The Pete Quiñones Show - Reading Solzhenitsyn's '200 Years Together' w/ Dr. Matthew Raphael Johnson - Part 25

Episode Date: April 9, 2025

50 MinutesPG-13Dr. Matthew Raphael Johnson is a researcher, writer, and former professor of history and political science, specializing in Russian history and political ideology.Pete and Dr. Johnson continue a project in which Pete reads Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn's '200 Years Together," and Dr' Johnson provides commentary.Dr Johnson's PatreonRusJournal.orgTHE ORTHODOX NATIONALISTDr. Johnson's Radio Albion PageDr. Johnson's Books on AmazonPete and Thomas777 'At the Movies'Support Pete on His WebsitePete's PatreonPete's SubstackPete's SubscribestarPete's GUMROADPete's VenmoPete's Buy Me a CoffeePete on FacebookPete on TwitterBecome a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-pete-quinones-show--6071361/support.

Ready for huge savings, we'll mark your calendars from November 28th to 30th because the Liddle Newbridge Warehouse Sale is back. We're talking thousands of your favourite Liddle items, all reduced to clear. From home essentials to seasonal must-habs, when the doors open, the deals go fast. Come see for yourself. The Liddle New Bridge Warehouse Sale, 28th to 30th of November. Liddle, more to value. You catch them in the corner of your eye, distinctive by design. They move you, even before you drive.

The new Cooper plugin hybrid range. For Mentor, Leon, and Terramar. Now with flexible PCP finance and trade-in boosters of up to 2,000 euro. Search Coopera and discover our latest offers. Coopera. Design that moves. Finance provided by way of higher purchase agreement from Volkswagen Financial Services, Ireland Limited, subject to lending criteria. Terms and conditions apply.

Financial Services Ireland Limited. Trading as Cooper Financial Services is regulated by the Central Bank of Ireland. Discover five-star luxury at Trump Dunebeg. Unwind in our luxurious spa. Saver sumptuous farm-fresh dining. Relax in our exquisite accommodations. Step outside and be captivated by the wild Atlantic surrounds. Your five-star getaway, where every detail is designed with you in mind. Give the gift of a unique experience this Christmas with vouchers from Trump Dune-Bend. Search Trump, Ireland gift vouchers. Trump on Thunbjog, Kosh Farage. If you want to support the show and get the episodes early and ad-free,

head on over to freeman beyond the wall.com forward slash support. I want to explain something right now if you support me through Substack or Patreon. You have access to an RSS feed that you can plug into any podcatcher, including Apple, and you'll be able to listen to the episodes through there. If you support me through Subscrib Star, Gumroad, or on my website directly, I will send you a link where you can download the file and you can listen to it any way you wish.

I really appreciate the support everyone gives me. It keeps the show going. It allows me to basically put out an episode every day now, and I'm not going to stop. I'm just going to accelerate. I think sometimes you see that I'm putting out two, even three a day. And yeah, can't do it without you. So thank you for the support. Head on over to freeman beyond the wall.com forward slash support and do it there. Thank you.

I want to welcome everyone back to part 25 of our reading of 200 years together by Alexander Solzhenyson. Dr. Johnson, how are you doing today? It's getting warm, which means I'm going to have to do things like mowing the grass. So I'm all right. I'm slightly irritated, but I'm going to, I'm going to delay it as long as I can. I did the first mowed nine days ago and it already has to be moed again. That's painful. Yeah. Yeah, especially in Alabama where we've actually, three days ago, we started turning the air conditioning on. Well, I turn the air conditioning on when it goes over 65. Because I would last, I would last two seconds in Alabama, or point south.

All right. We're starting a new chapter today. Chapter 7, the birth of Zionism. So here we go. How did the Jewish conscience evolve in Russia during the second half of the 19th century? Towards 1910, Vladimir Jabotinsky describes the evolution in his somewhat passionate manner. At first, the mass of Jews opposed the Enlightenment,

the fanatic prejudice of an overvalued specificity. But time did its work, and as much Jews historically fled humanist culture, as much they aspire to it now. And this thirst for knowledge is so widespread that it perhaps makes us, Jews of Russia, the first nation in the world. However, running towards the,

goal. We passed it. Our goal was to form a Jew who, by staying Jewish, could live a life that would be that of the universal man, and now we have totally forgotten that we must remain Jewish. We stopped attaching a price to our Jewish essence, and it began to weigh on us. We must extirpate this mentality from self-contempt and revive the mentality of self-respect. We complain that we are despised, but we are not far from despising ourselves. I don't think that self-loathing is a real issue, but I think this first paragraph is extraordinary. I don't mean, you know, Jabotinsky was a murderous thug, but his goals were in all that,

all that terrible. He talks about the universal man, which in the Kabbalah refers to Adam Cadman. it's my opinion that Antichrist is either I mean he's not a literal man but one of the many names for him is a universal man

and you know I think it's I think it's a falsehood to talk about you know Zionism is right wing and everything else as left wing in Jewish life they were all over the place I don't know what he means exactly by the first nation in the world. Does he mean the first existing nation or the first in the sense of primary? Oh, and keep in mind, too, when he refers to the Enlightenment, he's not talking about, you know, 16th, you know, 17th century Europe.

