
He didn't envision the form it would take, but Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn knew what the stakes would be. And he said:
Violence can only be concealed by a lie, and the lie can only be maintained by violence.
Think about that in the context of the Organization of the Islamic Conference's attempts to compel the UN to outlaw all criticism of Islam, and the international riots against the Muhammad cartoons that led up to these attempts.
May his memory be eternal.
A truly remarkable man. I read 'The Gulag Archipelago' when I was 18. Whatever illusions I still held about the worth and utility of Communism were forever shattered.
I didn't agree with everything he wrote, by Solzhenitsyn was without a doubt a man of remarkable integrity and vision, capable of recognizing a sociological evil when he saw one.
"May his memory be eternal"?
Are you people nuts? Have you read his latest book "Two Hundred Years Together"? This anti-Semitic piece of shit could not die fast enough, as far as we're concerned.
He was indeed a man of deep words.
He was a man of actions too...despite being ruled by commies he prayed a lot...you can see this by the characteristic "bump on the forehead" seen only on devout muslims.
Terror Free Oil
I am unaware that Solzhenitsyn was antisemitic. If he was, I of course do not endorse that aspect of his thought. I do not believe that for one to admire and respect someone else, one must believe him to be infallible.
Cordially
Robert Spencer
This was a very great man. He had immense literary ability, tremendous courage and insight into human nature of the highest order.
Terror-Free Oil: You're a liar. Alexander Solzhenitsyn was not anti-Semitic. When he was charged with such because he had many enemies in the West who did not like his criticisms of Western elitism and liberalism (his 1978 Harvard commencement speech began this), he responded by putting out a challenge------find passages in his writings or statements which support such a charge. No one could. You can't either. Calling Solzhenitsyn an anti-Semite is a baseless lie.
Wellinton has laid down the gauntlet:
'Terror-Free-Oil'....document this supposed anti-semitism...put up or shut up!
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn was a brilliant mind, had a photographic memory, and great depth of insight. It is regrettable he did not address the rise of Islamic militancy in the latter part of this last century. His focus was on the failures of the Communist state, and subsequently also became critical of Western democracy and its consumerist culture, as well as its liberal freedoms without responsibility. Had he addressed the rising tide of Islamism, his critical mind would have been a valuable asset in fighting this war. Like fighting Communism, we must preserve our personal freedoms from the encroachments of a primitive totalitarian controlling system of 7th century Islam. The two have many parallels, and from his critical writings we can draw on similarities to overcome this 1400 year old jihad foe to our free civilization. A great man has gone by.
Those interested in learning more about the complicated case of Solzhenitsyn may find the work of Grigori Baklanov a good place to begin.
Dear Robert,
I mentioned in my previous post, Solzhenitsyn's last book "Two Hundred Years Together" (http://www.amazon.com/Two-Hundred-Years-Together-Part/dp/5969703729/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1217868402&sr=8-1)
Unfortunately, as far as I know, the book is not available in English, but I've personally spoken to a few Russian Jews who read the book and were enraged by it.
A positive review posted on the David Duke's site will give you some insight in this book. (http://www.davidduke.com/general/alexander-solzhenitsyn%E2%80%99s-book-two-hundred-years-together-on-the-role-of-jews-in-soviet-era-repression_3108.html)
Cordially,
Alex Porter
Terror-Free Oil
Alex,
Thanks. I was loathe to go to Duke's site, but I went ahead and clicked on the link, and the article seems to be gone.
In any case, as I said above, if Solzhenitsyn was indeed antisemitic, that it is no way what I found admirable about him, and I repudiate it.
Cordially
Robert Spencer
Robert,
The URL must have screwed up.
Google "Alexander Solzhenitsyn and the Jews", the second result is Duke's site.
Alexander Solzhenitsyn and the Jews
By Friedrich Braun
I just finished reading the French translation of Solzhenitsyn’s Two Hundred Years Together (2003) on Russian-Jewish relations since 1772 in two volumes (still no English translation available…”are we powerful or what?”). It’s both a quick and fascinating read; among other things, we learn that not only the October 1917 Revolution (really a just a well-organized, well-carried out Jewish coup) was dominated by Jewish agitators (a documented fact) but so was the 1905 Revolution (something I didn’t know). We also learn from the grand old man the awe-inspiring extent of the Jewish domination of the Soviet Union during its first two decades of existence, including its ruthless and murderous internal security system: Tcheka, OGPU, NKGB, and NKVD. A Russian in the hands of the Tcheka, etc. was almost certain to be in the hands of Jewish torturers and executioners. The litany of Jewish crimes committed against the long-suffering Russians (and other Slavic peoples: Ukrainians and Belarussians) and coldly listed by the author is simply nauseating and one should approach both volumes on an empty stomach. To this day there has been no acknowledgment on the part of international Jewry of their overwhelming support of the Bolshevik dictatorship during its first two decades. No asking for forgiveness. No reparations paid out to Russians. No chest-beating. No nothing…how un-Jewish that would be! Those few, rare Jewish voices who dared to speak about the Jewish role in the establishment of the communist terror machine in Russia were inevitably greeted with hostiliy and enmity by other Jews and told to shut their “self-hating” mouths.
Another interesting aspect brought up by the author concerns the so-called era of “National Bolshevism” (a real misnomer) allegedly inaugurated by Stalin. Solzhenitsyn points out that Stalinism was as much hostile to Russian interests as Lenin and Trotsky. How many millions of Russian peasants and Russian Orthodox clergy perished under Stalin? To speak of a Russian nationalism on the part of Stalin is simply laughable when one considers the the slaughter accompanying collectivisation and religious persecutions. Additionally, Jews continued to be overrepresented at all levels of the Soviet bureaucracy (including their overwhelming participation in the administration of the Gulag system) during Stalin’s years at the helm.
Furthermore, Solzhenitsyn speaks of his personal contacts with Soviet Jews and their typical detached relativism on all issues, including communist crimes with their tens of millions of victims. However, all that cool, intellectual relativism and reluctance to see the world in black and white terms would disappear in the blink of an eye as soon as Hitlerism was mentioned. Another example of Jewish hypocrisy highlighted by the author concerns the Jews admonishing of Russians (namely Solzhenitsyn) to reject global generalisations regarding Jews and aspect of the Jewish character at the same time that they would form and propagate the most negative opinions on the Russian character and how it was the Russians’ fault that the fundamentally noble communist experiment failed. Expressing generalisations about Russians while demandind from them that they abstain from seeing in Jews some distinct personality traits is very Jewish and pure chuzpah. Nothing is ever the Jews’ fault. It’s always someone else’s fault. One standard for the Jews, another standard for the goyim.
Solzhenitsyn's "Two Hundred Years Together" was an honest attempt by a devout Russian Orthodox man of great stature to come to grips with Russian-Jewish relations over centuries. In the course of this work, Solzhenitsyn was critical at times of Russian Christians and at other times of Russian Jews, mostly the former. NO ONE of substance who reviewed this book levelled a charge of anti-Semitism against Solzhenitsyn. Quite the contrary, this work was widely praised. Hearsay and David Duke's assessments of this work, or of any work of Alexander Solzhenitsyn, do not constitute anything close to a valid charge of anti-Semitism. One knows this or should know it.
I detest, utterly detest, anti-Semitism. I am not Jewish but have a very high regard for what the Jews have accomplished in history. My heart also goes out to them for all the unnecessary suffering they have endured over the centuries. This is all the more reason why false charges of anti-Semtitism must be avoided. Such false charges dilute the real damage done to the Jewish people over time. And when these baseless charges occur, they must be condemned, as I am condemning them now.
Alexander Solzhenitsyn's challenge, I aver, still has not been met------provide specific passages from his writings or statements that support a charge of anti-Semitism. None ever have.
Cornelius,
You've read the Gulag Archipelago. I did a quick search on the internet and below is a link to an article from Reason Magazine that discusses Solzhenitsyn's supposed anti-Semitism.
It presents some interesting arguments. You might have more insight into this area, given your familiarity with Solzhenitsyn. I'm not sure that the arguments made are sufficient, since this is a highly subjective matter.
http://www.reason.com/news/show/29113.html
Accusations of anti-Semitism are not new for Solzhenitsyn. Critics have long pointed to passages in The Gulag Archipelago that selectively list the Jewish last names of labor camp commandants. And Solzhenitsyn's historical novel August 1914, published in English in 1972, emphasizes the Jewishness of Dmitry Bogrov, assassin of Russia's reformist prime minister Pyotr Stolypin.
Not having read his works, I can't comment on what he was like but his exposes on Stalin's Russia should not be lost. His writings could have gotten him killed rather than exiled to the West.
"Violence can only be concealed by a lie, and the lie can only be maintained by violence."
....a true hallmark of Islam.
Are you people nuts? Have you read his latest book "Two Hundred Years Together"? This anti-Semitic piece of shit could not die fast enough, as far as we're concerned.
-Terror-Free Oil
Here is a good sampling of this 'anti-semitic shit'
http://isteve.blogspot.com/2006/10/important-literary-historiographical.html
As a Jew, I am immediately repulsed but then fascinated by the ideas here. As my people remain in the vanguard of multi-cultural progressivism, the selling out of Israel, the hideous Frankenstein monster concoction of wishful thinking and lies that is 'liberalism' - I, as a Jew, must feel a sudden sense of shame and self-recognition. If I'm a self-hating Jew its because I am hating other self-hating Jews so it DOES get confusing.
Insofar as so many of MY people are involved in the enthusiastic destruction of the nation state including, USA and Israel in the name of some One World pipe dream. His arguments are depressingly resonant.
