sixties, when the McCarthy era ended, and the various media morality codes were lifted. In fitful exuberance, almost any idea was vented, and considered. Anything seemed acceptable. Why don’t we do it in the road? Why not put a hole in your head, to open your third eye? Why not drop out and live on a commune in Goa?

Ben Shapiro is currently being pilloried for saying something perfectly reasonable: that, if young Americans are lacking opportunities where they live, they should move. Others on the right are outraged. As Americans, we have the right to whatever we want, wherever we are. What sinister force seeks to steal this from us?

Shapiro is obviously right. Moving for better opportunity is the essence of the American story. It is a nation built by immigrants, and by settlers forever moving west. America is, as Margaret Atwood pointed out, with reference to its literature, the frontier. 

But like the Hippie Sixties, the resurgent right will suddenly not accept the bounds of reason or common sense: “we want the world, and we want it now.”

And part of why there is such blowback to Shapiro is that he is Jewish. For the question hangs suspended: if, the left defeated, we still do not have everything we want, what sinister force seeks to withhold this from us? 

This, sadly, naturally segues into antisemitism. If I deserve whatever I want, and some Jew seems to have more than I do, then they must be the guys. They must be keeping it from me.

The more so since the Jews always represent the Law: the idea of living with restrictions on one’s behaviour. 

To resurrect a famous phrase from the Sixties, we have met the enemy, and they is us.

 

The Rise of Antisemitism

 Simon Sebag Montefiore:

"To call October 7 a wake-up call is an understatement. People that we trusted—professors, journalists, charity workers—suddenly started celebrating the killing of civilians, the murder of grandmothers, the rape of girls, and the stealing of people as an act of war. And that was a terrible moment. I think we all went through it, and it was astonishing. That day, I remember watching professors who were at Harvard and Yale and Princeton suddenly saying, This is just a wonderful act of resistance. And that was terrifying, wasn’t it?"

We live in a nightmare moment of history. Montefiore believes the period of peace between 1945 and 2023 was a historical anomaly; and we are about to go back to the business of mass murder. 

I fear he may be right.

However, there is a concurrent rise of renewed faith and vigour. It is not that the best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of passionate intensity. In fact, I see the passion of the worst flagging, and the best gaining confidence, in the various populist movements around the developed world.

Bellevue House Decolonized

 

In a recent discussion among the hosts at Daily Wire, Andrew Klavan rightly argued that antisemitism is not like other forms of racism or discrimination. It is something special, and infinitely worse. The other hosts, even Ben Shapiro, the orthodox Jew, did not see this. 

As Ben Shapiro did point out, however, it is the form of discrimination most likely to end in genocide—arguably the only one.

In other forms of racism, the outsider group is considered inferior. Jews are hated, however, because they are perceived to be superior: “too powerful.”

You do not hate people you think are inferior to you. You are likely to feel sorry for them, and to reach out with. That is the actual experience of blacks or indigenous people. Granted, you don’t want them marrying your daughter. But you don’t hate them, and otherwise wish them well.

You only hate those you think are better than you. These are the people you want to harm or kill.

It is the story of Cain and Abel, repeated endlessly; the second sin of man. God seems to favour this people. Left alone, they always seem to succeed. They seem more intelligent and talented than you. 

Therefore, they must be kept down, or killed. 

To want to harm or kill another because they are more talented or intelligent than you is uniquely and gravely, as Klavan points out, a sin against God himself. God bestows talents. Antisemitism is perhaps the purest proof that someone is a bad person.

Not only Jews, to be fair, are Jews. While they are the obvious historical example, other groups are similarly hated for their accomplishments and talents. The Hakka Chinese in Southeast Asia. The Armenians in the Middle East. I suspect—I may be prejudiced—that this is behind the longstanding English determination to wipe out the Irish. It is clearly behind the current hatred of “straight white males.”

It is behind the Marxist/ socialist hartred for the rich, and ascription of all ills to “rich capitalists” and “greedy corporaions.”

And it directs hatred towards any unusually intelligent or talented or successful individual. Such as Sir John A. Macdonald.

