Ron Paul and the Neoliberal Reeducation Campaign

By Jeffrey Lord on 8.23.11 @ 6:09AM

And right here is where Paul and his neolibs, in the style of his neolib predecessors, begin going off the rails.

• Anti-Semitism

Disturbingly, the history of Neoliberalism is replete with charges of anti-Semitism.

While this is a charge in today's political dialogue that has been thrown repeatedly at Paul and his neolib followers (more of which shortly), it has reared its ugly head with earlier neolibs long before Paul was on the political scene. It is a charge that appears to be inevitable when the core premise of non-interventionism is that some dark force somewhere is pushing America into an unconstitutional interventionist war.

All too often that dark force for the Neoliberals turns out to be the scapegoat of hard-leftists everywhere in the world: the Jews.

A story from history.

Before Pearl Harbor, as the war in America over going to war in Europe raged, the once fierce opposition by the American people to taking on Hitler and the Nazis began to change as Hitler's relentless march through Europe picked up speed. This opposition also began to change in Hollywood, and soon a small raft of anti-Hitler, anti-Nazi films began to appear. These includedConfessions of a Nazi Spy starring Edward G. Robinson (1939), Alfred Hitchcock's 1940 Foreign Correspondent and, hilariously, Charlie Chaplin's The Great Dictator(1940).

Neolibs were furious.

Senator Gerald Nye, the liberal Republican non-interventionist, took to the radio airwaves in August 1941to accuse Hollywood studios of serving as "gigantic engines of propaganda… to influence public sentiment in the direction of participation by the United States in the present European war." The speech, take note, was mostly written for Nye by one John T. Flynn, a former editor of the progressive New Republicmagazine. (We'll come back to Mr. Flynn in moment.)

Nye also did something else in that radio address written by John Flynn. One by one he read out the names of the heads of these Hollywood studios -- names which, as he used particularly scathing or sarcastic tones to pronounce them -- were unmistakably taken by his audience to be Jewish names. Said Nye in the speech written by Flynn:

"….There is Harry and Jack Cohn, of Columbia Pictures. There is Louis B. Mayer, of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer…. There is Barney Balaban and Adolph Zukor, of Paramount…. There is Joseph Schenck and Darryl Zanuck, of Twentieth Century Fox…. There is Murray Silverstone, of United Artists, and the great Sam Goldwyn, of Samuel Goldwyn, Inc. There are the three Warner brothers, Arthur Loew, Nicholas Schenck, Sam Katz, and David Bernstein, of Loew's, Inc…. [Hollywood] swarms with refugees ... [and] British actors [as well as] directors ... from Russia, Hungary, Germany, and the Balkan countries…..susceptible to… national and racial emotions."

Meaning, of course, the men responsible for these films were Jews.

Literally before the day was out Nye had a resolution on the Senate floor demanding an investigation of Hollywood studios. In little over a month -- September 9, 1941 -- the liberal Democrat non-interventionist Senator Wheeler had ginned up that Senate investigation and it was opened for business. Harry Warner, one of the legendary Warner Brothers -- and yes, but of course, a Jew -- was dragged before a United States Senate subcommittee to explain himself. So too was the Jewish Nicholas Schenck of Loew's made to appear. And the great filmmaker Darryl Zanuck, then a vice-president at Twentieth Century Fox -- who was not Jewish. The witnesses against the three? That would include Senator Nye himself -- and John T. Flynn.

It was a headlining investigation that had as its unmistakable context an investigation into the Jewish influence in Hollywood. This, mind you, a full eight years after Hitler opened his first concentration camp at Dachau, the war already underway.

Fortunately, Americans increasingly aware of Hitler's lethal anti-Jewish obsessions, protested the hearing. The Republican New York Herald Tribune thundered at what it called an "inquisition." The Chicago Sentinel, an American Jewish newspaper, fingered the investigation for what it was. Senator Nye, said the angrySentinel, was using "the tactics of the demagogue -- and the German demagogue at that." In the end, the investigation withered. By December Pearl Harbor had changed everything. (And, notably, Senator Taft never involved himself with this. Taft's friendship and support from the Ohio Jewish community was the stuff of Ohio political legend.)

What does this old history have to do with what might be called the dark side of the Paul campaign?

In his book The Revolution: A Manifesto, Congressman Paul includes at the end a section called "A Reading List for a Free and Prosperous America." And on that recommended reading list? Here's the entry, in full:

Flynn, John T. As We Go Marching. Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1944. Flynn, an accomplished journalist, analyzes fascism in Italy and Germany and concludes by considering the state of America in his day.

That's right. Congressman Paul is recommending the writings of a man who, in his day, was seen as a driving force behind the anti-Semitic liberal Republican Senator Nye and the Senate investigation into Jewish influence in Hollywood.

Take a look at this CNN video, featuring Congressman Paul, Texas Democrat Congresswoman Sheila Jackson Lee and Ben Stein​, the conservative Renaissance Man (actor, author, lawyer, economist who is, it should be noted, a senior editor of and regular contributor to The American Spectator). The discussion, about Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab (the so-called "Underwear bomber" accused of trying to blow up a plane over Detroit) quickly draws a charge of anti-Semitism from Stein, which causes Paul to erupt and demand an apology, which was not forthcoming.

Ben Stein (and it should perhaps be noted here that while we share writing chores at The American Spectator we have never met) has a reputation as not only a very smart man but a very good, kind, and decent man. For him to sit on a national TV show and suddenly blurt out the anti-Semitism charge would be decidedly out of character -- unless of course Stein, who is Jewish, is aware of the background noise out there that Paul has within his orbit those who arouse concern for anti-Semitism.

Stein is not alone. This issue of a connection between Paul or those around him and anti-Semitism has been hotly discussed by all manner of well-respected conservatives. From David Horowitz (here) to Commentary's John Podhoretz to Andrew Walden at The American Thinker to Bill Kristol's Weekly Standard to (in defense of Paul) National Review's John Derbyshire.

The too-cute-by-half cleverness in this current argument over the newest appearance of anti-Semitism as an anchor of Neoliberal philosophy is the use of the term "neoconservative" as a euphemism for "Jew."

This comes in part because those who identified themselves with the term early-on, conservative intellectuals like Norman Podhoretz, Irving Kristol and son Bill Kristol, were or are themselves Jewish. This was discussed at length back in 2003 by Georgetown Government Professor Robert Lieber. Lieber describedthe accusation that, in essence, "the Jews" -- aka the "neocons" (or "the Israel Lobby")-- are running American foreign policy as "pure myth."

There's no need to expand on the obvious. But suffice to say, when a Paul supporter like Newark Star Ledgercolumnist Paul Mulshine repeatedly zeroes in on conservative talk radio host Mark Levin​, always dismissing the Jewish Mr. Levin as a neocon this or a neocon that, to these Protestant ears, fairly or unfairly Mulshine seems to be conjuring the ghosts of Ron Paul's favorite, John T. Flynn. Levin, for example, is targeted by Mulshine for "neocon nuttiness." The topic of Flynn's "Jews in Hollywood" speech written by Flynn and delivered by Gerald Nye​ that launched an anti-Jewish Senate witch hunt? "Our Madness Increases As Our Emergency Shrinks." And who caused that increasing madness? That's right: Jews. Jewish madness with Harry Warner and Darryl Zanuck yesterday, neocon nuttiness with Mark Levin today. The circle game goes round and round.

In historical fact, self-identified "neoconservatives" hold beliefs that are both straightforward and have nothing whatsoever to do with being Jewish.

Was he telling us?

Michael Jackson warning people to wake up from NWO Conspiracy !!!