The same cheap trick of accusing another great man, Pope Pius XII (who saved more Jews by far during WWII than anyone else), of anti-Semitism has been used by authors like John Cornwell. In Cornewll's dishonest work, "Hitler's Pope," he "proves" Pius' anti-Semitism by noting that Pius mentioned that many of the hierarchy in the Communist movement in the early twentieth century were Jewish. Never mind that this was absolutely true. And this was the chief evidence that Cornwell produced to sustain a charge of anti-Semitism against Pius. The same thing has happened with Solzhenitsyn. For simply telling it like it was, one gets charged with anti-Semitism. Very cheap. Very.
Solzhenitsyn was constituted such that he felt all peoples are answerable for their misdeeds. He spared no one, not his fellow Russians, not Jews, not anyone. This does not make a person an anti-Semite. Not by a long shot.
Wellington: "NO ONE of substance who reviewed this book levelled a charge of anti-Semitism against Solzhenitsyn."
It is reasonable to say that this is another BS statement since you cannot prove the negative. Also, the fact that “Two Hundred Years Together” is quoted more often than “Protocols of the Elders of Zion” by Russian Nazi websites should give you some idea. Even you (I hope) won’t argue that denying or diminishing the magnitude of the Holocaust is anti-Semitic. Solzhenitsyn’s “Two Hundred Years Together” has done a marvelous job in describing “Pogroms” as minor incidents.
Your pathetic attempts at whitewashing Pius XII are simply laughable. If you don’t like “Cornewll's dishonest work”, why don’t you read “The Secret War Against The Jews” and “Unholy Trinity” by John Loftus, the former president of the Holocaust Museum in Florida.
Here’s what Wikipedia says on Solzhenitsyn: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aleksandr_Solzhenitsyn
Marxism itself is violent: “Once in power, Communism tried to wipe clean every nation, destroying its culture and oppressing its people.”Sound familiar?
On the issue of his ‘anti-semitism’ it says: "After returning to Russia in 1994, Solzhenitsyn published eight two-part short stories, a series of contemplative "miniatures" or prose poems, a literary memoir on his years in the West (The Grain Between the Millstones) and a two-volume work on the history of Russian-Jewish relations (Two Hundred Years Together 2001, 2002). In it, Solzhenitsyn emphatically repudiates the idea the Russian revolutions of 1905 and 1917 were the work of a "Jewish conspiracy" (see chapters 9, 14, and 15 of that work). Yet he documents the predominance of Jews in the early Bolshevik leaderships, excepting Lenin. At the same time, he calls on both Russians and Jews to come to terms with the members of their peoples who acted in complicity with the Communist regime."
Not a “Jewish conspiracy”, though many idealists of that early Communist utopia were Jews, which is a historical fact. But that is not anti-Semitism to state the facts. Sound familiar line of argument? Who else claims repeatedly that our stating the facts of Islam is "Islamophobia"?
One thing to remember is the Jews have, for millenia treasured and preserved a record of their relations with God in which they are called terrible things by that God, reproached and raged at by their prophets. It is as though we've saved every letter from our Father - the ones teaching us how to live, the ones expressing love for us and the ones that rage at us for selling out our birthright and besmirching our souls. I have no problem with Solzhenitsyn's carefully presented statements. As he said 'the boundary between good and evil runs through every human heart'.
Wellington: "Solzhenitsyn's "Two Hundred Years Together" was an honest attempt by a devout Russian Orthodox man of great stature to come to grips with Russian-Jewish relations over centuries."
Did you actually read the book or are you just quoting another idiot?
Alex:
I don't know anything about the charges of antisemitism against Solzhenitsyn, but as for Pius XII, you might find the book The Myth of Hitler's Pope by Rabbi David Dalin quite interesting.
Cordially
Robert Spencer
Terror-Free Oil: I hardly think when one has to invoke David Duke and hearsay to prove one's point, he has any room to cast further aspersioins. David Duke also praised Ronald Reagan from time to time. Does that make Reagan a hater?
Your arguments are pathetic. As for John Loftus, he's a loon. He's a conspiracy nut. He thinks there was a major conspiracy with the USS Liberty in 1967, which is hogwash.
As for Pius, he saved upwards of 800,000 Jews. No one else came close. He authorized fake baptismal certificates to get Jewish children out of places like France. He had seminaries, monasteries, churches, etc. secretly house Jews. And much more. The reason why Pius is criticized today is because he didn't speak out publicly against the Nazis. But not only he, but prominent Jewish leaders at the time, concluded this would be counter-productive, most bitterly proven by the Dutch incident in 1943 when the Dutch Catholic hierarchy spoke out against Nazi treament of the Jews and the Nazis responded by rounding up Jewish converts to Catholicism while leaving Jewish converts to Protestantism alone. Pius worked furtively and adeptly to rescue a huge number of Jews. When he died in 1958, Golda Meir gave him a moving eulogy. It was only beginning in the 1960s that stupid revisionism began to sully his legacy. Obviously, you've bought into this nonsense. You've bought into a lot of nonsense and you still haven't met Solzhenitsyn's challenge. People who make accusations and can't back them up are themselves liars, as you are.
The link to Baklanov's article about Solzhenitsyn(in Russian):
http://www.lib.ru/PROZA/BAKLANOW/kumir.txt
"Accusations of anti-Semitism are not new for Solzhenitsyn. Critics have long pointed to passages in The Gulag Archipelago that selectively list the Jewish last names of labor camp commandants. And Solzhenitsyn's historical novel August 1914, published in English in 1972, emphasizes the Jewishness of Dmitry Bogrov, assassin of Russia's reformist prime minister Pyotr Stolypin."
RESPONSE: Nothing remotely explicit here.
I'm with Wellington until the facts speak otherwise.
'Terror-Free-Oil' has already revealed that he himself never read the book upon which he basis his accusation of Solzhenitsyn's anti-Semitism.
Hearsay is hardly conclusive evidence.
Did you actually read the book or are you just quoting another idiot?
It's almost impossible for *anyone* in the United States to read the book, since it hasn't been published here (and has been published abroad only in its original Russian and in French translation).
Wellington, "800,000 Jews" were not alive in Europe (outside areas of the Soviet Union that had not been occupied by the Germans) in 1945. Pope Pius xii can not be credited with saving Jews when their salvation was the result of the independent actions of INDIVIDUAL churchmen and women among Europe's Catholics. Read what James Carroll says about this issue in his "Constantine's Sword."
Though one can not deny that many assimilated Jews were involved in supporting the Soviet State, particularly in its early years, one has to consider the near obliteration of Jewish secular, national, and religious culture that was the fruit of Soviet communist efforts to destroy the Jewish people. Individual Jews may have played a role in communism, but the system itself worked tirelessly to crush all aspects of Jewish culture and national memory; and in this the Jews of Russia were not alone. Jewish communists often participated in their own people's demise, as witnessed by the notorious Yevsektsiyah, or "Jewish" branch of the party designed to propagandize the community and destroy its traditional institutions. These people of Jewish descent were no different than the medieval Jewish converts to Catholicism who persecuted their Jewish brothers and sisters.
One must also not forget that, from start to finish, the "greatest" leaders and controllers of the bolshevik vision, if you will, were people of Russian and other non-Jewish origin. Stalin was Georgian, and Lenin was Russian.
If you look, you will also find that Letts and Armenians were active in the revolution in numbers out-of-proportion to their number in the population.
Also, don't forget that socialism and communism appeared to so many to be progressive forces whose goal was the liberation of the oppressed. Could this one fact have accounted for the attraction the revolution held for many? Read the "God that Failed" for a look into their hearts and minds to see what motivated such people.
Terror Free Oil:
Racists may also find occassion to cite Jihadwatch from time to time in an effort to fan flames against Arabs, but that doesn't make Jihadwatch racist.
Solzhenitsyn was a great man. Like all men, great and not so great, he was also flawed. That being said, his moral courage and insight, two attributes he had in abundance, should be acknowledged on this sad day.
Even the devil quoted scripture, so the fact that Nazi's cite Solzhenitsyn is not indicative of anything.
The giants of the war against communism are dying off. They shall be missed. We need more of their kind in the war against Islam. We definitely need a Solzhenitsyn or two.
This review by Richard Pipes (no apologist for anti-semitism, he) of "Two Hundred Years Together" suggests that, while there's plenty to argue with in the book, it's far from an "anti-Semitic piece of shit." (And since Pipes almost certainly read the entire book in the original Russian (and since Terror-Free Oil never claims to have done so himself, but simply keeps asking if those who disagree with him have read it), I'm going to take Pipes a lot more seriously than Terror-Free Oil.)
http://www.benadorassociates.com/article/141
(Also, Terror-Free Oil's slurs on Pius XII pretty much confirm that I shouldn't take seriously anything he has to say about Solzhenitsyn.)
Solzhenitsyn was a populist with a terrible anti-Western viewpoint. He hated not only Jews, but what they represented to him: the "corrupt" West. He never wanted Russia to be western. In fact, he bemoaned Yeltsin's Russia as being too "free". Solzhenitsyn was also a hater of gays. He was so rabidly - anti-homosexual one wonders about him. After all, we know well about most anti rabid homosexuals and their self hatred.
Cornelius,
Did you read the article? I didn't want to put the whole thing up here. It was written by a Russian-born journalist, not a David Duke type.
Cathy Young is a columnist for The Boston Globe and Reason, an author and a public speaker.
Born in Moscow, Russia in 1963, Young came to the United States with her family in 1980. She received her B.A. degree in English from Rutgers University in 1988, where she was admitted to Phi Beta Kappa.
It was quite surprising to find out that some people here never heard about Solzhenitsyn's antisemitic tendencies (or at least, accusations thereof), so let me provide for you several quotes.
From a review of "Two Hundred Years Together" by Richard Pipes:
Pipes goes ahead to actually exonerate Solzhenitsyn of the charge of antisemitism and thus faces a rebuttal by David Klinghoffer:
In another review Zinaida Gimpelevich writes:
She continues:
This article also contains multiple references to and quotes from other reviews.
