Radix observes the panic on the left when Rachel Dolezal was revealed as transracial, wearing chocolate covered makeup over her naturally fair skin, dieing her blond straight hair black and curling it into tiny tight curls.
Melissa Harris-Perry, once called “America’s foremost public intellectual†by one of her fellow affirmative action scholars, had real terror in her eyes as she desperately tried to reconcile “transracial†people with “transgenders†without an inadvertent faux pas
…
… none of the brave independent thinkers rebelling against social norms have been told what the “right†side is yet, and so they remain paralyzed with fear and indecision.
They’re not the ruling class.
They are the Outer Party.
Moldbug had it wrong: these guys are the ones who are constantly being drug through 2 minutes of hate and do the bureaucratic work of running the apparatus. Their lives are constant fear and uncertainty.
Huxley had it right over Orwell in that instead of eating saccharine and drinking Victory Gin, these guys are drinking microbrews and snorting coke. But they are still the Outer Party, the Commissars, and have very little power other than to outperform the quotas.
Republicans are the outer party. If the inner party was comfortable, would have dared issue a ruling one way or the other.
It is the nature of the late stages of leftism that even the inner party gets terrorized.
The man who wrote “Giddy with success” was shaking in his boots.
Stalin was indeed fearful when he wrote that. Even though he was a madman, the Trotsky wing of the Bolsheviks were even madder. A similar dynamic was present between Adolf Hitler and Ernst Rohm.
The official Republicans, the ones in media and academia, are the outer wing of the outer party. Their constituents are prole as prole gets.
Remember that the outer party members’ jobs consisted of tedious paper shuffling for the inner party and that they were largely concerned with implementing the inner party’s ever-changing directives, just like the American “public intellectuals.” Remember that the outer party members were terrified of being accused of, or committing, crimethink, and that the inner party members were secure and smug, with no fear and a clear, predatory grasp on reality.
Look at those two blinking, gibbering retards in the video-is it imaginable that they are a ruling class? They couldn’t rule the administrative functions of a small office.
Stalin never blinked in his life, except for in 1941. And certainly no public intellectual in the USSR was part of the inner party. Those guys’ jobs were to be told what the policy was, what the quotas were, and to get to work.
Someone with no fear would have settled this issue one way or the other. Or even one way, and then the other, with everyone instantly forgetting that it had previously been settled any differently.
Further, I don’t think the inner party of Orwell’s 1984 had a clear, predatory grasp on reality. Rather, they were like Chris Turner, who sells carbon indulgences, and sailed his icebreaker into the icecap his ideology told him did not exist. Their power was in large part the power to make everyone else go along with their delusions. When Chris Turner refused to see the ice, no one else could see it either.
Stalin didn’t have a consolidated power base. He had to play one side against the other until all that was left was his creatures with no agency. Which he did.
Anyway, this is all beside the point-these people never had any real decision making power besides whether they were going to turn the amp up to 10 or 11.
Stalin was pretty nervous about only turning the amp up to ten, until he had consolidated his powerbase.
We don’t yet have a Stalin, and when we do, chances are the worst will be over for ordinary people, though for the elite, their troubles will just be beginning.
Let’s just say that I don’t share your view on Stalin vis-a-vis the regular people-the regular people spent the mid- and late-1930s (by which point Stalin had consolidated his power base, getting executed, imprisoned and deported by the millions.
I would put the date as the late 1930s, by which time the Soviet Union was still sending lots of people to the Gulag, but was no longer engaging in near genocidal artificial famines against the masses.
To the mid 1930s, those sent to the gulag were, in large part “déclassé and socially harmful elements”, and “outdated people” – in other words, those who had failed to keep up with the movement ever leftwards. In the late 1930s, however, we see dissidents and the excessively left sent to the Gulag. By and large, they are accused of Trotskyism, which implies a claim, whether true or not, that they were part of the new ruling elite.
In 1938, when Stalin’s power is finally consolidated, the Soviet Union got the great purge and the great terror, which was directed almost entirely against government officials, against the elite.
So, large scale terror against the masses ended in 1933 with the end of the artificial famines, though you could argue it continued to 1936. (One cannot give a precise date for the end of terror against the masses, but I would say not very long after 1933) Large scale terror against the elite began in 1938, though you could argue it began in 1936 with the Moscow trials.
Bottom line: Large scale terror against the masses ended before 1936, large scale terror against the elite began after 1936.
Yes, Jim, let’s ignore the partitioning of Eastern Europe with Hitler, the subsequent massacres of the conquered, the 1946 Ukraine famine or the purge Stalin was planning before he died (was poisoned?)…
Small potatoes compared to the Ukraine famine, which you lot cheered to the echo.
Yes, Jim, I’m a Communist because I’m not a member of your infinitesimally tiny NRx clique. But then pretty much every non-Communist dictatorship says that anything but total allegiance is Communism!
The New York Times cheered the liquidation of the kulaks, and you support everything the New York Times says or ever has said except when superseded by movement even further left.
