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Culture War Roundup for the week of June 12, 2023

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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]

So you maintain it's genuine?

Of course, they got ahold of the original facsimiles according to the diary entry of one of the Polish ambassadors who said "the documents are certainly genuine..."

In the spirit of the recent post on fake quotations, I found the quote from the diary entry as cited.

Love your stuff which is the only reason I'm bothering to comment, 'original facsimile' is an oxymoron. A facsimile is a copy. It's fallen out of use but once upon a time someone might have said 'make a facsimile of this document so we have two carbon copies'