Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: We'll go ahead and get started as people start filtering in the room. Thank you so much for joining our Atlas Society's Twitter space today. I'm Scott Schuff and we're very glad to have Atlas Society senior scholar Richard Salzman discussing anti semitism, anti capitalism, and assaults on Israel. After his opening comments, we'll open it up to questions. So if you have a question, you can just click request to speak and we'll get to as many as possible. Richard, again, thank you so much for doing this topic.
[00:00:35] Speaker B: Scott, thanks for hosting and thanks all for joining. I wanted to start by saying that a original source for this you may wish to visit later, afterwards. David Kelly and I David, the great objectivist philosopher and founder of the Atlas Society. He and I did a 90 Minutes clubhouse in January of 2023, almost a year ago on exactly this topic. So it's called anti semitism and anti capitalism, and a lot of history, philosophy, culture and other things were brought in. Then I mentioned it for one, because I don't want to repeat all the philosophy in that, but I do want to cite some of it today and then bring it to current events. But also from the standpoint of the outlaw society, identifying before it hits the topics, hits the headlines, I should say being prescient enough to say, listen, this is an issue, of course, it's been around for centuries, but that it was an issue that we identified in early 2023, ten months prior to Hamas assaulting Israel in October. So the power of ideas, the power of analysis and foresight can be very helpful for those who are tuning into the Atlas society. I thought what I would do today is kind of recapitulate briefly some of the themes in that one, but then also lots have happened since. So I want to apply it to more recent current events, not only the October 7 attack, but more importantly, the response, the rather, I would say rather weak response actually, of Israel and the US. And why philosophically that might be the case actually has to do with the New Testament and old testament, might surprise you to learn. And also, we know controversies on campus immediately. In the aftermath of the October 7 slaughter, 31 student groups at Harvard rallied to the defense of the attackers, defended Hamas, defended the palestinian gaza, and that kind of shocked people. Congress about a week ago had a committee that invited, if you remember very famously, three top university presidents, Harvard, MIT, UPenn.
I'll talk a little more about what they said, but their performance basically amounted to saying, we don't really have a problem on our campus. If students advocate for the genocide of Jews. They didn't say it exactly that way, but that was pretty much, they said it was context specific and it was protected speech. And these are the same universities who will throw you off campus if you dare question the binary or the non binary and gender issues subsequent to that, if, you know, the UPenn president was fired and the head of the UPenn trustees left. But the Harvard president, Claudine gay, still has her job, so that's important. And also, one last thing. I'll touch on the defunding campaign, if you will, although it's not so much organized, is of jewish, largely jewish university contributors, usually financiers, usually very well. Bill Ackman leads this, but there's a dozen at least others. Leon Cooperman. People who are Jewish Democrats for years have sent millions and millions of dollars to universities, are starting to withdraw their funding or cancel their funding, complaining about the anti semitism on campus.
So maybe that's akin maybe to what happened during COVID when parents learned by looking over their kid's shoulder at Zoom sessions how bad the public schools were. So we can talk about that as well, the kind of the awakening, finally, of these donors to the universities.
And do they care at all where their money is going? It was Ayn Rand's last lecture, 1981, called the sanction of the victims, where she specifically documented and warned wealthy people, businessmen, not to blindly send money to their universities, which were thoroughly anti capitalist. That was 42 years ago.
And so part of my theme also has been to say, let's not get too myopic here and too narrow and too provincial by seeing it as only anti semitism. The problem is deeper, wider than that. It's anti capitalism. And the Jews, for these haters, really represent models of capitalism in their eyes. So it really goes as we hate capitalism and then we hate Jews because they seem to be the most capitalist. It goes something like that. Now, let me just recapitulate briefly. And the goal here, Scott, I think, is what? I stop after 15 or 20 minutes and then open it up. Okay. Yeah. So I don't want to go too long here.
David and I in January 2023 recounted, of course, there is this long history of antisemitism. And the jewish faith is older than the christian faith, and the christian faith is older than the islamic faith. Islam is only 8th century, 7th century.
So the opportunity for interreligious hatreds goes way back. So another way of looking at all this is we have religious hatreds and wars going on. We have religions hating each other to varying intensities over the centuries. And from an objectivist perspective, our view would be, of course that's going to happen if you throw out reason, logic, persuasion, peaceful dealings among men. Once you go by faith, once you start claiming that you have superior skills of discerning the supernatural and others don't, once you start believing that, hey, you don't bow down before my God, therefore I'm going to attack and kill you. I'm setting aside here the fact that all the religions would be against non believers, the ones who are not religious, like me, and objectivists and others, that's a separate category. But they certainly have a long history of hating each other. And if you went through the enlightenment at all, as the Jews and the Christians did, the hatred there and the irrationality and the religious wars is going to be tempered to some degree. So it's a semi secularized, judeo christian world we see today. Nothing like it was in medieval times. The crusades. Were the Christians killing other religions en masse.
Unfortunately, Islam didn't go through the enlightenment to the full extent that the Jews and Christians did. So they stand today as more anti modern, anti capitalist, anti liberty. In other words, they're the true medievalists, walking around the world and trying, of course, to join it, trying and sometimes succeeding, adjoining it with the state.
