ANTI-SEMITES UNITE; YOU HAVE NOTHING TO LOSE BUT YOUR BRAINS!

What do the crazed killer at Virginia Tech, the slaying of three Christians in Turkey, the massacres in Darfur, World War Two, and the Sunni carbomb that blew over one hundred and forty Shiites to smithereens in Baghdad today have in common?


Simple.


It's the fault of Bush, America, and the Jews.


Most specifically, the Jews.

At least that is what several people in the Netherlands believe.

I ain't kidding.


Astute readers of the comments underneath Dutch newspaper articles on the internet and visitors to Dutch internet fora will have noticed that there are two underlying practices to much Dutch commentary. The first one is 'azijnzijken', the second is 'miereneuken'.

[Azijnzijken = Micturating vinegar; making spiteful remarks no matter how inappropriate, because one just doesn't like somebody or something. Vicious slander, lashon horo.
Miereneuken = Committing congress with ants; finding fault, no matter how much of a stretch, no matter how irrelevant, no matter how small-minded it proves one to be.]


The other thing that these same astute readers will have noticed is the conflation of radical Islamic, European Communist, and Neo-Nazi rhetoric.


Because of this it is hard to figure out the ideology of commentators.


Often one part of their bushwa can seem right-wing paranoid, while another part goes off in a different direction entirely. The European left adheres to the same conspiracy theories as the European right. And our ultra left and right often mirror that pattern (American extremists seem incapable of original thought, and imitate the Europeans - especially when criticizing the US and sneering at Americans).


The Dutch and German neonazis say virtually the same thing about the US as the communist activists in Western Europe.

They aver that the US is controlled by Zionists who wish to declare a holy war against Islam on behalf of Israel and big business interests, in order to end up controlling the world. Communists stress the business connection a bit more; neonazis stress the evil Jewish connection. The racists on both sides connipt their fits about the Jews, asserting that it is because of Jews that there are problems with non-whites – again, slight variance: communists claim that the draining of the third world (resources, labour) is a Jewish business plot, neonazis insist that the presence of the third world inside Europe is an attempt to weaken the Aryans.
In the rhetorical scrimmage, the extremes often support each other – their actual political involvement is mostly hypothetical, whereas making points and pushing ideas is daily business.

This pattern spills over into dialoguing with our own opposition here in the Bay Area – it is often hard to tell where they are coming from and what their underlying ideological basis is – the anti-Semitic strain is often at odds with much else.


Anti-Semitism is a religion. Of course, so are Marxism and Satanism. ‘Nuff said.