I don’t agree with the NYT’s apologia for Eldridge Cleaver’s rapes. I think that homosexuality and transgenderism is gross though killing such people Bible-style is a bit extreme. You’d have to list NYT positions on other issues so that I could make a comment on whether I agree or disagree. I still think that your allegation that I’m a Communist only works if you assume that anyone who agrees with the mainstream of American political opinions is a Communist. But then most Americans are Communists which is fine if you have delusions of grandeur about how elite and special you are…
Based on Gulag memoirs from the late 1930s, the vast majority of people being arrested, tried, executed/imprisoned (in conditions such that most of them died, which was not the case until about 1936) were completely innocent of any wrongdoing, left or right. They’d been falsely accused by their neighbors or coworkers, who wanted their jobs or communal rooms. Then the system, which had quotas, would turn the accusation into something outrageous. Perhaps the accusations most frequently heard had changed from being a Rykovite to a Trotskyite, though just as frequently they’d be accused of something crazy like being a Japanese or New Guinean intelligence agent, plotting to turn the Siberian rivers southward so that they would irrigate the Gobi instead of falling into the Arctic Ocean, etc.
After 1936 Stalin pursued a balanced policy of terrorizing people for excessive leftness and insufficient leftness, and as part of this policy, quite a few “kulaks” (which is to say peasants) were executed for real or imaginary lack of sufficient leftness. But, for the most part, it was party men, government officials, and his most important and major target was powerful communist government officials.
Before 1936, it was terribly dangerous to be insufficiently left, but fairly safe to be excessively left, hence endless movement left, part of the endless movement left that set in when Alexander the Liberator “freed” the serfs – by transferring them from the aristocracy to the bureaucracy.
And nothing done after 1936 is comparable to the artificial famines that happened routinely before 1936.
That’s not what the dozen+ post-1936 prison memoirs I’ve read say. The guys who wrote them, who ranged from low ranking army officers like Solzhenitsyn (arrested in 1945), to journalists like Shalamov (arrested in 1937) to Soviet spies like Bystrolyotov (arrested in 1938) to random guys (I am thinking in particular of one gentleman who was arrested and tortured in 1940-41, liberated by the Germans and published his Samizdat memoir in Argentina in the 50s, the name escapes me,) all say the exact same thing.
Most of the guys in there with them were absolute nobodies, of no rank, sent away either on made up denunciations or for an overheard joke or comment, which were then turned into ludicrous conspiracy and espionage charges by investigators seeking to outdo quotas.
Bystrolyotov recounts a cellmate who’d been in the Belarus NKVD explaining how it was done: every week, Boris Berman, the head of the organization, would have an assembly. He’d call up the top three investigators for the week and the bottom three. He’d read their achievements-how many sentences they’d achieved, how many man-years of incarceration, how many executions. The top three would get monetary awards and promotions. The bottom three would be arrested on the spot.
In this kind of environment, there’s not really room to claim that the people being purged were largely leftist or rightist, any more than there is to claim that the guys being killed by the Khmer Rouge for wearing glasses were leftist or rightist. What difference does it make if a shoemaker who was denounced by his roommate for supposedly cursing Stalin in his sleep and then beaten until he confessed to heading a conspiracy to murder the Politburo says that his fictional group of conspirateurs was inspired by Trotsky or Rykov?
They were charged with leftism or rightism, which is to say insufficient leftism, usually with leftism.
It’s like bouncing peas off a wall talking to you.
Fifty percent of the army leadership was purged. The entire NKVD was purged. A very large part of the party was purged. Almost all the founding fathers of Bolshevism were purged. The great purge was obviously an elite purge, the primary victims, the primary target, were the elite. Denying this is just you obstinately denying the undeniable, as you do with great regularity.
>Fifty percent of the army leadership was purged. The entire NKVD was purged. A very large part of the party was purged. The great purge was obviously an elite purge, the primary victims, the primary target, were the elite.
Most of the elite was purged, but the vast majority of those purged were not elite, not in any position of authority, guilty of nothing. Further, given the fate of some of those purged from the army, who were rehabilitated in the 1940s (like Rokossovsky,) and the mass rehabilitations in the 1950s (where they found absolutely no evidence that most of those purged were party to any plots or crimes,) shows that even most of those purged from the elites were not leftists relative to the mainstream.
Were the hundreds of thousands of Poles and random people with “Polish-sounding” last names killed in the Polish Operation of 1937-1938 leftists? Any of them? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polish_Operation_of_the_NKVD_(1937%E2%80%9338)
It’s ludicrous.
If I murder you and take all your stuff under the pretext that you were part of a Communist plot to kill the President and turn the United States over to the Papua New Guinean Communist Party, does that make my actions rightist, and you a leftist? If I murder you and take all your stuff under the pretext that you were a Nazi working for your masters, who have a vast network of UFO bases in Antarctica, plotting to assassinate Congress by diverting the Potomac to drown them while they were in session, does that make my actions leftist and you a rightist?
The vast, overwhelming majority of those purged were completely innocent, and the accusations against them were about as reasonable as that above.
Possibly, but the vast overwhelming majority of those that were guilty (Old Bolsheviks, the NKVD, and the army) were purged, which is a lot more justice than one usually gets. Maybe if Sulla had been as thorough as Stalin, he would have obtained more lasting results.
That is why Stalin is so thoroughly loathed and denounced by the left, while Mao is not. Mao primarily killed the innocent, in much bigger numbers than Stalin. Stalin is hated not for killing the innocent, but for killing the guilty.
If Stalin had murdered only innocents, progressives would love him today.
