there are no radicals on the true left, left, as weenies of all sorts decide who gets to comment on their platforms . . . David Rovics–latest wimp, and wimp-dom from self-described rad is dangerous?
I’m asking the question (above), not making the huge swath of criticism. But I gave him a few shots —
The tables were turned — David Rovics interviewed me in a wide-ranging, tangentially themed hour a few days ago. Here is what one Dissident Voice article has to say about Portland, OR-based Rovics
He is not one to wait for his turn to talk. He listens intently and when I’m finished asks another question. After all that Rovics has seen and heard during more than 20 years as a singer-song writer who has performed all over the world, he has yet to act like a self-proclaimed expert on anything. — “The Social Significance of David Rovics” by Jasmin Ramsey, July 25th, 2009
On the Streets, in Union Halls, on the Frontlines: Have Guitar, Will Travel by Paul Haeder / November 25th, 2020
How things change, in a Young Country with Old Men Who Are Actually Young Holding Us Down Since They Want Us Too Dumb for Old and Young Men in a Shit-Hole Country.
Or,
Now, I posted on this guy’s Substack, Rovics, that is, in the comments section, on my take around the idea he posits in today’s screed that people on his Substack might not like what he has to say about . . .
We can’t change the past, nor can we predict the future. But if we take a cursory look at what’s gone on on Planet Earth in my lifetime, it would be overwhelmingly reasonable to assume that neither 9/11/1973 or 9/11/2001 would have happened without the existence of the CIA and its practices in support of US foreign policy.
At this point I’m probably losing most of my readers, aside from the most conspiracy-obsessed ones. This is by design, on the part of the social engineers. You’re supposed to be thinking of emotionally unstable incel nerds with aluminum-foil hats ranting about secret societies, and your eyes should shortly start glossing over.
My comment was accepted, then erased, and then this:
OH, the blocks. Shadow-banning. This guy has already had problems with his Jewish ancestory and his Jewish Zionist brethren. What did I put into my comments?
The Gilad Atzmon and David Rovics Antisemitism Controversy, Explained
Oh, this website, pure hatred, pure telling Goyim and self-loathing Jews (sic-sic) what to do:
Rovics has been a staple of many radical communities for a couple of decades. Known for his acoustic protest songs, he often plays at demonstrations, writes tracks related to contemporary political issues, and tours internationally and has self-published dozens of albums.
In 2021 Rovics had a YouTube video and podcast interviewing the neo-Nazi Matthew Heimbach. The interview is a softball, where Rovics agrees with many of Heimbach’s critiques of the left and challenges virtually nothing Heimbach says, essentially giving him an open forum to state his views. Heimbach has argued that he has reformed, that he is no longer a white nationalist, but both by listening to his views and listening to experts, journalists, and antifascists who know him and his work well, this is an easy lie to dispel.[3]
Then Rovics hosted the antisemite Gilad Atzmon on his YouTube/podcast, where they talked at length about “Jewish tribal politics” and “Jewish identity politics.” Rovics knows well that there has been a great deal of evidence amassed about Atzmon and when he was confronted with it, both recently and historically, he has doubled down, refusing to deny Atzmon his support. Third, he appeared on the conspiracy podcast hosted by Kevin Barrett, who denied the Holocaust while Rovics was on his show; again, Rovics seemed to give him a pass.[4] Barrett is a known antisemite and conspiracy theorist, who describes himself as a “Holocaust agnostic” and who describes the antisemitic forgery The Protocols of the Elders of Zion as a witty piece of “satire.”[5]
Rovics has apologized for the Heimbach interview and taken it down. But that is not the issue at the heart of the ongoing controversy. People make mistakes, and Rovics believed Heimbach when he shouldn’t have. I, and all journalists and antifascists, quote white nationalists in stories, sometimes from direct interviews, because we have to prove they are what we allege they are. That is necessary for reliable journalism and the safety of the community. But when I do this I analyze and re-analyze the choices, I get a huge number of eyes to ensure it is being done ethically, and I never give them an open platform to speak up without being directly countered. So, this could be considered an understandable mistake, one which stems from his own arrogance to think that he does not need any expertise or accountability when doing this type of work.
