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Apr 29, 2010

[shamireaders] More responses to Lasha Darkmoon

 


More responses to Lasha Darkmoon's Goodbye, America

And to other matters

 

From Martin Webster, England

I seem to have lost the criticism of Lasha Darkmoon's "Goodbye, America" article by John Spritzler, and your (Ken's) reply to Spritzler. Sorry to trouble you, but I would be most grateful if you please send me those two particular texts.

{From Shamir: The texts are on http://groups.yahoo.com/group/shamireaders/message/1705 }

My opinion of Darkmoon's article, especially part 2, is that it was a long gush of emotion, not strongly embedded in rationality; indeed, it bordered on hysteria. It was (if I dare say it in these "politically correct" days) characteristic of a certain kind of female
-- to be more precise: a kind of emotionally self-indulgent thinking which is characteristic of some females. I cannot imagine a male writing in such a way.

Part 2 of her essay was, especially in its concluding passages, was simply a howl of anguish against the findings of science, especially the vistas opened up by Charles Darwin, which have done so much to dispel religious faiths and the God idea.

Darkmoon clearly feels an emotional anguish at having her belief in a comforting, loving Father-God taken away. She asserts (I think hysterically) that this loss of religious faith has undermined any basis for human morality and decent conduct and that we are all, therefore, sliding into the "Satanist" lunacy of Aleister Crowley.

This is an absurd thesis which crumbles upon the slightest examination and reflection. What evidence is there that humankind is any more or less prone to evil now that it was 50, 500 or 5,000 years ago? What evidence is there that societies based on faith in a God, or more particularly Christian societies, are less prone to evil than contemporary secular societies or the heathen societies of pre-Christian era?

Treating one's fellow human beings in a decent way, even sometimes to the point of individual self-sacrifice, is prompted -- whether we realise it or not -- by enlightened self/group-interest. God-believers attribute such conduct to a divinely-inspired code ("morality") which would not otherwise exist. More likely it is but an impulsive strategy for individual and/or group survival acquired through the accumulated experience of endless ages of evolution

It is a form of behaviour which is not peculiar to human beings. It is manifested by most if not all mammals and many other lesser species of animal, none of whom have the slightest concept of "God".

Enlightened self-interest manifested by decent conduct is balanced, of course, by a competing selfishness, but selfishness is also a tool in the survival locker.

When one or other of these impulses, which are hard-wired within our DNA, get out of balance in relation to the prevailing external circumstances in which we have to survive and socialise, then we have dysfunctional human beings and/or dysfunctional societies.

It is the excessive selfishness of the Jews, for example, who have created a culture predicated on their "God-given right" to predate on other human groups and destroy their cultures that has generated the phenomenon which the Jews designate as "anti-semitism". On a more individual level, predatory conduct is simply characterised as "crime".

As to other aspects of Darkmoon essay, I did not like her technique of attributing "quotes" to individuals, which if true, would be dynamite; but which are then admitted to be invented quotes created to illustrate those persons' likely thoughts.

That is an acceptable literary flourish in a fictional work, but it is not a proper way to conduct a serious argument on any topic. It undermines the reader's willing to trust ANY quote produced. Speculative mind reading may be part of the ritual of an obscure religious sect -- Spiritualist "mediums" purport to perform the trick -- but it is hardly a basis for rational exegesis of real events.

I note that Darkmoon is described as "an academic". In what discipline, I wonder?

Sincerely,

Martin Webster.

 

From Gordon Arnaut

 

This must be a joke, right? I think this was the same writer who joked about making soup out of his rooster for waking him up early one morning?

 

Anyway, perhaps Ms. Darkmoon should do a bit of studying on the history of lynching in the US. Lynching was perfectly legal in many jurisdictions of the South right up until the 1930s. What is really gruesome is how public these spectacles were. The lynching would be announced ahead of time in the local newspaper (often as a front-page story) and greeting cards would be printed and sold afterwards, oftentimes depicting a photo of the hanged and mutilated victim.