As an aside here, by the way, for more context, Ein Rand famously said that religion is a primitive form of philosophy. Now, notice she said it was philosophy. It gives you a view of the world, sometimes gives you a list of do's and don'ts virtues, a sense of where the universe came from, where you might go after you die, even guidance to politics. But primitive in the sense of non rational, not based on the facts of reality, based on instead supernaturalism and mysticism and faith instead of reason.
Now, she did not say this, but I would go further and added an addendum and say, if religion is a primitive form of philosophy, Islam is a primitive form of religion. It stands among the three great religions as the one today, unfortunately, that is the most primitive, that is the most barbaric, that has the greatest animosity toward modernity and the enlightenment and enlightenment ideas. And to the extent the other religions have been infused to some degree with enlightenment, they're hated just to that extent, I would say. Now, David and I also in that session in January 2023, there's the standard one, obviously, like, well, the Jews killed Jesus. Well, that would explain why the Christians hate him. But philosophically, let's go a little deeper here.
The idea that go to the ethics, the idea of arrogance, of pride. If pride is considered a deadly sin in Christianity, what kind of pride? Well, the Jews saying, we're the chosen people and we're a small minority, and it's hard to become jewish. You can't just convert easily. And there's a lot of learning and irridation and study. It's the mind that's very important to this particular rigid, not muscles.
You see Jews in the professions. You see them as doctors and lawyers and financiers and artists and engineer. You don't see them as much right relative to their size, relative to their position in the more physicalist, muscular fields. So you're beginning to see the origin, say, of an animosity that a leftist marxist socialist might have, just as the marxist leftist socialist would hate the white collar worker, the capitalist, the one who's bringing brains to the process, not brawn. Well, they're considered the exploiters. They're the ones considered the ones stealing from the, quote, true producers of wealth, the musclemen. What about usury? Well, for years, decades, usury, which meant not lending at a high interest, but lending at all, all the way from Aristotle, who said money lending is barren. Barren in the sense of it doesn't produce anything. How can you possibly make money from money?
And for various reasons, the Jews went into finance because they were barred from going into other areas or retail. So retail and finance, the extent, again, by extension, if finance is parasitical, then the Jews are really parasitical because they're the best at finance.
There's more of an earthly focus, too. That's a separate philosophic issue you find in the Jews versus the others. Now how about justice? Let's go to the ethic of justice. In objectivism, you can be objectively just. You must judge other people on their character, on their actions, but for rational reasons, not for non rational. Well, there's a very distinctive view of judgment that the Jews have, which is distinct from the Christians and definitely distinct from Sharia and Islam in the Old Testament. It is what? An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth, a kind of rough proportional justice that says, hey, you can't mess with me. I have rights. I have the right to self defense, the self. I value myself. I'm not going to be sheep. I'm not going to roll over to your attacks on me versus what in the New Testament? Turn the other cheek. Turn the other cheek to who? To the enemy who struck the first cheek. Imagine that you're struck by a foe, and the answer is okay, please strike me on the other cheek. Love thy enemies. A very different. So this is, even within religion, a fairly distinctive break between the jewish approach and the christian approach. And so the jewish approach would be seen as very selfish. Who are you to stand up and defend yourself? Why can't you be more christian, you Jews, and be nicer to enemies?
Blessed are the peacemakers, right? That is the christian New Testament view.
Now, before I leave this topic, I think I will forget it unless I say it right now. I would contend that one of the reasons Israel is not, and for years, by the way, has not eviscerated Hamas. Hamas has been around, by the way, since 1987. Did you know that? And Israel actually supported Hamas ruling in Gaza relative to the PLO. So the old idea of enemy of my enemy. So they were attacked by Hamas, but they've been supporting and promoting Hamas within that universe for a long time. But the kind of pusalamnus, the kind of cringing, pulling punches approach that Israel has had for, what are we going on? Almost two months now, and the Hamas still exists, and Hamas leadership is running around Qatar, and they're perfectly free and none of them are dead. And is it that the israeli government is adopting New Testament foreign policy and military strategy? Yeah, it sounds that way. They're not doing the truly Old Testament thing and wiping them out. They haven't for years wiped them out. Maybe they will this time. But if so, that means they're going old to Old Testament on them, not New Testament. The US, of course, pushing, pushing, pushing for Israel to relent, to not eviscerate Hamas for its attack on October 7, the more christian view of it. And by the way, for years in the conservative wing of american politics, we've heard the Judeo christian ethic, the Judeo christian alliance, the idea that they were unified on so many things. Are you starting to see the fishers now? Are you starting to see the infighting? Are you starting to know, for example, Ben Shapiro and Candace Owens fighting? Candace Owens the Christian, Ben Shapiro the Jew. And they're at each other's throats because they disagree about this conflict. So, again, but if you don't go by reason and logic and facts aren't your standard, yeah, you're going to get very emotional. Look at both of them. They're off the charts emotionally. They're just emotionalists, as you have to be in religion, fundamentally.
