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Culture War Roundup for the week of June 12, 2023

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You seem to be playing some sort of game here, and I strongly suspect you are trolling.

You have posted several times like this, long form culture war articles which you don't explicitly agree with, even suggest you might disagree, but this appears to be merely a guise for introducing the article without committing yourself to actually endorsing it. "Look at this article by a white nationalist; isn't this interesting?"

Normally, while I might consider this a little sketchy, you aren't the only regular poster who makes a habit of being somewhat oblique about your agenda, and we don't exactly have a rule requiring you to be explicit about your POV and agenda. (The requirement to speak plainly comes close, but people often misinterpret this as "You must always be direct and explicit and literal about what you're saying," and that's not really what it means.)

You've been warned a couple of times by @naraburns, and your now-deleted responses are consistent with this pattern of being coy about your intentions. @naraburns has also observed your tendency to write trollish posts that seems calculated to provoke responses without really saying anything.

Following your last posting spree, you deleted all your previous posts. While we allow people to delete their posts (though we'd prefer they didn't), this also looks quite suspect.

All of this is to say: whatever you are up to, you have attracted the attention of the mods, and while this post in itself is borderline (you basically repost the article with minimal commentary), you are starting to look like a bad actor. Whatever game you are playing, start being upfront and stop looking like someone who's not posting in good faith (and is likely a previously banned poster).

It's a shame, because they'd be welcome as a progressive poster interested in what conservatives think. And I genuinely do think a lot of the articles this user has posted have prompted interesting discussion. But deleting posts after a few hours on such a regular basis is poor form (at least wait until the end of the week).

There is no way this guy’s a progressive. What is he, writing a PhD on the identification of different flavours of stochastic terrorism? We get few progressives as it is, and it just so happens this one is more interested in far right content than we are.

Greer is interesting in that he presents himself as a race conscious conservative, putting him well outside the mainstream, but he never "calls out "Jewish power", which has alienated him among other far right online commentators.

Just add quotes around ‘jewish power’, and no one will notice the odd insider narration. Actually I'm pretty sure I read the above sentence, possibly about another guy, from another disposable account. To JQ or not to JQ, that is their question.

Inb4 OP deletes.

He has argued against resident reactionaries before (example today). Could it be a next-level psy op? I guess it could. My guess is he's a rationalist-verse poster though, not a Sneerclub regular. I could be wrong.

It’s weak bait, a few breadcrumbs. From a private, month-old account who never stays for any real discussion. Last time, you said you liked his posts, then he deleted everything, hours after posting. You may find it comfy to have him lobbing the easiest balls in your direction, but he obviously has a record of dishonesty. He’s far right, not sneerclub.

foreverlurker just posted this OP:

In the Culture War thread, SecureSignals cited an article in which Ron Unz quotes a "secret report" from the Polish Ambassador to the U.S. In the report, the Ambassador supposedly wrote that, basically, powerful Jews in the U.S. are responsible for turning public opinion against Germany.

SecureSignals claimed that the authenticity of this document was "confirmed many times over", but provided no evidence of this. My brief search found that the Ambassador, Jerzy Potocki, denied that he wrote the document. Reading the alleged report, it's so nakedly and unoriginally anti-Jewish that it seems like the kind of thing that the Nazis would fabricate, but I'm wondering if anyone has more information on the report or about Potocki more generally.

Of course, even if the document is authentic, Potocki's claim that "propaganda is mostly in the hands of the Jews who control almost 100% [of the] radio, film, daily and periodical press" is nonsensical in light of how much editorial power William Randolph Hearst had in the 30's and 40's.

I don’t know anything about this affair, but the denial by potocki in 1940 seems suspect to me, like I’m sure to most reasonable people. Now do you see the bait? It's encouraging people to find out that potocki really said those things, and then.... profit .... people's minds will be blown by the JQ. And he's like 'Oh my , how can such vile antisemitic claims be uttered by a pole, let alone be true. Wait, let me find more antisemitic claims for you to "debunk". "

He talks exactly like the last alt , from the same faux-mainstream perspective, about the same topics, 99% JQ.

While I'm at it, @SecureSignals , @hanikrummihundursvin , do you honestly think this guy's not on your side?

To be fair, it seems pretty hard to find information about it on the internet. I did a search before making my post and could only find that 1940 Jewish Telegraph Agency article which is probably what he found. That indicates he also did a search, could not find anything to corroborate the authenticity with google searching but found a denial, and then asked if anyone had more information. The only other brief reference to this was this Wikiquote link which contains a quote from the report which is flagged as disputed, with the very same 1940 JTA article as a source.

The only sources I can find confirming the authenticity are the very same cited in the article I linked, so he probably did not find anything to corroborate the authenticity from a google search.

In conclusion, a Google search yields essentially nothing about these documents except the 1940 JTA article. So him concluding "this is probably fake but if it's real it doesn't matter" seems genuine to me. It is pretty mind-blowing how closely that memo mirrors German propaganda all the way through alt-right propaganda about "spreading freedom and democracy" in the Middle East as a front for fighting wars on behalf of Israel. It's understandable why someone who denies the JQ would regard this as highly suspect for what is essentially contemporary, independent corroboration from a Polish ambassador to the anti-Semitic rhetoric.

