The link between George Orwell, George Floyd and the Jews – opinion
Anybody who believes that the goal of the protesters has been to raise consciousness about the unfair treatment of blacks is missing the point and the bigger picture.
By RUTHIE BLUMProtest against racial inequality in the aftermath of the death in Minneapolis police custody of George Floyd, in Washington(photo credit: REUTERS)
George Orwell’s iconic book 1984 depicts a dystopian post-revolutionary world in which an all-powerful “Party” rules a totalitarian universe through the use of “Thought Police.”In Part Two of the prophetic novel, the protagonist of the story, Winston Smith, tries to impress upon Julia, the woman with whom he is having a dangerous and forbidden love affair, why it is so impossible to rebel against mind control.“Do you realize that the past, starting from yesterday, has been actually abolished?” he asks rhetorically, during one their trysts, while recounting tales of his time as a forger of records. “If it survives anywhere, it’s in a few solid objects with no words attached to them, like that lump of glass there.”He goes on, “Already we know almost literally nothing about the Revolution and the years before the Revolution. Every record has been destroyed or falsified, every book has been rewritten, every picture has been repainted, every statue and street and building has been renamed, every date has been altered. And that process is continuing day by day and minute by minute. History has stopped. Nothing exists except an endless present in which the Party is always right.”These words – published in Britain in 1949, four years after the end of World War II – are particularly chilling today, in light of the current upheaval in the US.THE OSTENSIBLE catalyst for the explosion of what could be called the “cancel-culture revolution” was the May 25 killing of African-American George Floyd by a sadistic Minneapolis police officer. The ground was already fertile for the mayhem that ensued, however.Indeed, anybody who believes that the goal of the protesters – certainly those rioting and looting, but even the ones marching and chanting peacefully – has been to raise consciousness about the unfair treatment of blacks is missing the point and the bigger picture.What has become clear during the past few weeks is that the motive of the radicals leading the campaign is not to improve America by eradicating its social flaws. It is, rather, to demonize the country’s birth as a nation and delegitimize its entire existence, just like its enemies abroad, such as Iran, but from within.The Black Lives Matter and Antifa thugs barely disguise this aim. They don’t need to do so. Nor are they embarrassed by their often inherently contradictory positions. They call the shots, after all, and are never called to task for their actions.Meanwhile, their numerous clueless fellow travelers in the media, academia, Hollywood, Silicon Valley and even Wall Street are too busy apologizing for being “privileged” to engage in any serious examination or debate. Yes, even seemingly intelligent and educated people are more preoccupied these days with firing employees who might harbor impure thoughts, banning books and changing the brand names of syrup and cereal to question the dubious practices of the activists to whom they are kowtowing.
YES, AS professors and newspaper editors lost their livelihoods for defending free speech, their peers were penning letters of “mea culpa” for crimes against blacks that they have not committed.As Democratic members of the US Congress kneeled subserviently to the mobs defaming and attacking law enforcers, their party’s state senators, governors and mayors were being pressured by radical constituents into defunding police departments that not only employ blacks, but die in the service of protecting them.And as these Democrats cloaked themselves in African Kente cloth, not one of them even mentioned that thousands of Nigerian Christians are being slaughtered by Boko Haram jihadists, who also happen to be black. But then, not a peep has been uttered by Black Lives Matter about the plight of their “fellow” Africans. You know, the ones who actually live in Africa, where racism is rampant and slavery still thrives.Nor do the people begging for acceptance and forgiveness from the Black Lives Matter radicals appear to notice, for instance, that among the symbols of American heritage and history being trashed by their supporters are those honoring famed abolitionists, such as Wisconsin’s Col. Hans Christian Heg, as well as monuments that pay tribute to blacks themselves.Take the Clayton Jackson McGhie Memorial in Duluth, Minnesota, for example, which was defaced in the immediate aftermath of Floyd’s murder. The monument consists of the statues of Elias Clayton, Elmer Jackson and Isaac McGhie, three black men lynched by an angry mob in 1920 and hanged from a lamppost after being accused falsely of raping a white woman.Then there’s the Robert Gould Shaw and Massachusetts 54th Regiment Memorial in Boston. The bas-relief sculpture was created at the end of the 19th century to highlight the evil of racial bigotry and pay homage to the black heroes who fought and died in the Civil War.The desecration of the above monuments can be explained in one of two ways: Either the fact that they were erected by Americans for Americans was sufficient to render them evil; or the perpetrators who vandalized them were too ignorant of their own history to be familiar with the figures in stone and bronze.Orwell explains this phenomenon from the grave.“In a way, the world-view of the Party imposed itself most successfully on people incapable of understanding it,” his protagonist muses. “They could be made to accept the most flagrant violations of reality, because they never fully grasped the enormity of what was demanded of them, and were not sufficiently interested in public events to notice what was happening. By lack of understanding they remained sane. They simply swallowed everything, and what they swallowed did them no harm, because it left no residue behind, just as a grain of corn will pass undigested through the body of a bird.”Whenever “flagrant violations of reality” become the norm, the Jews have to worry.Of course, like African Americans, Jews are not a homogeneous bunch. Just as many blacks are horrified and disgusted by the burning of the American flag – and the denial of American exceptionalism – plenty of Jews are siding with Black Lives Matter in the effort to destroy the “land of the free and the home of the brave.” Oh, and to take down Israel while they’re at it.Some of these are ideologues with an agenda; others are “not sufficiently interested in public events to notice what [is] happening.”Yet all are potential prey for the George Floyd fan club, whose targets for hatred and blame at the moment are the police, the president and anyone who dares to suggest that “all lives matter.”When enthusiasm for those common enemies starts to lose steam, the Jews will become an open scapegoat, as they always do when a society is in peril or decline.THIS HELPS shed light on the sudden surge in the interest of American Jews to immigrate to Israel. Between the COVID-19 pandemic and subsequent anti-white demonstrations across the country – both of which were accompanied by antisemitic undertones – Jews who had spent years, if not decades, toying with idea of relocating to the Holy Land, began to take concrete steps in that direction.According to the aliyah-facilitating organization Nefesh B’Nefesh, this May saw a record number of applications from North America – the highest in a single month since its founding 18 years ago. In anticipation, the Jewish Agency told the Knesset to prepare for the wave of new immigrants.Though good news for Israel, it is a bad sign of the times. Jews never before have felt the need to flee the US. If they made aliyah, it was by choice. That so many even are considering such a move during the global economic crisis, caused by coronavirus lockdowns, indicates uncharacteristic desperation.Their malaise is understandable. So is their hope that Israel will provide a safe haven from progressive totalitarianism. The problem is that Israelis mimic Americans, which is why a vigil for Floyd, replete with Black Lives Matter signs and slogans, was held in Tel Aviv.It is also the reason that Israeli pundits who appear regularly on one or another of Israel’s main TV channels assert – with idiocy disguised as authority – that America suffers from “systemic racism,” which “everyone knows” is the fault of US President Donald Trump.Alas, if Israel weren’t surrounded by Iranian proxies and other external enemies armed to the teeth, it easily could end up bathing in – not just drinking – the cancel-culture Kool-Aid.Israel, like the rest of the West, needs a strong and healthy America, not one forced into submission by fanatics bent on altering its nature and fundamental principles. Black Lives Matter and its sycophants must not be mistaken for people who care about the likes of George Floyd. They should be seen and understood in the context of George Orwell.