He's talking about the transition of Jews from the Cahal to, you know, being a part of Russian life or, you know, semi-assimilated. That's what he's talking about. It's just another Jewish supremacist screed typical of him. This description reflects a general trend towards assimilation, but not all aspects of the picture. As we have already seen in Chapter 4, in the late 60s of the 19th century, the publicist and man of letters, Smolenskin, had spoken out vigorously against the tendency to assimilate Jewish intellectuals, as he had observed it in Odessa or as it had spread in Germany. And he at once declared war on both, bigots and false devotees who want to drive out all knowledge of the House of Israel. No, one must be ashamed.

One must not be ashamed of their origins. One must cherish their national language and dignity. However, national culture can only be preserved through language, the ancient Hebrew. This is all the more important because Judaism, derived of territory is a particular phenomenon, a spiritual nation. The Jews are indeed a nation, not a religious congregation. Smolenskin advanced the doctrine of progressive Jewish nationalism. Oh, that's what I said. You know, Zionism, this kind of Jewish nationalism, which exists in every Jewish movement, matter what it is, they could be all over the place,

even of the two pillars, the Masonic two pillars of mercy and justice, the Kabbal on one side and the Talmud and the other. But I think when he says, drive out all knowledge, I think what he's talking about is anything beyond the Talmud. So he may include the Kabbalah,

he may include liberalism and Marxism. that that we're developing in fact were the really essence of the of the European Enlightenment I think that's what he means here and again I said this before

but assimilation be very careful they're not you know you really have to be very careful how you define that term to assimilate seems to mean that you shed anything that makes you a particular race or ethnicity

that's not the case here. I don't think anyone ever advocated that here. It's just that you're not wearing the the fedora and the black coat all the time. And that's pretty much it. They realize that they could do more damage and gain more power

as looking like people who live in the broader society rather than staying in the cahal. But that's what I think he means by knowledge. And of course, Very few Jews, very few Jews knew Hebrew at the time. Throughout the 70s, Smolenskin's voice remained practically unheard of. At the end of this period, however, the liberation of the Slavs from the Balkans

contributed to the national awakening of the Jews of Russia themselves. But the pogroms of 1881 to 1882 caused the ideals of Haskellah to collapse. The conviction that civilization was going to put an end to the persecutions of another age against the Jews, and that these, thanks to the Enlightenment, would be able to approach to European peoples, this conviction was considerably shaken. The experience of the pogroms in the south of Ukraine is thus extrapolated to all of the Jews of Europe. Among the Jews of Russia, there appeared the type of repentant intellectual of those who aspired to return to traditional Judaism. You note that they refuse to take any responsibility. They believe,

the lies of these of the pogroms that they usually provoked and that killed far more Russians or Ukrainians than anybody else um so um you know what happens is that you know newspapers print a false fact or a bunch of false facts then they repeat them over and over again then in other context that same false fact shows up and then academics use those false facts in the building of theory and schools of thought. That's how a lie ends up becoming just completely taken for granted

almost impossible to dislodge. It's not just repetition, but the context of the repetition. And that's what's going on here with the program. The last thing, any Jew will do, is take responsibility

for their role in creating these, and the fact that very few Jews were armed during these so-called pogroms. But they just needed any sense of victimization to mobilize their people behind.

It was then that Lev Pinsker, a well-known doctor and publicist, already 60 years of age, gave the Jews of Russia and Germany a vigorous appeal to self-imaccipation. Pinska wrote that faith in emancipation had collapsed, that it was now necessary to stifle every ounce of hope in brotherhood among peoples. Today, the Jews do not constitute a living nation. There are strangers everywhere. They endure oppression and contempt on the part of the peoples who surround them. The Jewish people is the specter of a dead wandering among the living. One must be blind not to see that the Jews are the chosen people of universal hatred.

The Jews cannot assimilate to any nation, and consequently cannot be tolerated by any nation. By wanting to mingle with other peoples, they have frivolously sacrificed their own nationality, but nowhere have they obtained that the others recognize them as native-born inhabitants equal to them. The destiny of the Jewish people cannot depend on the benevolence of other peoples. The practical conclusion thus lies in the creation of a people on its own territory. What is needed, therefore, is to find an appropriate territory, no matter where in what part of the world, and that the Jews come to populate it. this is this unbelievable delusion

this tremendous malignant narcissism where you know I think what they mean by brotherhood among peoples is that Jews ruling over a completely derationated Europe and that's what happens now that's what's happening today but they don't define these things the way the way we do but these are the most privileged some of the most powerful and wealthy tiny little minority in all of Europe. And because they don't rule over it with an iron fist like they do today,

they think that they're a specter of dead wandering among the living. This, this mordland over-dramatization is just, it defines almost Jewish neuroticism, in my opinion. You catch them in the corner of your eye. Distinctive, by design, they move you, even before you drive. Cooper plugin hybrid range. For Mentor, Leon, and Terramar. Now with flexible PCP finance and trade-in boosters of up to 2,000 euro. Search Coopera and discover our latest offers. Coopera. Design that moves.