The current frenzy of tearing down statues, renaming streets, and desecrating museums is the same impulse. Sir John A. Macdonald is hated not for any crime, but precisely for his accomplishments. It is worth pointing out that he was one of the greatest advocates in his day for Canada’s native people. As was Egerton Ryerson, another man whose statues have been torn down. Yet those who, like George Brown, actually opposed aboriginal interests, do not receive criticism. Their buildings are not renamed. Macdonald is actually envied for his greater moral goodness. Henry Dundas, similarly, was a leading abolitionist in England; yet he, and not the slavers, is condemned for slavery, and his name erased.

We live in an evil age. What is happening to day is what we will later have to apologize for, and will shamefacedly want to erase from our history books. Like the Cultural Revolution in China, or the Nazi period in Germany.

Why Everyone Hates the Jews

 

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Christ Is King

 

Jesus Pantocrator Chora, Istanbul

Daily Wire seems to be losing the PR war over their parting of ways with Candace Owens. But I believe their position is being misrepresented. People are upset because they supposedly called the statement “Christ is King” antisemitic. Christians are naturally offended by this.

But Jeremy Boreing did not say this. This is a straw man. He said that the statement ”Christ is king”  was “weaponized” to be antisemitic, not that it was antisemitic in itself. I agree with him that it is at best obnoxious, and weaponizing the statement, to say it to a Jew in the course of an unrelated argument. As a Christian, I think he has a good case that it is an example of taking the Lord’s name in vain.

Others are saying this shows Daily Wire will not tolerate any criticism of Israel. This is the fallacy of overgeneralization, or drawing a conclusion from insufficient evidence. One cannot know this from a specific instance, One needs to consider and address Candace Owens’ actual statements and actual criticisms of Israel.

What were they? First, she sent out a tweet on November 3 saying “No government ever has the right to commit a genocide, ever. There is no justification for a genocide.”

Given the date, she was apparently accusing the Israeli government of genocide almost at the beginning of their response to the Hamas terrorist attack. Their ground invasion had begun only on October 27, seven days earlier. While the case that Israelis are using excessive force may have grown since, this was an almost immediate reaction to the Israelis’ invasion of Gaza. Notably, the Hamas raid that killed 1,200 Israelis and seized hostages was not officially a “government” attack, but done by “Hamas militants” (Wikipedia). So Owens was condemning the Israelis, not Hamas. The implication was that Israel had no right to retaliate, or indeed to defend its citizens.

I can understand any supporter of Israel considering such a position immoral and beyond what they could stomach being associated with.

Owens soon thereafter objected to Israeli apartheid on the basis that there was a recognized “Muslim quarter” in Old Jerusalem. “These are the Muslim quarters, this is where the Muslims are allowed to live.” This is no more true than that the Italians in New York are forced to live in Little Italy; yet I believe she has never retracted the comment. I suspect this is what Ben Shapiro was referring to when he spoke of her “faux sophistication.”

It very much looks to me as though Candace Owens is an antisemite. She is prejudiced against Israel, and by extension probably against Jews. Challenged by Ben Shapiro for her views on Israel, she responded “one cannot serve both God and money.” This seems to me to be a veiled endorsement of the racist stereotype that Jews are only interested in money, and unscrupulously so. 

And, given the disingenuity of the case made by her supporters, I believe they too are primarily motivated by antisemitism as well; and by envy of The Daily Wire’s success. Envy also being the inevitable root of all antisemitism. They want an excuse to go after Jews and the Daily Wire, and Owens has thrown them some red meat.

It is disgraceful. I spontaneously use the same words Ben Shapiro used.

Owens Out

 

There is now a feud going on between Candace Owens and the Daily Wire. They recently “parted ways.” And the matter has split the entire right wing. 

My own take is that Daily Wire is consistently right in this dispute, and Owens is consistently wrong—that is, on her veiled antisemitism and her criticism of Israel in Gaza. Moreover, in the current context of rising antisemitism everywhere, Owens’s comments are dangerous.

I think what is really going on is that Candace Owens loves a fight, and fighting has always been, after all, good for her ratings. It is her established MO. She has waded unprovoked into big public spats with Steven Crowder, Cardi B, Megyn Kelly.

She has been trying to provoke Boring and Shapiro. Tweeting “Christ is King” to a Jew in the middle of an unrelated argument may not be antisemitic, but it is deliberately provocative.

We want people like Owens around. Every now and then, we need a cat belled, or someone to notice the Emperor is naked. 

