Koestler and Khazars - Is the info accurate or even substantiative?

[Anonymous]

Latin posted this:

Mr. Smith information is questionable. Please take a deeper look at Arthur Koestler's work. In short his ground breaking research is based on one piece of evidence. Moreover, Koestler was a well known propagandist. Please feel to read what Bristish Freemason Fabian Socialist G. Orwell has to say about him. In short the 13th tribe argues that Khazar Jews have no claim to Israel because they are not from the chosen bloodline. What if you don't believe in the bible? At any rate Koestler's and Smith's target audience seem to be pious believers.

Here is Orwell's essay

Arthur Koestler
    George Orwell

    Arthur Koestler, 1944 [L.m./F.s.: 2004-12-11 / 33.26 KiB]
    'One striking fact about English literature during the present century is the extent to which it has been dominated by foreigners — for example, Conrad, Henry James, Shaw, Joyce, Yeats, Pound and Eliot. Still, if you chose to make this a matter of national prestige and examine our achievement in the various branches of literature, you would find that England made a fairly good showing until you came to what may be roughly described as political writing, or pamphleteering. I mean by this the special class of literature that has arisen out of the European political struggle since the rise of Fascism. Under this heading novels, autobiographies, books of 'reportage', sociological treatises and plain pamphlets can all be lumped together, all of them having a common origin and to a great extent the same emotional atmosphere.'

    About Arthur Koestler [L.m./F.s.: 2004-12-11 / 18.38 KiB]
    © Quotes from Arthur Koestler

http://orwell.ru/library/reviews/koestler/english/e_ak

This is directly from THE DBS SITE

According to a Jewish historian, Arthur Koestler, the Jews who are referred to as Ashkenazi Jews are not descendents of the original Jews of Palestine, who are referred to as Sephardic Jews.

    Koestler wrote a book called "The Thirteenth Tribe". You can read it for free on the Internet: http://www.iamthewitness.com/Koestler13thTribe.htm

    Koestler explains that more than a thousand years ago the Khazars, a group of people living in the area near the Caspian and Black Sea, picked up the Jewish religion.

&c. posted:

I'm not really certain (might need to find time to look into it), but I'm not at all sure that Koestler was anywhere near first to purvey the Khazaria information? Surely plenty other 'historians' on the subject preceeded him. In fact, while writing this I seem to recall reading (online) the entry for 'Khazaria' in the 1907 or 1917 [or ?] Encyclopedia Britannica and it conveyed similar info... will have to attempt to find that now...

1911 Britannica, it appears... http://www.1911encyclopedia.org/Khazars

'KHAZARS (known also as Chozars, as AnitT tpoc or X6. apoc in Byzantine writers, as Khazirs in Armenian and Khwalisses in Russian chronicles, and Ugri Bielii in Nestor), an ancient people who occupied a prominent place amongst the secondary powers of the Byzantine state-system. In the epic of Firdousi Khazar is the representative name for all the northern foes of Persia, and legendary invasions long before the Christian era are vaguely attributed to them. But the Khazars are an historic figure upon the borderland of Europe and Asia for at least 900 years (A.D. 190-1100). The epoch of their greatness is from A.D. 600 to 950. Their home was in the spurs of the Caucasus and along the shores of the Caspian - called by medieval Moslem geographers Bahr-al-Khazar ("sea of the Khazars"); their cities, all populous and civilized commercial centres, were Itil, the capital, upon the delta of the Volga, the "river of the Khazars," Semender (Tarkhu), the older capital, Khamlidje or Khalendsch, Belendscher, the outpost towards Armenia, and Sarkel on the Don. They were the Venetians of the Caspian and the Euxine, the organizers of the transit between the two basins, the universal carriers between East and West; and Itil was the meeting-place of the commerce of Persia, Byzantium, Armenia, Russia and the Bulgarians of the middle Volga. The tide of their dominion ebbed and flowed repeatedly, but the normal Khazari may be taken as the territory between the Caucasus, the Volga and the Don, with the outlying province of the Crimea, or Little Khazaria. The southern boundary never greatly altered; it did at times reach the Kur and the Aras, but on that side the Khazars were confronted by Byzantium and Persia, and were for the most part restrained within the passes of the Caucasus by the fortifications of Dariel. Amongst the nomadic Ugrians and agricultural Slays of the north their frontier fluctuated widely, and in its zenith Khazaria extended from the Dnieper to Bolgari upon the middle Volga, and along the eastern shore of the Caspian to Astarabad.

[edit]Ethnology
The origin of the Khazars has been much disputed, and they have been variously regarded as akin to the Georgians, Finno-Ugrians and Turks. This last view is perhaps the most probable. Their king Joseph, in answer to the inquiry of Hasdai Ibn Shaprut of Cordova (c. 958), stated that his people sprang from Thogarmah, grandson of Japhet, and the supposed ancestor of the other peoples of the Caucasus. The Arab geographers who knew the Khazars best connect them either with the Georgians (Ibn Athir) or with the Armenians (Dimishqi, ed. Mehren, p. 263); whilst Abmad ibn Fadlan, who passed through Khazaria on a mission from the caliph Moqtadir (A.D. 925), positively asserts that the Khazar tongue differed not only from the Turkish, but from that of the bordering nations, which were Ugrian.

