11 Reader Responses

1. rev max Says:
   September 14th, 2005 at 1:07 pm

   Hmmm.

   I was over on freerepublic.com posting the other day in response to an article by this conservativce supply side economist named Paul Craig Roberts, an old-school paleo-con constitutionalist type.

   And someone had posted an article by this guy saying that Bush should be impeached because we’ve lost a ton of civil liberties and spent billions of dollars on building a police state and still were no safer than we were before because Bush is so incompetent.

   ANd in part of the article, Roberts was talking about how it was not necessary to invade Iraq, that Iraq was not a threat to us but a distraction from actual terrorism, and that the only reason we invaded it was because of geopolitical considerations and that Bush was being poorly advised by the Neo-conservative clique.

   So, what the neo-cons are are a group of former leftist military hawks, a lot of them very strongly pro-Israel and influential in the current Administration.

   ANd for the Bush-bots, “neo-con” is the magic word , because the second anyone criticizes Bush, or Israeli policy RE: the settlements, or the neoconservative ideology in general, then all of the Bush-bots jump up and down and scream

   “It’s all about the JOOOOOOS! The liberal and isolationists and constitutionalists are antisemitic! That’s why they don’t support Israel! That’s why they don’t support Bush! Blah blah blah blah! Liberals are Hitler! We must invade Iran immediately!”

   So, I dunno. I guess what ‘m trying to say is that while this Ahmad Thomson may be an asshat, I am strongly suspicious of the rhetorical trick of linking this with that and that with this so that it all lines up and saying (for example) “David Duke supports Cindy Sheehan, therefore people who believe that the Iraq war was unjustified are white supremacists” or “If you don’t support the Israeli occupation of the West Bank then you are an irrational tinfoil hat wearer and neo-nazi,” etc.

   Often enough IMHO accusations of racism or anti-semitism or anti-Bush prejudice (yes there are people who talk about Bush like he is just some helpless representaive of an endangered species being unfairly targeted by big bullying liberals) are just thought stoppers, ways to derail honest discussions of policy that would be taking place in this country if Americans knew how to read the news and think critically.

   None of this has anything to do with Ahmad Thomson BTW and clearly the idea that Operation Iraqi Liberation was secretly controlled by “Jews & Freemasons” is absurd, but it would not be so absurd to say that operation O.I.L. is part of an overall strategy in the MIddle East from which geopoitical concerns are not absent, among them AMerican support of Israel as against the Palestinians, the american conservative movement’s newfound love of social crusading and wars of foreign liberation (for example, the latest reason we invaded iraq is supposedly in the name of “feminism”), etc.

   Your last sentence “So if you want to tread down that road of creepy racist speculation, you’re going to have to go it all alone.” motivated me to rant like this. I’ve seen similar sentiments in a loyt of places, e.g., “If you want to be on the side of David Duke and MIchael Moore and the other America-haters who doubt our president go right ahead.”

   Mr Blair was the latest in a long line of politicians to have been influenced by the group which saw the attack on Saddam Hussein as a way to control the Middle East.

   Well, does anyone doubt that is true? There certainly are groups who were chomping at the bit to invade iraq - read editorials from the weekly standard, wall street journal, townhall.com circa 2002. Whether any of them were Jews or Freemasons I have no idea, anymore than I know if they have knobby knees or collect stamps. I think business connections and political ideology are probably better predictors of attitudes towards Middle Eastern military intervention than anyting else.

   And on that note Ahmad Thomson is not doing the peace movement or muslims any favors either, cause by saying it is “Jews or Freemasons” (how 19th century, really) is just muddying the waters for an already uninformed public, encouraging kneejerk responses and providing ammo to people who want to use idiotic statements like this to keep honest conversations about the real motivations behind recent AMerican foreign policy shut down.

   /rant

2. Tim Boucher Says:
   September 14th, 2005 at 1:16 pm

   Rant noted and I agree. I should have clarified that I think denying the holocaust is ridiculous. I think trying to pin our problems on Jews & Freemasons is a similar waste of time. But our problems do exist, and there are groups playing a sinister game of control in the Middle East. It’s a well-documented fact, such as PNAC, etc. I just think that going down the road of “Zionist agendas” and “Masonic conspiracies” will not take you anywhere good. It to me is a mental trap, a shorthand marketing association to get you to stop thinking about who the actual bad guys are, what they are doing and why they are doing it and how it affects us.