Finance provided by way of higher purchase agreement from Volkswagen Financial Services, Arland Limited, subject to lending criteria. Terms and conditions apply. Volkswagen Financial Services Ireland Limited, trading as Cooper Financial Services, is regulated by the Central Bank of Ireland. Ready for huge savings? We'll mark your calendars from November 28th to 30th because the Liddle Newbridge Warehouse Sale is back.

We're talking thousands of your favourite Liddle items all reduced to clear. From home essentials to seasonal must-habs, when the doors open, the deals go fast. Come see for yourself. The Liddle New Bridge Warehouse Sale, 28th to 30th of November. Liddle, more to value.

Discover five-star luxury at Trump Dunebeg. Unwind in our luxurious spa. Saver sumptuous farm-fresh dining. Relax in our exquisite accommodations. Step outside and be captivated by the wild Atlantic surrounds. Your five-star getaway, where every detail is designed with you in mind. Give the gift of a unique experience this Christmas with vouchers from Trump-Dunbeg. Search Trump-Ireland gift vouchers.

Trump on Dunebiog, Kush Farage. Moreover, the creation in 1860 The Alliance was nothing but the first sign of Jewish refusal of a single option, assimilation. There already existed among the Jews of Russia a movement of palestinophilia, the aspiration to return to Palestine, conforming in essence to traditional religious salutation next year in Jerusalem. This movement gained momentum after 1881 to 1882. stretching out its efforts to colonize Palestine so that within a century the Jews can finally leave the hospitable land of Europe. The slogans that the Enlightenment had previously broadcasted in citing to fight traditionalism,

Hasidism, and religious prejudices gave way to a call for reconciliation in the union of all layers of Jewish society for the realization of the ideals of Palestine for the return to the Judaism of our fathers. In many cities of Russia, circles were formed, called Circles of the Lovers of Zion, Kovavi-Sion. Yeah, I think it was a big problem that Palestine, of course, was occupied by others. And it wasn't so much that the Balkanslavs had been liberated from Turkish control. That was not good news for the Jews, but that is quite possible that with the breakup of the gradual breakup of the Turkish Empire, that Palestine might be available. of course that turned out not to be not to be the case

so and remember this isn't necessarily religious it sounds it by saying that you know we should fight a citizen and traditionalism no this is quite secular in fact I know Rabbi Weiss of Natura Carter

who's an old friend of mine I haven't spoken to him in many years said that the basic argument is there's no there's no Zionism until the Messiah comes and therefore you have to be a secular Jew to believe in this despite the fact that there's Orthodox Jews who are Zionists all over the place

but this is part of the reason why you have all these freeloaders, huge numbers of Hasidic Jews in Jerusalem that were there prior to this state of Israel and continue to reject the state of Israel except, well, they're on welfare from the state, but they won't show up for the draft, they won't

do anything else like that. there's, they riot all the time. But at least the excuse is that religious Jews can accept a secular Israel because that can only be established in that place until the Messiah shows of Adam Cadman or whatever you want to call it, the Antichrist. And it was thus that an idea joined another to rectify it, going to settle elsewhere, yes, but not anywhere, in Palestine. But what happened in Palestine?

The First Crusade resulted in the virtual disappearance of the few Hebrews who remained in Palestine. Nevertheless, a tiny Jewish religious community had succeeded in surviving the collapse of the Crusader state and the conquest of the country by the Mamalukes and the invasion by the Mongol hordes. Over the following centuries, a Jewish population was somewhat replenished by a modest migratory flow of believers from different countries. At the end of the 18th century, a certain number of Hasidim emigrated from Russia. In the middle of the 19th century, there were 12,000 Jews in Palestine, whereas at the end of the 11th century, there were 25,000. These Jewish towns in the land of Israel constituted what was called the yeshiv. All their inhabitants, men, were only studying Judaism and nothing else. They lived

on Halika, subsidies sent by Jewish communities in Europe. These funds were distributed by the rabbis, hence the absolute authority of the rabbis. The leaders of the yeshuv rejected any attempt to create the country in the country even an embryo of productive work of Jewish origin. They were studying exclusively the town but nothing else and on a fairly elementary level. The great Jewish historian Gee Gretz, who visited Palestine in 1872, found that only a minority studied for real, the others preferred to stroll the streets, remained idle, engaged in gossip and slander. He believed that this system favors obscurantism, poverty and degeneration of the Jewish population of Palestine, and for this, he himself had to undergo harem.

This is like the tenth time, maybe even more, that I've made a comment, and the content of that comment shows up in the very next paragraph. I haven't read this in years, but that's exactly what I just said. this group that predates the establishment of the state of Israel, basically in Jerusalem, they're still there. They study Talmud and absolutely nothing else. And, of course, today it's just welfare from the Israeli state. But back then, it was these donations from Jews abroad.

