silly boys all over the place:
In a 2005 piece David Aaronovitch criticized Atzmon for writing in his essay "On Anti-Semitism" that "We must begin to take the accusation that the Jewish people are trying to control the world very seriously." and "American Jewry makes any debate on whether the 'Protocols of the Elders of Zion' are an authentic document or rather a forged irrelevant. American Jews do control the world, by proxy. So far they are doing pretty well for themselves at least"; Aaronovitch said Atzmon was "a silly boy advancing slightly dangerous arguments".from the Wikipedia entry on Gilad Atzmon, who Max Blumenthal, among evidently quite a few others, has "repeatedly denounced as an anti-Semite".
Since calling someone an anti-Semite energizes most nice people's radar to a degree that rational open-mindedness toward the accused becomes nearly impossible for them, and is then only achievable with conscious active effort, effort which is counter-productive to the receptive open-minded state, it's a very serious charge to make. It's also nigh impossible, once so accused, to avoid consequent antagonism.
People who level that charge don't really have much awareness of its consequences. Being slimed on and info-groped by assholes like the dishonorable thugs who deploy from groups like the ADL and its many subsidiary orgs is a repellent and polarizing experience all by itself. The accusation can easily become a self-fulfilling prophecy.
There's one of those tipping points in there, where whatever the original conditions were, the fear and defensive reactions of Jews to accusations of devious and covert activity - ancient irrational hatred! - practically necessitate a world-controlling response, to neutralize the real and increasing threats - from people who are seriously mad at you because they think you're controlling the world, and fucking up their lives. Even if you weren't doing that, even if it only looked like you were, or if only some of you were.
This is likely to account for at least some of the motives behind the NSA surround-snoop full-system info-suck. But to get to that assertion you have to get to Semitic manipulation of the US governmental apparatus to a degree that would make that doable. Which is conspiracy-thought, and targets the speaker of that thought for ridicule and contempt.
The total absence of discussion and analysis of the NSA's driving impetus, who's been ordering it to do all that, and especially why, would obviously point to something seriously powerful and covert in addition to the acts of surveillance. The discussion either goes underground from there, and onto the glass slides of infinite regress surveillance, or it gets exposed, isolated, and dealt with.
The so-called Southern Poverty Law Center, in its role as monitor of "hate groups", which superficially seems to be valiantly protecting struggling black folks from them dumb-ass cornpone racists and Gestapo re-enactors, functions now primarily as early-warning radar for....
whoever it is that creates the social conditions and cultural ambience in which Atzmon's reputation eats shit in much of polite society and Sheldon Adelson gets to vet the Republican nominee for President.
What Atzmon said above, is what Alterman said below.