It is worth mentioning that Solzhenitsyn was a self-professed Russian nationalist and expressed his position in multiple works, not just "Two Hundred Years Together". Probably, the most notorious of them is "How Should We Organize Russia" (HSWOR). From the same article by Zinaida Gimpelevich:
PMK,
I'm sure Cathy Young can't possibly be wrong about everything, but please see these:
Cathy Young's jihad against "Islamophobes"
http://www.jihadwatch.org/dhimmiwatch/archives/011785.php
Cathy Young strikes back
http://jihadwatch.org/dhimmiwatch/archives/011954.php
Forever Young
http://www.jihadwatch.org/dhimmiwatch/archives/012118.php
Fitzgerald: Last thoughts on Cathy Young
http://jihadwatch.org/dhimmiwatch/archives/012145.php
Cathy Young, useful idiot
http://www.jihadwatch.org/dhimmiwatch/archives/013206.php
Cathy Young: D'Souza and Spencer both wrong
http://jihadwatch.org/archives/016492.php
Cordially
Robert Spencer
Liggett: I don't think Solzhenitsyn dividing Jews into good and bad means anything, though David Klinghoffer does. Solzhenitsyn divided virtually every people into good and bad, including Russians. Also, references to him as a nationalist are off the mark. He actually decried nationalism and distinguised it from a proper love of country which he termed patriotism. Others called him a nationalist, but that didn't make him such. As for some non-Russians thinking Solzhenitsyn was too Russian and all that, that is a fair charge but rather a matter of interpretation than fact. I too thought at times that Solzhenitsyn placed too much emphasis on the uniqueness of the Russian soul and the many distinctions it had from the Western soul. But this was his right and there is nothing offensive I ever found in it.
Solzhenitsyn loved Russia and looked back to Kievan Rus with fondness. Thus the splitting of this state eventually into Russians, Ukranians and Belorussians was something tragic for him. Perhaps he was too nostalgic, but he didn't mean offense when he referred to Ukrainians and Belorussians as little brothers or some such thing. Besides, there are many Ukrainians, particularly in eastern Ukraine, who look fondly towards Russia. Most Belorussians do too. But yes, I'm aware that most in western Ukraine particularly don't think this way. As for Solzhenitsyn's interpretation of the damage Mongols and others did to Mother Russia, that's all it is-----interpretation. Yes, there are other rational interpretations of Russian history, but Solzhenitsyn had as much right to an interpretation as the next historian as long as it wasn't in egregious contradiction of the facts, which it wasn't.
Wellington wrote:
"Thus the splitting of this state eventually into Russians, Ukranians and Belorussians was something tragic for him."
What Gimpelevich wrote about Solzhenitsyn applies to others as well: "Such statements clearly reflect the ignorance of a Soviet-educated person. The author seems unaware of the twelve Eastern Slavic tribes, their different origins, and less than peaceful histories."
When I was in high school, I read an excerpt of his book in Reader's Digest. In the story, if I recall correctly, there was a part where a Communist party official was visiting the prison camp and a prisoner was selected to give the official a bouquet of the local flora as a welcome gift. When the prisoner approached the official, he gave him a fistful of barbed-wire strand ~ the fruit of Communism.
On the back of the magazine was an artist's rendition of that bouquet, which I took and glued to a board, covered with clear shellac and mounted on my wall. It sits on my bookcase today, after more than thirty years.
When I look at it today, the barbed-wire in the bouquet signifies to me the lies of Islam that bind, enslave and scar so many millions. And which must be defeated like the evil that was Communism.
I find it interesting that this track - on the subject of a major figure who challenged totalitarianism - who saw clearly the violence that surrounds and covers up a lie - has been almost completely derailed.
So let's go back to that one phrase which deserves to be written in letters of fire, and which applies just as firmly to the totalitarian geopolitical war-cult which is the Arab Imperial Religion, as it did to the Russia of Lenin and Stalin and Khruschev, and as it does to Maoist and post-Maoist China:
"Violence can only be concealed by a lie, and the lie can only be maintained by violence" -
And what Mr Spencer said:
"Think about that in the context of the Organization of the Islamic Conference's attempts to compel the UN to outlaw all criticism of Islam, and the international riots against the Muhammad cartoons that led up to these attempts."
*THAT* is what we should be discussing and reflecting upon.
I will share, myself, the phrase that struck me when I read the Gulag Archipelago long ago, a phrase describing the many Christians who vanished into the labor camps, persecuted for their faith: "a silent procession carrying invisible candles".
That phrase might also be used of the dhimmi Christian - and, too, the dhimmi Jewish - communities who basically lived as exploited and despised prisoners within the chaotic and murderous collective that is the Ummah.
ikonklast29palms: Thanks for your post. By 1945 perhaps, but we're talking about all the years leading up to that year. Actually, I have seen a number as high as 860,000 respecting the number of Jews saved by the Vatican. You can go to http://www.ewtn.com/library/answers/factsp12.htm. for more information on this. Also, a great site for information about Pius is http://www.holycross.edu/department/history/vlapomar/hiatt/piusXII.htm.
You're correct that many times local Catholic clergy acted on their own to save Jews but Pius' hand in this matter was all over the place. In the massive reference work, The Oxford Companion To World War II, it states that Pius had his own personal secretary and many others act as intermediaries between anti-Nazis and the Allies, though often not successfully. Pius personally wrote to Admiral Horthy to help Hungarian Jews and upwards of 80,000 were saved. The Pontifical Aid Commission, set up by the Pope, also did a great deal to help Jews. Jewish scholars like Joseph Lichten have chronicled Pius' efforts to ransom a large number of Jews. Directly on Pius' orders many Jews, particularly Italian Jews, were hdden in Vatican City, convents, churches and so on. Pius, in short, did a great deal, more than any other single person in Europe to save Jews from Nazi barbarism.
After the war, Pius openly expressed grief that he was not able to do even more. This act of Christian humility was turned on its head by cynics who used it as evidence that Pius really didn't do anything, in fact that he was sympathetic to Nazism, a horrible lie. Having taught history for many years now, I would be hard pressed to come up with many individuals who have been more unfairly abused by posterity than Pius. He would be my choice for the single most underrated person of the twentieth cntury. Just a few days ago here at JW I had the opportunity to indicate that Mahatma Gandhi would be my choice for the most overrated person for the same century. Sometimes, life is a fraud and Napoleon's assessment (which I also noted a few days ago and will repeat here), that history is a pack of lies agreed upon, rings true.
dumbledoresarmy: You're right that things got derailed and I take significant responsibility for that but I could not let a great man like Alexander Solzhenitsyn be maligned. I just couldn't.
"May his memory be eternal".
It will be.
ONe of my most overwhelming experiences ever was to read a few pages of THE GULAG ARCHIPELAGO for research. I had avoided it because descriptions of tyranny and atrocity depress me; but, to the contrary, it was one of the most invigorating, even cheering things I had ever read. The man's clear moral compass, his ability to distinguish, his understanding of people and things, shone like a lamp, and made the reading of a story of oppression and tragedy into a positive and strengthening experience. He is the voice of human freedom incarnate and personified.
WELLINGTON: "As for Solzhenitsyn's interpretation of the damage Mongols and others did to Mother Russia, that's all it is-----interpretation. Yes, there are other rational interpretations of Russian history, but Solzhenitsyn had as much right to an interpretation as the next historian as long as it wasn't in egregious contradiction of the facts, which it wasn't."
It certainly wasn't.
Though the first Russian state (Kiev) was a Swedish enterprise, the essence of Russian history was the endless battle between the steppe and the forest. The mounted peoples of the steppe had the upper hand for centuries, until the industrial revolution and European money and influence transformed and Westernized the "forest".
One shouldn't underestimate the enduring profundity of the Mongol terror on the collective Russian psyche. Some Russian historians have even referred to Stalin's despotism as "Asiatic" due to its depth and depravity.
And since we're talking about 'Western civilisation' (but let's broaden it - there are two poles, Greek and Latin, Byzantium and Rome), and mourning the passing of a great (however flawed) Defender of civilisation, here's an unforgettable thread from Dhimmiwatch, May 18, 2005, centred on a posting from Mr Fitzgerald entitled "What's At Stake".
I copied it and kept it in a file I call 'Reasons for Resisting'.
I'm reposting Hugh's article in full. But click on the link and scroll down through the comments field as well: where different posters added to Hugh's their own lists of what we stand to lose. It's dazzling, and incredibly moving.
http://www.jihadwatch.org/dhimmiwatch/archives/006213.php#comments
Fitzgerald: What's at stake
Jihad Watch's Hugh Fitzgerald compiles a short list of what has been put at risk with the rapid Islamization of Europe:
"Some time ago I observed that “without Europe the West becomes comical” – and was almost immediately asked to explain. Here goes:
The British Museum.
The Louvre.
The Prado.
The National Gallery.
The Uffizi.
The Rijksmeum.
Alte Pinakothek.
The Vatican Museum.
The Library at Chatsworth.
The Concertgebouw.
The canals of Venice.
The Piazza della Signoria.
Florence.
Umbria.
The Dulwich Gallery.
Paris.
Toledo.
The Tivoli Gardens.
The Boboli Gardens.
The Jardin des Plantes.
Las Ramblas in Barcelona.
The Juderia in Cordoba.
The Portuguese Synagogue in Amsterdam.
Trinity College Great Court.
Rome.
Pushkin's house and library in St. Petersburg.
Musee Guimet. Musee of Nissim Camondo. Jeu de Paume. The Luxembourg Gardens
Versailles.
Tolstoy's house at Yasnaya Polyana.
Linnaeus's house in Uppsala.
Uppsala.
Tsarskoe Selo.
The Dulwich Gallery.
Dickens's House.
