Anti-semitism as a career move

A well-known Jewish Israel-basher and anti-semite, Gilad Atzmon, has generated some controversy by playing jazz saxophone at a club in England.

Thinking himself hilarious, and perhaps showing some Borat envy, he created a fictional character named Artie Fishel who is his caricature of everything wrong about Jews. Artie believes that jazz was created by Jews and anyone who denies it is an anti-semite:

Artie: What do you mean? Are you a Jazz denier? Don’t you know that where jazz is coming from? Jazz is Jewish, Zwing is Jewish. Just get use to it. Do you want another Shoa, and then the another Schindler Liszt? Let’s stop right there. We ask for our music back, no more, no less.

Angie: But, Artie, jazz had its origins in America dating back to a time when former slaves were free to – never mind. Why don’t you introduce us to the musicians in the Promised Band?

Artie: Of course, I love to talk about us! I, myself, play the Zaxophon und Schwartzephon, what some people call the misery stick, what the goyim call clarinet. From time to time I zing as well. Hoy, I have such a beautiful voice, don’t you think so? Angie, why do you laugh? Don’t you like my voice? Anyway, you are an anti Semite. Actually I don’t really care what you think.

Angie: Come on, just get on with introducing the band, please.

Artie: On Droim we have Peter Foreskin. What a wonderful drummer! He is so violent, and angry, and aggressive and relax and quiet and he never, never, never misses the one, and even when he does occasionally misses the one, we always follow him, because we are so tune to each other. This is all due to our Kosher brotherhood. I tell you, once you go Kosher, Zwing is no torture.

Angie: And who is the bassist?

Artie: Hoy, Jaco Pastrami on the Boss. What a great player! The technique, the intonation, I tell you, he sounds like melting Philadelphia cream cheese mixed with smoke salmon.

Shimshon Gib Shoin on Gitoyer. Believe me, once you listen to him, you forget Hendrix and Clapton. Gitoyer is a Jewish instrument. It is noisy, but it can cry and break your heart as if a pogrom is going on.

Angie: Wow! Shimshon Gib Shoin is that good, eh? But the "gitoyer" is not a Jewish instrument, Artie.

Artie: What do you mean ‘not Jewish’? So what is it? Marrocan? Jordanian, Yeguslavian? Every people has its musical instrument so why we the Jews cannot have the Gitoyer? Aren’t we people like other people?

Atzmon is parlaying the criticism leveled at him from the Board of Deputies of British Jews into press releases and articles pushing his "Artie" album. Essentially, he is using his reputation as an anti-semite to make money, in much the same way that Holocaust deniers have.

And his anti-semitism and single-minded anti-Zionism is so extreme that other Marxists and far left moonbats have distanced themselves from him.

As the Jerusalem Post reported:

The Observer newspaper reported in an article in April 2005 that at a conference at London University's School of Oriental and African Studies, Atzmon said, "I'm not going to say whether it is right or not to burn down a synagogue, I can see that it is a rational act." He also repeatedly spoke of Jewish and Zionist influence around the world and referred to the US as the "Jew-nited States of Jew-merica."

In April of this year, in an article called "Self-Haters Unite," he wrote: "It is always the proud self-hating Jews who transform Jewishness into an ethical message." "Jews are capable of anything. They run the show, they own the world, and they are brutal, monstrous cannibals," he added.

Sue Blackwell, a Birmingham University academic who led the 2005 campaign to boycott Israeli academic institutions, has blacklisted Atzmon. On her Web site, in the aptly named section titled "Nazi Alert," she has severed all ties to him, saying: "Some notorious far-right individuals and organizations are jumping onto the Palestinian bandwagon in an attempt to hijack the cause of the Palestinian people for their own anti-Semitic ends."

Atzmon also peddles conspiracy theories. In a 2005 address at the Marxism conference in London he said that MI6 and the CIA were there among the IDF units who "flattened Jenin Refugee Camp" in 2002 and that Israeli officers were advising the American and British armies in Basra and Fallujah.

The article goes on to mention that Atzmon has praised Holocaust-denial materials on his website.

In the case of pathetic people like Atzmon, Norman Finkelstein, Uri Avnery and others, it seems likely that their views have become more extreme over time as they see that the neo-Nazis and far Left embrace them so wholly (Jews who criticize Jews serve to inoculate the Left from charges of bigotry.) They literally become famous for their extreme hate. Fame feeds their egos and they keep going.

In this case, Atzmon decided that his career as a jazz musician would benefit as well from trafficking in anti-Jewish stereotypes. I don't know whether he is truly as ideologically far out as he says he is, but it is clear that when it comes to pursuit of money and fame, he is willing to trade on his Jew-hating reputation.