I don’t get Greg Johnson. Yesterday I tried to post the following comment in the most recent piece published at Counter-Currents (CC). The subject? Jewish ritual murders of cute, gentile kids!
I’ve not read much about blood libel, speciously called here “Jewish ritual murders,” but I was pretty involved in editing Wikipedia’s Satanic Ritual Abuse which I studied thoroughly some years ago: a clear case of moral panic where many innocent American adults were indicted in the 1980s as in the Salem trials.
The “About” page in my blog has me as a researcher and debunker of the famous “wall face,” paranormal appearances in a house in Spain. One thing is clear to me now that I’m starting to see that many white nationalists religiously believe in retarded theories that blame the Jews for everything (e.g., 9/11). Unlike me they have not subscribed the Skeptical Inquirer, attended the conferences of the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry (CSI), or read their Prometheus Books that debunk not only paranormal claims but blood libels as well.
And no: the CSI founders—I’ve met Paul Kurtz twice in the conferences and corresponded to Martin Gardner before he died—are not Jews.
Johnson deleted my comment. Why? Is he mad with me for my criticizing those homosexuals that post featured articles at his webzine (see my recent entries here and here)? But in my above comment I was not criticizing these guys. Nor was it another criticism of Johnson’s musical and movie tastes, about which I posted here quite a few entries by the end of the year.
I wrote the above comment because, due to my experience with CSI, on these subjects—claims such as the ritual murder of children and adults—I am far more knowledgeable than the common nationalist. And extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.
Just to give you a bit of the flavor of the mendacity of these claims, this is what I wrote in my book Hojas Susurrantes, which precisely deals with child abuse, the subject I’ve researched most in my life:
Satanic Ritual Abuse
The confusion of my feelings about [Lloyd] deMause—lucubration such as [the above] are psychobabble but deMause’s authentic discoveries are the great lighthouse for the humanities—moved me to annotate each cognitive error I encountered in his legacy.
In 1994 deMause devoted more than a whole issue of his journal to one of the scandals originated in his country that destroyed the reputation of many innocent adults: claims of multiple victims, multiple perpetrators during occult rites in daycare centers for children, known as “Satanic Ritual Abuse” or SRA. I was so intrigued by the subject that, when I read deMause’s article “Why Cults Terrorize and Kill Children” I devoted a few months of my life to research the subject by reading, printing and discussing in the internet: material that would fill up the thickest ring-binder that I possess. I also purchased a copy of a book on SRA published by Princeton University. My objective was to ascertain whether the man whom I had been taking as a sort of mentor had gone astray. My suspicions turned to be justified, and even worse: by inviting the foremost believers of SRA to publish in his journal, deMause directly contributed to the creation of an urban myth.
The collective hysteria known as SRA originated with the publication of a 1980 sensationalist book, Michelle Remembers. Michelle claimed that Satan himself appeared to her and wounded her body, but that an archangel healed it. In the mentioned article deMause wrote credulous passages about other fantastic claims by Michelle, and added that the people who ran certain daycare centers in the 1980s put the children in boxes and cages “as symbolic wombs.” DeMause then speculated that “they hang them upside down, the position of fetuses” and that “they drink victim’s blood as fetuses ‘drink’ placental blood,” in addition to force children to “drink urine” and “eat feces as some do during birth.” DeMause also referred to secret tunnels that, he wrote, existed beneath the daycare centers: “They often hold their rituals in actual tunnels.” In fact, those tunnels never existed. In Evil Incarnate: Rumors of Demonic Conspiracy and Ritual Abuse in History, published in 2006, professor David Frankfurter wrote about deMause’s article: “In this way a contemporary writer can assemble a theory of ritual power to explain rituals that have no forensic evidence.”