 

A few years ago a New York gallery held an exhibit of these gruesome lynching postcards. The New York Times ran an excellent story and review of the show. Victims would literally be torn to pieces by the mob, trying to get hold of a piece of flesh, a tuft of hair, clothing, finger or whatever as a gruesome trophy.

 

These postcards would be sent along to those who could not be there. "Oh what a time was had by all. Wish you could have been there. Enjoy the postcard."

 

This important history of the US is nowhere to be seen. Why is it not taught in schools, along with other important historical truths, such as the genocide of the native peoples? That speaks volumes about the national character of the US.

 

Regards,

 

Gordon.

 

From Ronald Knarr

 

Dr. Lasha Darkmoon, I read your piece today on Shamir's e-mail. I'm in complete agreement and was aware of most of what you wrote. The only thing I would comment on is your promotion of the despair you disparage. A solution must be written in your conclusion or else you are truly promoting what you don't like.

For me I would at least tell people not to give in to despair. God is not dead-patient but not dead. Urge the living of a moral life to the best of one's ability in the face of the terror we are now living in. Pray that our living God will remember us and be our great help. Without prayer we are lost. I know of no one who prays who does not have hope, and without hope there is nothing left but despair and then our enemies do win.

God bless you for your efforts. Good fruit will bear good.

Ronald Knarr

 

From Mitch Medina

 

Aww, c'mon guys.  Everyone who grew up white in pre-Giuliani New York City knew perfectly well that if you got hassled, it was going to be by black kids.  This did not stop me from both being active in the Civil Rights movement in the 60's and 70's, and moving to another subway car if I didn't like the racial balance in the one in which I found myself.

 

Thank God, those days are over.  This is because America worked very hard to try to remediate the legacy of slavery and Jim Crow for 50 years -- and managed.  I was personally victimized by pro-black and anti-Jewish quotas in the colleges of my choice as a high school graduate -- but that did not stop me from supporting affirmative action.

 

The stereotyping of groups based on the misdeeds of individuals within them is, was and always will be contemptible.  This is true even if bad actors are statistically over-represented in a specific population.

 

"I have a dream -- that one day, our children will be judged, not by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character."

 

If there were a Martin Luther King to be found anywhere in Israel/Palestine, the problems of that troubled land, of which I am a dual citizen, would be finished within a generation. 

 

 

P.S. Sorry, Adam.  I find nothing useful in Part 2 of Darkmoon's article.  Your gentle reproof is admirable.  But Lasha is nuts.  Some of my best friends are non-white?  Maybe I'm just getting old and grumpy, but this kind of thing -- it was already disreputable when I was a teenager. 

 

Faithfully,

 

Mitch

 

From Margit Alm, Australia

 

A comment for Dr. Lasha Darkmoon:

 

Hello Dasha -

You said in your post you want criticism.  I can only say what a bewildering and confusing two-pieces writing you have presented.

 

I am just reading a book by the English philosopher A.C. Grayling ("Thinking of Answers - Questions in the philosophy over everyday life").   Under his essay 'Enlightenment' he quotes Kant and Kant's definition of enlightenment.   Kant wrote:  "Enlightenment is man's emergence from his self-imposed immaturity...."  

 

In my view, your articles did not reflect the opinion of an enlightened person.

 

Best wishes

Margit Alm, Melbourne, Australia

 

From John Wheat Gibson, Texas

I am in complete agreement that Lasha Moon demonstrates considerable
historical insight. I also agree that her descent into racism discredits
even her plainly true observations and overwhelms her analysis with a
disgusting stench. There is a certain logic to saying "the Jews" are
responsible for Zionism, just as there is a certain logic in saying "the
white people" are responsible for slavery, lynching, segregation, and the
continuing impoverishment of black North Americans. That logic, however,
like virtually all generalizations about human beings, is pernicious because
it dehumanizes the actual members of the group criticized and diverts
attention from the economic roots of racism to a reified notion of race as
the source of group consciousness.