>Possibly, but the vast overwhelming majority of those that were guilty (Old Bolsheviks, the NKVD, and the army) were purged,
Guilty of what? If you’re talking about murder, robbery and so on, they were all equally guilty.
>which is a lot more justice than one usually gets.
I’m sure that the vast amount of innocent victims were consoled by this.
Maimonides said: “It is better and more satisfactory to acquit a thousand guilty persons than to put a single innocent one to death.”
Then it is mighty good that most of them got what they deserved.
Politics is war, and in war, it is better that evil be destroyed.
If Stalin had killed only innocents, all decent right thinking people would agree he was a fine fellow who might have become a tiny bit carried away in his pursuit of social justice.
>Then it is mighty good that most of them got what they deserved.
It is mighty bad that the overwhelming majority of the people who were killed and had their lives destroyed did not deserve it.
>Politics is war, and in war, it is better that evil be destroyed.
This is sophistry. Destroying evil has never been the purpose of a war. The executioners, investigators and wardens of 1937 and onwards were equally evil to the worst of their victims, and most of them had nothing happen to them, retiring in peace.
Furthermore, politics is omnipresent. By your logic, an American tyrant who murdered 40 million would be alright, as long as he got a few thousand SJWs with them.
>If Stalin had killed only innocents, all decent right thinking people would agree he was a fine fellow who might have become a tiny bit carried away in his pursuit of social justice.
For the eighth time, I’m not saying that he killed only innocents. Nobody in this line of work kills only innocents. Pol Pot did not kill only innocents. I’m saying that the vast majority of his victims did nothing to deserve being murdered or having their lives destroyed.
Holier than Moses, I see.
It would be alright if he got all or nearly all the social justice warriors that were even holier than his extremely holy self.
>Holier than Moses, I see.
As usual, you are unfamiliar with the source matter, but speak as arrogantly as though you were an expert.
Their object in warfare was to possess the land. Not to exterminate the Canaanites, who were no more evil than the Egyptians, the Amorites or anyone else.
They gave the inhabitants the chance to flee.
Those of the inhabitants who came in to surrender (the Gibeonites) were given a deal and not exterminated.
The only evil people we are commanded to destroy are the Amalekites, but this is an exception.
Still holier than Moses.
>>By your logic, an American tyrant who murdered 40 million would be alright, as long as he got a few thousand SJWs with them.
>It would be alright if he got all or nearly all the social justice warriors that were even holier than his extremely holy self.
As I have said, you are a prog and share all their bad characteristics, including the conviction that the ends justify the means and that mass murder is okay if it’s for the social good.
21 And they utterly destroyed all that was in the city, both man and woman, young and old, and ox, and sheep, and ass, with the edge of the sword.
…
21 And when Joshua and all Israel saw that the ambush had taken the city, and that the smoke of the city ascended, then they turned again, and slew the men of Ai.
22 And the other issued out of the city against them; so they were in the midst of Israel, some on this side, and some on that side: and they smote them, so that they let none of them remain or escape.
23 And the king of Ai they took alive, and brought him to Joshua.
24 And it came to pass, when Israel had made an end of slaying all the inhabitants of Ai in the field, in the wilderness wherein they chased them, and when they were all fallen on the edge of the sword, until they were consumed, that all the Israelites returned unto Ai, and smote it with the edge of the sword.
25 And so it was, that all that fell that day, both of men and women, were twelve thousand, even all the men of Ai.
26 For Joshua drew not his hand back, wherewith he stretched out the spear, until he had utterly destroyed all the inhabitants of Ai.
…
28 And that day Joshua took Makkedah, and smote it with the edge of the sword, and the king thereof he utterly destroyed, them, and all the souls that were therein; he let none remain: and he did to the king of Makkedah as he did unto the king of Jericho.
29 Then Joshua passed from Makkedah, and all Israel with him, unto Libnah, and fought against Libnah:
30 And the LORD delivered it also, and the king thereof, into the hand of Israel; and he smote it with the edge of the sword, and all the souls that were therein; he let none remain in it; but did unto the king thereof as he did unto the king of Jericho.
31 And Joshua passed from Libnah, and all Israel with him, unto Lachish, and encamped against it, and fought against it:
32 And the LORD delivered Lachish into the hand of Israel, which took it on the second day, and smote it with the edge of the sword, and all the souls that were therein, according to all that he had done to Libnah.
33 Then Horam king of Gezer came up to help Lachish; and Joshua smote him and his people, until he had left him none remaining.
34 And from Lachish Joshua passed unto Eglon, and all Israel with him; and they encamped against it, and fought against it:
35 And they took it on that day, and smote it with the edge of the sword, and all the souls that were therein he utterly destroyed that day, according to all that he had done to Lachish.
36 And Joshua went up from Eglon, and all Israel with him, unto Hebron; and they fought against it:
37 And they took it, and smote it with the edge of the sword, and the king thereof, and all the cities thereof, and all the souls that were therein; he left none remaining, according to all that he had done to Eglon; but destroyed it utterly, and all the souls that were therein.
38 And Joshua returned, and all Israel with him, to Debir; and fought against it:
39 And he took it, and the king thereof, and all the cities thereof; and they smote them with the edge of the sword, and utterly destroyed all the souls that were therein; he left none remaining: as he had done to Hebron, so he did to Debir, and to the king thereof; as he had done also to Libnah, and to her king.
