There are so many layers to this story, which I saw yesterday and decided not to blog because I'd done enough blogging for the day and it looked complicated. Now, I'm seeing this WaPo piece and thinking I can use it to organize the layers to present it to you, but I'm wearied by the first paragraph, which brings in a layer I hadn't noticed before. Look how complicated this is. This is — I must stress — the first paragraph of the article. Look how it uses the word "it" without an antecedent:
Critics call it anti-Semitic, saying it places Holocaust revisionism at the center of an odious and addled worldview. Its title has been borrowed by followers of QAnon, a conspiracy movement that favors President Trump and peddles baseless theories about government secrets and cabals.The layer I had not noticed before is QAnon! I thought QAnon was had faded from currency. The layers I knew were: 1. A supposedly anti-Semitic writer I'd never heard of, 2. The famous writer Alice Walker, who used that other writer's work in some way, 3. The NYT who did some sort of puff piece about #2, 4. People who are criticizing #3 for not attending to #1.
Okay. I don't know if I want to do this. But let me try:
"It" in paragraph 1 of the Stanley-Becker piece is “And the Truth Shall Set You Free,” a book by David Icke, who is the writer in layer #1 of my incomplete understanding.
In the NYT piece, Alice Walker said "In Icke’s books there is the whole of existence, on this planet and several others, to think about." She called him a "curious person's dream come true."
And now the debate is whether the NYT had a "gate-keeping" responsibility to help readers discount Walker's recommendation of Icke.
Stanley-Becker provides the filter, telling us that Icke "disseminates conspiracy theories in self-published books and on YouTube" and "promote[s] the idea that a race of reptilian humanoids, widely viewed as a stand-in for Jews, is secretly running the world," and, to that end, has relied on "the infamous anti-Semitic forgery 'The Protocols of the Elders of Zion.'" Icke has written that the Holocaust was "coldly calculated by the ‘Jewish’ elite."
The NYT has not caved to criticism. It stands by its original article and refuses to tack on any detail about Icke.
I'm looking at the NYT piece now and see that it's a spare, easy-to-read Q&A about what books are "on your nightstand." These are the books Alice Walker is reading, with her own words about why. It's not the format of this style of interview to quarrel with the interviewee's book choices . It's raw material, and we the readers are challenged to read critically. The NYT archive is full of these "By the Book" interviews, and the interviewees are given the room to explain their own choices and that's that. If you take that to be the NYT endorsing the books, you're an idiot.
Stanley-Becker never gets back to the subject of QAnon! What is the QAnon connection? I reread what S-B wrote: "Its title has been borrowed by followers of QAnon..." Its title, you mean "And the Truth Shall Set You Free"?!!
Does Stanley-Becker think Icke originated the phrase "and the truth will set you free"? I literally feel nauseated at the thought that I'm reading a long column, seeking enlightenment, and the person who wrote it does not know the Biblical verse, "and you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.” Is the only connection between QAnon and Icke that both used that phrase?!
I need a rest.
BACK FROM MY REST: I think Stanley-Becker — eager to drag Trump into some newly available mud — gratuitously complicated an already confusing story by throwing QAnon into the first paragraph. The connection to QAnon was never explained, and as far as I can tell, is based on Stanley-Becker's ignorance of one of the most famous quotes in the Bible!
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And extra credit for getting a Trump slam in there too.
Trump does not belong in that article.
It's a ridiculous mental disease — throwing Trump in whatever looks like something is wrong.
It's the same form of thinking that has anti-Semites seeing the Jews everywhere!
It is completely believable that the NYT writer doesn't know that "biblical phrase". For the left, history begins when they're born. The Bible is completely out of the question.
We've even seen this elsewhere just this week (though, sadly, I can't remember the exact instance but we've seen person A or organization A blamed for saying/writing a thought T that was said by some deplorable person D or organization D - even though there was no other connection between A and D and even though the thought T predated both - perhaps someone here can fill that connection in.)
(Sorry for such a lame comment.)
I think Stanley-Becker — eager to drag Trump into some newly available mud — gratuitously complicated an already confusing story by throwing QAnon into the first paragraph.
Yes.