Nevertheless there are many points connected with the Khazars which indicate a close connexion with Ugrian or Turkish peoples. The official titles recorded by Ibn Fadlan are those in use amongst the Tatar nations of that age, whether Huns, Bulgarians, Turks or Mongols. The names of their cities can be explained only by reference to Turkish or Ugrian dialects (Klaproth, Mem. sur les Khazars; Howorth, Khazars). Some too amongst the medieval authorities (Ibn Haugal and Istakhri) note a resemblance between the speech in use amongst the Khazars and the Bulgarians; and the modern Magyar - a Ugrian language - can be traced back to a tribe which in the 9th century formed part of the Khazar kingdom. These characteristics, however, are accounted for by the fact that the Khazars were at one time subject to the Huns (A.D. 448 et seq.), at another to the Turks (c. 580), which would sufficiently explain the signs of Tatar influence in their polity, and also by the testimony of all observers, Greeks, Arabs and Russians, that there was a double strain within the Khazar nation. There were Khazars and Kara (black) Khazars. The Khazars were fair-skinned, black-haired and of a remarkable beauty and stature; their women indeed were sought as wives equally at Byzantium and Bagdad; while the Kara Khazars were ugly, short, and were reported by the Arabs almost as dark as Indians. The latter were indubitably the Ugrian nomads of the steppe, akin to the Tatar invaders of Europe, who filled the armies and convoyed the caravans of the ruling caste. But the Khazars proper were a civic commercial people, the founders of cities, remarkable for somewhat elaborate political institutions, for persistence and for good faith - all qualities foreign to the Hunnic character.

They have been identified with the AKarcpoc (perhaps AkKhazari, or White Khazars) who appear upon the lower Volga in the Byzantine annals, and thence they have been deduced, though with less convincing proof, either from the AyetOvpvoc (Agathyrsi) or the Kariapoc of Herodotus, iv. 104. There was throughout historic times a close connexion which eventually amounted to political identity between the Khazars and the Barsileens (the Passils of Moses of Chorene) who occupied the delta of the Volga; and the Barsileens can be traced through the pages of Ptolemy (Geog. v. 9), of Pliny (iv. 26), of Strabo (vii. 306), and of Pomponius Mela (ii. c. 1, p. 119) to the so-called Royal Scyths, ZKLOae (3aoLAnes, who were known to the Greek colonies upon the Euxine, and whose political superiority and commercial enterprise led to this rendering of their name. Such points, however, need not here be further pursued than to establish the presence of this white race around the Caspian and the Euxine throughout historic times. They appear in European history as White Huns (Ephthalites), White Ugrians (Sar-ogours), White Bulgarians. Owing to climatic causes the tract they occupied was slowly drying up. They were the outposts of civilization towards the encroaching desert, and the Tatar nomadism that advanced with it. They held in precarious subjection the hordes whom the conditions of the climate and the soil made it impossible to supplant. They bore the brunt of each of the great waves of Tatar conquests, and were eventually overwhelmed.

[edit]History
Amidst this white race of the steppe the Khazars can be first historically distinguished at the end of the 2nd century A.D. They burst into Armenia with the Barsileens, A.D. 198. They were repulsed and attacked in turn. The pressure of the nomads of the steppe, the quest of plunder or revenge, these seem the only motives of.., &c

I haven't actually read it yet, but simply cut 'n pasted part of it in quotes - so know not if it validates what I was saying... Either way, I still believe the info (possibly / probably) preceded Koestler, and that he merely expounded on it... [AND, I haven't read this entire thread, and so I hope I'm not offtrack.]

[Anonymous]

Here is what twiceborn has to say on Koestler and Khazars: Khazar history and Arthur Koestler's LIES


Additionally, here is a "scholarly" review of Koestler's work (below the images is an OCR text render for copying etc):

Review: Jewish Roots and Modern Israel
Author(s): Don Peretz
Reviewed work(s): The Thirteenth Tribe: The Khazar Empire and Its Heritage. by Arthur Koestler
Source: Journal of Palestine Studies, Vol. 6, No. 2, (Winter, 1977), pp. 133-138
Published by: University of California Press on behalf of the Institute for Palestine Studies

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Here is the above in text OCR render (can have inaccurate words/letters in it)