Samuel Johnson's House.
Oxford.
Cambridge.
The National Railway Museum in York.
The islands of Lewis and Harris.
Chartres.
The house of Bourges.
The birthplace of Hans Christian Andersen in Odense.
Stratford-on-Avon.
Swans on the Avon River.
The Thames.
The Seine.
The Ebro.
The Tiber.
The Danube.
The Palazzo of the D'Este family in Ferrara.
The Palazzo Pubblico in Siena.
The Pinacoteca in Siena.
Spoleto.
San Gimignano.
The Villa Lante.
The caves of Lascaux.
The caves of Altamira.
St. Sulpice.
The Palazzo Farnese.
The Piazza Farnese.
The Piazza Navona.
The Spanish Steps.
The house of Gogol at 47, via Sistina.
The house of Keats (now called the Keats-Shelley House).
Via Condotti. Via del Babuino.
The obelisk in the Piazza Minerva.
The fountain in the Piazza Navona.
La Barcaccia.
Trinita dei Monti.
Musee de Cluny.
Mont Saint-Michel.
Ile de Re.
Musee Andre-Jacquemart.
The lavander fields in Senanque.
The Bibliotheque Nationale.
The Colosseum.
The Parthenon.
Arezzo.
The street of alfarrabistas in Lisbon.
Lisbon.
The mist on Malvern Hill.
Tintern Abbey.
The gardens at Chiswick.
Lac Leman.
Prague.
Cracow.
Buda.
Pest.
And all the rest.
The King James version of the Bible. The Wyclif. The Tyndale.
Wynkyn de Worde. Sir Kenelm Digby. Sir John Maundeville. Boswell. Bosworth Field.
And lest we forget, Geoffrey and William and John , and Jane , and Charles, and Philip. Michel, Andre, Victor, Charles, Paul, Marcel, and Georges and Philip. Wislawa and Zbigniew and Czeslaw. Jaroslav. Jorge, Teresa, Francisco, Miguel, Teresa, JorgePiet, Harry. Gavriil, Aleksandr, Nikolai, Fyodor, Afanasy, Lev, Anton, Ivan, Mark, Osip, Marina, Boris, Vladimir, Vladislav, Mikhail. Jacopone, Guido, Francesco and Dante, all the way up to Giacomo, Eugenio, Dino and Primo and Italo. Christoph, Johann, Franz, Karl.
Have I left anyone out? Yes, because I only have 3 minutes to write this article before other duties call.
So fill it all in yourself. Don't forget a few it may be, in all the fuss, simply to overlook -- you know, such as Mozart, and Isaac Newton, and Spinoza, and Hume, and Rembrandt, and a few people like that whom I just forgot to list.
Gosh, I left out Leonardo. And Michelangelo. And Beethoven. Oops, I keep thinking of new names, new places, new things to add.
Goodness, this could go on for more than five minutes -- I'm now up to seven minutes.
Not all Europeans are named Patten, Solana, and Prodi. Not all are called Jacques Chirac, Dominique de Villepin, George Galloway, and Gerhard Schroder. Some of them are worth thinking about.
Everyone has his own private list. I open to my own O and find Odile, Oswyn, Osvaldo, and Oscar, and...well, you do it with your own mental address-book. And ask yourself, would you like to turn your backs on all of these people, and have them, or their descendants, live in an islamized Europe, with all that that implies?
You don't care? They deserve what they get? But aren't you looking forward to the American version of a British original -- "The Office" -- tonight? You're not?
Why not?
- Posted by Robert at May 18, 2005 7:33 AM
At the time I hadn't discovered Jihadwatch, so I'll take this opportunity to add a few of my own favourites to Hugh's list, belatedly
- Jacques Ellul, Oriana Fallaci, Simone Weil, Irina Ratushinskaya, Terry Pratchett, Adrian Plass, Graham Kendrick, C S Lewis, Dorothy L Sayers, Charles Williams, J R R Tolkien, G K Chesterton, J K Rowlings, John Rutter, Kryzysztof Kieslowski, Zbigniew Preisner, Maximilian Kolbe, J S Bach, Gabrieli, Monteverdi's Vespers of 1610, Thomas Tallis, Henry Purcell, Abelard, Hildegard of Bingen, the Lady Julian of Norwich (she who is remembered for the phrase, 'All shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of things shall be well'...but she was no Pollyanna, far from it).
dumbledoresarmy,
Well said, hope this thread gets back on track. There are two things that completely changed how I looked at humanity and my culture: One was the book Cancer Ward and the other was Solzenitsyn's speech at Harvard in 1978. Both are relevent to todays battles with respect to the totalitarianism that is Islam. Islam is a cancer, and the death of the West will be a result of what he called Fashion. His term of "Fashion" is what has now become Political Correctness. What we need now is another one like him that has the luck, the courage, the health, and the brilliance to articulate this.
Incidentally, the creature who called him an anti-semite also bought into the lies about Pius XII. That shows the sort of thing it is. Such things do not deserve being refuted - since refuting it would suggest that there is something about its lies worth touching. All you human beings just wash your hands rather carefully as you go, and try to find some nice flowers to smell and remove the stink from your nostrils.
When I read Solzhenitsyn’s “Gulag Archipelago” I had “Deliverance” like nightmares, with rotted arms thrusting through the permafrost. Yet I was able work my way through all three volumes and I gained a good foundation on the evil that is Communism. I tried to read the Koran around the same time and got no where with it. I even tried two different translations but I gave up thinking the Koran was disjointed gibberish. I am indebted to Mr. Spencer for pointing out, in the introduction to his biography of Mohammad, that the Koran is not the easiest work to get one’s head around.
Is not the disjointed gibberish that is the Koran one of the problems the denizens of Jihad Watch face in trying to spread the alarm over stealth, or not so stealthy, jihad? Even before 9/11, when I tried to point out that yes the Koran does enjoin the faithful to bring death to unbelievers, I was admonished that I had not even read the Koran. That my protagonists had not read it either meant naught in my attempts to overcome their PC induced oblivion to the evil that threatens us.
All I can offer is a prayer that those of us who still love Freedom never give up, never cease speaking the truth about the enemy and never permit the powers that be to silence us.
What city do you think good Muslims will nuke first?
Mr. Solzhenitsyn was a writer who put his life and livelihood on the line in order to document the experiences of his life, and gave a voice to many whose lives were ruined by the ideologues of Marxism-Leninism and would have perished in obscurity except for his chronicling their lives in the prisons scattered about the vast soviet empire.
My personal favorite short story by Solzhenitsyn was Matryonas House.
Ralph127, a good translation of the koran is Sales translation, because it is annotated with many notes explaining much of the origins of Mhmds "revelations".
Friends, like most of us, I only know Solzhenitsyn through his breath-taking Gulag (BTW if that interests you, and cryptozoology interests you, check out The Long Walk--forget his name, but it's only a couple-hundred pages and chronicles an escape from a Gulag, then a 4,000 mile hike to (then) British India.)
I'd seen his names for years, maybe my whole life (I'm 42) in the classics section. Read something about the Alaskan archipelago, and the metaphor sinked it for me. I bought it, probably around 35.
Two things that really boggled my mind were his afterword account of spending the day on that canal... I think it goes from St. Pete to the White Sea or somesuch... any way, he noted that after watching it ALL day, he saw ONE barge of firewood heading north, and another heading south... then he notes, "For this, 250,000 people lost their lives."
The other thing--and this literally made me queasy when I read it--was that the entire Gulag enterprise never even turned a profit. It was so full of privateers, cheats, bribe-takers and -makers, etc. that it was actually a burden on the taxpayers of the USSR. This, despite that 50,000 new "conscripts" could literally be called up at the stroke of a pen... and often were.
This, despite virtually unlimited access to every sort of (temperate zone) natural harvest: blubber, furs, oil, iron, gold, silver, uranium, timber, jewels, coal... the list is practically endless. And the whole rotten system, which enslaved and murdered millions, never turned a single ruble.
He doesn't have much to do with Jihad awareness, other than being listed on that great list of the many glitterati that will disappear IF Islam takes over Europe... but Gulag should be required reading for everyone that values freedom.
I don't think that Marx ever intended for Communism to be this way... more appropriately it should be called Leninism or Stalinism. But this is what happens when crazy people take over (hey, what do you know? Another link to Islam.)
I hereby offer a challenge to non-Western members of Mr Spencer's Hedge School of the Counter-Jihad. Here's your chance.
Above I posted an essay in which Hugh Fitzgerald listed, unforgettably, the Treasures of the West, what one might call, perhaps, the Treasures of Christendom and of the Enlightenment.
But I *know* - in light of Traditional Mainline Islam's condemnation of, and insane intent to eradicate, all music sacred and profane, vocal and instrumental, and all representation of living beings, and all sculpture, and the keeping of pet dogs, and all alcohol, and all display of uncovered female faces and forms in the public square, and all sacred places other than its own - that all the Glory of the Nations is in its crosshairs for demolition.
Indian posters, Filipinos, Thai visitors, African visitors - educate us. Give us that long long list, as Hugh has done for 'the West', of all those civilisational treasures, those works of art, those holy places, those poets and painters and sculptors, those fashion designers, those film-makers, whose work could never have come into being within Islam, and that would be destroyed by Muslims. Provide links if you can - for example, to major artworks, or classical traditional female costume.
I don't know a lot, but Angkor Wat would be at the top of my list, as would the exquisite classical dance forms of Thailand, India and Cambodia. (It is a testament to Bali that up till now their dancers and sculptors and temples have survived - but for how much longer, as the jihad tide rises in Indonesia?).
Now, squarely back on topic.
Solzhenitsyn was a champion of the human soul.
Today, let's honour his memory by celebrating the best that that human soul has created, both in the West *and* in the [non-Muslim] East.