It's like a requirement these days.
Biblical ignorance = historical context ignorance = American history ignorance
Once the literati decided against all evidence that The Bible no longer fit their definition of “great literature” then they unmoored their own society from the most influential literature of all time. And 50 years later we have reaped the whirlwind (oops another quote berift of context!), to arrive at this Tim e when ignorance is held to be wisdom. It’s like these journ-o-lists “literally know nothing!”
There is a Ramtha School Of Enlightenment in Yelm, Wa, whose cultists are rumored to believe in Lizard People beneath Mt. Rainier.
The True God, Lizardo, will not be pleased.
It's amazing how certain people on the Left and in MSM elevate certain memes and groups as strawmen. I vaguely recognize QAnon. I don't honestly believe that they're particularly influential on anything. They seem like a small, mostly internet based fringe. But because they help promate a narrative that there's this villanous army of derranged and possibly even dangerous Trump supporters they're elevated to a much grander status. The goal is obviously to equate just about anyone who supports Trump with crazy people who peddle "baseless theories about government secrets and cabals".
I used to be interested in reading those What Are You Reading? articles in the NYT Sunday book section.
I got bored of them, though, a few months ago. Now I always just glance at that page and then turn immediately to the next page.
QAnon is Eric Trump.
QAnon+ is President Donald Trump.
Jesus was a Reptilian.
Do the Reptilians have Shabbos mammals to do stuff for them on Saturdays?
I'm pretty sure I remember seeing the "Truth Shall Make you Free" quote etched on a UT academic building. The Austin SJW thought their work was done with Confederate monument. Trump's time travel to the early 1890s to 1920s is destroying their peace of mind.
I was willing to give Alice Walker the benefit of the doubt, and assume that she just missed the lizard people->Jews connection, and therefore the antisemitism of the book she read.
Then I read the rest of the By the Book interview. She is a vile, evil person. Quote:
I will always be on the side of babies. Which is why I support a woman’s right to abortion. How dare we bring anyone so small and helpless into our dangerous situation?
Althouse
"Trump does not belong in that article.
It's a ridiculous mental disease — throwing Trump in whatever looks like something is wrong."
Indeed. Read Vanity Fair, read The New Yorker, read reviews in the London Review. Trump. Trump in religion, Trump in kitchen utensils. Wherever he can be jammed for a quick smirk.
And the really sad thing of course is making a big deal about right wing "conspiracy theories" while Chris "Fredo" Cuomo, a prominent left wing media figure, implies his own baseless conspiracy by noticing an "Uncanny" similarity of Trump and Russian bot messages. I think it's safe to say that Chris Cuomo's influence is miles ahead of QAnon's.
Your analysis is correct. Stanley-Becker is ignorant and unconcerned about it. The NYT did not endorse the book, but Alice Walker seems to have.
The writer doesn’t understand the title,and despite this ignorance, draws strong conclusions from it. That’s exactly what the ignorant critics of Baby It’s Cold Outside did. Rather than than think, hmm, I don’t understand what that means, maybe I should learn they concluded, wow I know exactly what that means and no one else does!
"Do the Reptilians have Shabbos mammals to do stuff for them on Saturdays?"
Ha! Good one.
It's the same form of thinking that has anti-Semites seeing the Jews everywhere!
And, for some, vice versa. Maybe David Icke is an anti-Semite; I'm not going to consider that proven by the Washington Post saying so. According to them, the anti-Semites are in league with not only Donald Trump, but the prime minister of Israel. The phrase the idea that a race of reptilian humanoids, widely viewed as a stand-in for Jews, is secretly running the world evokes paranoid mindsets both outside and between the commas.
It is always entertaining to find the "woke" New York Times, that seems to find "dog whistles" of all sorts of nefarious things from conservatives from the most benign of quotes, not notice that their prized author interviewee is both an anti-Semite and a space alien conspiracy loon. Our betters, ladies and gentlemen.