40 So Joshua smote all the country of the hills, and of the south, and of the vale, and of the springs, and all their kings: he left none remaining, but utterly destroyed all that breathed, as the LORD God of Israel commanded.
41 And Joshua smote them from Kadeshbarnea even unto Gaza, and all the country of Goshen, even unto Gibeon.
…
10 And Joshua at that time turned back, and took Hazor, and smote the king thereof with the sword: for Hazor beforetime was the head of all those kingdoms.
11 And they smote all the souls that were therein with the edge of the sword, utterly destroying them: there was not any left to breathe: and he burnt Hazor with fire.
12 And all the cities of those kings, and all the kings of them, did Joshua take, and smote them with the edge of the sword, and he utterly destroyed them, as Moses the servant of the LORD commanded.
>Still holier than Moses.
Because I don’t equivocate Joshua kicking Canaanite ass with Stalin mass-murdering people?
I have actually read the Book of Joshua, thank you very much. In Hebrew, even.
If by pointing out that Joshua killed the Canaanites who declined to flee, you are attempting to justify Stalin’s actions, when he murdered millions of his own innocent citizens through building a system of false accusations, torture, murder and starvation, that’s quite a stretch.
He prevented them from fleeing. He killed the women and the children.
>He prevented them from fleeing. He killed the women and the children
Their chance to flee had been earlier. Joshua sent the Canaanites an offer to flee, submit or die before he crossed the Jordan. One of their kingdoms fled, one submitted. The rest made their choice.
You don’t seem to have read your own holy books.
Since you are a world-renowned biblical scholar, I’m sure you know what it says in Deuteronomy 20, but for the readers, I will quote it:
10 When thou drawest nigh unto a city to fight against it, then proclaim peace unto it.
×™11 And it shall be, if it make thee answer of peace, and open unto thee, then it shall be, that all the people that are found therein shall become tributary unto thee, and shall serve thee.
12 And if it will make no peace with thee, but will make war against thee, then thou shalt besiege it.
13 And when the LORD thy God delivereth it into thy hand, thou shalt smite every male thereof with the edge of the sword;
14 but the women, and the little ones, and the cattle, and all that is in the city, even all the spoil thereof, shalt thou take for a prey unto thyself; and thou shalt eat the spoil of thine enemies, which the LORD thy God hath given thee.
15 Thus shalt thou do unto all the cities which are very far off from thee, which are not of the cities of these nations.
16 Howbeit of the cities of these peoples, that the LORD thy God giveth thee for an inheritance, thou shalt save alive nothing that breatheth, 17 but thou shalt utterly destroy them: the Hittite, and the Amorite, the Canaanite, and the Perizzite, the Hivite, and the Jebusite; as the LORD thy God hath commanded thee; they teach you not to do after all their abominations, which they have done unto their gods, and so ye sin against the LORD your God.
As usual you don’t seem to read what you are quoting. Neither are you very familiar with your own holy books:
Joshua did not issue a demand to flee, surrender, or die, whether before or after he crossed the Jordan, because the Lord had commanded him:
And the book of Joshua tells us that is pretty much what he did – no mention of an ultimatum. He just went in to clear the land, and with a few minor special case exceptions, proceeded to do so.
Not so.
It says you’ll always issue an ultimatum first. And then, if they surrender, they become tributaries. But if they don’t, then you besiege them and take the city. At which point, one of two things: 1) if they are Canaanites in the Canaanite cities, you kill everyone, 2) if not, you kill the men and everyone else becomes a slave.
That’s why other parts of the Torah deal with the laws of a Canaanite slave-if it was the way you read it, a Canaanite slave would be impossible, since you’d have killed all the Canaanites. And it’s also why in the Book of Joshua it says:
19 There was not a city that made peace with the children of Israel, save the Hivites the inhabitants of Gibeon; they took all in battle. 20 For it was of the LORD to harden their hearts, to come against Israel in battle, that they might be utterly destroyed, that they might have no favour, but that they might be destroyed, as the LORD commanded Moses.
Obviously, this only makes sense if Joshua had given them an ultimatum and the chance to make peace.
No it does not. Not what it says. The initial ultimatum is only for far off peoples, not for for Canaanites and such. For Canaanites and such, the program is genocide, which program was never entirely carried out, but they had a mighty good stab at it.
The genocidal program was to prevent cultural contamination by the decadent Canaanites, presumably the worship of Moloch. And what made the thoughts and practices of the Amalekites dangerous we shall never know, for the children of Israel were commanded to forget those practices and to erase them from history. Presumably they were so seductive that just reading about them would be dangerous. Maybe communism and women’s liberation?
Hence the requirement to exterminate rather than enslave the cute chicks. You don’t prevent cultural contamination by summoning people to surrender.
Your interpretation not only flatly contradicts the plain meaning of the words, but also makes no sense given the frequently stated need to prevent cultural contamination from decadent societies.
The Children of Israel were commanded to whack everyone from the Nile to the Euphrates. They did not do so, but they made a good start on it.
The first thing it says is to give the ultimatum. In the absence of an ultimatum, the quote from the Book of Joshua is absurd-if they were going to be killed regardless, why would G-d have to harden their hearts for them to come against Israel in battle to be destroyed? The laws of dealing with Canaanite slaves wouldn’t exist-what Canaanite slaves?