But my tenant farmer white grandfather
opposed the Ku Klux Klan and the institutions that murdered and oppressed
black people in Texas after the Civil War. Therefore I beg writers who
would defend justice to avoid stupid racist generalizations about "the Jews"
or "the white people," etc. What we should condemn, and condemn with clear
language, is Jewish supremacism, white supremacism, and all the other racist
doctrines that keep us from recognizing our common humanity and our common
material interests.

My only disagreement is with John's suggestion that "the US military, which
until further notice is not under the command of the Mossad." There is
simply too much evidence to the contrary. John might as well say that the
spider in which the wasp lays her eggs, so that the spider then spins a web
for
the wasp larvae's cocoons, is not under the command of the wasp. Saying
a priori that << Neither the Defense Department nor the Justice Department
were controlled on 9/11 by Israeli agents>> it simply an empirically
unfounded statement of ideology that totally ignores the history of the
entire executive branch of the U.S. government, at least since the
assassination of John Kennedy.

 

As for the crimes - Gimme a break.  Nobody on Shamir's list is going to make apologies for the
horrible crimes Ms. Darkmoon describes, any more than we make apologies for
the same crimes by Zionists against the people of Palestine.  But to suggest
that Netanyahu's scam to drain the U.S. is motivated by racial animosity to
white people is absurd.  Nobody is whiter than Netanyahu.

But if we are going to accept the idea that race war is inevitable, then we
are in no position to criticize the Zionists, the Nazis, or any other
"master race" that claims the right to exterminate the rest of us.

I agree with Tom that there are an abundance of gelatinous white liberals
who ignore atrocities committed by black people for fear of the same
libelous accusations of racism they receive if they condemn the Zionist
Holocaust against Palestine.  But cowards are cowards, regardless of their
skin color.

John Wheat Gibson

 

From Jim Dean

 

Israel, There is a big split in the military on this and the Intel people. Those who know what a disaster it would be I think will leak what would be needed to try to stop it. What they are most concerned about is a nasty black flag operation to use as a trigger. They are afraid the Israeli elements would do it.

 

Guys on the inside know where a lot of skeletons are buried on the big guys. They have learned that it is better to move before a rigged attacked as afterwards the public is too rattled to read the tea leaves any more, even with an instructor.  

 

Here is Gordon Duff's latest. We are all scared to death of a dirty bomb trigger.   Jim Dean

 

http://www.veteranstoday.com/2010/04/24/gordon-duff-stage-being-set-for-dirty-bomb-false-flag/

 

 

 

 

From Hal Womack

 

Hello Ish,

Thanks for running my reply. I should have unpacked JAPE as "Jewish-American _Planetary_ Empire" rather than the way previously given (the underlines in this case are one-off disposable).

Maybe I will take up soon John's (or Elias Davidsson) attempt to exculpate Aerial Shaboom re Jewish lightning.

Looks like Iran tops the crises list currently. The following thriller (a) wears rather well on that point. You might wish IFOT or In the Fullness of Time to review it as part of a general evaluation of the spy genre in contemporary culture? I refer to (a) HARD RAIN (first published in Australia in 2008) by David Rollins, as previously mentioned to you in a circular.

The noticeable difference between Jewish aka the High Cabal's relation to Obama as contrasted to previously to SonnaBush merits discussion, eh?

More time, Hal

 

From Lille Singh, Delhi – New York

 

Salaams Adam Bhai……………..perhaps all your outraged commentators should delve into history as in actual events not fabricated propaganda.  The US amongst other continents was never white nor christian as in the current fanatical usage of the term.  How come there is no outrage at Africans, N & S Americas being controlled by alien beliefs and entities, is there total amnesia?  extraordinary how there is no correlation between facts and delusions.

Tolerance is vanishing, affinities are being ignored,  we are all human beings before being labelled into neat little geographical/theological terms.  The term itself is nonsensical - what is multiculture? - if people refuse to think we cannot communicate ergo all we have is expanding discord. All the artificial colonial borders and alphabet controls which regulate the globe should be deleted,  we need to continue to evolve rather than be pawns of various demented agendas

I have zero patience with people who call themselves scholars and intellectuals yet their actual knowledge is minimal since it is so narrowly defined rather one should say stifled,  ask them to travel and open up their minds instead.