JEWISH ROOTS AND MODERN ISRAEL
Arthur Koestler. The Thirteenth Tribe: The Khazar Empire and Its
Heritage} Random House, New York, 1976. 256pp. $8.95.
Reviewed by DON PERETZ*
The theory that the mass of European Jewry descended from the central
Asian Khazars has long fascinated both Jewish and non-Jewish historians. It is
significant in the context of the dispute between Arabs and Jews because of its
use by those who seek to refute Zionist claims to Palestine based on historical
ties of modern Jewry with ancient Israel. If the overwhelming majority ofJews
are not descended from the Semitic Hebrews of the Old Testament, but rather
*Don Peretz is Professor of Political Science at the State University of New York, Binghamton.
134 JOURNAL OF PALESTINE STUDIES
from the Turkic people of Khazaria, then, argue many anti-Zionists, Jewish
claims to Palestine based on the Bible are vitiated if not totally invalidated.
Arthur Koestler, the latest author-historian advocate on this Khazar theory,
explicitly refutes its bearing on modern-day Israel. He writes:
I am aware of the danger that it [his book] may be maliciously misinterpreted
as a denial of the State of Israel's right to exist .....But that
right is not based on the hypothetical origins of the Jewish people, not on
the mythological covenant of Abraham with God; it is based on international
law-i.e., on the United Nation's decision in 1947 to partition
Palestine... Whatever the Israeli citizen's racial origins, and whatever
illusions they entertain, their State exists de jure and de facto} and
cannot be undone, except by genocide.... Whether the chromosomes of
the people contain the genes of Khazar or Semitic, Roman or Spanish
origin, is irrevelant, and cannot affect Israel's right to exist.... The
problem of the Khazar infusion a thousand years ago, however
fascinating, is irrelevant to modern Israel. (p.233)
While discussed only peripherally, it seems that this question is more significant
than the information and arguments Koestler presents in the main body
of his study. In comparing The Thirteenth Tribe with previous research on
the Jewish Khazars done by historians for whom the subject was part of a life
work rather than a dilettantish interlude, I could find little that was new or
original other than Koestler's courage in throwing historical caution to the
wind by selecting those sources that confirm his own strong affirmation of the
Khazar theory.
As is often the case in a much discussed historical theme, those who wrote
about the Khazars before Koestler have used the identical sources but interpreted
much more cautiously what they found. Two of the most reputable historians
to whom Koestler frequently turns in support of his affirmations, Salo
Wittmayer Baron and D.M. Dunlop, have many more reservations about the
interpretations they place on the documentation. Uncertainties arise, not over
existence of a Jewish Khazar kingdom in central Asia, but over the extent of its
Jewishness and the fate of its inhabitants after its demise sometime before the
end of the thirteenth century.
There is sufficient historical data to affirm that the rulers of Khazaria were
converted to Judaism sometime in the eighth or ninth century. Even Koestler
acknowledges that: "The circumstances of the conversion are obscured by
legend... " (p. 63) anq "no doubt inspired by opportunistic motives-conceived
as a cunning political manoeuvre." (p. 62) Baron, in his Social and
Religious History of the Jews} and Dunlop, in The History of the Jewish
Khazars} as well as other historians of the period agree that the conversion was
motivated less by ideological than political considerations. Pressed by the
Byzantines on the west and the Muslims from the east the Khazar conversion
was a defensive tactic to neutralize their country. While Baron cites it as "the
largest and last mass conversion to Judaism," (Vol. III, p. 196) he is uncertain
RECENT BOOKS 135
about its extent and the ultimate fate of the Khazar kingdom's Jewish inhabitants.
In his shorter three volume summary, he states that the question of the
conversion has "not been satisfactorily solved." He cites an earlier authority
who wrote that "the conversion was gradual and proceeded from the royal
house to the upper classes, without ever including the bulk of the people."
(Vol. III, p. 77)
Koestler placed major emphasis on the so-called "Khazar Correspondence,"
an exchange of letters between a Spanish Jewish notable, Hasdi ibn Shaprut
and King Joseph of Khazaria, written in the latter tenth century, to support
his verdict. Both Dunlop and Baron are less sure of the authenticity. Baron
writes of "the paucity and general unreliability of the few Khazarian-Jewish
sources and, particularly, of the crucial letter of King Joseph extant in both a
shorter and a longer version.... " (Vol. II I, p. 196)
~here is no doubt that Khazaria and the conversion of its leaders to Judaism
was a fascinating episode, which Koestler described with verve and colour.
From a variety of sources he extracts a chronicle of the era that is exciting and
somewhat novel. He makes up for what is lacking in description of the Khazar
kingdom's Jewishness with the story of its relations in a hostile and barbarian
world. There are lengthy accounts of wars with Arabs, diverse Turkish tribes,
Byzantines, Russians and others. But more interesting from the viewpoint of
contemporary history are the sweeping conclusions derived from this skein of
events and supposed events. On a foundation of data, about whose reliability
other historians still have doubts, Koestler affirms that the dispersed Khazars
were the ancestors of Eastern European Jewry. In summary, he asserts that he
has "compiled the historical evidence which indicated that the bulk of Eastern
Jewry-and hence" of world Jewry-is of Khazar-Turkish, rather than Semitic
origin." (p. 199)
His concluding chapter on "Race and Myth" is indeed an intriguing speculative
essay supporting theories ofJewish non-Semitic roots, but hardly proof
of Khazar-Turkish origins. His argument that there is no Jewish race is cogent
..and convincing, and of course long supported by anthropologists. The evidence
he reiterates of diverse racial characteristics among Jews-cranial
measurement, blood types, skin, hair, and eye coloration, and other physical
characteristics - is worth repeating once again, especially in the context of the
the Arab-Israeli struggle where racial or ethnic stereotyping is not uncommon.
His two page discourse on the Jewish nose-with diagrams-and his observation
about the ease with which groups acquire physical stereotypes is both
amusing and an object lesson but supports a theory of what Jews are not,
rather than what they are.
Despite his uncertainties, Baron does not refrain from acknowledging the
importance of the Khazar contribution to Jewish history, yet he is not as
sweeping in his conclusions as Koestler. After falling victim in the thirteenth
century to the Mongol invasion set in motion by Jenghiz Khan, Baron writes
that the last remnant of Khazaria
136 JOURNAL OF PALESTINE STUDIES
...was largely absorbed by the Golden Horde which had established the
center of its empire in Khazar territory. But before and after the Mongol
upheaval the Khazars sent many offshoots into the unsubdued Slavonic