Mr Fitzgerald: you're our resident expert on things Russian - could you provide a suitable Interlude?
I suggest also a round of virtual vodka?
In honour of Aleksandri Solzhenitsyn, and of all the Saints and Martyrs of all the Russias, I herewith provide a couple of links to the works of Anton Rublev, Russia's greatest painter of icons:
http://www.rollins.edu/Foreign_Lang/Russian/rublev.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrei_Rublev
(scroll down: there are colour representations of sixteen Rublev icons)
And here is a setting of the most ancient known Christian hymn, Phos hilaron, sung in Church Slavonic:
http://www.grkat.nfo.sk/hudba/zbors13.mp3
kj: You cut Karl Marx way too much slack. His ideas are a prescription for evil, just as Islam's ideology is. Marx was a fool. His labor value theory maintained that the only reason anything had value was because labor was put into it to produce it. This is ridiculous. Marx didn't even take into account such things as intrinsic value (e.g., gold) and advertising costs. His dialectical materialism is jibberish. His theory of determinism is akin to palm reading and astrology. But most malicious is his class struggle theory, which asserted that certain socio-econommic classes must be done away with violently in order to establish the worker's paradise. No gradualism allowed. In other words, huge numbers of people must be killed.
Any ideology that singles out groups of human beings to be slaughtered is evil. Marx singled out social and economic classes. Hitler singled out ethnic groups. And Islam singles out non-believers unless they're prepared to accept second-class status. All three are evil. So, someone averring that Marxism in theory has merit is no different for me from someone maintaining that Nazism or Islam is just fine in theory.
Babel Fish translation of Hugh's link to Grigori Baklanov above:
heroyalwhyness: Why did you post what you did above? It's length is ridiculous and it's virtually unreadable. What's your point?
Thanks heroyalwhyness -- but Babel Fish is more like the Tower of Babel when it comes to long passages of a difficult language, I think.
Wellington: "As for John Loftus, he's a loon. He's a conspiracy nut. He thinks there was a major conspiracy with the USS Liberty in 1967, which is hogwash."
You're right, it is hogwash. However, only a moron would claim that Loftus "thinks there was a major conspiracy with the USS Liberty." Why don't you read his book before accusing him of being a Liberty conspiracist?
Solzhenitsyn, the subtle anti-Semite.
According to my Russian Jewish sources, main source of Solzhenitsyn’s “historical” review of Russian Jewry is “Jewish Encyclopedia” published by the same Russian government that produced “Protocols of the Elders of Zion”. His other one-sided sources include Derzhavin and Denikin, both open anti-Semites. Solzhenitsyn claims that mass emigration of Russian Jews at the turn of 20th century had nothing to do with pogroms, but with prohibition of being winemakers due to the fact that the Jews were creating an alcoholism problem within Russian population. According to Solzhenitsyn, so-called “Cherta Osedlosti” (Jews were prohibited to live in mainland Russia; they could only live in Ukraine, Belorussisa, etc., and only in villages, not cities) had nothing to do with ghetto-like discrimination, but was rather done for the benefit of the general population, including the Jews. According to my Russian Jewish friends who did read both parts of Solzhenitsyn’s book, you are unlikely to find a Jew who read the book and won’t consider Solzhenitsyn an anti-Semite.
Robert,
I understand that you can’t read the original, so I suggest you do the next best thing. Talk to a Russian Jews who read the book and get his/her take on it. A normal Jew, not someone like Finkelstein or Lerner.
Alex
The Western Left always hated Solzhenitsyn since his works effectively punctured the myth that Communism would have worked out well if it hadn't been "high-jacked" by Stalin -- an early version of the "Islam is a ROP that has been high-jacked by militants" line. Supposedly if Lenin had lived longer, and remained in good health, Stalin would never have come to power, and Communist Russia would have been a benign and humane state. Solzhenitsyn pointed out that the Gulag system was started almost immediately after the October Revolution. Within a year there were already thousands of killings, and the first Arctic prison-camps, with tens of thousands of prisoners. Stalin only intensified a system that Lenin had started in the first days after the Revolution. He was not an aberration of Bolshevism, he was its logical outcome.
The Western Left has never forgiven Solzhenitsyn for these revelations, and has seized on any opportunity to blacken his name and reputation.
Sorry for the OT:
Wakademia does it again:
This guy is all and everything to everybody: professor at Monash, an Anglican priest, a UN-stooge and an apologist to the ummah:
What a disgrace! Here's professor Bouma at a press conference during the ongoing Third International Conference of Islamic Scholars:
http://sheikyermami.com/2008/08/05/monash-wakademic-yammers-over-islamophobia-in-australia-indonesian-muslims-delighted/#more-9547
hero - Think "link" the next time you have gobs of material to share. Thanks!
Cornelius: "the first Russian state (Kiev) was a Swedish enterprise"
Dude, whatever you're smoking, I want me some of that.
Cornelius: "the first Russian state (Kiev) was a Swedish enterprise"
Dude, whatever you're smoking, I want me some of that.
Posted by: Terror-Free Oil
Terror-Free, perhaps "Swedish" is a bit of a misnomer, but it was Scandinavians, some of them from the area now called Sweden, that established Novgorod in 862, and Kiev ca. 900. These are generally regarded as the starting points of Russian civilization. Cornelius isn't "smoking" anything.
Terror-Free Oil: Man, you're all over the map. And wrong on each count. First of all, let me defend Cornelius. He's eminently correct in stating that Russian history pretty much begins with the Swedes. Rurik and his buddies were Swedish Vikings in the mid-ninth century who went souteastwards from Scandinavia and who mixed with Slavic folk they found in what is now Ukraine and Russia (this is the beginning of Kievan Rus), just as Norwegian Vikings went westwards for the most part (settling Iceland, Greenland and Vinland {Newfoundland}) and Danish Vikings went southwestwards into the British Isles, France and even the Mediterranean (e.g., Sicily) at approximately the same time (down to about 1000 A.D.). The House of Rurik is the first dynasty in Russian history, which continued until Ivan the Terrible's son, Feodor I, died in 1598, bringing on the Time of the Troubles, when Boris Godunov and others (e.g., false Dmitris) pretty much made a mess of things (not helped at all by Poland) until the Romanov dynasty was established in 1613 with Michael as the first czar of that family.
Second, I assert again, emphatically, that Loftus is a loon. He see conspiracies everywhere. For instance, he maintains that the Bush family had major ties with Nazis. This is complete rubbish. Prescott Bush, the current President's grandfather and former Senator from Connecticut, did a minimal amount of business in the 1930s with one Nazi businessman, who himself later deserted the Nazi party and was put in a concentration camp by the Nazis. From this connection, Loftus sees all kinds of things imaginary. That you would invoke Loftus reveals far more about yourself than I think you'll ever realize. In effect, you condemn yourself out of your own mouth. Rather humorous. And you deserve to be the butt of the humor here, though I have no doubt you will remain clueless through it all.
Your Russian Jewish sources? Wow, you never learn, do you? What sources? Name them. Be specific. You can't. The challenge I posed to you many hours ago still remains and you can't reply effectively--------indicate specific passages from Alexander Solzhenitsyn's works or statements that reveal his anti-Semitism. You've not yet done so. That's because you can't. You're a smear merchant, and not even a very good one at that. Really, if this is the best you can do, give up the ghost.
Perhaps I should have warned those who rely on Babelfish that it is only good, I'm afraid, for wrapping newspapers in. Not just in its translations from the Russian, but in its translations from the everything.
Terror-Free-Oil appears to need remedial history 101, regarding the origins of the Russian state and practically everything else. Meanwhile, the evidence of the original charge, that Solzhenitsyn was an anti-Semite, remains a scurrilous charge with no factual merit.
Wellington, it's yours...game, set, match. I wouldn't waste another moment on him.
EBONYSTONE: "Cornelius isn't "smoking" anything."
Tragically, you're right.
"“Jewish Encyclopedia” published by the same Russian government that produced “Protocols of the Elders of Zion”. "
My understanding is that the Protocols were the concoction of an elite clique within the Russian government (secret police), not the whole government itself. Terror Free Oil, I need my house painted; I could use your "broad brush"...
Wellington: “He's eminently correct in stating that Russian history pretty much begins with the Swedes. Rurik and his buddies were Swedish Vikings in the mid-ninth century who went souteastwards from Scandinavia and who mixed with Slavic folk they found in what is now Ukraine and Russia (this is the beginning of Kievan Rus)”
Except for the facts that Rurik died in the 9th century and Kiev was founded in the 5th century. So, unless Rurik lived 400 years, your theory goes down the toilet. That’s even if we discard those historical points of view that Rurik also could have been a Dane or a myth. The first written source that mentions Rurik is “Povest’ Vremennykh Let” was written in the 12th century, which puts Rurik’s very existence in question.
“Second, I assert again, emphatically, that Loftus is a loon.”
A loon would be someone who blames Loftus for Liberty conspiracy without actually reading what Loftus wrote about Liberty. If you don’t want to look dumber than you are, I suggest you actually read the chapter called “The Liberty Incident” from “The Secret War Against The Jews” before embarrassing yourself any further.
“What sources? Name them”
What kind of idiot are you? If I give you a name, how is it going to help?
“You're a smear merchant”
I run Terror-Free Oil (www.bankruptterror.org). My friend John Loftus (http://www.intelligencesummit.org/speakers/JohnLoftus.php) runs the Intelligence Summit (www.intelligencesummit.org).
Some little piece of shit like you is hardly in the position to call him or me either a loon or smear merchant.