In 1882 in Kharkov, Palestinianophile students founded the Billiam Circle. They proposed to create in Palestine a model agricultural colony to set the tone to the general colonization of Palestine by the Jews. They undertook to found circles in several cities of Russia. Later, they created a first settlement in Palestine but were confronted to the hostility and opposition of the traditional yeshiv. The rabbis demanded that, according to ancient custom, the cultivation of the earths be suspended one year out of seven. I don't think I have to say it. I don't think I have to say it, but I might say it anyway. Them talking about an agricultural colony,

after everything we've gone over about the free lands and everything that the Russians gave the Jews, one of their first proposals is to engage in agriculture so long as it's on their terms and in what they consider their promised land. and this confrontation right here that you just read, this is still going on. That's why most of the, you know, the more extreme, like Sartmar and those groups in Brooklyn and Manhattan continue to oppose Zionism, far more than the press will admit. Pinsker supported the advocates of the return to Palestine.

In 1887, he summoned the first Congress of Palestinians in Kadovich. then in Druskinniki and the second in 1887. Propagandas began to cover the Pala settlement, speaking in synagogues and public meetings. Deutsch testified that after 1882, P. Akserot himself contributed to Palestinianophilia. Of course, Smolenskin is one of the passionate apostles of the return to Palestine. Bubbling and lively, he connects with Anglo-Jewish political actors, but he comes up with the opposition of the alliance,

who does not want to promote the colonization of Palestine, but rather to direct the migratory wave towards America. He then describes the tactics of the alliance as betrayal of the cause of the people. His premature death cuts his effort short. We note, however, that this movement towards Palestine was rather weakly received by the Jews or Russia. It was even thwarted. The idea of a political revival of the Jewish people

brought a small handful of intellectuals behind it at the time, and it soon came up against fierce adversaries. The conservative circles, the rabbinit, and the Zadikam saw in this current towards Palestine an attack on the divine will, an attack on faith in the Messiah, who alone must bring the Jews back to Palestine. As for the progressive assimilationists, they saw in this current a reactionary desire to isolate the Jews from the rest of enlightened humanity? Well, I think we know that that's a bit of an exaggeration. I always thought, you know, Israel always seemed to be a distraction. The promised land as far as Jews are concerned is either Britain or the U.S.

In a secular way. The other option is, of course, New Khazadia, which I don't think can happen now. It's supposed to be in Crimea and in that. in that region, but that's not going to happen either. But the Israeli situation is completely unsustainable. Enough Jews, you have a huge out-migration of Jews going elsewhere. And so something else is going to have to happen. And the U.S. may get to be a victim of yet another migratory attack.

but as far as Russia at the time was concerned them assisting in the migration of Jews to the Middle East or wherever was probably the best option but of course we're saying this in 2025 they didn't know what would happen of course way back then air grid operator of Ireland's electricity grid is powering up the northwest

we're planning to upgrade the electricity grid in your area and your input and local knowledge are vital in shaping these plans. Our consultation closes on the 25th of November. Have your say, online or in person. So together, we can create a more reliable, sustainable electricity supply for your community.

Find out more at airgrid.i.4.Northwest. Employers, did you know, you can now reward you and your staff with up to 1,500 euro and gift cards annually, completely tax-free, and even better. You can spread it over five, different occasions. Now's the perfect time to try OptionsCard. OptionsCard is Ireland's brand new multi-choice employee gift card packed with unique features that your staff will love. It's simple to buy,

easy to manage, and best of all, there are no extra fees or hidden catches. Visit OptionsCard.compti today. This Black Friday game stream and go full speed with one gig Sky broadband, and watch unmissable shows like all her fault on Sky. These nice people killing you, John. Ballad of a Small Player starring Colin Farrell on Netflix. I made some mistakes. Right, who hasn't? Get one gig Sky Broadband, Essential TV and Netflix, all for just 44 euro a month for 12 months. Our lowest ever price.

Availability subject location, new customers only, 12 month minimum terms, standard pricing thereafter, TV and broadband sold separately. Terms apply for more infoes sky.a slash beads. The Jews of Europe did not support the movement either. Meanwhile, on site, the success of the return was revealed to be too mitigated. many colonists discovered their incompetence in the work of the land. The ideal of rebirth of the ancient country was crumbling into petty acts of pure benevolence. The colonies survived only because of the subsidies sent by Baron Rothschild,

and in the early 1890s, colonization went through. A serious crisis due to an anarchic system of land purchase and a decision by Turkey, the owner of Palestine, to ban the Jews of Russia from disembarking in Palestinian ports. It was at this time that the publicist thinker and organizer Asher Ginsburg became known under the eloquent pseudonym of Ahad Ham, one of his people. That's the pronunciation for those who are just listening. The definition of Ahad Ham is one of his people for those just listening. He strongly criticized practical Palestinafilia as it had been constituted.