 

 

 

 

From Lasha Darkmoon

 

Dear Mr Shamir,

 

I am not happy with this "White" issue thing. Never have been. I take all your criticisms on board. My ideology is basically similar to yours. I often visit Toronto, a multicultural city. My friends there are of all nationalities. So I am not a racist.

 

I genuinely do believe it's too late to go back to the past. Ployglot, multicolored communities — maybe this is the future. White Utopias? I can't really see them working. Well, Mr Shamir, you are a Christian, and you know that comment of St Paul's about "seeing through a glass darkly."  Many of the writers I am reading nowadays on the sites I frequent are concerned with race and "Whiteness" in a somewhat obsessive way that I do not share. These are not my own obsessions. And yet, these people feel beleagured and frightened — that they're "losing their country", their jobs, their culture, their traditional values. Their very religion, Mr Shamir — the Christianity you hold so dear — they see it being destroyed in America by organized Jewry's control of Hollywood, the mass media, and the porn industry which is largely in Jewish hands. So they would seem to have valid grounds for concern. There is much talk nowadays of "violent revolutions" and "military coups". When hope dies, men get desperate...

 

Almost every day I am in touch with my dear friend 'J', a Jewish American Princess, and so I get a different perspective from her on all these matters.  However much I may rage against "organized Jewry" in my articles, J knows I don't hate Jews. No way.  My close friendship with her precludes any such possibility. 

 

What I'd like you to do, Mr Shamir, is to publish my future articles on your site in spite of your strong disagreement with me on this multicultural issue. Take the risk.  And then feel free on your site to point out my various errors. You have "Shamir Readers". Let these clever and well-informed commentators feel free to tear me to pieces if they wish. How else can we find truth and wisdom, dear Mr Shamir, unless we engage in free dialogue?

 

Your sincere admirer,

 

Lasha Darkmoon

 

Part 2 of my latest article "Goodbye, America!" maybe reads like a collage in places; this is because Kevin MacDonald was forced to make extensive cuts. Once the connecting bits were removed, it was inevitable that a collage-like effect should be created. The second link below is a blog by KMD which explains why he felt it necessary to make these cuts. An interesting discussion can be found in the Comments column here —this has attracted many comments already.  

Sincere best wishes.

Lasha.

http://theoccidentalobserver.net/

http://theoccidentalobserver.net/tooblog/?p=1647

 

 

Re: American self-hatred by Ken Freeland

 

From Michael Smith

 

The discussion between Ken Freeland and Blagovesta Doncheva is interesting, but the premise beneath it is flawed.

U.S. public support for imperial wars is probably at an all-time low.  A mobilization of the country such as occurred in WWII is inconceivable today, and not because the Pentagon wouldn't like to see it.

Formal education and moral intelligence have little to do with one another.  In the Vietnam years, the college educated supported the Indochina slaughter much more than did working class Americans without such credentials, with the honorable exception of student protest leaders, a small percentage of the university educated.  And it is not hard to understand why:  working class Americans disproportionately suffered the consequences of that war (and every war for that matter), so their moral judgment was correspondingly sharper.  Intellectuals habitually can't see the moral forest for the trees.

Today, U.S. support for war is extremely shallow.  With control of information, short blitzkrieg-like assaults can achieve the "rally around the flag" phenomenon for a while, but extended imperial wars face steady erosion of public support almost as a matter of course.

Protest can still be effective, but not if the underlying assumption is that the people who are reluctant to join the protest are intellectually deficient.  Also, we have to face the fact that the 1960s generation - billed as the ultimate protest generation - obviously failed to achieve the cultural revolution it so glibly talked about. We should therefore expect that many people have concluded that protest doesn't work. 

In short, the "ignorant" majority is smarter than we take ourselves to be.

Michael Smith

 

From Gordon Arnaut

 

Dear Ken,

If I may jump in yet again with a quick comment. (And then I will go back to being quiet, promise).