Jews coexisted with Amalekites for centuries until a king arose to fulfill the commandment to exterminate Amalek. Whatever they worshipped was not the reason we were commanded to exterminate them. The Torah says exactly why we are to exterminate them and that is not the reason.
This is explicitly explained in the preceding chapter Joshua 9:8-22
In order to make peace with the children of Israel, the Hivites had to lie that they were from a far off place, thus not covered by the general extermination order.
Which implies that not only that the children of Israel were commanded to kill everyone in the promised land, but that this was widely known by their neighbors.
In fact of course, they did not kill everyone in the promised land, but they had damned good try, and had pretty good success.
>In order to make peace with the children of Israel, the Hivites had to lie that they were from a far off place, thus not covered by the general extermination order.
They didn’t have to. They thought they had to. They had originally turned down a peace offer that Joshua sent to all the Canaanite nations, and thought that that was a final offer, and that their submission would not be accepted otherwise. See Maimonides, below.
>Which implies that not only that the children of Israel were commanded to kill everyone in the promised land, but that this was widely known by their neighbors.
It implies that their neighbors figured that the Hebrews would kill them. But the fact that the Book of Joshua says that G-d hardened the hearts of the Canaanites to fight in order that they would be destroyed clearly indicates that they had another option to take, which they would have taken if their hearts had not been hardened. And it says that of the 31 kingdoms, only the Gibeonites made peace. Not that only the Gibeonites had been left alive. This all implies that the other 30 had a peaceful out. This out was to flee or submit as tributaries (as the surrounding people did to David and Solomon.)
This is exactly what we see explained by Maimonides:
http://www.chabad.org/library/article_cdo/aid/1188350/jewish/Melachim-uMilchamot-Chapter-6.htm
War, neither a milchemet hareshut or a milchemet mitzvah, should not be waged against anyone until they are offered the opportunity of peace as Deuteronomy 20:10 states: ‘When you approach a city to wage war against it, you should propose a peaceful settlement.’
If the enemy accepts the offer of peace and commits itself to the fulfillment of the seven mitzvot that were commanded to Noah’s descendents, none of them should be killed. Rather, they should be subjugated as ibid.:11 states: ‘They shall be your subjects and serve you.’
If they agree to tribute, but do not accept subjugation or if they accept subjugation, but do not agree to tribute, their offer should not be heeded. They must accept both.
…
If they do not agree to a peaceful settlement, or if they agree to a peaceful settlement, but refuse to accept the seven mitzvot, war should be waged against them.
All males past majority should be killed. Their money and their children should be taken as spoil, but neither women or children should be killed, as Deuteronomy 20:14 states: ‘But the women and the children… take as spoil.” ‘The children’ refer to males below the age of majority.
The above applies to a milchemet hareshut fought with other nations. However, if either the seven nations or Amalek refuse to accept a peaceful settlement, not one soul of them may be left alive as ibid. 20:15-16 states: ‘Do this to all the cities that … are not the cities of these nations. However, from the cities of these nations,… do not leave a soul alive.’ Similarly, in regard to Amalek, Deuteronomy 25:19 states: ‘Obliterate the memory of Amalek.’
How do we know that these commands are only referring to those who did not accept a peaceful settlement? Joshua 11:19-20 states: ‘There was no city which accepted a peaceful settlement with the children of Israel except the Chivites who lived in Gibeon. All the rest, they conquered in battle. This was inspired by God, Who strengthened their hearts to engage in battle against Israel so that they would be destroyed.’ From these statements, we can infer that a peaceful settlement was offered, but they did not accept it.
Halacha 5
Joshua sent three letters to the Canaanites before entering the promised land: At first, he sent them: ‘Whoever desires to flee, should flee.’
Afterwards, he sent a second message: ‘Whoever desires to accept a peaceful settlement, should make peace.’
Then, he sent again: ‘Whoever desires war, should do battle.’
If so, why did the inhabitants of Gibeon employ a ruse? Because originally, when he sent the message to them as part of all the Canaanite nations, they did not accept. They were not aware of the laws of Israel and thought that they would never be offered a peaceful settlement again.
Why was the matter difficult for the princes of Israel to accept to the point that they desired to slay the Gibeonites by the sword were it not for the oath they had taken? Because they made a covenant with them and Deuteronomy 7:2 states ‘Do not make a covenant with them.’ Rather, the laws governing their status would have prescribed that they be subjugated as servants.
Since the oath was given to them under false pretenses, it would have been just to slay them for misleading them, were it not for the dishonor to God’s name which would have been caused.
Halacha 6
No offer of a peaceful settlement should be made to Ammon and Moav, as Deuteronomy 23:7 states: ‘Do not seek their peace and welfare for all your days.’ Our Sages declared: Although it is written: ‘Offer a peaceful settlement,’ does this apply to Ammon and Moab? The Torah states: ‘Do not seek their peace and welfare.’
Although it is written Deuteronomy 23:17: ‘He must be allowed to live alongside you in you midst,’ does this apply to Ammon and Moav? No, the Torah also forbids ‘their welfare.’
Even though we should not offer them a peaceful settlement, if they sue for peace themselves, we may accept their offer.