On the other hand, while courage is the essential virtue, it does not ensure the presence of other virtues. Courage was Hitler’s one great virtue. Because he had this virtue, he was not the worst of men; but because he had this virtue, he did the worst of harm.

Were I the Daily Wire, I believe I too would have “parted ways” with Candace Owens. Not that I want to silence her; and the Daily Wire is certainly not silencing her by doing so. They are probably giving her free publicity. But I would not want to be associated with her; for I cannot see her principles.

The Politics of Envy

 

I see, in a recent Facebook post, the flag of Palestine flying over Grant Hall, at my old Alma Mater, Queen’s University. 

At the same time, the Canadian government is announcing the resumption of support to UNWRA, which as been implicated in the planning and execution of the October 6 attack on Israel. This means there has not even been an interruption of funding from Canada.

Back in more innocent days, it used to be a common classroom question: had you been around in the day, would you have stood up against Hitler’s holocaust? Or would you have done nothing?

Now we know. Had the bulk of those in apparent charge in Canada been around then, they would have supported Hitler.

But we already knew that; we already had the holocaust of abortion, bigger than Hitler’s holocaust. We already had postmodernism, essentially the fascist concept. We already had “Medical Assistance in Dying.” We were already scapegoating “cis white males” and “whites” generally for all conceivable ills, in the same way Hitler scapegoated Jews, and for the same reason. Jews are simply “ultra-white.” It was bound again to come around to them. They work too hard, are too smart, and are too successful. Envy is the game.

We’re the baddies.

More Problems with Claudine Gay

 

Will she bring Harvard down with her?

Here's the Leading Candidate to Replace Harvard

 

As where the best and the brightest go to learn. And around which the university system might be rebuilt.

Might Makes Wrong?

 

Nazi antisemitic poster, courtesy of Alamy

Some days ago, I suggested the recent Tory slippage in the Canadian polls had to do with the growing strength of Donald Trump in the US, allowing Trudeau to run against Trump instead of Poilievre. Now my sister has suggested another theory.

She suggests it is young people pulling away from Poilievre for his support of Israel. Trudeau has called for a ceasefire in Gaza, as Hamas and the left-wing protesters demand.

Raising the next question: why are young people and the left, in Canada and in the US, on the side of Hamas, and against Israel, in this conflict?

I say it is because the left, and the educational system they control, have rejected the concept of morality, “conventional morality”. So there is nothing intrinsically wrong with a surprise terrorist attack, however violent; there is nothing wrong with sucker-punching a "fascist," after all. Or, intrinsically, in raping women, or beheading babies, or taking hostages. They see everything as about power. The only issue is that there must be “equity,” and no “power imbalances” or “income inequalities.” No “bullying,” bullying simply meaning, to them, the exercise or mere possession of superior force.

It follows that if it comes to a disagreement, anyone who is poor is in the right, and anyone who is rich is in the wrong. In violent confrontations, whoever is losing is in the right; whoever is winning must be in the wrong. It is a childish cartoon morality, simply the inversion of “might makes right.” It makes Hitler and Japan the innocent victims of World War II, and Bin Laden the victim of 9/11. And children always right if they disagree with their parents.

That last is perhaps a clue as to why it is appealing to the young.

This is why, to the left, police and prisons are the causes of crime: abolish both, and we could all live in peace. This is why, at a recent symposium, a University of Minnesota professor declared “the U.S. is the greatest predator empire that has ever existed.” This is simply and definitionally true from the fact that the US is the richest and most militarily powerful nation so far in history.

And this is why Israel is in the wrong: because they are winning against Hamas. More Palestinians are dying than Israelis. And Israelis are richer than Palestinians.

This is actually the Nazi ideology. Mussolini portrayed Italy as a “proletarian nation,” Hitler called Germany a “volkish nation,” and both played up on the idea that their nations had been exploited and bullied by the peace treaties that ended WWI. Hitler was able to turn popular wrath on the Jews because they were richer and better educated than the average German: they were supposedly the international cabal that ruled the world.

Indeed, because of their accomplishments, this doctrine of “equity,” of amoral power politics, is always going to produce antisemitism.

Sadly, because of the admirable human instinct to defend the weak against the strong, this fascist atheist doctrine is likely to appeal to an uneducated conscience, and so lead a naive or weak mind astray.