 

Blagovesta makes some very good points. Her reaction to the helicopter crew in Baghdad is a gut reaction I think a lot of people have had. What kind of monsters are these? Such coldblooded ease in committing such a horrible atrocity is truly a jolt to one's sensibilities. The flat, even tone of voice is the thing that sticks with me the most, echoing in my mind still. 

 

The question that naturally follows is, "What kind of system produces such people, such killing automatons?"

 

I think that is what she is trying to answer. And I think she has touched on some very good points. Obviously education and indoctrination play an important role. I find Americans the most indoctrinated people imaginable -- knee-jerk when it comes to shibboleths like the "free market," and other such touchstones of the American religion.

 

Another aspect is the militarization of society. This is a more recent phenomenon that happened after Vietnam. This is also something that is spreading like a virus, especially here in Canada. Not far from my home there is a "Highway of Heroes," in honor of Canadian soldiers in Afghanistan.

 

Never mind that these "heroes" spend their time in Afghanistan stepping on the throats of local peasants and wildly spraying machine gun fire in all directions as they thunder through donkey villages at 80 mph in their armored carrier convoys. And then they go back to their air-conditioned base, where they have Burger King, Pizza Hut and a hockey rink (a miniature suburbia). While the Afghan peasants are left to pick up the pieces (and twisted and broken bodies).

 

This militarization of society fills the media. The soldiers are heroes, the police are heroes, the firefighters are heroes. Everyone in a uniform is now a hero. We love heros. Heros R' us.

 

This is all part of what I call the "religion" of imperialist capitalism, whose purpose is to fill the void where the human spirit once lived -- sucked out by the dehumanizing system in which we live. We have all been reduced to worker ants, nothing more. We are just a consumer whose only purpose is to provide a number on balance sheet for some giant bank and other giant corporations. 

 

So we have been given all kinds of things to worship. The Hollywood "stars," the military and police, the mighty business men, and even the politicians themselves. 

 

Blagovesta is right. There is no way to fight this. The game is over. Orwell saw this coming decades ago, where we are all just worker ants, going about our allotted chores and having no control whatsoever over any aspect of our existence.

 

The masses have tuned out and they do not care. They know there is no way out. They go about their lives weighed down by the pressure of being debt serfs. They know that homelessness is just a couple of missed paychecks away. 

 

So they keep their heads down, toil away at Walmart or McDonald's and come home to watch mind-numbing garbage on TV. They cheer the carnage that they see in Iraq and Afghanistan the same way the Roman mob filled the Coliseum to watch the Gladiators and the Lions.

 

The vapidity of daily life, the vacuum in people's hearts and souls is the cause. I agree that if you give a young man a good education he will have a good chance of fulfilling his potential. Finding a passion and interest that will sustain him and give his life meaning, and perhaps a life's work along the way. 

 

But who is going to give people such a gift? The corporate fascist state? How could they spread around billions on a superior education for all, when they need those billions to round out their Forbes 400 list?

 

Regards,

 

Gordon Arnaut

Oro-Medonte, Ontario.

 

From John Bayldon

 

Strange thing is- and I really wish it wasn't so- I wish I could blame US TV or the Jews but I cannot for the fact that Americans have been known for this juvenile attitude and barbarity from at least 1917- my second uncles told of it in WW1- as Brit soldier shot in the lung by Germans and trying to crawl (5 miles) was approached by two American troops as 'Hey Kraut you wanna die?' ' No give him a gut shot.' bang! my uncle Tom was then shot in the thigh- he continued crawling until  Brit troops found him and took him to hospital- he lived to age 85 with only one lung- they built them tough back then!

Great uncle Fred- (Brit army) shot in the shoulder and legs by crazed  Yanks and left for dead was captured by the Germans and treated with utmost care by German medics in a German hospital. also lived to age 82.

Americans act and have always acted like 12-16 year old kids- I honestly believe that in a sane world Americans would, alone in the world, not be allowed guns (possibly under Scandinavian supervision) since they have shown themselves incapable of he necessary maturity to possess and use weapons safely.