What he advocated was, before striving for a renaissance on a territory, to worry about a rebirth of hearts, an intellectual and moral improvement of the people, to instill at the center of Jewish life, a living and spiritual aspiration, a desire for national cohesion, revival and free development in a national spirit, but on the basis of all men. This will later be called spiritual Zionism, but not religious, and this is important. I think what he means is all Jews. He's not talking about every living person. But by intellectual and moral improvement, you chuckle at that. But then the next line gives a definition to be more Jewish, to be more cohesive,

to have everything revolve around Jewishness. Judaism has always been a secular matter, at least post-Kazardia. The religious elements, to me, have always just been, you know, symbols of their national cohesiveness. So this was a firmly secular nationalist movement, which in and of itself, in my personal opinion, is not a terrible thing. Of course, there are people living in Palestine at the time.

I think every ethnic group understanding itself as such should have its own territory if it wants it. The problem with it, and I said this before too, And Rabbi Weiss used to say this all the time. In order for something like Israel to function, the state of Israel to function, there has to be plenty of Jews in at least one or two of the great powers to control its foreign policy to make sure that arms, weapons, money, support, media control, continues to flow to it.

given the neighborhood that Israel's in, if it wasn't for a Soviet, then later British and American assistance, I don't know if the, I don't think it'd be in Israel at all. Without leaving a colony in different parts of the world, Israel as such, you know,

which should give them an impression that it's just not a viable or rational solution. Now, a simple, you know, like what Notary Carter wants, you know, a Jewish community that lives, in harmony with everyone around them. It doesn't want to exploit anybody.

Of course, he's in a tiny minority. He's the one, by the way, who went to Iran for the revisionist, the Holocaust revisionist conference. Got 15 years ago now. So he had a synagogue burned down. I've spoken at length to him about this stuff. But that's

not what it is to be a Jew, unfortunately. Spiritual Zionism is just to be separate but within the country of origin, whatever country you're living in at the time. But I think that's all they mean by intellectual and moral improvement is to be more cohesive, Jewish interests above everything.

That same year, 1889, in order to unite among them, those who were dear to the idea of the rebirth of national feeling, Ahad Ham founded a league, or as it is called, an order, but named Moisha, the sons of Moses, whose status resembled strongly those of the Masonic lodges. The applicant made the solemn promise of strictly executing all the demands of order. The new members were initiated by a master, the Big Brother, the Neophyte undertook to serve without reserve the ideal of national rebirth,

even if there was little hope that this ideal would be realized anytime soon. It was stipulated in the manifest of order that national consciousness takes precedence of religious consciousness, personal interests are subject to national interests, and it was recommended that a feeling of unreserved love for Judaism placed above all other objectives of the movement. Thus was prepared the ground for the reception of political Zionism of Herzl, of which Ahad Aham absolutely did not want. He made several trips to Palestine in 1891, 1893, and 1900. Regarding colonization, he denounced an anarchic character and an insufficient rootedness in tradition. He severely criticized the dictatorial conduct of Baron Rothschild's emissaries.

Yeah, talk about biting the hand that feeds you. I'm not sure of which a hot-harm absolutely didn't want. I guess because Herschel wanted the actual physical, you know, like transfer agreement, where what's his name, HOM was, you know, didn't think it was proper for that. But his movement, it seems almost, you know, the Jews are so over-organized. Even if there's like 10 Jews in an area, they have 50 organizations. They're the only group that has a large, wealthy group that brings together all their organizations. You know, the, what is it called in America?

the council of Jewish organizations. That's how over-organized they are. But it seems that the sons of Moses was really redundant. That's what it was to be Jewish. And this was a creation of a fanatical sect

holding the broader society in which they live in contempt, no matter how wealthy they were to matter how well they did. But again, in and of itself, it's not a horrible thing. It's just that it comes at the expense of everyone else. You know, it's a shame that many of our people can't think like this. This is how Zionism was born in Europe, a decade behind Russia.

The first leader of Zionism, Theodore Herzl, had been, until the age of 36, he only lived to 44, a writer, a playwright, a journalist. He had never been interested in Jewish history or a fortiori in the Hebrew language and character. as a good Austrian liberal, he considered the aspirations of the various ethnic minorities of the Austro-Hungarian Empire to self-determination and national existence to be reactionary and found it normal to stifle them. Fanatical Jewish nationalists says it's terrible that other people be fanatical nationalists. Sounds familiar. As Stefan Zieg writes, Herzl cherished a dream of seeing the Jews of Vienna enter the cathedral

in order to be baptized, and seeing the Jewish question resolved once and for all by the fusion of Judaism and Christianity. But anti-Jewish sentimentist developed in Austria-Hungary in parallel with the rise of Pan-Germanism, while in Paris, where Herzl resided at the time, the Dreyfus affair broke out. Herzl had the opportunity to witness the public degradation of Captain Dreyfus, convinced of his innocence he was deeply shaken and changed his course. If separation is inevitable, he said, well, let it be radical. If we suffer from being without a country, let us build ourselves a homeland.

