Alice Walker's Blindspot, with all due respect

Alice Walker deserves a credit for her accomplishments, in particular her book The Color Purple,  but she also has a flaw in her politics, or a blind spot, in an area where I am qualified to speak.  She has a blind spot with regard to anti-Semitism, most recently revealed in her support and defense of David Icke, and her failure to see a danger in the book by Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf.  David Icke may be a faddish or transient influence as an anti-Semite, but Hitler was an historic figure with a track record of perpetrating massive murder against six million Jews, and five million non-Jews, among his many crimes.  His book Mein Kampf was full of the ideological ground work for his mass extermination plan against the Jews, and Alice Walker, for all her intelligence, could not sense this when she examined the book. 

I am at the other end of the spectrum in this instance, in sharp contrast to her, because I found the book alarming, extremely stressful, entirely ominous.  I have a heightened awareness of its danger.  Alice Walker expressed no alarm about the book and said she found it boring, too dense in details of unfamiliar German history and German then-current events to be penetrable for her.  She could not discern the pattern among all the details, that over and over, on every page, the Jews in general, or specific Jews were blamed endlessly for every problem.  All the anecdotes with all their unfamiliar details had a common theme, the pounding out of a case against the Jews, Jewry, Jewish individuals, Judaism, Jewish influence, anything Jewish -- along with the simultaneous exoneration of German gentiles.  A secondary target of the pounding out were communists and communism, and the third group targeted for occasional pounding were pacifists, or the peace movement of that generation.

Alice Walker could not see the danger that lurked on every page of Mein Kampf, because it takes a specialized skill to see it?  Or because she has a blind spot?  

I am the author of "Debunking Henry Ford."  Ford's mass produced anti-Semitic propaganda pre-dated and encouraged Adolf Hitler in his thinking.  Somewhere in the dense pages of Mein Kampf,  Hitler calls Ford a great man, which is said to be the book's only reference to an American.  Ford also sent money, and other support to Hitler.  So I was obligated to examine Hitler's book, in English translation, in connection with my expose' of Ford.  I was skilled and adept at identifying anti-Semitism, the ideology.

When Alice Walker volunteered her comment about Mein Kampf,  on her website, she was wading in waters that were not comprehensible to her --  in spite of her competence elsewhere and skill as a writer.  I have liked her writing, especially The Color Purple,  and some of her shorter pieces, but I have also seen glimpses of her short comings before and I have a realistic sense of her.  This time she has revealed an oblivious streak, in her comments on Mein Kampf by Hitler and her defense of David Icke.

Alice Walker's support and defense of David Icke is additionally painful to me because someone who was once a friend of mine, Lani Bromberg, could not see through David Icke either, and posted his bullshit on Facebook a few years ago.  Her real name is not Lani Bromberg.  But before I finish this article, I will have to digress and say something about that related can of worms.

But let me focus on Alice Walker and David Icke, for the moment.  In December of 2018, the book review section of the New York Times, featured Alice Walker in one of its ongoing columns called "By the Book."  In this column an author is asked, What are you reading lately?  What is on your night table?  Who are your favorite writers?  The author is asked these questions and their answers are reported without any editorializing. 

When it was Alice Walker's turn for this honor, she listed and briefly commented upon half a dozen books as being on her night table, meaning her current active reading, and a David Icke book was one of these, tucked into a list mainly of historical fiction.               

Alice Walker: “ 'And the Truth Shall Set You Free,' by David Icke. In Icke’s books there is the whole of existence, on this planet and several others, to think about. A curious person’s dream come true."

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A Tangent about the Christian Identity Movement  

I have to discuss David Icke and it pains me additionally, because someone who was once a friend of mine, Lani Bromberg, could not see through David Icke either, and posted his b.s. on Facebook, a few years ago.

When Lani Bromberg posted a video by David Icke, I had not heard of him, but I could quickly and easily see his wrongness.  By the time I finished watching the four or five minute video, I was certain that he was a point of infiltration of discreet or camouflaged  anti-Semitism into the Occupy Movement which was at its height at that time.  He had helped himself to the rhetoric about the economic one percent, the very wealthiest people and the target of the Occupy Movement, and he had fused this rhetoric with extensive serpent imagery and rhetoric from the anti-Semitism of the Christian Identity Movement, sometimes called Aryan Identity.  On top of that, one of the sources he listed at the end was known to me as a classic of anti-Semitic conspiracy theory.

This is esoteric stuff?  I have a highly specialized knowledge that enabled me to see right through the video, and Lani Bromberg couldn't.  I am the author of "Debunking Henry Ford," and one of Ford's lesser known treacheries is that he financed some of the early development of what became known as Christian Identity, and Aryan

Identity.  When Ford closed his mass propaganda mill, the "Dearborn Independent," in 1927, he kept on its editor and main writer, William Cameron, giving him some time on the clock to pursue his own interests, within the vast range of anti-Semitic ideology.  

Cameron was personally interested in quoting Scripture while hating the Jews.  He claimed Anglo-Saxon-Celtics were a lost tribe of Israel, and moreover they were "the chosen people," while the contemporary Jewish people were impostors as Jews, not real Jews by dint of false descent.  To me this is utterly appalling, on so many levels.   

