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February 10, 2007
Another Jewish Radical Goes Completely Insane
I knew Michael Lerner was a Chomskyite idiot. I did not know that he was completely insane.
The book in which Lerner’s essay appears is billed as having been “inspired by” David Ray Griffin’s “The New Pearl Harbor,” a seminal text of the so-called “9/11 Truth” movement. The new book includes an essay by Griffin in which he makes the case that the September 11 attacks were likely “orchestrated, like many previous false-flag attacks, by U.S. agents as a pretext for a war to expand the American empire.”
In his own essay for “9/11 and American Empire,” Lerner wrote: “For those who watched the reactionary political uses made of this tragedy, it’s easy to conjure up a variety of possible conspiratorial motives that would have led the president, the vice president, or some branch of the armed forces or CIA or FBI or other ‘security’ forces to have passively or actively participated in a plot to re-credit militarism and war. We’ve learned enough about the subsequent ways that the Bush administration lied to the American public to no longer be shocked if there had been some active involvement by them in these deeds.”This guy's giving Tony Kushner a run for his money in the tiresomely earnest psychopath department. I'd say that we can come up with some very cogent reasons for being suspicious of Michael Lerner. Perhaps we could talk about the ways in which the anti-war movement has lied to the American public. I can certainly speak from personal experience on that issue. This is not even to mention the movement's awesome responsibility for the deaths of millions of innocent people in Vietnam and Cambodia, or its support for tyranny from Eastern Europe to Cuba. But I digress. When discussing forms of political insanity one should not seek logic, reason or simple human decency from its practitioners. As for Lerner himself, Jewish radicalism has a long and rather depressingly futile history, and Lerner is exceptional only in that he seeks to hijack halachic Judaism itself for his revolutionary purposes. Most Jewish radicals of the past have had the good sense to ignore religion or dismiss it entirely. Lerner's desperate need to desecrate the Torah for his own purposes is both cheap and insulting, but I suppose that if I were an "agnostic" in regards to certain historical truths I might need faith in my corner as well.But, Lerner immediately added, “Neither would I be surprised if, when all the archives were opened and all the communications revealed, it turned out that there was some other non-conspiratorial explanation for elements of the story that currently seem to make no sense.”
Lerner told the Forward that he has good reason to be suspicious of the government.
“I’ve had a lot of personal experience of government lying and doing things that are very destructive and pretending that they weren’t doing it,” Lerner said. “I was part of antiwar demonstrations in which violence was done and the violence later turned out was being done by police agents. I had that personal experience…. After that, nothing surprises me about what this government would do to achieve what its perceived ends are. Nothing would surprise me. That doesn’t mean I believe it. That doesn’t mean that I believe that that’s actually happening right now.”
To see where other conspiracy theories have brought us, check this out. I can't wait for the movie on the 9/11 conspiracy, and there will be one. Count on it.
Cross posted at Diary of an Anti-Chomskyite.
Benjamin | 02/10/07 at 01:47 PM | Categories: - Useful idiots
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Comments
IIRC, Hillary Clinton was a big fan of Lerner's.
david foster | February 10, 2007 05:11 PM
In lukewarm defence of Hillary, Lerner was not half so insane back then. Maybe 2/5 as insane. A lot of people who were on the fringe went right over the edge after 9-11.
Judith | February 10, 2007 07:04 PM
Richard Landes, who is a professor of Medieval History at Boston University and whom Judith knows well, fisked another one of Reb Lerner's out-gassings last week. Link Here
Robert Schwartz | February 10, 2007 09:59 PM
Lerner is, and was a hard Leftist. What that says about Hillary...
Lerner's old website had links to International ANSWER groups and gushy links to Islamofascist imams for a long time after 9/11.
ontheleftcoast ![[TypeKey Profile Page]](http://www.keshertalk.com/nav-commenters.gif)
| February 10, 2007 10:56 PM
"Lerner's old website had links to International ANSWER groups and gushy links to Islamofascist imams for a long time after 9/11."
That's ironic since ANSWER refused to let him speak at a rally because he believes Israel has a right to exist.
Judith | February 11, 2007 09:12 AM
Err Excuse me, there's four guys dressed in lab coats and they want to take you away Michael Lerner.
The conspiracy theories just get wilder.
Regards
Aaron
Visit:Bagelblogger
bagelblogger | February 11, 2007 11:39 AM
Sort of. It depends on whether you group the International Solidarity Movement with ANSWER; maybe Lerner didn't. Beyt Tikkun's website used to share the vision, or some such with (I think) the ISM, or anyway to an organization that was "non-violent" but "supported the right of the Palestinian People to resist the occupation by whatever means it felt appropriate."
Beyt Tikkun's tent is big enough for Jewish Voice for Peace (spit, spit)
ontheleftcoast | February 11, 2007 11:44 AM
It's also ironic that JVP is getting all this press as a result of the AJC flap, since there are only about five of them. Well, now that they are the flavor of the week, maybe there are ten.
Judith | February 11, 2007 04:29 PM
Nice to find the odd thing we can agree on, Ben.
I'm surprised he stops short of blaming it on Israel. Because, you know, blaming it on the US is SO much more logical. Wait, let me guess... it was an insurance scam, right?
AFAIK Noam Chomsky has never suggested 9/11 was anything other than a terrorist attack by al-Qaeda or its proxies. Which I suppose makes Lerner a jackass in spite of his Chomskitude rather than because of it.
Oh, and David Ray Griffin gets a brief skewering in this article on 9/11 conspiracy theories by George Monbiot (from whose name the word "moonbat" is said - plausibly - to have been derived).
Dear me: Benjamin Kerstein and George Monbiot agreeing on something. Snow chains recommended in Hell....
Rob | February 11, 2007 10:08 PM
Rob, haven't you read your Dante?
It is frozen at its depths.
Alcibiades | February 12, 2007 10:24 AM
Ah well, I'd always thought of both Benjamin K and George M as more natural denizens of the second circle on account of their windy rhetoric.
Rob | February 12, 2007 08:23 PM