This is the sort of thing that, in Wikipedia’s talk page about psychohistory, culminates with rants like the one that I rescued before another editor deleted it: “Don’t ever listen to this lunatic!” (deMause). It is true that Colin Ross is another gullible believer of SRA, as seen in a book in whose afterword Elizabeth Loftus disagrees with him. But since the mid-1990s the phenomenon was discredited to such degree that sociologists, criminologists and police officials recognized what it was: a witch-hunt that led to prison and ruined the lives of many adults. The movie Indictment: The McMartin Trial, sponsored by Oliver Stone and based on the most notorious of these hunts, sums up what I mean. Using invasive techniques for adults in the interrogation of little kids, therapists of the McMartin case and other kindergartens obtained confessions full of fantasies: that the children had been abducted and taken through a network of tunnels to a hidden cave under the school; that they flew in the air and saw giraffes, lions and the killing of a rabbit to be returned to their unsuspecting parents in the daycare center. Kyle Zirpolo was one of the McMartin children. A twenty-nine in 2005, several years after the trial, Zirpolo confessed to reporters that as a child he had been pressured to lie:
Anytime I would give them an answer that they didn’t like, they would ask again and encourage me to give them the answer they were looking for. It was really obvious what they wanted… I felt uncomfortable and a little ashamed that I was being dishonest. But at the same time, being the type of person I was, whatever my parents wanted me to do, I would do.
In its heyday in the 1980s and early 90s, and in some ways similar to the Salem witch trials of 1692, SRA allegations reached grotesque levels. Proponents argued that an intergenerational group of families raised and kidnapped babies and children in an international conspiracy that had infiltrated the police and the professions of lawyers and doctors. Conspiracy theorists claimed that the FBI and the CIA were involved to discredit the veracity of the phenomenon. The allegations ranged from brainwashing and necrophilia, kidnapping, sexual abuse and child pornography, to black masses and ritual killings of animals and thousands of people every year. In the McMartin case they talked about children washed away when the perpetrator pulled the toilet chain taking them to hidden rooms where they would be molested; orgies in carwash business, and even flying witches. Needless to say, no forensic evidence was found to support such claims.
After the legal catastrophe that McMartin and several other cases represented, small children have not been questioned with the aggressive techniques that led them to fantasize so wildly. Nowadays there is no witch-hunting going on in the U.S., UK or Australia caused by coercive techniques of fanatics that induce either false memories or outright lies (like Zirpolo’s) to please therapist and parent. However, despite the consensus in 21st century’s sociology and criminology—that SRA was a case of moral panic about which there is no forensic evidence—, deMause did not change his view. The work that describes his thinking more broadly, The Emotional Life of Nations published in 2002 and recently translated into German, contains a brief passage where he still regards SRA as something real.
Is my criticism of homosexuals who, in my humble opinion, ought not be featured at CC enough reason to suppress legit commentariat on unrelated subjects, such as SRA or the so-called “blood libel”?
Suppose that a causal visitor hits CC today and, erroneously, gets the impression that all white nationalists believe in these literally medieval rumors about the Jews. Wouldn’t this automatically disqualify CC to the eyes of our skeptical visitor? Wouldn’t this turn out into a psychological stumbling block for our visitor to become familiar with the more sober, legitimate criticism of the Jews, such as the work of Kevin MacDonald?
With my single comment I tried to balance a bit the gullibility of the editor, author and commenters. No kidding: I was trying to do some good public relations for CC after reading that ill-researched piece.
And this is what I got.
12 replies on “Satanic Ritual Abuse”
Quite the contrary, Kurtz is a Jew. He is, i believe, the founder of secular humanism or of an org. that acts as an umbrella to “freethinking” organizations, most or all of which promulgate the Jewish spirit of Critique a la Kevin MacDonald’s thesis.
Anyway, Greg Johnson, under the aegis of “triteness”, declines to publish my, and now I assume, your comments. I think your comment is apposite; wrong or right.
It seems that Greg Johnson has been offended by us, especially me. Just recently, he declined to publish my comment on his video of Placido Domingo; oh, well. Think about it: what would be someone’s response to calling their musical taste disgusting? To calling their precious philosophy of nonchalance and toleration towards sexual perversion revolting and moronic?
Still, I can’t help but think that I’m dealing with a fickle woman. 😉
I see that Wikipedia, for the first time in its history, recently added Kurtz in the list of “Jewish philosophers”. I’ll have to check this out by contacting him directly.
In the previous incarnation of the article Kurtz appeared of Christian background. And I remember perfectly that at Free Inquiry he debated a Jew who claimed that Kurtz “blamed the victim” when Kurtz wrote that the Jews should have miscegenated long time ago to avoid anti-Semitism.