SHAME on Rovics. LINK.
So so, fair play, no? What the hell is wrong with someone not wanting comments on their Substack? Prior Restraint or Censoring?
Hell, hat did I say to offend him? I said that conspiracy theories are not theories and some sort of reason to even joke about “losing my readers.” I posted this article, about Abrams:
Then this one I posted:
Then this one, too:
Then, I referred to Lowkey and this article:
Then, I recommended to him to keep this Parenti quote handy:
“Almost as an article of faith, some individuals believe that conspiracies are either kooky fantasies or unimportant aberrations. To be sure, wacko conspiracy theories do exist. There are people who believe that the United States has been invaded by a secret United Nations army equipped with black helicopters, or that the country is secretly controlled by Jews or gays or feminists or black nationalists or communists or extraterrestrial aliens. But it does not logically follow that all conspiracies are imaginary.
Conspiracy is a legitimate concept in law: the collusion of two or more people pursuing illegal means to effect some illegal or immoral end. People go to jail for committing conspiratorial acts. Conspiracies are a matter of public record, and some are of real political significance. The Watergate break-in was a conspiracy, as was the Watergate cover-up, which led to Nixon’s downfall. Iran-contra was a conspiracy of immense scope, much of it still uncovered. The savings and loan scandal was described by the Justice Department as “a thousand conspiracies of fraud, theft, and bribery,” the greatest financial crime in history.
Often the term “conspiracy” is applied dismissively whenever one suggests that people who occupy positions of political and economic power are consciously dedicated to advancing their elite interests. Even when they openly profess their designs, there are those who deny that intent is involved. In 1994, the officers of the Federal Reserve announced they would pursue monetary policies designed to maintain a high level of unemployment in order to safeguard against “overheating” the economy. Like any creditor class, they preferred a deflationary course. When an acquaintance of mine mentioned this to friends, he was greeted skeptically, “Do you think the Fed bankers are deliberately trying to keep people unemployed?” In fact, not only did he think it, it was announced on the financial pages of the press. Still, his friends assumed he was imagining a conspiracy because he ascribed self-interested collusion to powerful people.
At a World Affairs Council meeting in San Francisco, I remarked to a participant that U.S. leaders were pushing hard for the reinstatement of capitalism in the former communist countries. He said, “Do you really think they carry it to that level of conscious intent?” I pointed out it was not a conjecture on my part. They have repeatedly announced their commitment to seeing that “free-market reforms” are introduced in Eastern Europe. Their economic aid is channeled almost exclusively into the private sector. The same policy holds for the monies intended for other countries. Thus, as of the end of 1995, “more than $4.5 million U.S. aid to Haiti has been put on hold because the Aristide government has failed to make progress on a program to privatize state-owned companies” (New York Times 11/25/95).
Those who suffer from conspiracy phobia are fond of saying: “Do you actually think there’s a group of people sitting around in a room plotting things?” For some reason that image is assumed to be so patently absurd as to invite only disclaimers. But where else would people of power get together – on park benches or carousels? Indeed, they meet in rooms: corporate boardrooms, Pentagon command rooms, at the Bohemian Grove, in the choice dining rooms at the best restaurants, resorts, hotels, and estates, in the many conference rooms at the White House, the NSA, the CIA, or wherever. And, yes, they consciously plot – though they call it “planning” and “strategizing” – and they do so in great secrecy, often resisting all efforts at public disclosure. No one confabulates and plans more than political and corporate elites and their hired specialists. To make the world safe for those who own it, politically active elements of the owning class have created a national security state that expends billions of dollars and enlists the efforts of vast numbers of people.”―Michael Parenti,Dirty Truths
Fuck You Book —
The irony of this cock blocking by the non-radical Rovics is that I was having my fucking nanny gate fun over at FU Book minutes before.