We will come back to David Icke in a moment, but let me say something about the "chosen people" concept within my own religion, Judaism.  This ancient concept has undergone some tempering from within, by pluralistic awareness, and by our sages explaining repeatedly, we were chosen for extra responsibilities, not privilege.  There is much in Judaism that warrants appreciation,  or is even inspiring -- but the chosen people concept is something that warrants caution and re-interpretation, or relegation to low priority or disuse.  The Christian Identity Movement has appropriated  this concept, and applied it to themselves, with no tempering wisdom and espoused a most reactionary version of it, incorporating it into an explicitly malicious undertaking.      

To make a long story short, the derangements that Cameron and his colleagues devised laid dormant for a while, but are now having a revival and are being augmented.  A current spate of serpent stories claim that White gentiles originated from the union of Adam and Eve, while Jews descended from Eve and the serpent in Garden of Eden.  People of color, if they are mentioned at all, are ascribed yet another descent outside of Scripture, and are called "mud people."  These stories about the serpent may not be firmly believed, but function as an entertainment, or as a bonding activity, in some circles of racist anti-Semite extremists.

So what is the relationship of David Icke to this?  The serpent drawings and rhetoric throughout his video are the same drawings and rhetoric employed recurrently  in the Christian Identity Movement.  Icke's video claimed repeatedly this was the descent and the character of the one percent, the country's economic elite, while the other ninety-nine percent, human society, are the victims of this serpentine, reptilian element.  At the very least this is an unhealthy twist on what the Occupy Movement was saying about the unfair extreme concentration of wealth at the very top.  At the very least, the video literally dehumanized the one percent, and to what end?  To promote a paradigm that shares with and  links with anti-Semitic thinking?  To supply a dehumanizing element that allows for violence?

What is Alice Walker's relation to this?  She has made excuses for Icke's serpent business, while complimenting him on his interpretations of Judaism and in particular, the Talmud, our encyclopedic commentaries that are not shared literature with Christianity.  She accepts his classic smear job of Talmud and cannot see the danger of him. 

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A Blind Spot?

This article may be structured in a non-standard way.  I do not care about being standard, but I hope this is not too confusing or tiring to the reader.

I thought this was going to be a simple article.  But when I started examining Alice Walker's website, I kept finding more and more examples of anti-Semitic ideology in her thinking, beyond what was revealed in the New York Times book review section.  So I was writing and researching at the same time, an invitation for chaos, plus I kept becoming more critical of her as I researched.  At one point, I had to ask: is it a blind spot or a blind streak?  

I was glad she included in her website a letter she received from an Israeli friend of hers who ever so nicely criticized Alice Walker's understanding of what the Talmud is, and very nicely tried to give her a path out of her classic prejudiced interpretation.  I am not a friend of Alice Walker's.  I am an appreciative reader, but there are limits to my appreciation.  I only hope my efforts are clarifying, for Alice Walker's benefit, possibly, and for the reader.      

                      

      

Notes on Sources

"To the Also Curious" by Alice Walker, in her official website:   http://alicewalkersgarden.com/  

This contains the quotes about Mein Kamp and David Icke that I have criticized here.   

                

Alice Walker's initial remarks about David Icke's book, and other books of interest to her, in the "New York Times:"  

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/13/books/review/alice-walker-by-the-book.htmlhttps://

For Alice Walker's poem referring to the Talmud, and a rebuttal by an Israeli Jewish friend of hers, Nurit Peled Elhanan, see the link below.  This rebuttal is a starting place only, and is not adequate, and not entirely accurate, either.  What bothers me the most about Walker's poem is her repeated equation of Zionists with Nazis, and her claim that Zionists are killing everybody and everything.  These are dangerous exaggerations and distortions.  That Walker could not see the evil in Mein Kampf, by the real Nazis' foremost leader, then couples word Nazi with Zionism, repeatedly, then claiming the Talmud is the root of this -- to me,  this is utterly corrupt thinking, a significant blundering.             

alicewalkersgarden.com/2019/01/effort-helping-to-heal-the-world-by-making-it-more-visible-to-each-other-a-letter-from-nurit-peled-elhanan-activist-educator-and-friend-from-israel/  

See also:

Slate's discussion of both Alice Walker's remarks and the protests that followed.

        

Jewish Chronicle article by Rosa Doherty.

Michael Barkan's analysis of David Icke's camouflaged anti-Semitism.   

addenda:

In my article above I say that on my first exposure to David Icke, I was sure he was a point of infiltration of anti-Semitism into the Occupy movement.  I stand by this, and I want to offer a quote related to this, that places Icke supporters, at an anti-globalization rally in Seattle.  The article is not entirely reliable, and has a dubious main point,  but a person being quoted in that article, and re-quoted here, Chip Berlet, is quite reliable, in my opinion, and is a significant long time  researcher on right-wing extremists.    

So this is a quote that verifies right-wing infiltration into what was basically a left-wing demonstration.    

"...Berlet wrote in an upcoming book he has co-authored that only “a handful of rightwing activists, including some third position neo-nazis and fans of David Icke, took part in the large and dramatic Seattle protests against globalization...” When asked for clarification on what he meant by “a handful,” Berlet answered: “Several Icke supporters were openly holding signs promoting Icke and handing out pamphlets. There are photographs of this, including one in the SPLC report....”

source:  https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/p-milstein-the-southern-poverty-law-center-bad-jackets-anarchists  article by P. Milstein, "SPLC Bad Jackets Anarchists."