   I should have played up more how I thought it was interesting in this article that the government is able to hold conversations with people who don’t agree or who openly oppose it, and still use that information in a constructive way. I find that inspiring and honestly more interesting than the Jew/Mason angle being played out here.

3. rev max Says:
   September 14th, 2005 at 1:19 pm

   just followed the link and read the article, from all my experiences on right wing chat boards I just assumed this thompson guy was a bush-critic or israel-critic who was having his statements twisted or distorted somehow in an attempt to discredit his position, but having now read his actual words I would have to agree that is a grade-a kook!

   Oh well, it was still fun to rant.

4. Tim Boucher Says:
   September 14th, 2005 at 1:24 pm

   For what it’s worth, I thought you made worthwhile points, even if they don’t apply to Thomson necessarily.

5. hebrides Says:
   September 14th, 2005 at 1:40 pm

   Well, the Jews and Freemasons thing is very old anti-semtic conspiracy theory going back at least to Nesta Webster. The Nazis believed this shit, and also that the communists were part of the plot (and in the end, the Jews are supposed to control both the commies and the masons).

   It’s not surprising that this nazi-shit permeates this guy’s thinking. The Protocols of Zion are quite popular in the Middle East, have been for years and the reasons are complex. Basically, the Nazis made contacts with certain Arab leaders during the WWII era and disseminated the Protocols there. Compound this with the definite threat that was seen by the (at the time) illegal immigration of lots of european jews into Palestine and you can see how the common folk in the area may have been easy to convince with this shit. And on top of that, the other popular place for Nazi’s to flee to after WWII (after South America and U.S. aviation and intelligence programs) was the Middle East.

   Back in the day, an excited LaRoucher told me how it was great that “Lyn” had been on Al Jazeera and I didn’t think much about it. But it makes a lot of sense now that I’ve read about the above stuff.

6. james Says:
   September 14th, 2005 at 7:17 pm

   The luxury of being a conspiracy hobbyist is that you get the pick and choose the theories you like.

   The above theory is not new, but I guess it never died off. I remember hearing this stuff after 9/11 and shrugging. The Iraq angle was obviously added in light of recent events.

   There’s an even better (and maybe more plausible) theory out there that seems to be the polar opposite of this one, and it has to do with Nazis: specifically, the theory is that Hitler used Arab spies during WWII at the behest of a man named al Bana, founder of the Muslim Brotherhood. These Arab Nazis, after the Axis powers lost in WWII, were escorted to Saudi Arabia, much in the same way Nazis scientists were smuggled into the U.S. to help with our space program, much like the remainder of Nazis fled to South America.

   The Arab Nazis attached themselves to extreme Muslim fringe sects like the Wahhabis and started “training” the current rash of Islamofascists that we are at war with today.

   It may seem like nonsense for Hitler to be in cahoots with Arabs, but then again Marcus Garvey had ties to the KKK– he wanted American blacks to go back to Africa, and so did the KKK. They had a common cause. Thus, Nazis and extremist Arabs had a common cause– their hatred of the Jews.

   Some of the links also tie in post-Ottoman Empire Turks with the Nazis. They speculate that Hitler admired their systematic genocide against the Armenians. Also keep in mind that the word “Aryan” originated not in Germany but in India and Persia.

   The glue that holds this wild theory together? Himmler’s obsession with Eastern religions and the occult. For a man who worked for racial purity, he sure chose some pretty non-white sources for some of his more radical ideas.

   My source is a book by Nicholas Goodrick Clarke called “The Occult Roots of Nazism” and I mention it because of Hebrides’ last paragraph of comments.