But I'll admit I'm not 100% certain, maybe he's a DR person throwing soft-balls, but he is saying enough things that indicate to me he's not. It's easy to accidentally throw softballs at the DR if you are not experienced actually talking to them.

The only sources I can find confirming the authenticity are the very same cited in the article I linked

Why then did you say earlier its authenticity "has been confirmed many times over"? Are you and the DR in the habit of taking nazi propaganda at face value?

Because the article contains multiple sources with citations? If it didn't contain citations I wouldn't take it at face value:

There is no question that the secret documents taken from the Polish Foreign Ministry in Warsaw are authentic. Charles C. Tansill considered the documents genuine and stated, “Some months ago I had a long conversation with M. Lipsky, the Polish ambassador in Berlin in the prewar years, and he assured me that the documents in the German White Paper are authentic.”[6]

William H. Chamberlain wrote , “I have been privately informed by an extremely reliable source that Potocki, now residing in South America, confirmed the accuracy of the documents, so far as he was concerned.”[7] Historian Harry Elmer Barnes also stated, “Both Professor Tansill and myself have independently established the thorough authenticity of these documents.”[8]

Edward Raczyński, the Polish ambassador to London from 1934 to 1945, confirmed in his diary the authenticity of the Polish documents. He wrote in his entry on June 20, 1940: “The Germans published in April a White Book containing documents from the archives of our Ministry of Foreign Affairs, consisting of reports from Potocki from Washington, Łukasiewicz in Paris and myself. I do not know where they found them, since we were told that the archives had been destroyed. The documents are certainly genuine, and the facsimiles show that for the most part the Germans got hold of the originals and not merely copies.”[9]

The official papers and memoirs of Juliusz Łukasiewicz published in 1970 in the book Diplomat in Paris 1936-1939 reconfirmed the authenticity of the Polish documents. Łukasiewicz was the Polish ambassador to Paris, who authored several of the secret Polish documents. The collection was edited by Wacław Jędrzejewicz, a former Polish diplomat and cabinet member. Jędrzejewicz considered the documents made public by the Germans absolutely genuine, and quoted from several of them.

Tyler G. Kent, who worked at the U.S. Embassy in London in 1939 and 1940, has also confirmed the authenticity of the secret Polish documents. Kent says that he saw copies of U.S. diplomatic messages in the files which corresponded to the Polish documents.[10]

The German Foreign Office published the Polish documents on March 29, 1940. The Reich Ministry of Propaganda released the documents to strengthen the case of the American isolationists and to prove the degree of America’s responsibility for the outbreak of war. In Berlin, journalists from around the world were permitted to examine the original documents themselves, along with a large number of other documents from the Polish Foreign Ministry. The release of the documents caused an international media sensation. American newspapers published lengthy excerpts from the documents and gave the story large front-page headline coverage.[11]

Charles C. Tansill

is a revisionist historian, for what it is worth.

In the 1930s, Tansill was a staunch isolationist, arguing that the United States should not participate in World War II.[1] At the same time, he was an advisor to the United States Senate Committee on Foreign Relations.[2] In 1952, Tansill published Back Door to War, a book about the war.[1][6] According to A. S. Winston, Tansill, "blamed Franklin Roosevelt for forcing a peace-minded Hitler into war and used the standard Rudolph Hess line that Hitler wanted only a free hand to deal with Bolshevism in the East."[1] Tansill went on to argue that it was Roosevelt who persuaded Neville Chamberlain to assure Poland that it would be defended by Britain if it was attacked by Germany, which happened in 1939 during the German invasion of Poland.[2] Winston goes on to suggest, "The book became a foundation for revisionist history of World War II."[1]

Barnes is similar, if a little kookier.

In his 1947 pamphlet, "The Struggle Against The Historical Blackout", Barnes claimed that "court historians" suppressed that Hitler was the most "reasonable" leader in the world in 1939, and that France's Premier Édouard Daladier wanted to commit aggression against Germany, aided and abetted by British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain and the U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt.

Edward Raczyński

was later President of Poland in exile and is a reputable figure. "he provided the Allies with one of the earliest and most accurate accounts of the ongoing Holocaust". A statement by him should be believed in this matter.

Łukasiewicz

was a marginal figure who committed suicide in 1951. I find him credible, but much less so than Raczyński. However, Wacław Jędrzejewicz is a completely solid figure, awarded many honors and was a professor at Wellesley.

Tyler Kent, a fascist (in the sense he was a member of a fascist organization, the Right Club), was convicted of spying as he leaked documents to the Germans.

At his trial, Kent also admitted he had taken documents from the US Embassy in Moscow, with the vague notion of someday showing them to US senators who shared his isolationist, antisemitic views.

Wikipedia says:

Isolationist groups in the United States claimed he had been framed and that the trial was an attempted cover-up of an attempt to get the US to join the war. The documents, finally released in 1972, did not support this claim. The papers that Kent had purloined indicated British-American naval co-operation, but they also showed that Roosevelt was not prepared to go further without support from the US Congress or the public.

but this ends with "citation needed" so it is unsourced.

Overall, if the source that says Raczyński vouched for them is accurate, then I believe the documents are accurate. I find the claims of Kent, Tansill, and Barnes unconvincing, as I would expect them to make those claims. I would also place significant weight on Jędrzejewicz, but he was reporting on someone else's beliefs as I read it.

I hate when people mix reliable figures with others that are completely partisan.