Where do I want to go with this now? I just want to remind some people about the left. Of course, there's right. I hate right. Left. I hate that as a way of distinguishing. But yeah, the right supremacist, the white right supremacist idea that the jewish cabal is taking over the world. That's always existed. And one of the reasons anti Semitism is attributed to the right is a long history of the fascists, of course. But to the extent the fascists and communists are anti capitalists, there should be nothing surprising about the fact that both of them are anti semitic. They are. I mean, they're Nazi Germany, but so was the USSR. The USSR was terribly anti jew. A couple of quotes here, which I think might interest you now here from a 1971 book. This seems a long time ago, but a wonderful book by Ellis Ribkin, the shaping of jewish history. Listen to this. Now. This is a quote from Ribkin. Since World War II. This is 1971. Since World War II, Jews and Judaism have been liberated in every country and territory where capitalism has been restored to vigorous growth. And this includes Germany. By contrast, wherever anticapitalism or pre capitalism has prevailed, the status of Jews and Judaism has undergone deterioration or is highly precarious. Thus, at this very moment, 1971, in the country where developing capitalism is most advanced, the United States accords Jews and Judaism a freedom not known anywhere else in the world, and that was never known in the past. It's a freedom that is not matched even in Israel.
By contrast, in the Soviet Union. Soviet Union still existed then, right? The citadel of anti capitalism. The Jews are cowed by anti Semitism, threatened by extinction, and barred from access to their God, unquote.
Well, that's a summary of things, 1971. But right around the same time, this very revealing quote from, for those of you who remember the Byder manhoff gang in Germany, West Germany, sixty s and seventy s, a left wing terrorist group, the Red Army Faction, they called it. Well, one of the founders, Ulrich Minoff, she found it with Bader. Quote, this is from her in 1970. Quote, auschwis meant that 6 million Jews were killed and thrown on the waste heap of Europe for what they were considered money. Jews finance capital in the banks. The hardcore of the system of imperialism and capitalism had turned the hatred of men against money and exploitation and against the Jews. Anti seminatism is really a hatred of capitalism, unquote. They say it themselves. They're very brazen about it. They know what they're talking about. This is the root of it. This is why the democratic socialists of America, with members including AOC and the squad, denounced Israel after Hamas attacked in October. Of course, the democratic socialists of America, on the side of Hamas on the side of the Palestinians calling Israel what?
A settler nation, a racist settler nation. You can't settle. Settle means owning property in an imperialist, colonialist settler country.
Israel. That's the argument from the Democrats duly elected in today's congress a couple years ago, by the way, very interesting. If you know Jacobin, the left wing magazine online, it's actually very well written. And if you want to go for the views of the left, not a bad place to go. Get this take, though. Aaron Friedman in January 2020 wrote something called now get this. To defeat anti semitism, we must defeat capitalism.
The argument is, hey, I'm anti semitic. But let me tell you what the real problem is. Now, I'll summarize the essay. It goes something like this. Capitalism and Judaism are like two peas in a pod. They're kin. .2 hatred of both is perfectly understandable.
.3 to end hatred of the Jews, end capitalism.
Brilliant. Isn't that brilliant? That's just brilliant.
That's Aaron Friedman and the Jacob. And it reminds me of a study I saw years ago in academia, and they were referring to envy.
And the argument was, envy is terrible. And I thought, this is amazing. Someone in academia is actually criticizing envy in the know. Ayn Rand said, we live in an age of envy. Envy is terrible. So I read the essay, and guess what the essay says.
Envy comes from unequal wealth.
This cure for envy is to have equality wealth.
Very similar to this argument in Jacobin right now. A couple things, and then I'll close.
I already mentioned what I think is a really sad, appeasing type response from Israel and America to what's happened. And I'm not sure at all whether they'll get rid of Hamash. I don't think they will. So we're going into yet another long and possibly unwinnable war because they're not using the principles of all out war. They're using what's called in academia just war theory. And they call it just war theory because you're supposed to avoid hitting innocent civilians and things like that. And Hamas knowing that, uses them as shields. So it's not really just war theory, it's mercy war theory. It's the idea of don't go after your enemies fully, and as a result, you're not going to win, are you? It's going to be drawn out.
But the other, I think, really important thing is the anti semitism rampant on some, I wouldn't say it's on all college campuses, has been true for a while, but has been exposed by this war and been exposed, particularly enough that the donors, the very wealthy donors, have stood up and said, I'm not giving money anymore. My theme in the last couple of weeks has been, please widen your. I mean, that's good. I applaud that. I applaud that. But I implore them also to widen their scope, widen the lens, dig a little deeper, and realize that this is really part and parcel of a fully anti capitalist stance on so many campuses. And by the way, the more prestigious the school. That's why the Ivy Leagues get the focus. It tends to be the more the case as you go down the quality structure, if you will, or the reputational structure of the universities. There's much less of this. There's much less, both anti capitalism and anti semitism, post modernism, that kooky, perverted attempt to say, no objectivity is possible, which my colleague Stephen Hicks eviscerated years ago in a 2004 book on postmodernism. Same kind of thing. You see that at the major, very expensive universities. You don't really see that at Indiana state or elsewhere, not to that extent, at least.