I'd give the Times a pass, at least on the Alice Walker interview. If you need this much background information and explication to generate outrage, the offense was probably inadvertent.......Nonetheless, the left is discriminatory and biased in their treatment of antisemiites. They hate German and Nazi anti-Semites because Germans are white and the Nazis were the founders of the modern Republican Party. But when it comes to Muslim and POC anti-semitism, they're remarkably indulgent and forgiving. Israeli zoning violations are just cause for mass murder,
It's generally liberals who are obsessed with the conspiracy theory that Donald Trump colluded with Vladimir Putin to steal the USA's 2016 Presidential election.
An sample element of this conspiracy is that reptilian Carter Page was an active secret agent of the Russian Intelligence services. What's the factual basis for that ludicrous accusation?
The reason that the QAnonos have been suffering recently is that the amount of political corruption on the part of the Deep State combined with the Democrats has been exposed to be of epic proportions. For example, Trump is being attacked for using his own money to pay off bimbos for a couple hundred thousand dollars as a perfectly legal non-campaign campaign expense, while well documented proof of almost a hundred million dollars in illegally routed, and therefore illegal, campaign contributions are being ignored by the FEC, and stuck waiting for a decision on standing by the DC District Ct. Peter Strzok and another agent had no legitimate reason to meet with Gen Flynn at the WH, yet did. It took 2 weeks to get the resulting 302s into the system (which the judge had to threaten contempt to acquire), well in excess of the mandatory 5 days, and weren’t submitted until approved by DD McCabe. It was a perjury trap set for the United States National Security Advisor using information, from FISA Title I recordings that should never have been legally unmasked. And then, the FBI turned all this classified information over to a WaPo reporter. Let me repeat that - the FBI, apparently authorized by and with the full participation of DD McCabe, committed Espionage Act felonies in order to take out the US NSA in a perjury trap by giving away classified information that they had no legal right to have in the first place to a party without a security clearance so that it could be publicly distributed. And it is Gen Flynn, and not former DD McCabe or former DAD Strzok, who committed the really serious felonies, who is to be sentenced by Judge Sullivan.
Everything was supposed to come together on 12/5, but then the funeral of GHW Bush intervened. When USA Huber finally did testify, he couldn’t say anything, presumably because of continuing investigations. Trump has the legal power to blow this all open, and doesn’t. There is plenty of factual information available to him to justify jailing dozens, probably including some from the Obama White House. No arrests, and Comey essentially said FU to Trump and Congress a couple days ago, with, apparently little worry about ever paying for his crimes. It appears that a lot of the QAnons are now so dispirited, that they are dropping out of politics entirely (and some of them are buying guns instead).
Since when is reading a book endorsing it?
Yes, the Post's writer is an idiot. In other news, water is wet.
If you’re looking for some actual enlightenment, National Review has a good brief take: David Icke Is Certifiable; Is Alice Walker?
Only person who seems to be avoiding any kind of direct criticism is...Alice Walker!
Only critique of walker is indirect (NYT should have challenged her)
But no one has actually challenged her.
I will always be on the side of babies. Which is why I support a woman’s right to abortion.
I will always be on the side of the Jews. That's why I support Germany's right to Holocausting.
I will always be on the side of the blacks. That's why I support the slavery of Africans.
I googled her nonsense because I found it hard to believe that anyone could say that with a straight face -->
Alice Walker Wants Donald Trump To Read This Children's Book For An Important Reason
The reason is so important that they didn't have to time to mention it.
Althouse, you got to where I was thinking about this yesterday. I collect stories about famous writers, so this interested me.
1. Yes, it was a simple Q&A, and if the Times wanted to engage its readers, it could have simply said look, it's a Q&A. We don't explicate on what they're reading or saying. We sparked a conversation, so good on you for contributing. But don't take our silence here as an endorsement. Just stop that.
2. The Ace of Spades site does a pretty good job with the story, quoting from the book and showing that Icke is a loon. (Yes, Ace does accuse the NYT of "endorsing" this, but never mind that.)
3. As a point of irony, Alice Walker had a long relationship with a Jewish civil rights lawyer, and had a daughter by him. She then proceeded to neglect said daughter, who ended up pregnant at 14, a drug-addict, and multiple relationships with older men. She seems to have straightened herself out, wrote a memoir about her life, and was then cut off by her mother.
Char Char asks: "Since when is reading a book endorsing it."
