Taki proves I was right about him

Dan R. writes:

With his most recent article about the Gaza war, calling Israel “the Bernie Madoff of countries.” Taki has once again validated your request to be removed from his blogroll. Here’s how it begins:

Israel: The Bernie Madoff of Countries

Israel can now safely be called the Bernie Madoff of countries, at it has lied to the world about its intentions, stolen Palestinian lands continuously since 1948, and managed to do all this with American tax payer’s money. Every American taxpayer, starting with George W. Bush, has Palestinian blood on their hands thanks to the butchers that run Israel.

I met Taki once and found him to be charming and delightful, but his hositility to Israel just runs over the top, taking delight in baiting Jews with comments referencing Israel to Goebbels and the like, and more. Unfortunately, as owner of his site he made the decision to end reader comments and thus cannot learn the reactions of his readers. That, along with his advice to his staff to minimize or stop using the word “conservative” to describe themselves, makes me wonder if Taki is yet another embodiment of the Peter Principle, funny and interesting as a columnist, but promoted (by himself!) to his level of incompetence with the creation of Takimag.com .

LA replies:

Madoff is probably the biggest thief, and the biggest defrauder, in history. And he is conspicuously Jewish. To call Israel the Bernie Madoff of countries, thus portraying the Jewish State as a nation of criminal sneaks through its supposed similarity to the Jewish Madoff, goes beyond Israel hatred and becomes Jew-hatred. Taki is an anti-Semite, a person who deliberately invokes hatred of Jews as Jews. His statement about Israel quoted above is as bad as any I’ve seen. The man is garbage. His contributors and readers are welcome to him.

And the rest of his article is the standard Arab history of Israel, the message of which is: Israel is illegitimate, it was founded by crime, it shouldn’t exist, and the Arabs are justified in waging war against it until they destroy it.

UPDATE

LA writes:

In a later entry, I have further commented on the meaning of Taki’s statement:

This Bernie Madoff of countries, this perfidious and lying Jew of a country, this country whose entire history from its founding has been one vast act of fraud and theft making it deserving of Arab attacks and denying it the right of self defense, this country led by “butchers”—such is Taki’s picture of Israel and the Jews. With those remarks, Taki’s anti-Israelism crossed the line into anti-Semitism, and of a particularly gross and disgusting kind.

- end of initial entry -

Before he saw this entry, Howard Sutherland wrote:

I think Takimag has been slipping of late, but there is good stuff there from time to time. Here Zmirak lets Bush and the neocons have it, yet again. His second paragraph pithily sums up what the Bush’s administration has actually done, and how Bush should be greeted in future. In addition to the justified vilification of Bush and Rove, I especially like this: “The theory that a secular state governing a nation in an advanced stage of cultural decay could rely on federally-directed programs to foster the “values” treasured by Christian conservatives was always absurd on its very face.” There is real wisdom in that sentence.

And here is one former military man who agrees completely that the Pentagon’s budget needs to be slashed. We must drop our overseas commitments that do nothing for the American national interest—including our occupations in Iraq and Afghanistan—and reduce and redeploy our armed forces. The place to deploy most of the U.S. Army is the Mexican border! And the place for most of the Navy is American waters. Let’s defend ourselves for a change.

If Takimag still allowed comments, I would have posted this there.

Howard Sutherland continued:

I hope you are not offended by my forwarding a link to Takimag. While I value some of what Zmirak, Piatak (I guess I like Taki’s Slavik friends) and a few others post there, I have to agree with you that Taki himself has become unhinged—to the extent he wasn’t already—about Israel.

I haven’t read enough of Taki’s writing to know if he a full-fledged anti-Semite, although I’m sure he has nothing against partying with the Rothschilds. I don’t find his writing very interesting. I have, however, seen enough of it to know he is irrationally and viciously anti-Israeli. His animus against Israel and Israelis is unrelenting. Curious, as he doesn’t strike me as an Orientalist or pro-Moslem, either. Taki also seems utterly incapable of distinguishing between Jewish American neoconservatives and actual Israelis.

In his latest, which I won’t link out of courtesy, he calls Israel the “Bernie Madoff of countries.” Cheap shot. If so, are the Arabs, with their support of Moslem decapitations, the “Jack the Ripper of peoples”?

For some on the Right, Israel seems to be truly deranging. Taki I have mentioned, but another — whom you have pilloried for it — is Paul Craig Roberts. When I compare what Roberts had to say about the Soviet economy (all of it true, as far as I can tell) with his fulminations about Israel, it’s hard to believe it’s the same man talking.

Bruce B. writes:

I only gross about $40K per year and have a large family and, consequently, don’t really pay any federal taxes except FICA. So I guess the Palestinians’ blood isn’t on my hands. Whew!

Gintas writes:

When I go to Takimag, I just scan the front page, maybe there might be a potentially interesting article. I looked today at Takimag, and what did I see? A pornographic picture. I’m sure someone could argue that technically it’s not pornography, it just looks like it.

So, if you go there, you’ll see it, you’ve been warned (the point here isn’t to tempt you, but to show that Takimag isn’t something I can view safely at work, or at home when the family is around). If you don’t go there you won’t see it and just take my word for it that it’s there. Does it matter what the article is about? As I write, I can’t remember who wrote it, it’s something about advertising (“Advertising is Rape”), and I’m not going back to look again, nor am I providing a link to make it easy for you.

The other day there was an article advocating the legalization of drugs (“Repealing the 2nd Prohibition”). Do you remember that Taki spent time in jail for carrying some drugs through airport security?

LA replies:

Instead of linking the front page, which changes, here is the article with the photo that Gintas is referring to.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at January 08, 2009 12:50 PM | Send