lands, helping ultimately to build up the great Jewish centers of eastern
Europe.... During the half millennium (750-1250) of its existence, however,
and its aftermath in the East European communities, this noteworthy
experiment in Jewish statecraft doubtless exerted a greater influence
on Jewish history than we are yet about to envisage. (Vol. III, p.
206)
As for the theory that the Jews of eastern Europe, especially those in Poland,
were the descendants of the Khazars, Dunlop concludes that:
This can be dealt with very shortly, because there is little evidence which
bears directly upon it, and it unavoidably retains the character of a mere
assumption to speak of the Jews of eastern Europe as descendants of
'the Khazars would be to go much beyond what our imperfect records
allow. (pp.262-263)
Whether or not they accept the Khazar origins of modern Jewry, most
modern historians do conclude that today's Jews are a congeries of peoples in
terms of race and physical characteristics, yet they are one people in an ethnic
national sense. The fundamental historical question, raised by this observation,
as well as by Koestler's various and at time conflicting conclusions, is
complex. Would Jewish nationalism in the form of Zionism be subverted by
realization that the Jews in the modern world are not a "racially" cohesive
group with common Semitic ancestry? Both anthropological and historical
evidence does seem to indicate that few Jews can reliably trace their origins to
the ancient Middle East. The diverse racial characteristics and physical types
of Israel's Jewish population which includes African Blacks, blond, blue-eyed
"Nordics" from Germany, dark skinned Indians, a few racial Chinese, and the
Eastern European "Semitic" stereotype, refute any theory of common physical
origin. If, as Koestler maintains, most Jews are descended from the Khazars,
this theory is hardly valid for the Jews of Israel. More than half of them are
neither Ashkenazi nor European, but came to the country from long established
African and Asian communities unrelated even in theory to the
Khazars. Yet despite severe strains between the European and the Afro-Asian
Jewish communities in Israel, both claim a common identity with the country.
An explanation of their ties with Palestine, now Israel, is less difficult for
those who are practitioners of orthodox Judaism and their supporters among
Christians who believe in a literal interpretation of the Old Testament. They
perceive Israel as God's gift to the Jewish people, regardless of who the Jewish
people are today or the historical and ethnic transformations through which it
passed during the past two thousand years. Because mere man cannot argue
with or question God's will, the theories of anthropologists, historians, and
scientists can no more invalidate orthodox Jewish claims to Palestine than
RECENT BOOKS 137
scientific theories could or would invalidate the story of Jesus' birth for
pious Roman Catholics.
Since Israel was established in 1948 fewer and fewer Zionists proclaim divine
sanction for their "rights" in Palestine. Indeed, few nationalists of any
genre base their claims on God-given authority. To the extent that historical
claims can be extended back through history on grounds of common racial
origins, national prerogatives of many groups are fortified, and many do seek
to create elaborate mythologies to justify their presence in disputed territories.
However, with new archaeological discoveries and diverse interpretations of
their significance, it becomes increasingly clear that population movements of
the last two thousand years have so scrambled the peoples of Europe, Asia,
and Africa that few if any "pure-blooded" peoples of any significance exist.
Neither Zionists nor Palestinians can claim the disputed country on the basis
of "blood" or racial ties with the peoples who were there in ancient times.
If the Jews are not a race united by common physical characteristics, if increasing
numbers are secularists for whom divine guidance on this matter is
irrelevant, in what sense are they now an ethnic group and on what basis does
this ethnic group claim legitimate rights in Palestine?
First, given the arguments stated above, in what way are the Jews an ethnic
group? Increasingly nationalism is self-defined, i.e. those who identify with a
particular group or state are members of the group, regardless of objective
criteria. The subjective feeling of identity creates identity. In the United States
black identity is less identified with blackness of skin than the association of an
individual or group with black culture and black consciousness. Jewishness is
no longer associated with the angle of a hooked nose or the curliness of hair,
but with subjective identity by an individual with the Jewish people. Many
Palestinians are the off-spring of immigrants who came from Armenia, the
Caucasus, or of inter-marriages between Middle Easterners and Europeans,
but their self-identity as Palestinians rather than percentages of blood or some
other such characteristic determines their national 'identity. "Pure" national
origins have become a myth. It is the people who identify themselves as a national
group at any given moment in history that gives substance and credibility
to the group's existence, not the mythologies of ancient origins and
"blood roots."
Both Jewish and Palest~nian self-identity as Jews and as Palestinians gives
their respective national identities credibility and legitimacy. To the extent
that a self-defined national or ethnic group's cohesiveness is reinforced by
common symbols such as language or religion or race or tribe or culture, the
easier it is to assert the existence of objective foundations for identity. But ethnic
or national cohesiveness can exist without such "objective" criteria merely
by the determination and will of a people to exist as a distinctive
group. While common history and ancestral roots may also strengthen group
cohesiveness, they are neither a prerequisite nor a necessary justification for
ethnic or national identity.
138 JOURNAL OF PALESTINE STUDIES
What then of Jewish "rights" in Palestine? Are they more, less or equal to
those of Palestinian Arabs, or do they exist at all? Again, Koestler's book and
the Khazar theory is of little help in answering the question for me since I, too,
have assumed that neither divi~e sanction nor "blood" origins are anything
other than mythic components of any group's ethnic consciousness and
identity.
Both Israeli Jewish and Palestinian Arab identity with the same country is
justified for existentialist reasons: identity exists deep enough In the consciousness
of both peoples to merit recognition and acknowledgement by
others and to warrant mutual acknowledgement by both. Regardless of the
"blood" roots of either, or the authenticity of the elaborate historical justifications
that each claims for its "rights," the symbolism of Palestine is so deeply
etched in both Jewish and Palestinian consciousness that it is neither quixotic
nor ephemeral. Each may seek to undermine the historical credibility of the
other's justifications for Palestine-centeredness, but no scientific arguments
can diminish the existential claims that each will continue to make.