Herzl then had a revelation. It was necessary to create a Jewish state. As if struck by lightning, Herzl was enlightened by this new idea. Anti-Semitism is not a fortuitous phenomenon subject to particular conditions. It is a permanent evil. It is the eternal companion of the eternal errant, and the only possible solution to the Jewish question is a sovereign Jewish state. To conceive such a project after nearly 2,000 years of Diaspora was what imaginative power one needed, what exceptional audacity. However, according to S. Vig, Herzl's pamphlet entitled to Jewish State received from

the Viennese bourgeoisie a welcome perplexed and irritated. What's gotten into this writer, so intelligent, so cultivated, and spiritual? Our language is German and not Hebrew. Our homeland, beautiful Austria, Herzl, does he not give our worst enemies arguments against us? He wants to isolate us. Consequently, Vienna abandoned him and laughed at him. But the answer came to him from elsewhere. It burst forth like a thunderbolt so sudden, charged, with such a weight of passion and such ecstasy,

that he was almost frightened to have awakened around the world a movement with his dozens of pages, a movement so powerful and through which he found himself overwhelmed. His answer did not come to him, it is true, from the Jews of the West, but from the formidable masses of the East. Herzl, with his pamphlet, had inflamed this nucleus of Judaism, which was smoldering under the ashes of the stranger. Michael Jones tells a story about Austria at the time. The Rothschild dynasty financed,

their railroad expansion, roughly around this time. And, of course, the work was grueling, and there was a particularly nasty accident where a whole bunch of people were killed. That was one of the first times that it became public knowledge that the Rothschilds, not just in Austria, but in Britain too, were profiting massively off of this, huge government contracts, but of course doing none of the work. and making none of the sacrifices. For the first time,

the Rothschild name became a huge problem. We're talking about maybe a little bit before this. He says the revolution of 1848 really derived from this very same problem. Maternick was essentially a son of the Rothschild. That's the only reason he was able to escape Vienna for a while. So from 1848 to this period of times, say the 1880s.

About 40 years, you know, groups like the Christian Socialist Party developed, people became more and more educated about the Rothschilds, Jewish banking, but just how privileged these people were. So it's no,

you know, so that might be one of the reasons that Herschel said what he said, the Zionist movement as small as it was, ever existed at all. But it always makes me laugh. They say, you know, our home is Vienna.

Well, it's not really their home. But why are we going to ruin a good thing for a very difficult project that's going to require huge sacrifices financially and otherwise? So I think that might be the practical argument at the time against Zionism in the Middle East. Air Grid, operator of Ireland's electricity grid is powering up the northwest. We're planning to upgrade the electricity grid in your area and your input and local knowledge are vital. in shaping these plans. Our consultation closes on the 25th of November. Have your say, online or in person.

So together we can create a more reliable, sustainable electricity supply for your community. Find out more at airgrid.i.4 slash northwest. Employers, rewarding your staff? Why choose between a shop voucher or a spend anywhere card when with options card, you can have both. With options card, your team gets the best of both worlds world. They can spend with Ireland's favourite retailers

or choose a spend anywhere card. It's simple to buy and easy to manage. There are no hidden fees, it's easy to use and totally flexible. They can even re-gift or donate to a good cause. Make your awards more rewarding. Visit optionscard.i today. This Black Friday gain stream and go full speed with one gig Sky broadband

and watch unmissable shows like all her fault on Sky. These nice people killing each other. and Ballad of a Small Player starring Colin Farrell on Netflix. I've made some mistakes. Right, who hasn't? Get one gig Sky Broadband, Essential TV and Netflix, all for just 44 euro a month for 12 months. Our lowest ever price.

Availability subject location, new customers only, 12 month minimum terms, standard pricing thereafter, TV and broadband sold separately. Terms apply for more infoosies sky.a slash beads. Henceforth, Herzl gives himself body and soul to his new idea. He breaks off with those closest to him. He only frequents the Jewish people. who, even recently, despise politics, now founds a political movement. He introduces to it a spirit

and a party discipline, forms a framework of a future army, and transforms the Zionist Congresses into a true parliament of the Jewish people. At the first Congress of Basel in 1897, he produced a very strong impression on the Jews who were meeting for the first time in a parliamentary role, and during his first speech, he was unanimously and enthusiastically proclaimed, leader and chief, for the Zionist movement. He shows a consummate art to find the formulas of conciliation, and conversely, the one who criticizes his objective or merely blames certain measures taken by him, that one is the enemy not only of Zionism, but of the entire Jewish people. The energetic writer Max Nordau, Sudfeld, supported him by expressing the idea that emancipation is fallacious,

since it has introduced seeds of discord into the Jewish world. The emancipated Jew believes that he really has found a homeland when all that is living in vital in Judaism, which represents a Jewish ideal, the courage and the ability to advance, all that is none other than Zionism. Yeah, I think that's, again, another neurotic exaggeration. I don't think there were a whole lot of Jews