Oh come on. You are contradicting the plain clear and entirely unambiguous wording of the old Testament.
The reaction of the Children of Israel when they learned the truth (that the Hivites were near, therefore covered by the general extermination order) shows that they were indeed covered by a general extermination order.
Deuteronomy 20:17
But thou shalt utterly destroy them; namely, the Hittites, and the Amorites, the Canaanites, and the Perizzites, the Hivites, and the Jebusites; as the LORD thy God hath commanded thee:
Joshua 9
6 And they went to Joshua unto the camp at Gilgal, and said unto him, and to the men of Israel, We be come from a far country: now therefore make ye a league with us.
7 And the men of Israel said unto the Hivites, Peradventure ye dwell among us; and how shall we make a league with you?
8 And they said unto Joshua, We are thy servants. And Joshua said unto them, Who are ye? and from whence come ye?
9 And they said unto him, From a very far country thy servants are come because of the name of the LORD thy God: for we have heard the fame of him, and all that he did in Egypt,
10 And all that he did to the two kings of the Amorites, that were beyond Jordan, to Sihon king of Heshbon, and to Og king of Bashan, which was at Ashtaroth.
11 Wherefore our elders and all the inhabitants of our country spake to us, saying, Take victuals with you for the journey, and go to meet them, and say unto them, We are your servants: therefore now make ye a league with us.
12 This our bread we took hot for our provision out of our houses on the day we came forth to go unto you; but now, behold, it is dry, and it is mouldy:
13 And these bottles of wine, which we filled, were new; and, behold, they be rent: and these our garments and our shoes are become old by reason of the very long journey.
14 And the men took of their victuals, and asked not counsel at the mouth of the LORD.
15 And Joshua made peace with them, and made a league with them, to let them live: and the princes of the congregation sware unto them.
16 And it came to pass at the end of three days after they had made a league with them, that they heard that they were their neighbours, and that they dwelt among them.
17 And the children of Israel journeyed, and came unto their cities on the third day. Now their cities were Gibeon, and Chephirah, and Beeroth, and Kirjathjearim.
18 And the children of Israel smote them not, because the princes of the congregation had sworn unto them by the LORD God of Israel. And all the congregation murmured against the princes.
19 But all the princes said unto all the congregation, We have sworn unto them by the LORD God of Israel: now therefore we may not touch them.
20 This we will do to them; we will even let them live, lest wrath be upon us, because of the oath which we sware unto them.
21 And the princes said unto them, Let them live; but let them be hewers of wood and drawers of water unto all the congregation; as the princes had promised them.
22 And Joshua called for them, and he spake unto them, saying, Wherefore have ye beguiled us, saying, We are very far from you; when ye dwell among us?
23 Now therefore ye are cursed, and there shall none of you be freed from being bondmen, and hewers of wood and drawers of water for the house of my God.
24 And they answered Joshua, and said, Because it was certainly told thy servants, how that the LORD thy God commanded his servant Moses to give you all the land, and to destroy all the inhabitants of the land from before you, therefore we were sore afraid of our lives because of you, and have done this thing.
25 And now, behold, we are in thine hand: as it seemeth good and right unto thee to do unto us, do.
26 And so did he unto them, and delivered them out of the hand of the children of Israel, that they slew them not.
This is straightforwardly incompatible with the book of Joshua, and, like parts of the Talmud on rape, seduction, and marriage, straightforwardly and flatly incompatible with the book of Deuteronomy
Is this another case where you know what the Torah says better than Maimonides does?
He says (I quoted, but you apparently didn’t read it):
Why was the matter difficult for the princes of Israel to accept to the point that they desired to slay the Gibeonites by the sword were it not for the oath they had taken? Because they made a covenant with them and Deuteronomy 7:2 states ‘Do not make a covenant with them.’ Rather, the laws governing their status would have prescribed that they be subjugated as servants.
Since the oath was given to them under false pretenses, it would have been just to slay them for misleading them, were it not for the dishonor to God’s name which would have been caused.
I can read what the old Testament says. If Maimonides says different, he is making shit up.
But in fact, the material you quote does not say anything different. Maimonides says they swore an oath, not that they were commanded by god to accept an oath if offered.
The Children of Israel were commanded to kill everyone man woman and child in a rather large area to clear the land for settlement. They did not manage to clear the entire area, but they made a good start on it.
You are arbitrarily and unreasonably reading into Maimonides words the proposition that Deuteronomy 7-2
Does not mean “thou shalt utterly destroy them”. But that is a strain on Maimonides’ words.
» Jews coexisted with Amalekites for centuries until a king arose to fulfill the commandment to exterminate Amalek. Whatever they worshipped was not the reason we were commanded to exterminate them. The Torah says exactly why we are to exterminate them and that is not the reason.
This is the creepiest thing I have ever heard from a Jew.
>I can read what the old Testament says.
Not well, apparently. For the eighth time: the Torah says that 30 out of the 31 Canaanite kingdoms did not make peace, because G-d hardened their hearts, to fight in order that they be destroyed. In your version of events, where they were going to be destroyed regardless and not allowed to flee or surrender, this makes no sense. You studiously ignore the contradiction, but it remains.
>If Maimonides says different, he is making shit up.