So it's a good trend. I think this is a wonderful opportunity for us as advocates of reason, as people have for years have told Americans, to be very suspicious of religion. Maybe it's a moment like 911 where Americans did become, by all polls, less religious after that. Maybe this can happen again. But more important to me, I think, is that I'm looking at these huge donors, and I would love it if their funds are not only withdrawn from these hotbeds of anti capitalism, but redirected toward pro capitalist, pro israeli, pro jewish groups.
So I'll leave it at there and draw a line.
[00:22:59] Speaker A: Scott, great opening. I want to encourage anyone that wants to ask a question to raise their hands. I just have to go back to that german leftist you described for a moment. I mean, isn't part of the real lesson that it's not that they think Auschwitz was bad, but that it shouldn't have just been the Jews, it should have been anyone for.
[00:23:25] Speaker B: Yes. Yeah. And there's more than enough quotes. I don't know if people know this, but from the Nazis, from Hitler against capitalism, those are almost never cited. They only cite the ones against Jews.
And I think one of the reasons is the left doesn't want to be seen as well. He hates capitalism as much as I do. He hates capitalism as much as we do. Oh, my God. It looks like we're in the same.
It looks like we're in the same realm here. Wish they were, by the way, in Hamas's founding document in 1988.
I'm quoting here from. I went back and read it. It's been revised a couple of times since. But it embraces, quote, mutual social responsibility in contrast to, quote, the imperialistic forces of the capitalist west.
The thing also faults the Jews for, quote, striving to amass great and substantial material wealth.
Iran's leader, Kameh just last year wrote, excuse me, in the late 90s, zionist capitalists were a plague for the whole world. Now they're a plague, especially for the world of Islam in 2022. Only last year, quote, this is the head of Iran. The viewpoint of Islam towards workers is based on gratitude. It's different, though, from the point of capitalism. The viewpoint of the capitalist system towards their workers is based on interest, self interest, exploitation. For them, workers are a tool for ensuring their wealth, unquote. Here's a head of Islam, head of the regime in Iran, speaking like a true blue Marxist. A lot of overlap here.
Hitler, by the way, also allied with Islam during his reign. That's a story that isn't often told. But if you just look up Hitler and Muslims.
[00:25:27] Speaker A: Mufti of yeah, yeah, I listened to that January clubhouse earlier, some of it, and both you and David were somewhat prophetic in talking about how younger people don't support Israel anymore. And that was one of the main shocks post October 7.
[00:25:50] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:25:51] Speaker A: What does that mean for the future?
[00:25:53] Speaker B: Not very good. And I don't even think it just begins in college to have these views. You'd have to have them, I think, even in high school. Well, I'm looking at a poll here, Scott, from December 16. So only, what, five days ago, quote. Well, here's the title. Majority of Americans 18 to 24 think Israel should be, quote, ended and given to Hamas, unquote.
This is a Harvard Harris poll. And that was the question. Do you think Israel should be ended and Israel given to. 51% of Americans 18 to 24 said yes. The long term solution was for, quote, israel to be ended and given to Hamas and the Palestinians.
Only 32% said they believed in a two state solution, which is interesting because Hamas doesn't believe in a two state solution. They want a one state solution, which is called caliphate, which is an imperialistic. Talk about sharing the socialist view. If you just look up islamic caliphate. It's not that every single islamic terrorist group believes this, but Hamas does. Their view is the whole world should be Islam. Sharia should rule everywhere. And that is much more. If you remember the soviet view, the soviet view was international communism not just national.
Anyway, there's other things in that quote. When asked, this is the students, or 18 to 24, when asked if Israel is committing genocide against those in Gaza, 60% say yes.
It's bad.
[00:27:40] Speaker A: I remember when there were knife attacks a few years ago and there were a majority that supported the knife attacks. And it's just at what point is the population supporting it?
[00:27:54] Speaker B: I don't know if you remember, Scott, do you remember the headlines a couple of weeks ago? It went something like students, young Americans and young people around the world rediscovering bin Laden's letter to America.
[00:28:07] Speaker A: Right.
[00:28:08] Speaker B: 2002. And you go online, you see a bunch of people, wow, I'm 20 years old, and I never realized that Osama bin Laden wrote this wonderful, scathing critique of America and advising peers and friends to read it, which is a total anti capitalist, anti modern screed. As you can imagine, they're loving it.
[00:28:34] Speaker A: Yeah, they relate to the anti imperialism rhetoric.
And again, I encourage people, if you want to request to speak, we can bring you up here. Is there a relationship between Jews kind of being forced into finance early and almost how they prospered post enlightenment?
[00:29:00] Speaker B: Yeah, I think that's right. The origins of them going into particular fields is another matter. But a lot of it had to do with anti semitism to begin with. So the idea of them gravitating towards certain areas where they had some freedom at least, but almost every area they went relative to their numbers, relative to their proportion.