who actually believed that Austria or Germany or Russia or whatever was their homeland. they all had this sense that that one day Antichrist will arrive and establish his empire in Jerusalem this is precisely why they won't farm anywhere and now even in Israel they're not very good at it but at least that was the first thing he did

they realized that's our soil according to them so now we can we can form the land or at least at least trying to so I think that's I think they exaggerate what assimilation is or a man's patient is for the sake of justifying what they want to do. I also think that they're more thoughtful Jews realize, especially with the Rothschild scandals in around 1847, 1848,

that there's going to be a reckoning. You know, Kimminski was always in the back of their mind. You know, we are a dominant group. We do have tremendous amount. We are taking the profit without doing any of the work in the Austrian Railroad. Maybe, they probably may not say this. consciously, but maybe there is a reason why

we are hated in certain places by certain people. And therefore, Zionism might be a necessity. I don't know how much of that will be in their conscious thoughts because they can't take responsibility. But keep in mind, too, that despite the harsh language that Herschel used, he also said he understood

why anti-Jewish feelings exist. you know, he called this terrible evil. But he realized, you know, we're aliens. We don't belong here. We don't think the same way these other people do. And so, in a sense, he realized that anti-Jewish, anti-Semitic feeling is, it's somewhat justified. That's why we have to get the hell out of here.

At the first Congress, the delegates of Russian Zionism constituted one-third of the participants, 66 out of 196. 66 out of 197. In the eyes of some, their presence could be regarded as a gesture of opposition to the Russian government. To Zionism had adhered all of the Russian Kovavi Zion, thus contributing to the establishment of global Zionism. Thus, Zionism drew its strength from the communities of oppressed Jews in the East, having found only limited support among the Jews of Western Europe. But it also followed that the Russian Zionist represented for Herzl, a most serious opponent. Ahad Ham waged a fierce struggle against Herzl's political Zionism,

alongside the majority of Palestinians, strongly criticizing the pragmatism of Herzl and Nordau, and denouncing what he called their indifference to the spiritual values of Judaic culture and tradition. He found Chimerick the hope of political Zionism to found an autonomous Jewish state in the near future. He regarded all this, all this movement as extremely detrimental to the cause of the spiritual rebirth of the nation.

They do not care about the salvation of Judaism in perdition because they care nothing about spiritual and cultural heritage. They aspire not to the rebirth of the ancient nation, but to the creation of a new people from the dispersed particles of ancient matter. If he uses and even emphasizes the word Judaism, it is almost evident that it is not in the sense of the Judaic religion, but in the sense of the spiritual system inherited from ancestors. The Jewish Encyclopedia tells us that Ahad Ham, that in the 70s, he was more and more imbued with rationalism and deviated from religion. If the only vocation for Palestine is to become the spiritual center that could unite by national and spiritual ties, the dispersed nations,

a center which would pour out its light on the Jews of the world, of the whole world, would create a new spiritual bond between the scattered members of the people, it would be a less state of the Jews than an elite spiritual community. Yeah, in their mind, of course, it's one and the same. They are elite,

and by spiritual, of course, they mean something completely different. For people who know the Kabbalah, I'm pretty sure, just in these few lines that he was quoted, Ham was quoted, there's at least three or four references to it. dispersed particles of ancient matter pour out its light.

These are all directly taken from the Kabbalah. But I guess this is, we're starting to see a political, ethnic manifestation of Tikun Olam. And a lead spiritual community, of course, are Jews who can rule over everyone else who then works for them because Christians are idolaters. And therefore, they have no rights. They have no standing.

so I think it's a false dichotomy, but there may be a bit of an opposition here, at least practically between the Kabbalah and the Talmud. Ultimately, it's not really an opposition, but it depends on what you stress. You know, he is a rationalist, and so Jews, he sees Jews as a race that just for that reason deserves to be preserved and and have it be the fanatical core of people who support it.

But you notice how he has state in the near future italicized. And that's true. He's not against political Zionism. It's just it's not going to happen anytime soon. They needed Hitler for that. Discussions agitated the Zionists. Had Ham strongly criticized Herzl, whom Nordau, supported by accusing Ahad Ham of covert Zionists.

World Zionist congresses were held every year. In 1902, took place the one of the Russian Zionists in Minsk, and the discussions resumed. This is where Had Had Haad Ham read his famous exposition, a spiritual rebirth. Zionism no longer met with enmity from the outside. Herzl expected this as soon as the program of the Zionists would take a concrete form, and as soon as the real departure to Palestine began, anti-Semitism everywhere would end. But long before this result was reached, stronger than others, the voice of those who feared that the taking a public position and the nationalist sense of an assimilated Jew

would give anti-Semites the opportunity to say that every assimilated Jew hides under his mask and authentic Jew, incapable of blending into the local population. and as soon as an independent state was created, the Jews went everywhere to be suspected and accused of civic disloyalty, ideological isolationism, which their enemies had always suspected and accused them of. It doesn't take a separate state for them to be disloyal.