If I have to choose between who is making shit up about what the Torah says, Maimonides, who was one of the top minds of the last 1000 years, or you, who flipped through a Gideon Bible in a hotel, well…
>But in fact, the material you quote does not say anything different. Maimonides says they swore an oath, not that they were commanded by god to accept an oath if offered.
Maimonides says (I quoted him already, but you are illiterate):
“Joshua sent three letters to the Canaanites before entering the promised land: At first, he sent them: ‘Whoever desires to flee, should flee.’
Afterwards, he sent a second message: ‘Whoever desires to accept a peaceful settlement, should make peace.’
Then, he sent again: ‘Whoever desires war, should do battle.’”
Maimonides is relying on sources who have an unbroken tradition going back to Joshua himself. Not on a casual perusal of a Gideon Bible. Maimonides’ explanation fits the Torah exactly, while yours has a large hole.
>The Children of Israel were commanded to kill everyone man woman and child in a rather large area to clear the land for settlement.
The Children of Israel were commanded to first offer submission and then to kill those who didn’t take them up on the offer, and in the case of the Canaanites, to kill their entire populations if they didn’t submit.
>You are arbitrarily and unreasonably reading into Maimonides words the proposition that Deuteronomy 7-2
>“And when the LORD thy God shall deliver them before thee; thou shalt smite them, and utterly destroy them; thou shalt make no covenant with them, nor shew mercy unto themâ€
>Does not mean “thou shalt utterly destroy themâ€. But that is a strain on Maimonides’ words.
I quoted Maimonides directly, and he says that this applies only when they do not take the offer to become tributaries or flee, and that becoming a tributary does not count as a covenant.
>This is the creepiest thing I have ever heard from a Jew.
“Here’s why that’s a problem.”
But I really could care less about your opinion. I’m more interested in what the Torah has to say, in Deuteronomy:
17 Remember what Amalek did unto thee by the way as ye came forth out of Egypt;
18 how he met thee by the way, and smote the hindmost of thee, all that were enfeebled in thy rear, when thou wast faint and weary; and he feared not God.
19 Therefore it shall be, when the LORD thy God hath given thee rest from all thine enemies round about, in the land which the LORD thy God giveth thee for an inheritance to possess it, that thou shalt blot out the remembrance of Amalek from under heaven; thou shalt not forget
Of course, in our day, Amalek does not exist as a nation, having become assimilated under the Assyrians and Babylonians.
You take a tiny fragment out of context, make unjustified deductions from it, and ignore the repeated plain wording of Joshua and Deuteronomy, the kind of reasoning that people refer to when they use “talmudic” as a pejorative.
>You taker a tiny fragment out of context, make unjustified deductions from it, and ignore the repeated plain wording of Joshua and Deuteronomy, the kind of reasoning that people refer to when they use “talmudic†as a perjorative.
“You”=Maimonides. “Have you ever heard of Plato, Aristotle, Socrates? Morons.”
Tiny fragment=Joshua’s summary of his campaigns, which pretty obviously implies that if they hadn’t fought, the Canaanites would not have been killed.
Also the relevant part of Deuteronomy has context-the commandment to kill everyone in a Canaanite city is right below the commandment to offer a city tributary status before you attack it. The former commandment doesn’t override the latter but specifies it.
Your kind of reasoning, taking a fragment out of the Torah and ignoring its context (which you don’t know anyway, never having read the source text except with ctrl+f,) running around and announcing to everyone that you know what the Torah meant and the Jews don’t, is exactly why the Torah was given to us-and not to you.
When you casually skim a text which was given as a foundation for a nation’s legal system and constitution, that’s fine. But when you take your casual skimmings and proclaim yourself an authority over people who study that text in depth, you make an idiot of yourself.
It’s exactly why Jews use “goyishe kopf” as pejorative, and exactly why when you people attempted to appropriate the Torah, you got Martin Luther King and tattooed lesbian “pastors.”
you guys are arguing about definitions based on novels. Does that mean you’ve run out of Bible passages?
Thanks for this. This is goddamn fascinating. I usually feel like the slowest retard in the room here, but I hang on as best I can and you have a great skill at boiling down a situation and putting across what’s happening.
Are we going to get a Pinochet to clean house?
Or a Stalin to merely freeze the leftward march?
Or really, did those fellows only differ by a matter of degree?
The closest thing to “Pinochet” that the Europid Whites have is Tsar Vladimir Putin. For the East Asians, it’s the High Mandarins of China.
Putin is weak sauce. I’d be happy to see the more rightist radicals he has empowered for his war in Ukraine, seize control of the country and truly set it on the course for Reaction.
You bet you bet. I’ll learn Russian to get a better seat at that show.
They’re all scared because they know that someone will be drawn and quartered in the public square as part of the introduction to whatever doctrine wins progressive consensus, and they don’t want to be the one. Melissa Harris-Perry, however, shouldn’t be too worried. She’d get a pass no matter which view she offered initially. She’s too well-connected within the Cathedral to be chosen for destruction.
In the unlikely event a black liberal female member of the media was sacrificed for the sake of an object lesson, it would be someone like Joy Reid. Reid is the daughter of immigrants, not the descendant of American slaves. She’s relatively low in the prog media hierarchy. And her skin is pretty much the only black thing about her. A relatively small deviation from liberal doctrine could get someone like her labeled an Uncle Tom very easily. And the tranny campaign is probably the social justice issue most likely to knock a leftist out of step.