I hate to use the word overachievers, but that's what the meaning relative to their very small numbers and proportion to most populations, their achievements in these great areas like finance and medicine and legal and other things, is enormous. I mean, it's well known in America that I don't think the Hollywood studio system, the golden years of Hollywood, which has had an enormous influence over the world, right. It influenced iron rain when she saw movies, Gary Cooper and others coming. That origins of Hollywood are almost entirely jewish. In the beginning, Metro Golden, Mayor and others and Louis V. Mayer and others wouldn't have happened without a.
They're, the anti semitism induces them to go into certain areas. They think they can be freer, Scott. And then they so succeed. It's like the anti semitism is intensified and ramped up because now it's very visible, especially to groups that proportionally achieve nothing and again, in proportion to their numbers, which is odd, because if they're truly religious, they shouldn't care about achieving secular success.
And yet they seem to simultaneously say, I resent and envy those who are achieving material success. The Jews, someone in Islam might say that, right? But if you say, well, your ideal is the afterlife, not this life. So why do you care whether any group or any particular religion is succeeding in an earthly manner? Well, because their real hatred is for the earthly, I would put it that way, yeah.
[00:31:12] Speaker A: I wondered how much was a result of not only things like interest, but also that Jews might be the trader that you would go to if you wanted items that you couldn't ask from a fellow christian in society.
[00:31:31] Speaker B: Yes, that's another good point. Another way I put it is if you really believe wealth is physicalist, as a Marxist would, but maybe even certain really medieval people, medieval religionists, would that then going up from the earth to the top of a skyscraper. Earth meaning agriculture, the real salt of the earth, as they say. The farmers are almost never vilified. They're deified, right, the farmers. And then the worker on the line, on the assembly line, must sweat, not the blue collar worker. In fact, they call them workers versus employers, like the employers don't work.
But then on up into, well, the services, advertising, legal services, doctor services, finance, you notice if you go up, you're getting more and more abstract, you're getting more and more that it's cerebral mental labor that's adding value. You're going up what Ein Rand called the pyramid of ability, so that there's many more in certain numbers, many more who are physicalists, far fewer the minorities are productive ability. Minorities are up in the top of the pyramid, contributing the most, he said, not exploiting, but contributing the most down below. So here you see a minority group, the Jews, dominating in this upper part of the pyramid, but dominating not in a vicious, violent way, but in a productive way. And so the same kind of analysis of, hey, you must be parasitical. The higher you go up, you're drawing from all the alleged genuine work being done by those below you. So you're suspect on the grounds of you're a parasite.
And so all the stuff about envy and where does wealth come from is brought to concentrate on those at the top. But I hope people can see the parallels. The same kind of envy and hatred people would have of anyone who succeeds in these fields, regardless of their religion. That same kind of animosity is not going to go away because you learn that, oh, by the way, they happen to be this religion or that religion, when you look and you have your hatred focused on that, and then you say, oh my God, and then most of them are Jews, the hatred just gets intensified and exponential.
[00:34:11] Speaker A: Sure, that makes sense.
We'll get to you in just 1 minute. Contra, I do want to. Our CEO Jennifer Grossman is here and I wanted to invite you. We've been trying to get you to the stage for a few minutes to ask Richard a question.
[00:34:30] Speaker C: Yeah, thanks, Scott. Thanks, Richard. Great. Also to see Professor Hicks here.
I wanted to add a couple of notes of hope, or at least possible reasons, rational reasons for optimism. One thing that I have been surprised by, but also pleased by, in terms of what we are finding, the engagement with the Atlas Society's content and our videos online, is that we are getting the most engagement, the most views in the arabic speaking world. So the videos that we put out on themes like capitalism and envy and victimhood and gratitude and Ayn Rand and all of the characters from her novels, videos that get a million views in English, are getting 6 million, 7 million, 8 million views and a ton of positive engagement in the arabic speaking world. So I do think that there are some young people, predominantly out there, that are open to and eager for a new perspective. They feel that the old isms, nationalism, socialism, islamism, have not served them well. And so that is a little bit of a bright spot. And I'd also say that capitalism, more capitalism, is the answer towards greater peace in the Middle east.
The fact that there are now lots of business relationships between companies in Israel, companies in the United States, and companies in, in the Gulf states, that they now have a self interested reason, do want to see a peaceful context for profit making. So I thought that was particularly optimistic. And then maybe, Richard, I know you spoke at our Gulch conference in Nashville last summer. Of course, we had one of the very most generous donors to the Atlas Society, Dr. Michael Kaufman, who gave a fantastic talk there, talking about Atlas shrugging in Israel. And he was highly critical of the current government there for what he described as a marriage of the muscle and the mystics, and in particular kind of Netanyahu making these alliances with the ultra orthodox, ultra religious.
And that that was certainly injecting an element of irrationality into the domestic and foreign policy of Israel, and that him so focused on some of these other things.
As I like to say, the choice of doing one thing is the choice not to do another thing. And when we look at the spectacular security failure that these attacks represented, I mean, not to be blaming the victim, but also kind of trying to look forward in terms of what is the proper posture and the proper orientation to minimize this kind of horrific terrorist debacle going forward.