They didn't like the societies in which they lived. They were, they did have ideological isolationism. and this, you know, this assimilated Jew hides under the mask of an authentic Jew. The words here are very interesting. You can be both assimilated and authentic, but it just depends on how you define those words. And I have the feeling these debates at the time, right up until World War I, had a lot to do with how they're defining these very terms. In reply, at the Second Zionist Congress 1898, Nordau declared,

we reject with disdain the name of party. The Zionists are not a party. They are the Jewish people themselves. Those who, on the contrary, are at ease in servitude and contempt. They keep themselves carefully apart unless they fight us fiercely. As one English historian observes, yes, Zionism has done a great service to the Jews by restoring them a sense of dignity, and yet it leaves unresolved the question of their attitude towards the countries in which they live. In Austria, a compatriot of Herzl, Otto Veninger, argued with him.

Zionism and Judaism are incompatible with the fact that Zionism intends to force the Jews to take upon themselves the responsibility of a state of their own, which contradicts the very essence of every Jew. And he predicted the failure of Zionism. When I first read that years ago, it made me laugh that the sacrifices are too much financially. We want to take advantage of an already established state. We don't have to follow its laws or anything. We could profit heavily from an order. But if we have to create a state of our own,

that's going to be way too much work. I think that's a very funny. And then he goes so far as I say, it's the essence of the Jew to live that way. I think it's, I think that was very funny when I first, when I first read it, that it's just too much work,

too much responsibility. We're doing well here, taking advantage of everybody else. In Russia in 1890, I.M. Beekerman argued strongly against Zionism as an idea deemed quacky, inspired by anti-Semitism, of reactionary inspiration and harmful by nature. It is necessary to reject the illusions of the Zionists and without, in any way, renouncing the spiritual particularism of the Jews, struggle hand in hand with the cultural and progressive forces of Russia in the name of regeneration of the common fatherland.

At the beginning of the century, the poet N. Minsky had issued this criticism. Zionism marks the loss of the notion of universal man. It lowers the cosmopolitan dimensions, the universal vocation of Judaism to the level of an ordinary nationalism. The Zionist, speaking tirelessly of nationalism, turn away from the genuinely national face of Judaism, and in fact seek only to be like everyone else, not worse than others. Of course, you know, they see their nation as the first nation and superior in every way to everyone around it. You know, their spirit, everyone else is matter to be just one nation among others.

But he seems to think that Zionism requires every Jew in the world to move to the Middle East. we know that Israel can never have functioned that way. This isn't an ordinary nationalism. The universal man is Adam Cadman. It is the end of days. And the only place that could take place, of course, is in Jerusalem.

Again, all of this seems to be based on the timing that it hasn't, the right time hasn't occurred yet. This isn't a good time. But, of course, later on, World War I, we said, of course, they couldn't, didn't know about World War II. definitely, then you're going to start. And they didn't have much support at this point.

For them to say that we are the Jewish people is ridiculous. They were a minority of Jews all over Europe. It is interesting to compare these sentences with a remark made before the revolution by the Orthodox thinker S. Bulgakov. The biggest difficulty for Zionism is that it is not able to recover the lost faith of the fathers, and it is obliged to rely on a principle that is either national, cultural, or ethnic, a principle on which no genuine great nation can rely exclusively. But the first Russian Zionists now, now it is from Russia that most of the founders of the state of Israel and the pioneers of the state of Israel came out, and it was in Russia that were written, the best pages of Zionist journalism, were filled with an irrepressible enthusiasm for the idea of

returning to their people, the lost homeland, the ancient land of the Bible and their ancestors, to create a state of unparalleled quality, and to have men of exceptional quality grow there. And this impulse, this call addressed to all to turn to physical work, the work of the earth, does not this appeal echo the exhortations of Tolstoy, the doctrine of asceticism? all streams leads all streams lead to the sea that goes right back to to

what's his name saying that founding your own state is way too difficult it's way too much responsibility and if there are only Jews here who are we going to take advantage of you know we will start slaughtering each other I think it ultimately comes down to the fact that

especially in Western Europe Jews were dominant. They were doing extremely well. But they had to have known at some level, maybe a subconscious level, that that is what, it was going to cause an explosion like Kimmonezki. Kielnitsky is a huge part of

officially Eastern Europe, the Jewish mind. The pogroms kind of took over. Of course, the Hitler took over after that. Kind of outshone Kimunitsky. But that that's always on its way because of what we do

I think this is a constant part of the Jewish subconscious and is part of what makes them a very neurotic people. All right. We have a natural break there. So we'll pick up the rest of this chapter on the next episode. As I do at the end of every episode, I encourage people to go to the show notes on this, YouTube, Rumble, Odyssey,

and there are links to where you can donate to Dr. Johnson there. To keep him working and as I always say to keep him unemployed so he can keep us educated. Thank you. No problem. I will see you in a couple days. Thank you, Dr. Johnson. Bye-bye.