Answer: "In Icke's books there is the whole of existence, on this planet and several others, to think about. A curious person's dream come true."
Actually, this is kind of a neutral endorsement, a careful way of saying she approves without actually saying so.
Because she didn't say, "Man, this is some weird shit. I can't believe it, but it's good to expand your mind sometimes."
I think because she didn't want to say, "I agree with this."
Long as I'm talking, let me add my thought about QAnon. This reminds me of "alt-Right," which I hadn't heard about until after Trump won.
Does anyone here remember any discussion or mention of them before the vote? It seems to me like the journalisters needed someone to blame and fixated on them and QAnon.
(And, yes, I've heard of white supramacists. Those idiots have been around for a long time. It's the all of a sudden "alt-right" this and "steve bannon" that, and I'm thinking I don't remember seeing any of this shit before. Have I been Mandalized?
I thought work shall set you free.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arbeit_macht_frei
Stanley-Becker's ignorance of one of the most famous quotes in the Bible!
Never forget, journalists are stupid rich kids who couldn't get into law school.
The reason that QAnon & Trump & the kitchen sink are thrown into the WaPo article is to deflect attention away from Alice Walker, who is considered untouchable no matter what nonsense she peddles.
To criticize Walker is to touch a third rail of the Democratic coalition -- i.e. an awful lot of the black community believe in amazingly whack-job nonsense. Even someone as supposedly "enlightened" as Alice Walker.
For example, lefties love to make fun of white fundamentalists for not believing in evolution. Yet, as large or larger of a percentage of blacks don't believe in evolution ("When God made me, He didn't make no monkey-man!"). I mean, that makes perfect senses sociologically, right? Theologically, black Protestantism is very much like its white counterpart. There is also an unpleasant history of evolutionary theorists casting blacks in the role of racial inferiors using evolutionary theory as justification. It's not surprising that there would be no love for evolution among American blacks. But, it's never mentioned.
And don't even get me started on the barrel of insanity that is the Nation of Islam or the New Black Panther Party. Someone ought to ask good Sunni Muslim girl Linda Sarsour why she hangs around with Muslim heretics, which is what the Nation is.
"Books I am pretending to read" is probably a more accurate description of most of the these articles.
I don't know that much about Alice Walker, but it's possible for a talented writer to be anti-Semitic. See T.S. Elliot and Ezra Pound. I think the Times' offense was probably inadvertent, but I don't think they would be in any big hurry to discover if Alice Walker was truly anti-Semitic. Anti-Semites are not created equally. The anti Semitism of T S Elliot is judged far more harshly than that of Alice Walker.
I like The Guardian's various versions of what authors are reading. Even before the NYT went subscription I preferred The Guardian's take on books, more human, more sophisticated, less politically driven. Sure, I disagree with all their politics, but they don't drag politics into absolutely everything bookish. Although they do use quotes around the antisemitic in front of David Icke.
@William,
I don't know that much about Alice Walker, but it's possible for a talented writer to be anti-Semitic. See T.S. Elliot and Ezra Pound.
No! Do not go "domesticating" the whack-jobbery of Walker or the Nation of Islam into garden-variety "Antisemiticism of the Toffs". It's not like they just want to keep the Jews out of the drawing rooms of Oxford & the country clubs. This is what my liberal Jewish friends do with folks like Farrakhan, because it makes his weirdness comprehensible to them.
You have to take seriously the claims of lizard-aliens running things, of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion being the written down master-plan of conquest of the Gentiles by the Jews, of white people being invented in Patmos by an evil scientist named Yacub for the purpose of tormenting black people. They believe this shit. You just don't want to believe that they believe this shit.
It's not just the antisemitism. It's all the insanity that accompanies the antisemitism.