Calling for the Genocide of Jews

 

I’ve been saying for years that we are sleepwalking into everything about Weimar Germany that ended with the rise of Hitler. The parallels are getting faster and more furious. We are now at the point of public calls for Jewish genocide.

It begins with the rejection of conventional ethics. Weimar Germany, endorsing Nietzsche’s scorn for “slave morality,” was a place where anything goes, or went, at first, and most appealingly to the average German, in sexual affairs. But the wall between right and wrong was broken down, and so one could just as properly, in principle, murder and steal. And the greatest danger was not the couple in the bar, but those with great power—the bureaucracy, the industrialists the government. Once the invisible restraints of morality are gone, they can use their power entirely for their own self-interest.

All that mattered was the triumph of the will.

And we see this again in our day. We rejected conventional morality again in the 1960s, first, and most appealingly, in sexual affairs. “Free love.”

And now morality has broken down in the halls of power. Governments and industrialists are colluding to run their Lolita islands, to silence dissent, to manipulate the news, to throw people in prison for protesting, to apply the law unfairly to help friends and punish enemies, to give and to accept bribes, and so forth. In Weimar Germany, Spartacist were prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law, and even extrajudicially assassinated, while Nazis and stormtroopers committing similar crimes were let off with perhaps a slap on the arm raised in salute. We see the same bias now: BLM or Antifa do what they please, while Proud Boys or the January rioters are thrown in prison on petty grounds.

Those in power again feel free to use that power as they see fit to advance their own interests.

The proliferation of “gay pride” rainbow flags is even eerily similar to the proliferation of swastika flags in the last days of the Weimar Republic. Both represent a political ideology; and the same political ideology, the triumph of the will of the collective, the group, over morality and ontology.

And it inevitably comes to antisemitism. First, because Jews represent symbolically the moral law. They introduced ethical monotheism to the world. Second, because once morality is abolished, Jews provoke the sin of envy. They are too successful, just too good at everything. 

Say Biden is Hindenberg, or perhaps Petain. If he is re-elected, some faceless bureaucrat is likely to emerge below him, someone heretofore utterly unobtrusive and unremarkable, as Hitler originally was, or Stalin, or Putin.

If, on the other hand, Trump is elected, is he, perhaps, a Churchill? He is similarly hated by those in power

Ending the Eternal Pogrom

 

Hitting a stone wall.

I have a lot of Jewish friends. I also have a lot of Muslim friends. The horrors Israeli Jews have suffered in the last few days depress me beyond measure. 

Putting aside anger, and even right and wrong, how do we ever end this? It has been going on since 1948. No matter what Israel does, the Palestinian Arabs and many Muslim powers surrounding Israel will not be reconciled to its existence. The transplant has failed.

The supposed reason for Israel was so that the Jews could avoid pogrom and persecution; at last they could escape historic European persecution and defend themselves. But this has turned out to be a false hope. The last few days have been as bad as any old Russian pogrom. 

Israel is a relatively small number of people on a small patch of land surrounded by a vastly larger number of hostile neighbours. Who are gradually developing technologically. For sheerly demographic reasons, sooner or later, Israel is going down, going down in blood, and in the meantime there will be massacre after massacre after massacre of the Jews.

Israel is a mistake. 

In the Torah, the Jews are called to be a leaven and a light unto the nations. It seems obvious this was God’s desire. The return to Jerusalem and the rebuilding of the temple is supposed to happen only in the last days. To have tried to force the issue as a purely secular matter seems presumptuous. Presumptuous as the Tower of Babel.

Of course, the recreation of Israel was also never fair to the Arabs. Why was it up to them to surrender some land? Why did they have to yield sovereignty to the Jews, and not, say, Germany or Russia or Poland, whose borders were fungible in 1948? Why not the US, Canada, or Australia, with large sparsely populated areas?

To be a light or leaven unto the nations, the Jews must disperse to all lands; as the leaven must be worked though the bread, and the light must not be hidden in a bushel. Any land not of idiots ought to be desperate to have them. There is a world depopulation crisis; developed countries calculate that they need immigrants in larger numbers. Why not this group of naturally adaptable, mobile immigrants, who contribute more to the culture wherever they go than any other group ever?