I appealed to this son of a bitch Meta Monster:
I still did not know what the fuck the ban was about [ ban included me not able to comment on the groups I follow . . . this is the what Goyim like me have to deal with facing Hasbara Tyrants like Fucker-Burg. ]
I found out that this is the offending post:
It’s a legit site:
So, this is SS Substack, I know I know. Closet Goebbels and Gestapo of Sorts. I am sure the rules based disorder of this dystopia says not to criticize fellow Sub-Human Substackers.
Attacking Isra-Hell or Fuckerberg?
HIDE AND SEEK — Tracking NSO Group’s Pegasus Spyware to Operations in 45 Countries
April 26, 2022. This is a fake site, of course, set up to attack, well, David and Gilad.
Now, this is verboten? Words, questions, racialized questions, citing this or that scum or sort-of-scum of the earth?
“The issue of biology is very interesting, and I think that Kevin MacDonald himself understands it,” Atzmon says, citing a white nationalist psychologist known for arguing that Judaism was a “group evolutionary strategy” for Jews to eugenically improve themselves and outcompete Gentiles for resources.
“How much of it is biology, race, culture? These questions should be discussed openly. I don’t see Jews as a race. There is no Jewish racial continuum, but there is definitely a cultural pattern that has some biological implications,” says Atzmon.
“I use The Bell Curve models to show how Jews’ cognitive ability distribution was in the Jewish society. There is something that people don’t know a lot about. Kevin MacDonald definitely knows about it. He wrote about it. Jews, for as long as 1,500 years, European Jews married intelligence – the sage, the rabbi, the young boy that is destined to become the rabbi – with the merchant’s daughter. For 1,500 years, in the ghetto, rabbinical Jews married scholarship with money, and they have managed to create a very unique elite that specialized in scholarship and money.”
So, this person — [Shane Burley is a writer, filmmaker, and union organizer based in Portland, Oregon. He is the author of Why We Fight: Essays on Fascism, Resistance, and Surviving the Apocalypse (AK Press, 2021) and Fascism Today: What It Is and How to End It (AK Press, 2017), and the editor of the forthcoming anthology ¡No pasarán!: Antifascist Dispatches from a World in Crisis. His work is featured at places such as NBC News, The Daily Beast, The Independent, Jacobin, Al Jazeera, Haaretz, Tikkun, The Baffler, Bandcamp Daily, Truthout, and the Oregon Historical Quarterly. He is also the editor of a special issue of the Journal of Social Justice on “Antisemitism in the 21st Century.” He is currently working on two books, one on radical approaches to antisemitism and another on the history of antifascism and popular struggle.] — attacks Rovics hard right-left! Quoting Burley:
Atzmon has just as much of a problem with Jewish anti-Zionists as he does with Jewish Zionists because they maintain their “tribal identity” and refuse to disaffiliate with Jewishness. “Don’t they love themselves for being enlightened, progressive socialists, while at the same time sinking into neurosis upon realizing that being Jewish tribal petit bourgeois, they have never managed to join the human family, let alone the working class,” says Atzmon about Jewish anti-Zionists.[43]
“If we redefine Zionism as a modern form of Jewish activism that aims to halt assimilation, we can then reassess all Jewish tribal activity as an internal debate within the diverse Zionist political movement – colonizing of Palestine can then be considered as just another one of the faces of Zionism. Jewish socialism and Jewish progressive activism fits very nicely into the Zionist project. As integral parts of the Zionist network, they are there to collect the lost souls amongst the humanist Jews, to bring them home for Hanukkah. The Israel Lobby and Alan Dershowitzes of the world are the voices of Zionism; the third-category socialists are there to stop proud, self-hating Jews from blowing the whistle.”
Enough already: Wikipedia, David Rovics was born in New York City. His family moved to Wilton, Connecticut when he was young. Rovics was politically inspired during his adolescence by his experiences with the conservative-oriented, Christian milieu of his home town. His parents, both classical musicians and educators, were liberal in their outlook. Perhaps for this reason, while in his teens Rovics acquired interests in nuclear disarmament, vegetarianism and other counterculture issues. He has described himself as an “anti-Zionist Jew from New York”
Paul Haeder, Author 