I've never read anything by Alice Walker, but I've read T.S. Elliot. There are some anti-Semitic slights in his writings, but I wouldn't characterize them as rants or diatribes. Nonetheless, I have read critics who took delight in denouncing him for these slights. From what I understand, Elliot had many personal failings that quite surpassed his antisemitism, but the critics wish to consign him to the unread DWEMs because of the antisemitism. That's his big sin...... I don't think they would submit Alice Walker's writing to that kind of close reading, but I haven't read her. So far as I know I don't think her writings are especially bigoted against Jews.......There was a fascist movement in Ireland called the Blueshirts. The leaders wanted to rally against the Jews, but attendees lost interest. They didn't want to dilute the pure flame of their hatred for the English with any of this antisemitism malarkey. I think hatred for the Jews is probably far down on Alice Walker's list of grudges.
Wait, whoa, back up. You're taking issue with the author's ignorance regarding the quote. I might think about that, but first I have to wrap my brain around the idea of reptilian humanoid overlords.
In November 2017, Walker posted an explicitly anti-Semitic “poem” on her blog titled, “It Is Our (Frightful) Duty to Study the Talmud.” The composition blames all the world’s ills, from Israel to America, on the ancient Aramaic compendium of Jewish law and lore, and checks nearly every anti-Semitic box, from attacking Jews as Christ-killers to claiming that Jews view gentiles as “sub-human.” ...
Why has Walker escaped accountability for so long? Perhaps it is due to her Israel politics, which have been used to confuse the issue. Walker is a prominent supporter of the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement against Israel, famously forbidding The Color Purple from being translated into the language of Hebrew. Because Walker—like Icke—is a strident critic of Israel, her defenders—like Icke’s—have dismissed allegations of anti-Semitism by claiming they are merely an attempt to quash her criticism of the Jewish state.
More here.
"... first I have to wrap my brain around the idea of reptilian humanoid overlords."
You'll get used to them.
MLK used the phrase in one of his speeches too. Connect the dots, people! MLK, QAnon, Trump, anti-Semites! Wheels inside of wheels, man.
> wrap my brain around the idea of reptilian humanoid overlords.
I wouldn't have believed it myself, but then there is the WaPo. What better explanation of Bezos toy is there?
I knew there were people who thought that, as I recall hearing of a book back in the 90s by a woman who claimed she was an Ultra CIA sex slave. In addition to being raped by Bill Clinton, Lee Greenwood (WTF?), and a star-studded cast of characters over a number of years, she also veered off into the reptilian overlords. Damn, that book had it all. Never read it, just reading about it was quite enough. I think the title was "Trance:Formation of America."
the idea of reptilian humanoid overlords...is just...Ickey.
I think the point was that the New York Times would not go around asking prominent Neo-Nazis or members of the alt-Right (Richard Spencer? David Duke?) what books are on their nightstand, and Alice Walker's views on Jews are indistinguishable from those of the average Neo-Nazi. Read her poem, "To Study the Talmud." It's on her website: http://alicewalkersgarden.com. This is typical: "Simply follow the trail of 'TheTalmud' as its poison belatedly winds its way Into our collective consciousness." She's a hard-core leftist and a Jew hater. Why is the New York Times giving her any time at all?
It's all very easy to explain. Icke and Alice Walker are both involved in the New Age wing of Green Party politics which is incidentally anti-semitic -- I say incidentally ONLY because they have cobbled such a lengthy laundry list of enemies. However, in their behavior, they most enthusiastically endorse the mainstream Green Party hatred of Israel, hatred of Israel being a gatekeeper faith for lefties.
Their hatred of the Queen of England and belief in an esoteric theory of lizard people also puts them in the camp of my favorite nutcase, Lyndon LaRouche. Others bouncing around the LaRouche/Icke camp include Ron Paul and Cynthia McKinney. It's a wonderfully weirdo world. Aleister Crowley is in there somewhere.
Less amusing than believing Queen Elizabeth is an intergalactic lizard, Walker is also a white-woman-hating hag. She gets the usual awards and accolades and big speaking fees for her redundant expressions of intersectional hatred towards whites and especially white women. There isn't an undergraduate girl in America who isn't forced to read her nasty essay about how white women shouldn't report rape if they are attacked by a black man. It ought to be curious that she can do this in the #metoo era, but it isn't. She gets the race pass for all her unhinged, politically incorrect, stupid ideas.
As well as her crappy writing.
Isn't that the unofficial motto of the CIA? "And you shall know the truth and the truth shall make you free." (John 8:32)
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