Consider English Canadian culture without Leonard Cohen, Irving Layton, A.M. Klein, Ed and David Mirvish, Wayne and Schuster, Sharon, Lois, and Bram, William Shatner, Jack Granatstein, Frank Gehry, Moshe Safdie, Avie Bennett, Mordecai Richler, the Bronfmans, Mel Hurtig, Jonathan and Barbara Kay, Ezra Levant, Moses Znaimer, Heather Reisman, Eugene Levy, Howie Mandel, Rick Moranis, Robbie Robertson … there would be nothing. That’s what leaven is like.

The best thing Canada could do in the current crisis is to open unrestricted immediate citizenship to any Jew coming from Israel. Best for the Jews, who would surely face less persecution in Canada than in the Middle East. What the Arabs would prefer, not want to live with the Jews. Best for Canada. Best for the world. God’s stated desire.

Other countries should do likewise.

All I Want for Christmas...

 

Here's an example of a modern secular Christmas song not written, as Xerxes, complains they all are, by a Jew.

It's the Jews. It's Always the Jews

 

My leftist friend Xerxes surprises me by devoting his latest column to how “the Jews” have 

“re-invented” Christmas. This they have done, according to him, by dominating the music industry and writing Christmas songs on purely secular themes.

This is where we are. It is not a good place.

Xerxes is wrong, to begin with, to suggest that non-religious Christmas songs are any new thing. Christmas has always been a celebration of winter and the solstice as well as of the birth of Christ. It has always had its secular side of general merriment and misrule.

Here is a brief selection of old and purely secular Christmas tunes:

Deck the Halls

We Wish You a Merry Christmas

The Wren

Jingle Bells

Here We Come a Wassailing

O Tannenbaum

He is wrong too to say that all modern secular Christmas songs are written by “the Jews.” Here are a few secularist songs and songwriters I am pretty sure are not Jewish.

“Little St. Nick” – Brian Wilson

“(Simply Having) A Wonderful Christmas Time”—Paul McCartney

“Happy Christmas (War is Over)” – John Lennon

“All I Want for Christmas Is You” – Mariah Carey

When I was a kid, “All I Want for Christmas is My Two Front Teeth” was a popular novelty song. The author also wrote hymns—not Jewish.

Not that Xerxes is complaining all that loudly. Almost the last thing he cares about is anything going secular. He ends the column saying that St. Paul condemned holidays anyway.

But that leaves the whole point of the column being to blame the Jews for something, anything.

Without demanding punishment, Xerxes includes all the elements of anti-semitism. First, the idea that Jews act as a unit; that they have an agenda. Second, that they are powerful, and more or less secretly powerful. They are controlling things behind the curtain. Third, that their agenda goes against the interests and desires of the majority.

Very sinister. And Bob’s your uncle, you have the International Jewish Conspiracy. You have the Protocols of the Elders of Zion.

This was always the predictable end of “intersectionality.” The inevitable trajectory was to target the smallest distinct group with the greatest available concentration of wealth to pillage. So the scapegoat class who owed reparations perhaps started out as “whites,” but then “white males,” then “cis white males,” or non-disabled cis white males; while the supposedly oppressed class expanded from blacks to blacks and women, blacks, women, and people of any skin tone other than white, but then also Muslims, then also sexual nonconformists of any description. The inevitable end-point was everybody versus the Jews, the smallest identifiable minority with the greatest wealth. Modern leftists see this just as Hitler saw it. 

I expect Kanye West’s recent outbursts have a lot to do with other people feeling freer to go here—although everyone was going here already.

One aspect of West’s argument was “Why can’t I complain about the Jews? I can complain about everybody else, but not the Jews.”

But that is not true. Black people have licence to complain publicly about everybody else, except the Jews. The only people white people can complain about are cis white males. And apart from complaining--the fact seems suppressed, but Jews are, in proportion, the one group most targeted by hate crimes. 

The modern left is not just Fascist. It is becoming Nazi.

Ye and Hitler on Alex Jones

 

Kanye West just went on Alex Jones and said he saw good things in Hitler. After all, "There's some good in everybody." And the Jews were not going to stop him from saying so. We have to stop demonizing the Nazis.

Two points: first, this is not a reasonable position. This is where moral relativism and non-judgemental New Age "Christianity" takes us, and it is a dark path. Hitler had the potential to be good, but he chose evil, and did not repent.