[LatinAmericanview]

It seems that Jewish authors have been fabricating historical evidence of Khazaria and their empire for many centuries. In fact, most of the original knowledge of this kingdom came from these literary forgeries.

Modern historians would never have started looking for the empire of Khazaria unless they were prompted by these false descriptions. As we know, if you are being paid to look for something, you will find it. If you don't you lose your funding. This seems to be the case here, with modern historians "rediscovering" evidence for the long forgotten empire, or simply inventing it wherever it suited their agendas.

I'm not buying it, and i'll show you why.

The first example is one that Arthur Koestler uses in "The Thirteenth Tribe". Koestler was a propagandist, a communist revolutionary, and a Zionist, and I dont know why anyone thinks he'd write an honest book. Let me just say this, no one ever branded him an "anti-semite" and he died a very wealthy man. Alan Watt would have us believe he was really exposing the truth, yeah riiiight.....

In this account, apparently a Spanish Jew, "Hasdai Ibn-Ishaq", heard of a wonderful Jewish paradise to the East. He decided to write them a letter, and lo and behold, they responded!

But this was not just any response, it was from the KING OF KHAZARIA himself, the honorable "King Joseph, son of Aaron". (notice the biblical names...) The good king told Hasdai about his kingdom, a wonderful land where jews were free to frolic like nature intended. How touching.

King Joseph even wrote Hasdai a follow up letter. Between these two letters we get all of our early information describing Khazaria.

This letter was very popular to Jews in that era, and Hasdai became a well known figure. Apparently this letter still exists, and is still the ONLY EVIDENCE OF A KHAZAR KINGDOM WHICH CONVERSION TO JUDAISM. Yep, thats it, thats the evidence. All of it.

Now, if thats not idiotic enough for you, consider this.

The arab mapmaker Ibn Hawkal, who wrote the FIRST MAP showing the Khazar Kingdom got his information about the Kingdom from the rumors he heard about Hasdai.

On his map he writes:
"Hasdai thinks that this great long mountain is connected with the mountains of Armenia and traverses the country of the Greeks, extending to Khazaran and the mountains of Armenia. He was well informed about these parts because he visited them and met their principal kings and leading men."

Notice how the story changed? Now the rumor was that Hasdai had gone to Khazaria himself and met with it's "Kings and leading men". Also, notice the description: "traverses the country of the Greeks, extending to Khazaran and the mountains of Armenia".

He clearly describes "Khazaran" as a country past Greece and before Armenia. Compare this to Arthur Koestler's map of Khazaria which shows it in a completely different location.
Map: http://www.biblebelievers.org.au/13trindx.htm

What Ibn Hawkal describes on his map is a Kingdom in the area of modern Turkey, which correlates to my theory that the land of the Khazars was the land of the Caesars - the Eastern Roman (Byzantine) Empire. But this map itself is a little vague, it was also dated as between 479 and 1086ad. That's over 500 years, a mighty big gap for an accurate historical dating, wouldnt you say?

Its probably a forgery, as no one seems to know when or where the hell it came from.

This is not the only original work on the Khazars that came from Hasdai's fantasy pen pal club. There were several books written on the Khazars using the letter as source material. These were all written by prominent Rabbis in the few generations after Hasdai. And ladies and gentlemen, THESE ARE THE VERY WORKS WHICH HISTORIANS USE FOR THEIR INFORMATION TODAY. One way or another, ALL of the research on Khazaria derive from these texts.

The worst part about all of this is that Arthur Koestler TAKES IT SERIOUSLY. He does go over the information I just stated but he did not really question any of the information as I just did, he just shrugs it off and stays his course. All of this is put into "Appendix 3" of his book,wayyyy at the end, but he never seems to mention that ALL of the information given in the preceeding chapters derived from these sources!

He really wants to get across that idea that the "Khazars converted to Judaism" and that "They are the European Jews today", regardless of how little evidence there acutally is for these events. Pointing to southern Russia and saying "there be Jews" is a great way to divert our attention and is the essence of disinformation.

We need to really question this story, and stop taking it for granted because it's hundreds of years old and "historically accepted". Most historians are rich little twits who decided to study history so they wouldnt need to get a real job. They go with the flow, and never question anything as it would be professional suicide and would upset all the other History Dorks.