Those who cannot read Russian, in which the most important material about Solzhenitsyn, by those best informed about him, has appeared, including the discussion of his relations with his fellow zek and memoirist Varlam Shalamov (and why Shalamov, visiting Solzhenitsyn, left before breakfast after his first night), and his failure to ever express gratitude to Alexander Tvardovsky, the editor of "Novy Mir" who risked everything to publish, in 1963, the year before Khrushchev was replaced, Solzhenitsyn's most important single work, "One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich" (and several other short early works, including Matryonin Dvor or Matruyshka's Homestead), his exaggerated attention to very minor matters, methodically stiched together with such deliberate tendentiousness in "Two Hundred Years Together," while the most important evidence on the topic, such as the testimony of the World War I hero General Brussilov (whose name is not quite as mangled in the Babelfish version above as is the name of Lev Kopelev, which came out as "Copel"), is ignored, may well be at a disadvantage in judging the merits of Solzhenitsyn as
1) literary artist
2) historian of Russia
3) figure in the political history of Russia
4) figure in world history
5) moral exemplar.
These are all different things.
DenverRodeo, are you saying that "Jewish Encyclopedia" produced by Russian government (that treated Jews worse than contemporary American government treated Blacks) is a reliable source? The Blacks must have been segregated for their own good too, right? "Union of Russian People", a.k.a. "Black Hundred" killed more Jews than KKK killed Blacks. Anyone who whitewashes KKK would be considered a racist. Shouldn't anyone (i.e., Solzhenitsyn) who whitewashes “Black Hundred” be considered an anti-Semite?
Alex
I like you and respect your work, but please don't do this here. Thanks.
Cordially
Robert Spencer
Terror-Free Oil: Well, first of all, you still haven't met my original (actually Solzhenitsyn's) challenge. You just keep dodging and weaving.
Second, perhaps the actual site of the city of Kiev had some kind of village settlement as early as the fifth century, but so what? Rome took off as of the mid-eighth century B.C., just as the legends contend, even though there seems to have been a small settlement on some of the seven hills of Rome as far back as 1000 B.C. You're nitpicking. Sure, Rurik is semi-legendary, but the fledgling Russian state (Kievan Rus) began about the mid-ninth century and that's what is important. The actual person, Rurik, could be a composite, as is the case with so many origin myths, but there seems to be no doubt, archaeologically speaking, that Swedish Vikings mixing with early Slavic folk on the steppes form the start of what ended up as a Muscovy-dominated state by the time of Ivan III.
Third, Loftus is actually your friend? Well, do him a favor and tell him to ease up on the conspiracy nonsense. Remember, the vast majority of conspiracy theories are formed by amateurs with too much time on their hands. And Loftus' crap about the Bush family in league with Nazis is particularly loony. Also, no serious historian maintains that the Liberty was a set-up, nor does any serious historian aver that the Bush family was in tight with the Nazi regime. Wouldn't surprise me if Loftus thinks that JFK was killed by a conspiracy rather than by the lone loser that actually did the heinous deed.
Fourth, specifics, pal. You can't talk about friends and so on who've given you vital information demonstrating that this guy or that guy is an anti-Semite, a racist, a fascist, etc. When you make serious charges, you must back them up with serious evidence. You don't.
Fifth, I think I'll take Cornelius' advice and waste no more time on you. Have a good chat with Loftus. I'm sure you and he have most everything figured out.
I read all three volumes of The Gulag Archipelago. (Did you know he had sympathetic words for the Chechen-Ingush there?)
And Lenin in Zurich. And One Day... And The Oak and the Calf.
I read a lot of discussion about Solzhenitsyn's possible hostility toward the Jews--Lev Navrozov probably made the strongest arguments. But I thought Richard Pipes made the better points.
All of us are to some extent molded by our era, and our surroundings. AS was born in 1918, in newly Soviet Russia. The vast bulk of his oeuvre was devoted to (1) rescuing Russia from the "inevitable and eternal" grip of Leninism, and (2) cleansing Russia from that hideous poison once it was liberated. He no doubt had some kooky ideas, but he was an incredibly dedicated, sincere, and peace-loving human being. Not a saint, like Sakharov, but Sakarov didn't write Gulag, either.
If AS were Chinese, I'd say: "He was 90% good, 10% bad."
Oh, someone quoted:
"While certain passages in this generally laudable contribution to historical literature may sound downright philosemitic, one also notes that Solzhenitsyn is careful to distinguish between good Jews and bad Jews — the former being the religious and the Zionists, the latter being the secularists and the socialists..."
Your point being...?!
"Except for the facts that Rurik died in the 9th century and Kiev was founded in the 5th century. So, unless Rurik lived 400 years, your theory goes down the toilet."
Except for the fact that we were briefly discussing the origins of the Russian state, not the origins of Kiev as a settlement. Wrong again Sherlock.
-------------------------------------------------
"Some little piece of shit like you is hardly in the position to call him or me either a loon or smear merchant."
My God. The unmistakable stench of bloated ego. Wellington, how dare you challenge a man of such import.
--------------------------------------------------
Wellington,
I'm off tomorrow morning to research some Civil War battlefields in the South. Will be back in a week. My plan of attack is to knock down a six of McKewen's Scotch Ale after the flight and hotel. It's a bit stout for my tastes, but the buzz is nice.
Have a great week.
Wellington and the rest: I did suggest that the creature who signs itself Terror-Free Oil should not be touched with a bargepole and gloves. He should be avoided like a nasty mess on the street. You are answering it. And what good are you doing? You are just allowing it more and more space for its delirium. Please, guys, leave it alone. Hugh, the details of ego-rubbing and wounded among literary persons would supply enough material to destroy any hero, if we were that way minded. Solzhenitsyn was a hero - period. What he did was equivalent to describing the atrocities of Auschwitz and Buchenwald while Hitler was still in power and the SS still omnipotent. Consider that. It makes us all rather small compared with him.
correction, above:
"...the details of ego-rubbing and wounded vanities among literary persons..."
Wellington,
Slightly OT, but I commend you on your fine scholarship of Russian history.
I refer you (and everyone else, of course) to this little gem about Staraya (Old) Ladoga
I am very proud to live in the only incorporated town in the USA with this fine name! You can't believe the immense joy I get explaining the origin and history of this very odd place name to people who ask.
Okay. Returning to topic.
Hm, I went to that Loftus website, and saw a book they feature:
Unholy Trinity: The Vatican, the Nazis, and the Swiss Banks with Mark Aarons
Then I see their list of "advisory council" includes Nonie Darwish, Brigitte Gabriel and Robert Spencer and also they've got Ibn Warraq and Magdi Allam on some "Summit".
Weird. I need an Alka Seltzer.
@HUGH
"Perhaps I should have warned those who rely on Babelfish that it is only good, I'm afraid, for wrapping newspapers in."
I see what you did there. Very amusing.
Terror-free Oil ,
What is a "normal Jew" in your opinion ? Are you Jewish ? You have posted no academic evidence to refute JW/Robert .
Show us the evidence .
By comparison, I know "a couple of(as you put it)" American Jews also that call FDR an anti-Semite because he banned Jewish mass immigration from Europe before the Holocaust .Should I believe them or qualified historians?
JW prides itself on evidence based argument . Show us your evidence Mr ???
Where is it ?
Any ideology that singles out groups of human beings to be slaughtered is evil. Marx singled out social and economic classes. Hitler singled out ethnic groups. And Islam singles out non-believers unless they're prepared to accept second-class status. All three are evil. So, someone averring that Marxism in theory has merit is no different for me from someone maintaining that Nazism or Islam is just fine in theory.
Posted by: Wellington at August 4, 2008 8:33 PM
This is so well said that it deserves to be singled out and seen again. It goes to the heart of what our Judeao-Christian culture is all about. The Golden Rule is the ancient guidepost.
Robert: "please don't do this here"
My apologies. I was out of line. Won't happen again.
Alex
Please stop feeding the trol. Stop it, STOP IT. I want to read about how others were affected by the literature of AS, and how his ideology affects the current battle that is being waged against Jihad. The blathering arguments about anti-semitism during the Stalinist history are not appropriate to this thread.
If you want a good objective account of anti-semitism during Stalinist Russia, I recommend "The Whisperers".
Wellington: "first of all, you still haven't met my original (actually Solzhenitsyn's) challenge."
I don't think it is possible if you do not consider whitewashing "Black Hundred" anti-Semetic.
"perhaps the actual site of the city of Kiev had some kind of village settlement as early as the fifth century, but so what?"
According to "По́весть временны́х лет" (povest vremennyh let - first written source that mentions Rurik) Kiev was founded by princes Кия, Щека, and Хорива (Kiya, Stcheka, and Horiva). That means that Kievskaya Rus' existed (as a city-state) before Rurik.
"do him a favor and tell him to ease up on the conspiracy nonsense."
Can you actually quote what Loftus said about either Bush-Nazi connection or Liberty instead of making your ridiculous claims about him being a conspiracy theorist?
"When you make serious charges, you must back them up with serious evidence. You don't."
Which part of Solzhenitsyn's book is whitewashing "Black Hundred" confused you?
This is what your favorite anti-Semite writes:
Dvesti Let Vmesti, Part I, page 240.
"Ещё утвердилось, что погромами октября 1905 руководил Союз Русского Народа. Это – неправда, он только в ноябре 1905, тоже от инстинкта народной обиды, стал возникать."
There was an opinion that Union of Russian People commanded pogroms of October 1905. This is not true. It started to appear only in November of 1905, because [Russian] people felt being insulted [by Jews].
"Однако Союз этот, раздутый слухами и страхами в легендарный, был в реальности жалкой, бессильной и безденежной партией."
However, this Union, blown by rumors into legendary, in reality was a pathetic, weak, and hopeless party.
"погромы от Союза Русского Народа не известны, а прежние – были от стихийного взрыва масс."
pogroms by Union of Russian People are unknown, but previous [pogoms] were results of spontaneous explosions of masses [people’s actions]
"Через несколько лет после загасания революции 1905 Союз Русского Народа – и от начала бутафорский – бесславно растаял."