And antisemitism is, to me, a litmus test of good and evil. It almost seems as though God assigned the Jews this role among the nations. 

People who know Kanye West insist he is not saying this because he is manic. I don't think this makes a difference. Manic people, insane people of any sort, are still morally responsible for their moral judgments.

Should Kanye West -- Ye -- be punished in some way? No. Freedom of speech and freedom of thought prohibits that.

But we should all publicly express our strong disagreement.

Democracy Dies in the Washington Post

 

History repeats itself in detail.

The San Diego Synagogue Shootings

Anti-semitic cartoon, 1896.

It had to happen sooner or later. It is unwise to come to any conclusions based on first reports—the 48-hour rule is a good one—but it looks as though the Passover attack on a synagogue near San Diego in California was by a genuine white nationalist, white supremacist Nazi who at least identifies as Christian.

Mind, since the left has been declaring loudly that this was happening for years without it being true, I think it is proper to blame them for it now. Speak of the Devil, and he will appear. Someone was bound to be listening. And it seems odd that this killer’s manifesto, making all of his motives plain, was immediately available and linked to on the Internet, whereas the Christchurch killer’s manifesto, making it plain that he was neither a “white supremacist” nor a right-winger, was quickly and generally suppressed.

This killer also takes pains to point out that his actions are no “false flag.” Odd that he would; but then, he is doing exactly what those he claims to oppose would most want him to do, and what most advances their interests against those he claims to be his own. He is, by his acts, throwing white nationalism, white supremacy, and Christianity into disrepute, surely. He is confirming a claim on the left that he himself insists is false. How is that supposed to work? Perhaps he protests too much?

Someone else, apparently familiar with 8chan, where it appeared, in linking to the manifesto, comments that it is full of “s***posting and is not to be taken literally.” 8chan is famous for spoofs and false flags. So who knows?

As a Christian, my challenge is this: assuming the manifesto is for real, how can I reconcile his actions and his expressed thoughts with his claiming to be a Christian? There are, presumably, three possibilities. Either 1. The killer is insane. 2. There is actually something in Christianity that warrants this; or 3. He is aware that he is simply doing evil, and is lying. I think 3 is by far the most plausible thesis.

I resist explanation 1. I may find his manifesto incoherent, but not in the obviously disordered way you would expect from the truly delusional. In any case, I do not buy insanity as an excuse for immorality. There is no connection, statistically speaking. That just comes from a prejudice against the insane.

He declares himself a Christian and quotes Bible verses. He claims to have been inspired by “Jesus Christ, the Apostle Paul, Martin Luther, Adolf Hitler, …, Ludwig van Beethoven, Moon Man, and Pink Guy.”

But how seriously can we take the faith of someone who lists Jesus as simply parallel among his influences not just with Adolf Hitler but with “Moon Man and Pink Guy”? Does a serious Christian think that way? It seems at least plausible that he is feigning Christianity in order to malign Christianity. He knows the lingo—his father was apparently a prominent member of a local Presbyterian congregation. But that might only have given him the ammunition; and perhaps a desire to rebel.

To begin with, surely, Christianity is antithetical to the racial ideology on which he has based his actions. It is not just that St. Paul wrote “There is no Jew nor Greek in Christ”: the basic concept of the “New Covenant,” aka Christianity, is that God was now offering to all nations, without ethnic distinction, the covenant that had formerly been offered exclusively to the Jews. Racism is therefore fundamentally opposite to the Christian message.

The Bible verses the killer then quotes to justify harming Jews are not attacking Jews at all, but those who claim to be Jews yet are not. Hypocrites, in other words. For example, quoting the actual verses he cites:

“They answered and said unto him, Abraham is our father. Jesus saith unto them, If ye were Abraham’s children, ye would do the works of Abraham […] Ye are of your father the devil, and the lusts of your father ye will do. He was a murderer from the beginning, and abode not in the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he speaketh a lie, he speaketh of his own: for he is a liar, and the father of it. And because I tell you the truth, ye believe me not” (John 8:37-45).

For the quote to make sense, it must be a good thing, in conformity with God’s will, to be a devout Jew. If you do truly follow Abraham’s example—as either a Jew or, latterly, a Muslim—you are in obedience to God.