Don’t think so. I used to subscribe Free Inquiry and never got the impression of something subversive going on in the magazine: just freethinking for atheists.
Oh: And please publish here your comment that Greg has recently censored!
Oops! I now see that the Wikipedia article “List of Jewish American philosophers” doesn’t include Kurtz in it. It means that someone recently added it in the “See Also” section of the Kurtz article with no internal support or source. Anyway, I’ve just left a message at both the wiki’s talk page and at the Facebook page on Kurtz and hope they will clarify this issue.
Kurtz is Jewish. He’s married to a French woman, too. I’ve been involved with him and his outfit. Apparently, Hook, another Jew, was his mentor and they were at one time communists.
Anyway, the general tenor of atheist movements, of which I was a big part, belongs to the Culture of Critique. Kurtz’s orgs. Are no exception. Everyone around him is, in someway, deconstructing the West. Indeed, I never saw a work from Prometheus Books that excoriated Judaism and its Talmud.
Anyway, my comment on the Domingo post was the following: “I love that aria. However, I prefer Corelli in that role.”
IFA
I am not much familiar with American and Jewish last names, but wasn’t Marlon Brando at the Apocalypse Now movie a “Kurtz” also (i.e., a gentile)?
In the Wikipedia talk page an editor, David W. Brooks, has just responded. He said that there’s no evidence and removed the phrase that had Kurtz as Jewish.
Which evidence do you have that he has Jewish ancestry? Anyway, I am still awaiting a direct response to my question at Kurtz’s Facebook page.
I knew that Paul Kurtz has a French wife because he told us that in a Mexico City dinner. And I own lots of Prometheus Books and have not seen anything remotely against the West. Quite the contrary: he wants to deconstruct religions, pseudo-sciences and also magical and new age beliefs.
Kurtz signed me a copy of one of his books, and in The Transcendental Temptation he certainly devoted a whole chapter debunking Judaism, and especially the figure of Moses. Presently, however, I no longer subscribe his two magazines because like most western intellectuals he is altogether clueless about race, etc.
What Kurtz seems to be mostly concerned with are the postmodern critics of science, those silly guys who believe that science is “a social construct”, etc. That’s why his major emphasis has been Skeptical Inquirer and the paranormal pseudosciences. And yes: in the very early Free Inquiry magazines that I still have in my library you can see Hook. Kurtz seems to have undergone the typical youthful change from political leftism to freethinking centrism.
That cannot be, since many CSI scholars I am acquainted with restrict their work in deconstructing a chosen field of fringe science—parapsychology, UFOlogy, astrology, medical quackery, you name it—with no pronouncements on political subjects. Except perhaps the fact that all of this bunk debilitates society and immerse the population into magical thinking. If Prometheus Books or CSI had a typical “culture of critique” agenda they’d have been in the radar of The Occidental Observer by now. But they aren’t.
Really? How?
By the by, if Greg deleted that innocent comment of yours, that can only mean that you are absolutely right in what you said way above. We are dealing with fickle, not exactly manly, behavior (which is why I hate so much the Costello and Donovan pseudo-manly articles at CC).
Kurtz’s avuncular, rotund, and bearded right-handman stated that Kurtz was a Brooklyn Jew, ex-commie, and follower of Hook.
I disagree. Notwithstanding the specialty of those aforementioned, Kurtz’s CSH and all his meetings that I’ve attended are steeped in the C of C and Jew-heavy. As an example, one has to open Ibn Warraq’s “Why I Am Not a Muslim” or listen to his youtube videos and see/hear his Jewish modernisms.
I have christened the “freethinking” movement as “Atheists who voted for Bill Clinton.”
IFA
Perhaps you’re right, because nobody has replied to my Facebook question yet. He seems to be the son of Russian immigrants, and if his Jewish background is confirmed it would surprise me.
At any event, I would have never become a white nationalist hadn’t I met Kurtz and his group back in November 1989 when they visited Mexico: James Randi, Ray Hyman and James Alcock.
At that time I was immersed in magical thinking—parapsychology, the Turin Shroud, and nutty projects to develop ESP and PK. I was also struggling with the inner demons of a Christianity that my father had inculcated in me since my childhood.
Thanks to Kurtz and his group, for the first time in my life I started to read skeptical literature, especially the critics of parapsychology.