If you dont believe me, go to a Renaissance faire and THEN tell me i'm incorrect in this assessment... :lol:



I dont want to smash a held belief and offer nothing to replace it, so here are my theories. I MAY BE WRONG, but its something to start with.

I do believe there was an Empire that "adopted" Judaism (created it actually) in the East. It is the same empire that "created" the Catholic Church and modern Christianity out of the Egyptian Gnostic beliefs. The same ruling class developed BOTH Judaism and Christianity and then gave them false histories, stretching into the archaic past, so they could not be questioned. Acharya S. gives a great description of this in her books. I highly suggest them.

Why are both "Jewish" and "Christian" texts included in the bible? Because it was written as a collaboration between those two groups. They both came under the leadership of the Empire, and both had their places.

Judaism was never "persecuted", their numbers were meant to be small and THEY THEMSELVES choose to live in separate communities, just as you would want from a "ruling class" who needed to stay above and apart from those they ruled.

This all happened in the Eastern Roman (Byzantine) Empire, the real "Caesaria" (KHAZARIA) - "the land of Caesar".

[LatinAmericanview]

Despite his uncertainties, Baron does not refrain from acknowledging the
importance of the Khazar contribution to Jewish history, yet he is not as
sweeping in his conclusions as Koestler. After falling victim in the thirteenth
century to the Mongol invasion set in from azixx

[Anonymous]

Despite his uncertainties, Baron does not refrain from acknowledging the
importance of the Khazar contribution to Jewish history, yet he is not as
sweeping in his conclusions as Koestler. After falling victim in the thirteenth
century to the Mongol invasion set in from azixx

what if we started calling Khazars Tartars?

viewtopic.php?f=21&t=3098

[LatinAmericanview]

A ruling group is a ruling group! A rose by any other name would still have thorns

[CrackSmokeRepublican]

So do you think this Map is inaccurate at around 600AD?  


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:NE_600ad.jpg

[Anonymous]

So do you think this Map is inaccurate at around 600AD?  


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:NE_600ad.jpg

I believe the conflict is whether the Khazars are todays 'Jews'.  Less about the territory they are said to have inhabited.

[LatinAmericanview]

So do you think this Map is inaccurate at around 600AD?  


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:NE_600ad.jpg

It is a fabrication! It is a joke. It is child's play!  The sexton was not invented until late 1600's. Maps like these could have been made a thousand years before the technology to create them.

[LatinAmericanview]

Sorry misunderstood the nature of the question. Does the map represent geographic distributions of ancient tribes. No! I don't think so. I think the concept of tribal identity has changed a lot in the past 1000 years.

[blueocean]

LAV wrote: "This all happened in the Eastern Roman (Byzantine) Empire, the real "Caesaria" (KHAZARIA) - "the land of Caesar".



Can you provide other links or pdf's where this is written down and or substantiated?   interested to study it.

[LatinAmericanview]

http://www.revisedhistory.org/civilevents.htm

http://www.revisedhistory.org/Book%20of ... zation.pdf

[Ralph Furely]

so, if i am to understand this correctly, whats being asserted here is that this was all made up to create a false history?  it was indeed more than just Koestler that was
into this research, and that wrote about it.  so would this have been a big concerted effort by multiple parties to create this big false history?  when would this have
to have been decided on, back then, to get this all rolling?

as for the bible thing that i read in the 1st post..  about what if u dont believe in the bible.  well, then their whole argument is moot anyway isnt it?  this whole chosen ppls land, haveing this right to
the holy land... they rely on the bible for all that shit dont they.  if it werent for the bible then they would never be able to say we have a right to this land in the 1st place..the bible being their real estate document
from god, and all that bullshit.  
so if someone doesnt believe in the bible, then the argument is even more so correct that NONE of these so called chosen ppl have any right to the land whatsoever.  god given or otherwise.

am i making sense?  i dont even know at this point...


also i was pretty sure he was branded the dreaded anti semite was he not.  i thought he was actually smeared really badly?  something about a statue at a school or something comes to mind.  in any event i read about a lot of the self hating jew talk in regards to him and this book.
maybe that could all be done purposely tho, taking in this new context of the whole situation... i suppose this could all be part of the deception..

in any event very confusing.  i see it like this.  either way, it goes against their bullshit talk of deserving, or being promised this land of israel.  regardless if they were mostly converts who would then have no right at all as they would not be from the same blood line... or if you look at them as all being from the bloodline, i still find it wrong for them to think they own this land, because 'jeus', or 'the bible', says so.

for one im pretty sure jesus said something to the effect of live amongst the other lands untill i come back.  that they are not supposed to have their own land.  and that they are supposed to be living morally and be good ppl, etc.   well they have done none of that.
and for two, basing so much shit off one 2000 yr old book, ie saying you arabs must leave now or be killed because if you look right here at these pages, taken from a very old book, which has been edited, changed around, omitted, etc, well thats even sillier than the 1st two things.
so my point is, any way you look at it, this land of israel for the jews thing is corrupt and wrong on many levels.  regardless if this book is bullshit or not.

i know this is neither here nor there when you really get down to it.  i know this isnt the basis of the argument, just wanted to throw that in.