7. Tim Boucher Says:
   September 14th, 2005 at 7:24 pm

   Thats actually pretty interesting stuff. I’ve been hearing about the Nazi-Arab connection a lot lately. I’ll have to look into it more

8. carlos Says:
   September 15th, 2005 at 1:17 am

   That’s actually pretty cool that they listen to this guy despite his rantings on Jews & Freemasons.

   keep your enemies close? no, thomson’s a barrister, he believes in the same bullshit law as the government.

   they listen to him because of his rantings. the whole control system is staffed from the top-down with some of the craziest fuckwits the world has ever seen. doesn’t really seem to matter what they believe. if they believe, they are controllable. no questions, no problems. the only quarrel thomson has with the government is over who gets to run the show.

   Before all your conspiracy fanatics come to this Thomson guy’s defense though, also realize that he believes the Holocaust was a hoax.

   i don’t get it. how can anyone be certain about the holocaust? talk about muddy waters. all i know is that i couldn’t give a fuck either way. so some germans killed some jews, or maybe they didn’t, what ever.

   but i’m curious, what makes you so certain it isn’t a hoax? everything’s a bloody hoax. of all the places to stop questioning, why here?

   I’ve been hearing about the Nazi-Arab connection a lot lately.

   have you? why is that, i wonder? oh well, if you want to tread down that road of creepy racist speculation… ;

9. segovius Says:
   September 15th, 2005 at 7:32 am

   Got to pick up on this following point by James above:

   The Arab Nazis attached themselves to extreme Muslim fringe sects like the Wahhabis and started “training” the current rash of Islamofascists that we are at war with today.

   I do not dispute that there were Nazi-Arab links in WW2 (just as there were Nazi links with the Bush family for example), nor would I disagree that the Wahabis are the problem and that they are in fact almost the sole source of extremism and ‘terrorism’ in an Islamic sense today, but I would have to take issue with the second part that suggests that ‘we are at war with them’.

   This is clearly false. The Wahabis are centred in Saudi. The US is not, and never will be, at war with the Saudis or Wahabism.

   Iraq, Syria and Iran are (or were) all the most implacable enemies of the Saudis and Wahabism. The first has been attacked already and the other two will be in due course without a shadow of doubt. The bases used to mount all these attacks are/will be in Saudi Arabia.

   Meanwhile, 90% of the new mosques built in America (which is a very large number of mosques btw) are Saudi-financed/owned Wahabi mosques. The Wahabis are free to publish and promote their literature with impunity. Osama, a Wahabi, is at large and no efforts are being made to capture him.

   The Iraqi insurgents are almost uniformly Wahabi extremists. Zarqawi ….and on and on…..meanwhile, the attention and war drums beat towards the Shi’ite State of Iran (Saudi’s sworn enemy).

   There is certainly a war and there are obviously some nutters on the loose but imo we should be careful of any statements from Bush and co as to the ground-rules, targets and purpose of that war.

   Things ain’t always what they seem. Especially now.

10. james Says:
    September 15th, 2005 at 4:51 pm

    Segovius– you missed the part in my last comment where I stated “These Arab Nazis, after the Axis powers lost in WWII, were escorted to Saudi Arabia, much in the same way Nazis scientists were smuggled into the U.S. to help with our space program, much like the remainder of Nazis fled to South America…”

    The implication is that the “islamofascists” (a media term, not mine) are based in Saudi Arabia. You stated that the Wahhabis are centered in Saudi Arabia. As a conspiracy hobbyist who can’t shake the fact that the majority of the 9/11 hijackers were Saudis, I can’t help but wonder why we are still allies with them and why saudi Arabia is the only country in the world that the U.S. is forbidden to have any intelligence on. I’m not trying to point fingers, however– I just can’t understand why we went to war with Afghanistan and Iraq instead of maybe imposing sanctions on Saudi Arabia until something was done about it.

    Maybe it has to do with all that oil. But then again, to think that might make me a conspiracy nut…

11. bill m. Says:
    September 15th, 2005 at 8:00 pm

    does this mean carlos is a nihilist?
    believing that nothing is true is no different that believing ‘whatever’. it just sets you up for a position in a different hierarchy. (maybe the circus..)
    if it doesn’t matter if ’some germans killed some jews’ then why are you even concerned at all about governments? isn’t it the assumption that they are doing Bad Things?
    if everything is a hoax, then isn’t death itself a joke, and how can this barrister or bush or anyone even merit your attention?