Americans- saturated in their juvenile culture can never see themselves as the world sees them- histerical fat, gun-godding cowardly juveniles- as one British office put it to some high ranking US officers-'Have you an adult I could speak with please?'

JB

 

 

Lies and Wars – Danger of Iran War

 

From Robert Leverant, California

Leo and Gordon,

I've very much appreciated your analysis, insights and views. I'd like to add a thought or two to the discussion.

What is being normalized in these lies and threats, heralded throughout the world by the media, is the normalization of the use of nuclear weapons. 

Most likely, the attack will not be by Israel but by the U.S. whose first and last display of nuclear weapons to and in the world was on an innocent populations in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The use of nuclear weapons was not tactically necessary (the war was already won) but was a message to Soviet Russia. 

Though the nuclear weapons in this case allegedly will only be (mere) bunker busters targeting underground nuclear facilities, this will be accompanied by the U.S. bombing "10,000 targets to totally destroy Iran in a few hours." (Dan Plesch, in a speech in London reported in Haaretz on March 25th) The obliteration of Iran will be message to the world, "We, the U.S. and Israel, are the top dogs, and will totally destroy you and your population and infrastructure if you stand in our way. We prefer this to diplomacy. We are that insane."

Robert 

 

From Mitch Medina, New York

 

No, I think the U.S. Defense Department is acting in American interests, which include not having a nuclear-armed Iran become a regional superpower in the Middle East.

 

Israel is not a conventional threat to any state in the Middle East except the Palestinians (who, of course, don't have a state).  Iran is a conventional threat to every state in the region, and with nuclear weapons, would basically be a hegemonic power in its general neighborhood, in which a goodly proportion of the world's oil happens to be situated.

 

There is an essential difference between the Israeli nuclear deterrent, and potential Iranian nuclear weapons.  Israeli nuclear weapons can only be deployed under some kind of Masada or Osirak scenario.  But the threat of deployment of a potential Iranian nuclear force can be used to make any conventional aggression irresistible, to install puppet governments in all of the smaller states of the region, and in general, to turn any Iranian "offer" into one which "can't be refused", in the words of Don Corleone.

 

It is the existence of the Iranian nuclear threat which allows the Netanyahu government to essentially give the finger to the Obama administration, which, in the abstract, would like very much to rein in Israel in some way.

 

If I were a conspiracy theorist, I would assert that Mossad installed Ahmedinejad, to provide cover for its Greater Israel ambitions.  That proposition is no more preposterous than the one asserted by Mr. Gibson in his post of the Porter article, which is very old news in the first place.

 

Faithfully,

 

Mitch Medina

 



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Dalton's Holocaust Radio Debate on April 24, 2010:

http://www.americanfreedomradio.com/Barrett_10.html

Peace.

Michael Santomauro
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Call anytime: 917-974-6367
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Dr. David Duke's News and Updates message

 


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My new video is done.

WHITE GENOCIDE IN SOUTH AFRICA!

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This is a vital video concerning the terrible genocide going on against the White people of South Africa.

I think it is the most important video I have done to date!

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I need it more than ever right now, as the work is hard, the time is short and the funds are low!

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http://www.davidduke.com for the latest news, and that is the best place to email me personally.

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Dalton's Holocaust Radio Debate on April 24, 2010:

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Tikun Olam : Alan Dershowitz on the Goldstone Bar Mitzvah: Talking Out of Both Sides of His Mouth

 

Tikun Olam-תקון עולם: Make the World a Better Place
April 29, 2010 2:54 PM

Alan Dershowitz on the Goldstone Bar Mitzvah: Talking Out of Both Sides of His Mouth

Everyone knows all the jokes about the lying scumbag lawyers who talk out of both sides of their mouths and get paid for it.  That's pretty much Alan Dershowitz to a T.  Last week, when it appeared Richard Goldstone would not attend his grandson's bar mitzvah due to pressure from the South African pro-Israel Zionist