“For ye, brethren, became followers of the churches of God which in Judaea are in Christ Jesus: for ye also have suffered like things of your own countrymen, even as they have of the Jews: Who both killed the Lord Jesus, and their own prophets, and have persecuted us; and they please not God, and are contrary to all men: Forbidding us to speak to the Gentiles that they might be saved, to fill up their sins away: for the wrath is come upon them to the uttermost” (1 Thessalonians 2:14-16).

Paul’s point is not that the Jews are especially guilty of persecuting Christians, but the reverse: that Christians everywhere are being persecuted, not by some other racial group, but by their own countrymen. Just as Jesus himself observed: a man’s (or a prophet’s) enemies will come from within his own home, his own family, and his own neighbours. It follows that racism is at best an error. The very error Paul is condemning here among the Jews of Judea.

“I know thy works, and tribulation, and poverty, (but thou art rich) and I know the blasphemy of them which say they are Jews, and are not, but are the synagogue of Satan” (Revelation 2:9).

This passage is necessarily saying that Judaism is a good thing, and not following its teachings is Satanic.

Even without the Bible passages, the thing is logically and theologically unambiguous: God made a covenant with the Jews. Does God keep his promises, or not? It necessarily follows, for any true Christian, that the covenant with the Jews is still in force, for any Jew who keeps it.

It is possible, I suppose, that the shooter is too stupid to see this, but it seems profoundly unlikely that he could have managed to consistently reverse the meanings of Bible passages by 180 degrees simply by misreading the Bible.

It seems to me too that the killer gives hints he knows he is in the wrong. He, as the Devil is said to commonly do, seems to condemn himself out of his own mouth. He accuses the Jews, for example, of spreading “blood libel,” without evidence, only a few paragraphs after spreading the ancient blood libel against the Jews: that they supposedly killed Christ. This is what the term commonly refers to. He is, in other words, scapegoating the Jews for his own sins; and at some level he must know this. It is one thing to be randomly wrong. But when what you say is exactly and fairly consistently 180 degrees from the truth, it tends to betray an underlying awareness of in what direction truth actually lies.

There is indeed an anti-Christian blood libel that has been going around for long years: that Christianity is anti-Semitic. I myself got fed that as if simple fact when studying religion in university. But this is surely not what the murderer is referring to here, because he believes that very libel himself, according to his own claims, and is doing his best to justify it.

Recent history has demonstrated this is an anti-Christian slander. With greater contact with the Muslim world, people in the West discover that Muslims are at least as prone to antisemitism as Christians ever were. And those who read history—or the Bible—know that antisemitism was familiar in the ancient world, among the Romans, who burned down Jerusalem and dispersed the Jews, among the Greeks, who converted the temple in Jerusalem to pagan worship, the Babylonians, who levelled the temple and dispersed the Jews, or the Egyptians, who enslaved the Jews, then tried to wipe them out. And on it goes.

The Romans under Titus haul away the treasures of Jerusalem.

Far from being anti-semitic, Christianity is at its core irreducibly and uniquely pro-semitic. The Hebrew scriptures are also the Christian scriptures. Christians reading them necessarily self-identify as Jews.

Rather than having anything to do with Christianity in particular, anti-semitism, here as everywhere, is simply a reliable expression and measure of human evil. I do not think it too simplistic to say that bad people are always anti-semitic, and good people invariably identify instead with the Jews.

For the real cause of anti-semitism, here and everywhere, is simply envy. It is the sin that dare not speak its name, and so the one always in need of scapegoats and alibis. The San Diego shooter simply envied the Jews, and used whatever cover he could find rather than admit it was because he felt they were better than him.

Their moral and historical status as God’s original chosen people might well be enough to provoke such envy: it is exactly the thing that caused Cain, in envy, to kill Abel. That makes such murderous envy only one generation removed from original sin. It is as wrong, of course, as wrong could be: it is automatically also an open rebellion against God himself.

Of course, many these days will not take that claim literally. That makes no difference. It is a scientific fact, as measurable by IQ tests, that Jews as an identifiable group are more intelligent than the rest of us. As a result of this, if not directly because of God’s favour, or for whatever reason, it is also a demonstrable fact that, demographically, wherever they settle, and despite frequent discrimination against them, Jews tend to become richer and better educated as a group than those around them. They become overrepresented at the top of the professions, and of business.