Few years after decline of revolution of 1905, Union of Russian People, a sham to begin with, ingloriously melted
"Есть и ещё клеймо, прикипевшее крепко: «чёрная сотня», неотразимое именно в неопределённости своего смысла. … И оказалось отлично действующим ярлыком для этого стихийного народного патриотического движения."
There is also a brand, strongly attached: «black hundred» irresistible particularly in its vagueness. … It happened to become an operating label for spontaneous patriotic movement of the [Russian] people.
Now, find me a single person who claims that the KKK is a “spontaneous patriotic movement of the American people” and who is also NOT a racist?
Purplemarbles: “What is a "normal Jew" in your opinion ?”
Which part of “not someone like Finkelstein or Lerner” don’t you understand?
“Show us the evidence”
Your sense of entitlement is astounding. Why do you feel that someone has an obligation to alleviate your ignorance? However, if the Solzhenitsyn’s own words are not good enough as evidence, nothing will convince you.
“By comparison, I know "a couple of(as you put it)" American Jews also that call FDR an anti-Semite because he banned Jewish mass immigration from Europe before the Holocaust .Should I believe them or qualified historians?”
And you don’t consider banning “Jewish mass immigration from Europe before the Holocaust” an anti-Semitic move? What would qualify as anti-Semitism in your opinion, then? Killing a Jew for being a Jew? Killing a dozen of them? A million? Was Hitler an anti-Semite, or was he just a German patriot trying to cleanse Germany of some filth?
People today claim anyone who is nationalist, Christian or criticizes Jews at all is anti-Semitic.
Read Norman Podhoretz's article on Solzhenitsyn in Commentary and the follow up letters to the editor. Podhoretz says that post-1967 Zionist by definition cannot be anti-Semitic. He brings Solzhenitsyn and Pat Robertson as examples.
This article is also worth a read:
http://www.firstthings.com/article.php3?id_article=368
I personally would not determine if one was an anti-Semite based on a book review by David Duke.
Re. http://www.firstthings.com/article.php3?id_article=368
“Nor would one learn about his moving and somber discussion in chapter twenty-one of Two Hundred Years Together of the Holocaust unleashed against Jews on Soviet territory. In that chapter Solzhenitsyn narrates the truly mind-boggling facts regarding the extermination of Soviet Jews in the western territories of the Soviet Union.”
Moving and somber? What exactly is moving or somber about the Chapter 21? He provides statistics without passing any judgments. The only judgment he passes is when he refers to some Jewish authors who denied “good will” of the Soviet government in reference to evacuating the Jews from advancing German armies. According to Solzhenitsyn, the Soviets were bending over backwards to evacuate the Jews, which makes those Jewish authors look like ungrateful pigs.
From the very beginning of the war, the Soviet government knew that the Jews left on German-occupied territory were as good as dead. Hundreds of thousands of Soviet (civilian) Jews were murdered by the Nazis. So when some Jewish authors complain that the Soviet government was less than enthusiastic about evacuating the Jews, their complaints are not entirely without merit, to say the least. And Solzhenitsyn’s bitching about it, while not passing judgment on Nazi’s actions makes him an anti-Semite.
He could have been a great humanitarian, as long as we do not consider the Jews human. His attitude is very similar to Muslim human rights declaration. Humans have all the rights in the world, as long as they are Muslim.
I feel to tiptoe among shattered remnants of china, here.
Whatever we say about Solzhenitsyn, he was hmm, kak skazat'? Ochen' slozhny chelovek, pravdali?
I read his speech to Harvard when it was published into a book, many moons ago.
Having read the First Circle, Cancer Ward, Odin Dyen' Ivana Denisovicha, and both Gulag books in my teens, this little book, this gem packed speech stands out for me as the best of what it is he truly believed.
He minced no words.
What pissed off the Harvardites is that they were of the belief that he came to praise them, and when he didn't, they turned on him.
Even then, the Ivy League was full of itself.
What I got for myself, from reading his works is deep spirituality, which he decried as lacking in the West.
He was no intolerant authoritarian, but a deeply religious man, a Christian, and thus his world view emanated from that point.
He was indeed, a complex man, but as a teenager, I found him breathtakingly blunt, which I may have mistaken for sheer simplicity. Silly girl.
Do you see what you've done? DO YOU SEE WHAT YOU'VE DONE?
STOP FEEDING THE TROLL.
Solzhenitsyn no more needs us to defend him than the Niagara Falls need us to toss thimblefuls of water in them. When Hochhuth - yes, the same propagandist who invented the "Hitler's Pope" slander, and who, according to Ion Pacepa, was a bought and paid for KGB hireling - tried to peddle the notion that Churchill had had the Polish leader Sikorski murdered, the mud flew back in his face, and rightly so. (Would that there had been more honest men to ridicule his first play as well!) And mind you, Hochhuth was promoted and supported by a mighty secret apparatus and by hordes of fashionable idiots. Who, except his mother, knows Terror-Free Oil? For the love of Heaven, fellows, leave it alone.
Solzhenitsyn was no anti-Semite. In fact most of his closest associates and co-writers were Jews. These include men such as the late Mikhail Agursky who was one of the co-authors with Solzhenitsyn of "From Under the Rubble" (1975) probably the greatest work of anti-Soviet dissidence ever written.
"find me a single person who claims that the KKK is a “spontaneous patriotic movement of the American people” and who is also NOT a racist?"
Many of the KKK were (and are) "patriotic" in that they thought/think of their movement as patriotic. Many times people are patriotic for the wrong reasons and base what they think is patriotism on mistaken or twisted ideals, like case in point all those illustrious men and women of various professional pedigrees including former government positions who are featured illustriously on a roster over at a website called "Patriots Question 911" -- including John Loftus himself:
http://www.patriotsquestion911.com/#Loftus
These men and women might think they are being patriotic but in my book they are enabling the "Truthers" and could not be more despicable.
Jewel Atkins: "Whatever we say about Solzhenitsyn, he was hmm, kak skazat'? Ochen' slozhny chelovek, pravdali?"
OK, he was a slozhy anti-Semite, but still an anti-Semite. And none of his civil rights accomplishments can changed that. Take Jesse Jackson. None of his civil rights accomplishments will change the fact that he is an anti-Semitic piece of shit. Why should Solzhenitsyn be treated any differently?
DenverRodeo: "http://www.patriotsquestion911.com/#Loftus"
You can’t blame John Loftus for one moron misquoting him and another putting his picture/bio/misquote on some idiotic site. Those 9/11 truthers do it all the time. Just look at Dr. Ehrenfeld’s site (http://acdemocracy.org/): “PLEASE NOTE: Dr. Rachel Ehrenfeld is not a signatory of the 911Truth.org. She has asked several times to have her name removed from the list, but the organization failed to comply.”
TerrorFree Oil, I emailed John Loftus about 24 hours ago asking him why his name and picture are on that site and what his position is,and no reply still. Maybe he's too busy.
Moving and somber? What exactly is moving or somber about the Chapter 21? He provides statistics without passing any judgments.
I think that "providing statistics" is what Mahoney meant by "narrat[ing] the truly mind-boggling facts." Sometimes facts speak for themselves, and don't require the narrator to explicitly "pass[] any judgments." Most of us, reading a detailed narrative about extermination of Jews, would assume that the narrator disapproved of the extermination, even if he didn't add "And this was a bad thing."
Anyway, Terro-Free Oil's trolling has inspired me to order the book. I don't read Russian, but I do read French, so I ordered the translation from amazon.fr. Unfortunately, it won't arrive until well after the comment period has closed, so I won't be able to provide a detailed response to Terror-Free Oil's slurs. (Maybe it's good that I won't be able to feed the troll.)
Seamus, are you too retarded to read the rest of the paragraph?
DenverRodeo: "Maybe he's too busy."
Yes, he is. I'll see if I can get you the answer.
Seamus, are you too retarded to read the rest of the paragraph?
Your use of personal invective only underscores the poverty of your arguments.
Yes, I read the rest of the paragraph. I chose to be kind and not call attention to the fact that Solzhenitsyn's reference to "some Jewish authors who denied 'good will' of the Soviet government in reference to evacuating the Jews from advancing German armies" is not a "moral judgment," but a statement (which may or may not be accurate) about the facts. Perhaps Solzhenitsyn made a moral judgment, but you'd never know if from your description. You claim that "According to Solzhenitsyn, the Soviets were bending over backwards to evacuate the Jews, which makes those Jewish authors look like ungrateful pigs." The first part of that sentence reports another statement about the facts; the second part is your conclusion about the kind of judgment that could be made (note: not one that, so far as you tell us, Solzhenitsyn himself makes).
As I said, I've bought the book, and I'll read it myself to see how much there is in it to justify your accusations. I'm not expecting much; someone who argues with a straight face that it's appropriate to call FDR an anti-Semite is someone who sees anti-Semites all kinds of places where they aren't there.
Anyone who whitewashes KKK would be considered a racist.
Not necessarily. For example, if the KKK had been widely believed to have planned and carried out a particular lynching, someone who examined the evidence and concluded that they weren't in fact guilty of that lynching shouldn't, for that reason, be considered a racist. (After all, one can defend the Germans against the accusation of having carried out the Katyn Forest massacre without being a Nazi sympathizer.) Similarly, one can conclude (as you cite Solzhenitsyn as concluding) that the Union of Russian People did not order certain pogroms in October 1905, without being an anti-Semite.
DenverRodeo,
This is John Loftus’ response to http://www.patriotsquestion911.com/#Loftus. It's ont a quote, I’m paraphrasing our conversation.