It really seems unlikely that these silly women are the ruling class.
They are nervous because they don’t know what they are supposed to say.
But eventually whoever is actually the ruling class will make it clear for them.
Well I think it’s safe to assume that women are always nervous unless medicated into a near unconscious state.
ot: the ratchet clicks leftward: neo-con karl rove calls for repeal of second amendment.
[…] He also notes, in passing, that the Anti slavery people were evil from the beginning. And Jim points us to Greg Hood’s Based. Hood is enjoying seeing left-liberals dangling over the abyss of […]
Should we be placing wagers on the outcome?
I hope you’re right, Jim.
This country is a circus resting on a house of cards.
Anyone who has the attitude of a rebel ought not also be the ruling class. There is real anarchy when people like the president and the pope are rebels deep down.
These leftists grew up feeling how cool it is to shake their fist at The Man. But now their are in positions where they are supposed to represent the establishment, civilization. When they instead go into rebel mode, it falls on various panicked onlookers to try to correct things. As the pope basks in hip and oblivious departure from Catholic teaching, tired staff at the Vatican and elsewhere work to smooth things out and explain what he really meant.
I imagine it is the same at the White House. Fans of Obama like to rationalize that he is manipulated into radical or unworkable things. The opposite is true I think. I imagine much of his staff acquires a more conservative bent, if only in trying to manage Obama toward a middle way. I imagine if Obama’s unmanaged self were more widely seen, many people would be surprised.
After the Obama leaves office, we will see what a radical we really had for eight years and we will be grateful for his handlers for reducing his destructiveness.
If it was deliberate con job, Dolezal would be admirable, but she takes this insanity seriously. This is sad, and as Czech, i would like to apologize for my countrywoman 😉 (yes, this “cause” was reported here, to a general amusement)
BTW, do many Americans grasp how utterly ridiculous such “scandals” make them look to the rest of the world?
Senile and drooling king of the world slumbers on his throne, with clown cap on his head. The crown lies on the floor – who is going to pick it up?
B:
>”Based on Gulag memoirs from the late 1930s, the vast majority of people being arrested, tried, executed/imprisoned (in conditions such that most of them died, which was not the case until about 1936) were completely innocent of any wrongdoing, left or right.”
You are right, most of these people were not guilty of wrong political orientation. Only some of them were or could reasonably be suspected.
The largest category of people affected by the 37-38 wave of terror were guilty of standing in the way of the drive towards equality.
They were obviously unequal and could not hide their superiority.
But This category was much smaller than say peasants. The reason we hear so much abot this wave of terror is not because it was bigger than the prior ones (I think Jim is right, it was smaller) but because it was directed against people in the cities.
The victims of the artificial famine of 1932-33 and those of the various purges and actions between 1936 and 1941 were roughly of the same order of magnitude. Many of the latter group had been survivors of the former who’d fled to cities (the whole point of the famine was to crush the countryside and facilitate the growth of the industrial cities through resource and personnel extraction.) Ex-kulaks, who’d survived the dekulakization of the early 30s and were living as second class citizens under police watch, were specifically targeted. Of those arrested in 1937, they made up the largest group-600K arrests, 300K executions (I’m sure Jim would say they were secret leftists, but the reality was that they were easy targets with whom to exceed quotas.)
The famine killed around 6 million people, the purges and actions about 1-2 officially, but I suspect about 2-3 times that in reality. The 1-2 million accounts for those who were executed, but doesn’t account for those who were not executed but sent off to camps where most of them died from slave labor within a year or three, and it doesn’t account for the children of the arrested, who were sent to state run orphanages for the children of the enemies of the state, where most of them died of hunger and neglect.
I read about the dekulakization and the massive deaths from hunger in the same sources (Samizdat and Western) as I read about the purges of the late 30s. The peasants didn’t write memoirs, for the reason that they were less literarily inclined than the urbanites, and also that life for a Russian peasant from 1914-1960 was just a long series of bad shit that happened, and so they were tougher and not as inclined to see the events of the 1930s as unprecedented apocalypse. They also didn’t write many WW2 memoirs. They simply focused on surviving and rebuilding their lives.
No they were not. The artificial famines (there were more than one) killed considerably more people than the great purge, and was primarily targeted at people who were just trying to make a living. The great purge was primarily targeted at those dangerously hungry for power, targeted at leftists in power.
Thereby bringing Russia’s endless movement ever leftwards to a halt.
To halt Russia’s ever leftwards movement, it had to be made more dangerous to be too far left than to be insufficiently left, and since it had already been made extremely dangerous to be insufficiently left, that was very dangerous indeed.
Having pressed far too hard on the accelerator for far too long, it was necessary to press far too hard on the brake.
>No they were not. The artificial famines (there were more than one) killed considerably more people than the great purge, and was primarily targeted at people who were just trying to make a living. The great purge was primarily targeted at those dangerously hungry for power, targeted at leftists in power.
You are a fucking imbecile.
The largest single group arrested and murdered in 1937 was ex-kulaks. They were living in special settlements, with no civil rights.
Were they leftists and hungry for power?
The largest of the national operations of the late 30s was the Polish Operation.
Were the ethnic Poles (and people with Polish-sounding last names who were picked out of the phone book) dangerous leftists hungry for power?