This makes them, wherever they go, inevitable targets for this deadly sin of envy, wherever and to whatever extent it is present: that is, whenever they are among bad people.

It must now be said that it has long been the left, not the right, that has endorsed and promoted the sin of envy: of looking on anyone richer then oneself as having stolen something, and deserving punishment. Socialism naturally segues, as with Nazism and Stalinism alike, into anti-semitism.

Certainly the present killer would not identify himself as a typical “Commifornian,” to use his term. But he is no doubt a product of that milieu, and has accepted some of its basic premises.

More than he has been influenced by anything in the Bible.

About the Jews

A Canadian WWI recruiting poster.

I read with surprise recently that Canada actually has the world's fourth largest Jewish population, after Israel, France, and the US.

Good for Canada.

But then, I think if Canada were smarter, the Jewish population of Canada would be far larger. I advocate for Canada an absolute “right of return”: automatically accept any Jew as an immigrant.

First, on humanitarian grounds. Jews are in principle in danger and at risk everywhere. They always have been, for thousands of years. They are the ultimate and archetypal refugees. Not excluding in Israel, where odds are, over the course of time and changing demographics, they will sooner or later be wiped out. As many of their neighbours openly advocate.

If there is one place on earth with the available space to offer the Jews a home, it is Canada. If there is one place on earth where they would be safe over the long term, it is Canada, bounded by seas on three sides, and with the Russian advantage of vast distances. Why impose on the Arabs, by taking some of their traditional land? If they do not want the Jews, very well. Their mistake. We should. Take them all; end the trouble in the Middle East.

For any sensible person must see that a Jewish presence is a net benefit wherever they are.

Ask Hitler's ghost. Ever wonder why it was the Americans who first detonated the atom bomb? What if it had been Germany? Imagine what that might have meant. But it was not going to be Germany, because Hitler had killed or forced into exile all the Jewish scientists who knew much of anything about the atom, beginning of course with Albert Einstein. And Julius Oppenheimer, whose parents had fled Germany. And Niels Bohr. They left for America, and did it there. Getting rid of Jews was suicidal for Nazi Germany. It amounts, in effect, to getting rid of the best minds in your country or culture. You are cutting off your head to spite your face.

Why, you might ask, then, does everyone hate the Jews?

Not hard to explain. It is right there in the Bible, almost at the start, in the story of Cain and Abel. The Jews are the shepherd brother. Others envy them because they are smarter and more successful. And so they want to murder them. We see the same tendency today in the general pogrom against “Anglos” or “straight white men.”

Yes, it is true, Jews are great at starting businesses, just as everyone says. Bronfmans, Aspers, Steinbergs, Mirvishes, Snidermans. Stronger economy, more jobs. All Canadians would be poorer had such families not settled in our midst. But there's more. Where would Canadian culture be either without Leonard Cohen, Irving Layton, Mordecai Richler, A.M. Klein, Wayne and Schuster, Sharon, Lois and Bram, Ed Mirvish, Frank Gehry, Moshe Safdie, Lorne Greene, William Shatner, David Cronenberg, Lorne Michaels, Robbie Robertson, Barbara Frum, Peter C. Newman, Barbara Amiel, and on and on? There'd be quite a hole if they had not been around, wouldn't there be?

All of this from a tiny minority within the country. One percent of the population. There are more Portuguese, Welsh, Spanish, or Norwegian in Canada.

Now imagine if we had twice or three times as many such creative and enterprising types?

Not welcoming Jews wherever they want to settle is its own punishment.

Haters Gonna Hate

More on the clear and present danger of "Islamophobia":

The stats available online are not that current—2013--but they show the number of hate crimes in Canada declining overall, and specifically the hate crimes based on religion—down 22% year over year. So why promote the impression that they are spiralling out of control?

Among hate crimes inspired by religion, far and away the most were against Jews—two to three times more than those aimed at Muslims. Per capita, the imbalance is even greater: Jews experienced 54.9 hate crimes per 100,000 (Jewish) population; Muslims experienced 6.2 hate crimes per 100,000. I think that qualifies as an order of magnitude.

So why are we singling out hate crimes against Muslims for special condemnation, and refusing to mention hate crimes against Jews? Given the facts on the ground, that looks more like a green light for hate crimes against Jews than something inspired by hate crimes against Muslims.