And lo and behold: reading them cured me from my magical, paranormal worldview that had ruined my life for so long. Prometheus Books also gave me a wholly different POV to debunk the religion of my father that had so greatly injured me (I recount a tiny tip of the iceberg of my father’s Christian toxicity here).
Ordering back issues of both Skeptical Inquirer and Free Inquiry was like running a Norton antivirus that encapsulated the many viruses of the mind that resulted from my failed defense mechanism before the parental abuse I had suffered since my teens. It is a long, long story which I recount in Hojas Susurrantes.
Later in a CSI conference I shook Carl Sagan’s hand in 1994, whose book critical of all sort of paranormal thinking can be read as a perfect manifesto of what CSI stands for.
No, I see nothing like MacDonald’s exposé of the Jewish “culture of critique” in this sort of debunking of magical thinking. So in the end it doesn’t matter whether or not Kurtz is of Jewish ancestry. Thanks to the group he cofounded with Martin Gardner, who was 100% gentile by the way, I was rescued from my parapsychological delusions, becoming a hardcore skeptic of the paranormal. (For instance, when I started to investigate the Belmez case in Spain I was a believer that the faces were genuine, and ended skeptic.)
Don’t throw away the baby with the bathwater, I always say.
IFA
Unless you were offering something to add in the way of evidence contrary to the verdict reached by two italian courts in the Simon of Trent case, Greg Johnson may have deleted your comment on the Toaff book review simply because ihe thought it was off-topic. Jewish ritual murder and Satanic ritual abuse are not the same thing. Harell Rhome has also written about The Trent Affair is an example of a well-documented and proven Jewish ritual murder. http://www.gnosticliberationfront.com/strange_sad_saga_of_St_Simon.htm. Rather than approaching Hamilton’s book review with skepticism about where the blame should have been placed maybe Mr. Johnson would have let your comment stand if you had written about why little Simon Gerber was de-cannonized in 1965.
The Jews of Trent went into shock. This cosmopolitan city had no record of pogroms or anti-Jewish violence. Jews had lived peacefully and profitably in Italy for centuries. But, the murder in Trent was essentially a proven case, and cannot be blamed on ignorance or naive anti-Jewish prejudices. Italy, particularly in Trent, had never really oppressed the Jews, lending even greater veracity to the case of Simon. The Trentine Jewish community, however, soon recovered from their initial shock, and began to resist the turn of events. Through bribery and pressure on the authorities, they gained a new trial. This tribunal sat in Ventimiglia, presided over by a respected jurist named Guidici. The verdict was the same. They confirmed the death sentences. But the rich, influential Jews of Trent did not stop there. Under howls of protest, the case came before Pope Sixtus IV. He appointed a respected canon lawyer, Father Panvino, to preside over a tribunal consisting of no less than six Cardinals. They, too, confirmed the sentences, saying: “The Hebrews killed the little boy Simon in order to obey a rabbinical religious law; their motive to serve a most wicked piety and devotion by obtaining Christian blood….”
A Papal Bull entitled Facit Nos Pietas in 1478 fully accepted the truth of the verdicts. The verdict of the Papal Tribunal was the final legal segment, and the appeals went no further. The controversy did not subside, and the decision caused deep resentment among the Jews. In the final stages, Dr. Tobias committed suicide and four others converted to Catholicism and received pardons. Jews were henceforth excluded from Trent, and as late as the eighteenth century were not allowed to pass through the town. According to the Encyclopedia Judaica, the rabbis of Italy imposed a ban on Jewish settlement in Trent. This was formally lifted when Little Simon was de-canonized in 1965.
I know that SRA and blood libel are not the same thing. But you missed my point: extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. And those familiar with sacrificial ritual abuse claims—just take a look at my book Hojas Susurrantes: the subject matter of my 4th book are real child sacrifices thru history—know that westerners have suffered from several moral panics in the last centuries (the witch trials, only the most notorious case).
Again, extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence, and I see nothing of it in CC’s gullible piece.
By the way, the Popes also accepted that poor, non-Jew white women labeled as witches had a pact with the Devil. Popes are anything but a reliable source on witch claims!
Is it not so that medical examination of many of the Mcmartin children found that they had indeed been victims of sexual assault?
No. I used to edit this wiki article.