[00:38:17] Speaker B: All great points, I totally agree. I was at the Kaufman presentation, and yes, JAG, and that could be retrieved on YouTube, that the Atlas channel Kaufman was highlighting what people forget because so much has happened since then, but that the demonstration, the controversies in Israel about judicial reform that was going on. And you're absolutely right, Jennifer. One of the reasons it was being critiqued is that they were thinking of getting rid of judicial review, the idea of preserving civil liberties in Israel by striking down laws. And it did seem for some to be a move toward integrating, I hate to say, church and state. I guess it would be synagogue and state by. Yes, by Netanyahu appeasing the fundamentalists and the orthodox as opposed to the, you know, the feeling was, well, okay, Iran is a problem because it has unified Islam and state. The solution to this is not to integrate Judaism and state in Israel because we're going to lose our liberties. There's a lot of truth to that, I think jag also, your point about victim was really a really good one, because in terms of people trying to figure out why the anti, this is not so much anti jew, but anti Israel, which has a lot of overlap.
Part of it is the oppressor and oppressed perpetrator and victim, capitalist versus labor, straights versus gays, men versus women. This what's called cultural Marxism. Marxism, having failed completely to explain what happens in economics, shifted their gears to trying to perpetuate as many animosities as they could between groups allegedly at each other's throat. And this is, in John Rawls's quote, theory of justice out of Harvard is really a theory of unjustice, 1970, which took academia by storm. And he had the same view. There's advantaged and disadvantaged, and there's constant exploitation, and it's perpetual and can't be overcome except by paying indulgences and guilt money to the ones who are oppressed. And this has happened with Israel because if you think about it, after World War II, there was enormous sympathy for Israel. After the Holocaust. But why? Because they were victims. They were clearly, unabashedly victims. And the same altruism that would say, oh, we need to benefit the victims. Okay, but notice what's happened since 1948. As they became stronger, as they recovered, as they grew their economy, as they built their military, they were under attack by surrounding Arabs. First the 67 war, then 73 war and onward. See, now the idea was, you're the perpetrators, Israel. And that is, notice how much of the campus and other demonstrations today are exactly that. The Palestinians are now the victim. They're the ones and being victimized by these strong Israelis. So in many ways, the template hasn't changed. It's just the players have changed as to who fits into the template and that people should be aware of as well, because all that stuff is totally contrived, the idea that someone is. But it's true of the Jews and the labor pyramid, because you're able and because you're competent and because you're accomplished does not mean you've achieved that at the cost of those who have not accomplished. But that's exactly. If you take that same theory and bring it up to nation state relations, that's what you've got here. You've got Israel being blamed for the utter brutality and poverty of Gaza. Gaza, which has been ruled by Hamas since 2000. What is it, 2014? They voted for Hamas in Gaza. They asked for their oppression, and they're blaming it on Israel. It's crazy. But we see that in America as well. The victimhood card that people play.
That's what's going on here as well. And that does explain what seems like a transformation in world attitudes towards Israel from 1948 onward, when they were founded. By the way, you mentioned the security lapse. It's a head scratcher to me, and I've never seen it explained in any analysis that the October 7 attack was the 50th anniversary of the Yom Kippur attack, literally to the day. October 7, 1973, was the beginning of the Yom Kippur war, when Israel was attacked, and why the IDF and why the Mossad and why israeli security did not have their eyes wide open in the days leading up to the 50th anniversary is beyond me. I don't think that was coincidental. Everyone knows that Hamas had been trying and practicing this for a long time. But that date on the calendar wasn't circled in Tel Aviv. And I don't understand why, unless you do have conspiracy theories that say just as FDR wanted Japan to attack Pearl harbor so we can get into World War II, maybe Netanyahu did that here. If that's discovered later when they investigate this, that would be quite terrible. That would be quite something bad.
[00:43:43] Speaker A: But anyway, sometimes they just get so much intel, you don't know which warning to believe.
Now, just going back to Israel for a mean, you talked about they're not going all out, but, I mean, they're not going all out, and yet they're still getting smeared as being genocidal monsters, right?
[00:44:05] Speaker B: What do you make of that, Scott?
[00:44:07] Speaker A: So, I mean, can they do much more without world support crumbling, even Biden's.
[00:44:15] Speaker B: Well, that's a good question.
It's sad to say that that would be a condition for them, but it's a condition meaning we're not going to defend ourselves unless we get a lot of support from abroad.
That's not their approach. And they're specifically, of course, very concerned about us support. Now here I would counsel, but I don't know if you can counsel Netanyahu to do this, who's been, of all the israeli prime ministers over the years, probably the best in terms of the origins of terrorism, how to fight terrorism, how to be uncompromising about it. But he hasn't been that good in practice about it. He's written a great book about it. But I'm worried about him and others saying, well, the US gives us military support.
They sell us stuff for the air force and elsewhere, which is true, but lots of other countries do that, too. They buy us weapons and things like that. The idea they seem to have, which is, therefore we must adopt U. S. Military strategies. Therefore we must adopt goofy us policies about civilians and things like that. Definitely hamstrings they. Could they be able to say, listen, we're going to buy your stuff. Thank you. We are paying you, but we're going to conduct war on Old Testament grounds. We're not going to conduct it on your New Testament grounds. I don't know that, I don't know enough about the philosophy of military in Israel to know whether this has changed or not or what the problem is. But it is a big problem. I think it's making them pull punches.