[LatinAmericanview]

Well RF-

There several points worth stating the vast majority of people believe in some sort of Monotheism.  Monotheism has been considered to be an imperialistic religion since the time of Plato( estimates on when Plato created his great works vary from 2500BC to 1500AD). Koestle does what in propaganda is called a 3rd party endorsement. If you believe in the three great religions then his work certainly debatable and salient to our current crises. However, if you were to leave the theological dabet aside then one would merely ask how good is Koestler research and his sources. The more through person might inquire about Arthur Koestler himself!

This is what Orwell (another shill) said about the man:

George Orwell
Arthur Koestler

One striking fact about English literature during the present century is the extent to which it has been dominated by foreigners — for example, Conrad, Henry James, Shaw, Joyce, Yeats, Pound and Eliot. Still, if you chose to make this a matter of national prestige and examine our achievement in the various branches of literature, you would find that England made a fairly good showing until you came to what may be roughly described as political writing, or pamphleteering. I mean by this the special class of literature that has arisen out of the European political struggle since the rise of Fascism. Under this heading novels, autobiographies, books of 'reportage', sociological treatises and plain pamphlets can all be lumped together, all of them having a common origin and to a great extent the same emotional atmosphere.

Some of the outstanding figures in this school of writers are Silone, Malraux, Salvemini, Borkenau, Victor Serge and Koestler himself. Some of these are imaginative writers, some not, but they are all alike in that they are trying to write contemporary history, but unofficial history, the kind that is ignored in the text-books and lied about in the newspapers. Also they are all alike in being continental Europeans. It may be an exaggeration, but it cannot be a very great one, to say that whenever a book dealing with totalitarianism appears in this country, and still seems worth reading six months after publication, it is a book translated from some foreign language. English writers, over the past dozen years, have poured forth an enormous spate of political literature, but they have produced almost nothing of aesthetic value, and very little of historical value either. The Left Book Club, for instance, has been running ever since 1936. How many of its chosen volumes can you even remember the names of? Nazi Germany, Soviet Russian, Spain, Abyssinia, Austria, Czechoslovakia — all that these and kindred subjects have produced, in England, are slick books of reportage, dishonest pamphlets in which propaganda is swallowed whole and then spewed up again, half digested, and a very few reliable guide books and text-books. There has been nothing resembling, for instance, Fontamara or Darkness at Noon, because there is almost no English writer to whom it has happened to see totalitarianism from the inside. In Europe, during the past decade and more, things have been happening to middle-class people which in England do not even happen to the working class. Most of the European writers I mentioned above, and scores of others like them, have been obliged to break the law in order to engage in politics at all; some of them have thrown bombs and fought in street battles, many have been in prison or the concentration camp, or fled across frontiers with false names and forged passports. One cannot imagine, say, Professor Laski indulging in activities of that kind. England is lacking, therefore, in what one might call concentration-camp literature. The special world created by secret-police forces, censorship of opinion, torture, and frame-up trials is, of course, known about and to some extent disapproved of, but it has made very little emotional impact. One result of this is that there exists in England almost no literature of disillusionment about the Soviet Union. There is the attitude of ignorant disapproval, and there is the attitude of uncritical admiration, but very little in between. Opinion on the Moscow sabotage trials, for instance, was divided, but divided chiefly on the question of whether the accused were guilty. Few people were able to see that, whether justified or not, the trials were an unspeakable horror. And English disapproval of the Nazi outrages has also been an unreal thing, turned on and off like a tap according to political expediency. To understand such things one has to be able to imagine oneself as the victim, and for an Englishman to write Darkness at Noon would be as unlikely an accident as for a slave-trader to write Uncle Tom's Cabin.

Koestler's published work really centres about the Moscow trials. His main theme is the decadence of revolutions owing to the corrupting effects of power, but the special nature of the Stalin dictatorship has driven him back into a position not far removed from pessimistic Conservatism. I do not know how many books he has written in all. He is a Hungarian whose earlier books were written in German, and five books have been published in England: Spanish Testament, The Gladiators, Darkness at Noon, Scum of the Earth, and Arrival and Departure. The subject-matter of all of them is similar, and none of them ever escapes for more than a few pages from the atmosphere of nightmare. Of the five books, the action of three takes place entirely or almost entirely in prison.

In the opening months of the Spanish Civil War Koestler was the News Chronicle's correspondent in Spain, and early in 1937 he was taken prisoner when the Fascists captured Malaga. He was nearly shot out of hand, then spent some months imprisoned in a fortress, listening every night to the roar of rifle fire as batch after batch of Republicans was executed, and being most of the time in acute danger of execution himself. This was not a chance adventure which 'might have happened to anybody', but was in accordance with Koestler's life-style. A politically indifferent person would not have been in Spain at that date, a more cautious observer would have got out of Malaga before the Fascists arrived, and a British or American newspaper man would have been treated with more consideration. The book that Koestler wrote apart about this, Spanish Testament, has remarkable passages, but apart from the scrappiness that is usual in a book of reportage, it is definitely false in places. In the prison scenes Koestler successfully establishes the nightmare atmosphere which is, so to speak, his patent, but the rest of the book is too much coloured by the Popular Front orthodoxy of the time. One or two passage even look as though they had been doctored for the purposes of the Left Book Club. At that time Koestler still was, or recently had been, a member of the Communist Party, and the complex politics of the civil war made it impossible for any Communist to write honestly about the internal struggle on the Government side. The sin of nearly all left-wingers from 1933 onward is that they have wanted to be anti-Fascist without being anti-totalitarian. In 1937 Koestler already knew this, but did not feel free to say so. He came much nearer to saying it — indeed, he did say it, though he put on a mask to do so — in his next book, The Gladiators, which was published about a year before the war and for some reason attracted very little attention.