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Call anytime: 917-974-6367
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New York Times: Anti-Semitic Jewess

 




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April 25, 2010

Assessing Jewish Identity of Author Killed by Nazis

By PATRICIA COHEN


The first novel of Irène Némirovsky's that most people read was the last one she wrote. Némirovsky, the Russian Jewish author, died at Auschwitz in 1942 at 39 after completing two parts of a five-part novel titled "Suite Française." Secreted away in a trunk carried by Némirovsky's daughters, Denise and Elizabeth, as they escaped from German-occupied France, the manuscript was not published for more than 60 years. It received stunning reviews that simultaneously announced the discovery and loss of an enormous talent.

Némirovsky's personal story contains plenty of drama, including the desperate, heart-rending attempts by her husband, Michel Epstein, to save her. He too died at Auschwitz. But along with the belated publication came charges from a handful of critics that Némirovsky, killed because she was a Jew, was herself an anti-Semite who courted extreme right-wing friends and wrote ugly caricatured portraits of Jews.

Next month a new biography, "The Life of Irène Némirovsky: Author of Suite Française," and a collection of her short stories are being published for the first time in English in the United States, giving Americans another opportunity to assess Némirovsky's life and work.

The biographers, Olivier Philipponnat and Patrick Lienhardt, who are French and have already received enthusiastic reviews in France and Britain, had access to a trove of untapped letters, journals, archives and personal remembrances that fill in gaps about Némirovsky's life. They even unearthed an unknown short story and said they believe there is more unpublished work yet to come, including a radio play discovered just weeks ago.

As for the most incendiary charges, they unequivocally reject them. "The one word I refuse to hear is 'anti-Semitism,' " Mr. Philipponnat said, speaking in English by phone from Paris.

What motivated Némirovsky, Mr. Philipponnat and Mr. Lienhardt argue, were deep and complex feelings about her Russian-Jewish bourgeois background, shtetl Jews and, in particular, an overwhelming loathing for her mother, Anna. Vain and snobbish, Anna Némirovsky had numerous affairs and saw her daughter as an albatross, obstructing her seductions and attempts to conceal her real age. "It seems clear that this child had not been wanted," they write.

More shocking was Denise Némirovsky's tale, reported in The Sunday Times of London in 2007, that when she and her sister showed up at her grandmother's door after the war, she refused to open it, shouting "If you're orphans, go to the orphanage."

Charges of anti-Semitism first surfaced in 1929 after Némirovsky's novel "David Golder" was published. Némirovsky, who said she was repeatedly playing out the relationship with her mother in her fiction, based the characters loosely on her family. She was 26 at time — the same age as Philip Roth when he wrote "Goodbye, Columbus," a book that also earned its author the label of a "self-hating Jew."

David Golder is a greedy and crude Jewish banker with a long hooked nose and a grasping wife. The novel, tagged as both a "masterpiece" and anti-Semitic, aroused fierce sentiments from people on the left and right, from Jews and non-Jews in France, which Némirovsky, who wrote in French, considered her true spiritual home since settling there in 1919. Némirovsky rejected the accusations. When a reporter from a Zionist newspaper showed up at her home, she said: "I'm accused of anti-Semitism? Come now, that's absurd! For I'm Jewish myself and say so to anyone prepared to listen!"

But Jewish enemies were making use of her characters, the reporter persisted.

"Nevertheless, that's the way I saw them," she replied.

To Mr. Philipponnat and Mr. Lienhardt critics then and now have given the book a myopic reading. Calling it a depiction of a social milieu, they ask, "Had 'David Golder' been written in 2009 by Bernard Madoff's daughter, who would dream of accusing her of anti-Semitic views?"

In 1935 Némirovsky pointed out how different the political climate was when she wrote the novel. "It is absolutely certain that had there been Hitler, I would have greatly softened 'David Golder,' and I would not have written it in the same way," she said. "And yet I would have been wrong, it would have been a weakness unworthy of a real writer!"