[00:45:57] Speaker A: And what level of pressure is being brought to.
[00:46:03] Speaker B: When on the good side, when you hear Netanyahu and others saying our mission is to, I don't think he uses the word exterminate, but our mission is to get rid of Hamas. Okay. I guess so. What about Hezbollah? What about Hezbollah in Lebanon, which is attacking them from the other side?
What about, if you look it up, by the way, all Hamas leadership is in Qatar.
They're sitting there in Qatar. There's pictures, they have group pictures that appear in major newspapers. The US treats Qatar as an ally.
Did you know that the biggest us military base in the Middle east is not in Israel, it's in Qatar. So there's a huge military base in Qatar.
You could probably stand in one of the turrets and kill all the Hamas leaders in Qatar as they will move between their hotels and brothels. And they don't. So you have to wonder why, like during World War II, if you had a clear shot of Hitler, Himmler and the rest of them and didn't take it. Someone might say, I guess you don't really want to kill Nazis, do you? Because here's the head of. And so that's a headshicker, too. You have to ask people, what are you actually trying to do here? And the longer it goes on, the longer they're going to face pressure. So Netanyahu must know that, right, that you can't take a long time to do this or you're going to lose support.
But my advice would be you shouldn't be looking for support from appeasers, appeasers of Islam or people like Biden who are funding and financing Iran. Iran, who's behind all these groups? The Biden administration has dropped all sanctions against Iran and has given them, I don't know, something like 30 or $40.
[00:47:48] Speaker A: Billion that helps the Houthis fire their missiles.
[00:47:54] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:47:56] Speaker A: Now, just to take the other side for a moment, what about reports that Israel shot their own hostages that were trying to escape? Is there any indication that maybe they need to relax their rules of engagement at all?
[00:48:11] Speaker B: Oh, I don't think so. I think here's a case, the terrible tragedy of someone holding a white flag. But what does the IDF know? That this has often been done by combatants on the other side who do it and pretend to be surrendering, and then they open fire on the israeli soldiers. So that's what happened here. They were actually hostages that wanted to alert the IDF who was coming in, that we are part of the hostages.
And they spoke in Hebrew, too. So someone said, well, what's the deal there? Because often the Hamas terrorists will do that as well, to lure them in. So I think it's a tragedy, but I think what you do not hear at all is much condemnation of the approach that Hamas takes to using hospitals and schools and un warehouses to get resupplied, to hide, to use women and children as shields. Two days ago was revealed there's many, many miles of tunnels underground in Gaza. Tunnels not to help Gazans or move food around, but to attack Israel. And there is one that's been revealed, which is so big, so huge, so long. I think it's 3 miles long that it looks like the Holland tunnel under. It looks like the Holland tunnel in New York. The thing is huge. You would have had to have equipment, really heavy duty equipment, provided by who? Provided that funded over a long period of time to do such.
So this is with the help of Iran, the UN. The UN is in on this. It's awful. It's terrible.
But I wouldn't blame israeli soldiers for being a bit nervous about who's approaching them in a God awful place like Gaza. By the way, another thing that's happening is the US is starting to promise to rebuild Gaza. So not only has the US helped appease Hamas, but now they're talking about wasting us taxpayer money on rebuilding Gaza, which has become a rubble. I don't know what can be done in Gaza other than it really has to be reduced to rubble. If, as we see, Hamas is hiding in the buildings, the hospitals and the schools, in effect, Hamas wants there to be rubble there, and they're hoping that the world community will feel sorry for them.
I assume this audience realizes that the loss of civilians in war like this is totally due to the perpetrator. And the perpetrator here is Hamas, not Israel. So any civilian death is on the hands of Hamas. And I think Netanyahu has been pretty good about saying that. Actually, Marco Rubio was very good about saying this when approached by, I don't know, someone from Al Jazeera or something like that. And he was very adamant about that principle. So that is a very important principle for the Israelis and Americans not to fall for the idea that they are responsible for casualties among civilians. And it's not really necessary to cite this, but maybe worth citing it for context that polls have been done since October 7 showing that 80% of Palestinians support Hamas. So this idea that there's a bunch of innocent people running around saying, oh, my God, we're victims of Hamas, leave us alone.
They support Hamas completely, almost as much as young Americans at the Ivy Leagues.
[00:51:59] Speaker A: Let's go to Contra Coultura. Thank you.
[00:52:04] Speaker D: Hi, Scott. Thank you for allowing me to speak again.
I would go back to Richard's original take on the ideology within Judaism and how the left characterizes Judaism as capitalism.
And it's always puzled me that many Jews don't really identify as capitalists. And I'm reading this book that I just quoted on the comments on the history of the Frankfurt school and the academia in Columbia University after the war running from the Nazis. And were they not also mostly jewish? And what do you make of this dichotomy on ideological proclivity within Judaism? Thank you.