There could have been negligence on the part of the government agencies in not sharing the information that may or may not have prevented the 9/11 attacks, but one must be crazy to claim that the government planned the attacks or intentionally withheld information. Loftus has not seen a single shred of evidence supporting government’s involvement and with the conspiracy of this magnitude something would have come up by now. As far as the link, Loftus cannot control what other people write about him or attribute to him. If you need to know what he says, you can visit either www.john-loftus.com or www.intelligencesummit.org
I hope this puts to rest all the BS about Loftus.
Seamus: “it's appropriate to call FDR an anti-Semite”
Considering banning “Jewish mass immigration from Europe before the Holocaust” an anti-Semitic move, which DID result in countless dead Jews is not exactly as calling FDR anti-Semite. I don’t know what his motivations were.
I’m glad you got the book. Because after you’re done with it, you’ll agree that Solzhenitsyn was an anti-Semite. At least at the time he was writing that book.
“Anyone who whitewashes KKK would be considered a racist.
Not necessarily.”
Are you too dumb to understand the difference between exonerating the KKK of a particular crime and claiming that KKK’s hate for Blacks is justifiable?
Considering banning “Jewish mass immigration from Europe before the Holocaust” an anti-Semitic move, which DID result in countless dead Jews is not exactly as calling FDR anti-Semite. I don’t know what his motivations were.
When purple marbles said that he knew "'a couple of(as you put it)' American Jews also that call FDR an anti-Semite because he banned Jewish mass immigration from Europe before the Holocaust" and asked, "Should I believe them or qualified historians?", you declined to draw the distinction between anti-semitic actions and being an anti-semite. Your reply, as you may recall, was "And you don’t consider banning “Jewish mass immigration from Europe before the Holocaust” an anti-Semitic move? What would qualify as anti-Semitism in your opinion, then? Killing a Jew for being a Jew? Killing a dozen of them? A million? Was Hitler an anti-Semite, or was he just a German patriot trying to cleanse Germany of some filth?" In other words, by refusing to answer purplemarbles by telling him that no, he should not believe those American Jews who call FDR anti-Semitic, and by going on to liken FDR's actions to Hitler's, you pretty much admit that you think it *is* appropriate to call FDR an anti-Semite (which is what I said you did), whether or not you agree with that assessment yourself.
Are you too dumb to understand the difference between exonerating the KKK of a particular crime and claiming that KKK’s hate for Blacks is justifiable?
Sigh. Are you too dumb to understand that in none of the "smoking guns" you quote does Solzhenitsyn claim that the Union of Russian People's hate for Jews was justifiable, or to understand that they instead exonerate the Union from particular pogroms of which they were accused, or else call the Union a "sham" or say that it "ingloriously melted" after the 1905 revolution, or else say (if I understand your very confusing and translation, which was yanked out of any context that might have made it easier to understand) that the name "Black Hundreds" was one that came to be applied to a "spontaneous, patriotic movement" of the Russian people (perhaps meaning that the term shouldn't be held to apply only the URP)? (It should go without saying, but I'll say it anyway, that calling a movement "patriotic" is not tantamount to approving it, much less to claiming that hatred of its members for any particular ethnic minority was justifiable. If, for example, I call the Second Klan (the one created in 1915 and that was so powerful during the 1920s) a "nativist and patriotic organization," and deny that it had much to do with lynchings of blacks in the South, that's not an endorsement, or even a "whitewash" of the Klan, but is simply a factual assertion, which may or may not be accurate (though I believe it is).)
"you pretty much admit that you think it *is* appropriate to call FDR an anti-Semite"
No, I don't. May not have been clear about it, but I'm on the fence about FDR's anti-Semitism; I find valid arguments on both side. Solzhenitsyn's anti-Semitism is pretty clear; he is a Russian Pat Buchanan.
“Are you too dumb to understand that in none of the "smoking guns" you quote does Solzhenitsyn claim that the Union of Russian People's hate for Jews was justifiable”
I thought that even someone as disadvantaged as you are could put two and two together. Apparently I was wrong, so let me help you. “Jews were creating an alcoholism problem within Russian population” + “[pogoms] were results of spontaneous explosions of masses [people’s actions].” This means “Fu#$%ng Jews deserved pogroms, because they were corrupting Russian people with alcohol.”
"you pretty much admit that you think it *is* appropriate to call FDR an anti-Semite"
No, I don't. May not have been clear about it, but I'm on the fence about FDR's anti-Semitism; I find valid arguments on both side. Solzhenitsyn's anti-Semitism is pretty clear; he is a Russian Pat Buchanan.
So you *don't* think it appropriate to call FDR an anti-Semite, but believe there "valid arguments on both side[s]," including the side that holds that FDR *was* an anti-semite. That's a neat trick of mental legerdemain.
“Are you too dumb to understand that in none of the "smoking guns" you quote does Solzhenitsyn claim that the Union of Russian People's hate for Jews was justifiable”
I thought that even someone as disadvantaged as you are could put two and two together. Apparently I was wrong, so let me help you. “Jews were creating an alcoholism problem within Russian population” + “[pogoms] were results of spontaneous explosions of masses [people’s actions].” This means “Fu#$%ng Jews deserved pogroms, because they were corrupting Russian people with alcohol.”
"Jews were creating an alcoholism problem within Russian population" was not one of the smoking guns you quoted. It was your characterization of his position (and which leaves unanswered a number of material questions: Was Solzhenitsyn saying that "Jews" in general were creating the problem, or only some of them? Is he claiming that Jews dominated the manufacture or retailing of alcoholic beverages, or were disproportionately represented among businessmen in those fields? Is Solzhenitsyn saying that Jews were to blame for participating in those industries, or simply that they were the subject of blame? Is he saying that Jews in those industries were contributing to the problem of alcoholism in ways that gentiles in those industries were not?)
But even if Solzhenitsyn said those very words, and even if he said that "previous [pogroms] were results of spontaneous explosions of masses [people’s actions]," it does not logically follow that "Fu#$%ng Jews deserved pogroms, because they were corrupting Russian people with alcohol." (Similarly, even if you think that Korean shopkeepers in South Central L.A. cheated or abused black shoppers (or owned a disporporionate number of the liquor stores that were contributing to alcoholism among the black population), and even if you believe that the 1992 Los Angeles riots, which resulted in the looting and burning of many Korean-owned businesses, were a spontaneous explosion of the masses, that doesn't mean that you think the riots were justified, or that the Koreans had it coming to them.)
Seamus, I read the book. It is anti-Semitic.
Ilshat Alsayef
MASH
Muslims Against Sharia: First of all, I don't agree with your assessment that Solzhenitsyn was an anti-Semite. He was "merely" ruthless on everyone, including his fellow Russians.
But I felt compelled to ask you how can one be Muslim and be against Sharia? To do so would mean gutting Islam like a fish. So, what's the damn point? Why not just leave Islam completely? Any good in it can be found as well in Judaism, Christianity, Aristotelian ethics, Zoroastrianism, agnosticism with a conscience, etc. Islam is not uniquely enlightened in any way. And there's so much in it which is repulsive. Go ahead and try and prove me wrong. I say you can't. What does Islam have in it which is good and which is not found anywhere else? I say nothing. What do you say?
Wellington, when you say that you don't agree with my assessment on Solzhenitsyn's anti-Semitism, do you base it on your reading of the book? If you did read the book, don't his claims that the Jews were themselves responsible for pogroms reveal his anti-Semitism?
How can Muslims be against Sharia? How can Muslims be against FGM or honorcide? How can Christians be against the Inquisition? You claim that for Muslims to be against Sharia is the same as to gut Islam like a fish. That shows that your knowledge of Islam is just as superficial as you knowledge of Solzhenitsyn. Hearing a few things here and there about a subject does not make you an expert on the subject.
You're asking why not just leave Islam completely. That leads me to believe that you consider Islam an inferior religion. Anyone who considers another religion inferior is a religious supremacist. You know another common example of religious supremacists? Islamofascists. The only difference between you and them is that you're not running around blowing up infidels. Yet.
Muslims Against Sharia: I think Seamus said it about as well as anyone could respecting any supposed anti-Semitism by Solzhenitsyn. See his post above.
I didn't attack you but you attacked me personally. That is your right. But what I did attack was Islam and I asked you questions you did not respond to. First, you didn't answer my query about how can Muslims be against Sharia. You went off on a tangent about the Inquisition. There's no comparison. You mixed apples with oranges and besides force used in the name of Christianity always violated Christian tenets but force used in the name of Islam is often fulfilling one of the major principles of Islam, which is that the religion can be spread by the sword, something which is not sanctioned in any way by Christianity.
Second, I asked you what good is found in Islam that isn't found elsewhere and you didn't answer this question either. I say there is nothing in Islam which is good which cannot be found in other religions or philosophies. But there is a hell of a lot of rotten things in Islam. Prove me wrong. Name some good things in Islam which don't exist anywhere else.
Do I consider Islam an inferior religion? You bet I do. I think it the one major faith which is totalitarian in structure and ideology, as Bertrand Russell observed. It was founded by a brutal man who is one of the great frauds of history. The Islamic deity is Orwellian. Images of heaven are child-like and the Koran is the most desultory, repetitive, disturbing religious work I have ever read and I read all 114 suras. I don't like Islam and I wouldn't say that about any other major religion. I lump it together with Marxism and Nazism, except that it is a spiritual totalitraian ideology instead of a secular one. And it is a death cult for a certain percentage of its followers when they don't get their way. Always has been. Is now. Always will be. Islam is a burden to mankind.
Personal attacks do not constitute an argument. Tell me why I'm wrong. Still betting you can't. And just describing someone as a hater isn't an argument either. So, don't go there as well. Prove me wrong.
Seamus, I read the book. It is anti-Semitic.
Ilshat Alsayef
MASH
Oh, well then, in that case never mind. I really admire the way you cut through the Gordian knot we're trying to untangle through use of logic and through citation and evaluation of evidence, and just appeal to (your) authority.