The charges of anti-Semitism that resurfaced in Israel and the United States when "David Golder" was reissued and translated into English, have been polarizing. Jonathan Weiss, the author of a 2005 biography, "Irene Némirovsky: Her Life and Works," wrote in an e-mail message that because Némirovsky's critics used quotations from his book, he was inaccurately classified as someone who condemned her attitudes toward Jews, gaining him the enmity of her family. Mr. Weiss, who started his research in the 1990s, did not have access to the cache of personal writings or the family recollections made available to Mr. Philipponnat and Mr. Lienhardt.

The authors, who knew Némirovsky's work, approached a publisher about writing her biography in 2004, about two months before "Suite Française" first appeared. "When we presented the project, their first reaction was not to publish it because she was totally forgotten," Mr. Philipponnat said. He and Mr. Lienhardt had previously collaborated on a biography of Roger Stéphane, a founder of the French newspaper L'Observateur. Denise Epstein, Némirovsky's daughter, liked their treatment of Mr. Stéphane's Jewishness, Mr. Philipponnat said, and so "decided to give us all the archives as she could and her memories too."

Némirovsky wrote at least 50 short stories and 15 novels, including "Suite Française." That book barely mentions Jews. The two parts capture the chaotic escape of French civilians from the German Army in 1940 and present a sympathetic portrait of a billeted German soldier. In the thick of the maelstrom she was describing, Némirovsky wrote, "I'm working on burning lava."

Some of the 10 stories written between 1934 and 1942 and published in the new collection, "Dimanche and Other Stories," came from that same molten pit.

In "Monsieur Rose," written after the invasion, Némirovsky seems to be trying out characters and scenes for the exodus of French civilians depicted in "Suite Française."

"Fraternité" ("Brotherhood") will undoubtedly surface in the debate over Némirovsky's Jewish identity. The protagonist, Christian Rabinovitch, was based on a Jewish journalist, Pierre Loewel, Mr. Philipponnat said, yet there are several autobiographical details as well, like the reference to ancestors in Odessa, the city where Némirovsky's parents met, and her oft-repeated wish that she had been born in France.

Christian is a prosperous second-generation Frenchman, who notes that his "excessively long and pointed" nose and dry lips seemingly "parched by a thousand-year-old thirst" are "the only specifically Jewish traits I've kept." At a train station he meets a poor, disheveled Jew from Russia with the same last name, possibly a relation from generations back.

After Christian departs from this shtetl doppelgänger, she writes, "Was it possible that he was of the same flesh and blood as that man?"

"Impossible, grotesque! There's an abyss, a gulf between us!" Christian says, unsuccessfully trying to reassure himself that "he was a rich French bourgeois, pure and simple!"

In hindsight the story, written in 1936 but rejected by her publisher, seems both strangely prescient and unaware.

"Never, never can we settle!" the Jewish Rabinovitch bemoans. As soon as the Jews do, "there's a war, a revolution, a pogrom or something else and it's goodbye! 'Pack your bags, clear off.' "

Némirovsky and Epstein, of course, did not clear off after the German invasion — a choice that still angers her daughter Denise. Since 1935 the couple had been trying to gain French citizenship, and in 1939 they converted to Roman Catholicism. Distancing her family from the lower-class Jews of Eastern Europe, Némirovsky considered herself a "respectable" not an "unwanted foreigner," as she wrote Marshal Pétain, the head of the Vichy government in 1940 — in other words, a "French bourgeois, pure and simple."

But as Mr. Philipponnat and Mr. Lienhardt write in their final chapter, from the day the gendarmes arrested her, Irène Némirovsky "ceased to be a novelist, a mother, a wife, a Russian, a Frenchwoman: she was just a Jewess."



--

Dalton's Holocaust Radio Debate on April 24, 2010:

http://www.americanfreedomradio.com/Barrett_10.html

Peace.

Michael Santomauro
Editorial Director
Call anytime: 917-974-6367
ReporterNotebook@Gmail.com

http://www.DebatingTheHolocaust.com

Amazon's: DEBATING THE HOLOCAUST: A New Look At Both Sides by Thomas Dalton

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