[00:53:15] Speaker B: Well, that's a great question. And you understand that, of course, if no jew ever really fully understood the case for capitalism, if none did, which is not true, it would still be horrific for them to be attacked for any reasons, but on the grounds that they're part and parcel of capitalism but you name a really good point. And it's true. I mean, it's undeniably true. Milton Friedman, a jewish famous economist, free market economist in America, who died, I think, in 2005, famously wrote in 1972, the Jews and capitalism. So the Jews and capitalism by Friedman, he was troubled by the fact that he could name, he was in academia, University of Chicago and elsewhere, that so many Jews were not pro capitalist.
And he would try to tell them, you need to be pro capitalist. Why are you not pro capitalist? And I don't know the last you can look at the polls over the years, but it is true that Jews predominantly vote Democrat, not Republican. Now, assuming that Republicans lean more capitalist, that is od, why wouldn't they be more republican than Democrat? They're not. It's also, though, interesting, because it kind of refutes the marxist view that the richer you are, the more you're going to be pro Republican and vote Republican. Well, that's not, that's not true of Jews. They're very rich and they vote for Democrats and finance them and support them. That's why so many of them, like Bill Ackman and Leon Cooperman and others, are standing up saying, oh, my gosh, what the hell has happened? I've been giving my money to democratically dominated universities and foundations. And Bernie Madoff, at Bernie Madoff, same thing. Bernie Madoff would get a whole bunch of money from people because he claimed he was a jewish philanthropist. He was actually a crook.
But you make a really good point. I would leave it at this. One of the best books on this is by Jerry Mueller, or Mueller, M-U-L-L-E-R from 2010, capitalism and the Jews. And that's not only a history of the relationship, but this phenomenon that you mentioned of, why would Jews be suspicious of her against capitalism? And he gives you that. It's very good. It's a very good answer. By the way, one of Milton Friedman's theory was, since Jews are dominant in academia, they're going to be anti capitalists just because they happen to be in academia. So there's some explanation there. But we've also heard, I'm not sure it's a really legitimate phrase, but we've also heard the phrase the self loathing jew.
What is the self loathing? And this is Mueller's point. They've accepted the premise like everyone else. Some of them aren't good at saying, fu, we do not accept your premise that we are evil because, interested in commercial affairs, that we're evil because we succeed. They accept the premise. They're taught to accept the premise, and they're not immune to that. And you never want to classify an entire group as this or that. But of course, they would not be immune to the arguments, especially if they're in the intellectual realms, especially if they're in academia. But on the good side, there have been an enormous number of very intelligent, very accomplished, very certain and morally certain jewish intellectuals who defended capitalism, Milton Freedman among them. And again, not a perfect defense, but my gosh, there's many I couldn't even begin to name, but I would start with Milton Friedman. There are many, many things, thankfully, that know the issues and defend it. By the way, those interested in the origins of objectivism, if you asked, where did objectivist intellectuals come know? First generation, second generation, third generation objectivists, if you know them, Ayn Rand and Brandon and Greenspan and Peacock. I'm jewish.
I'm a Catholic. There are many objectivists, second generation who came from Catholicism, but you find very few Islamicists in the objectivism who were once Islamicists. Why is that?
Could it be my theory about of the three religions, and almost everyone is born into some kind of religion? Of the three religions, the jewish religion is, I'll just put it negatively, least anti capitalist, least anti reason, least antiegoism.
But if you're in that realm and are smeared every day about being egoistic and intellectual and commercial, many of them will fall for it and loathe themselves.
[00:58:11] Speaker A: Great content.
Real quickly, I just wanted to touch back to something you said earlier about the love thy enemy attitude that's in Christianity. I mean, are we not seeing that a little bit more today in these progressive policies where retail theft is somewhat legal in California?
[00:58:35] Speaker B: Well, I think that I would attribute that more to the leftover of 2020 St. Floyd riots. I call them George Floyd riots, where. Where they would be coming out of know, armed with all the jewels, and they would say, these are reparations. There it is.
The idea of, I'm not stealing, I'm getting restitution for stuff stolen from me, which is totally absurd, of course, but I don't know if that's. Are you saying, Scott, that that is anti Jewish in the sense that the Jewish are in retail and things like that? I don't know if it's that. I think it's more the idea of I get to do this because I've been oppressed and I'm disadvantaged.
I'm one of the oppressed. I'm one of the disadvantaged. And therefore, and if I'm not going to get reparation which apparently everyone is telling me I should. What's taking so long?
I get to just take it directly.
And, yes, then the prosecutors and the ags, they're even worse because they stand back and say, yeah, that's okay.
[00:59:40] Speaker A: That's cheek turning. Well, this has been a great session. I look forward to hearing it on the playback.
Next week, the Atlas Society is interviewing Dr. Robert Malone. Very brave choice. That's going to be Wednesday, December 27, at 05:00 p.m.. Eastern.
You know, as someone who grew up jewish, I'll say, merry Christmas, happy Hanukkah, whatever else you celebrate. And we'll look forward to providing more good content in the new year.
[01:00:15] Speaker B: Thank you, Scott. Thank you so much. Shalom.
[01:00:17] Speaker A: Thanks, Richard.
Bye.