The Gladiators is in some ways an unsatisfactory book. It is about Spartacus, the Thracian gladiator who raised a slaves' rebellion in Italy round about 65 B.C., and any book on such a subject is handicapped by challenging comparison with Salammbô. In our own age it would not be possible to write a book like Salammbô, even if one had the talent. The great thing about Salammbô, even more important than its physical detail, is this utter mercilessness. Flaubert could think himself into the stony cruelty of antiquity, because in the mid-nineteenth century one still had peace of mind. One had time to travel in the past. Nowadays the present and the future are too terrifying to be escaped from, and if one bothers with history it is in order to find modern meanings there. Koestler makes Spartacus into an allegorical figure, a primitive version of the proletarian dictator. Whereas Flaubert has been able, by a prolonged effort of the imagination, to make his mercenaries truly pre-Christian, Spartacus is a modern man dressed up. But this might not matter if Koestler were fully aware of what his allegory means. Revolutions always go wrong — that is the main theme. It is on the question of why they go wrong that he falters, and his uncertainty enters into the story and makes the central figures enigmatic and unreal.

For several years the rebellious slaves are uniformly successful. Their numbers swell to a hundred thousand, they over-run great areas of Southern Italy, they defeat one punitive expedition after another, they ally themselves with the pirates who at that time were the masters of the Mediterranean, and finally they set to work to build a city of their own, to be named the City of the Sun. In this city human beings are to be free and equal, and above all, they are to be happy: no slavery, no hunger, no injustice, no floggings, no executions. It is the dream of a just society which seems to haunt the human imagination ineradicably and in all ages, whether it is called the Kingdom of Heaven or the classless society, or whether it is thought of as a Golden Age which once existed in the past and from which we have degenerated. Needless to say, the slaves fail to achieve it. No sooner have they formed themselves into a community than their way of life turns out to be as unjust, laborious and fear-ridden as any other. Even the cross, symbol of slavery, has to be revived for the punishment of malefactors. The turning-point comes when Spartacus finds himself obliged to crucify twenty of this oldest and most faithful followers. After that the City of the Sun is doomed, the slaves split up and are defeated in detail, the last fifteen thousand of them being captured and crucified in one batch.

The serious weakness of this story is that the motives of Spartacus himself are never made clear. The Roman lawyer Fulvius, who joins the rebellion and acts as its chronicler, sets forth the familiar dilemma of ends and means. You can achieve nothing unless you are willing to use force and cunning, but in using them you pervert your original aims. Spartacus, however, is not represented as power hungry, nor, on the other hand, as a visionary. He is driven onwards by some obscure force which he does not understand, and he is frequently in two minds as to whether it would not be better to throw up the whole adventure and flee to Alexandria while the going is good. The slaves' republic is in any case wrecked rather by hedonism than by the struggle for power. The slaves are discontented with their liberty because they still have to work, and the final break-up happens because the more turbulent and less civilized slaves, chiefly Gauls and Germans, continue to behave like bandits after the republic has been established. This may be a true account of events — naturally we know very little about the slave rebellions of antiquity — but by allowing the Sun City to be destroyed because Crixus the Gaul cannot be prevented from looting and raping, Koestler has faltered between allegory and history. If Spartacus is the prototype of the modern revolutionary — and obviously he is intended as that — he should have gone astray because of the impossibility of combining power with righteousness. As it is, he is an almost passive figure, acted upon rather than acting, and at times not convincing. The story partly fails because the central problem of revolution has been avoided or, at least, has not been solved.

It is again avoided in a subtler way in the next book, Koestler's masterpiece, Darkness at Noon. Here, however, the story is not spoiled, because it deals with individuals and its interest is psychological. It is an episode picked out from a background that does not have to be questioned. Darkness at Noon describes the imprisonment and death of an Old Bolshevik, Rubashov, who first denies and ultimately confesses to crimes which he is well aware he has not committed. The grown-upness, the lack of surprise or denunciation, the pity and irony with which the story is told, show the advantage, when one is handling a theme of this kind, of being a European. The book reaches the stature of tragedy, whereas an English or American writer could at most have made it into a polemical tract. Koestler has digested his material and can treat it on the aesthetic level. At the same time his handling of it has a political implication, not important in this case but likely to be damaging in later books.

Naturally the whole book centres round one question: Why did Rubashov confess? He is not guilty — that is, not guilty of anything except the essential crime of disliking the Stalin régime. The concrete acts of treason in which he is supposed to have engaged are all imaginary. He has not even been tortured, or not very severely. He is worn down by solitude, toothache, lack of tobacco, bright lights glaring in his eyes, and continuous questioning, but these in themselves would not be enough to overcome a hardened revolutionary. The Nazis have previously done worse to him without breaking his spirit. The confessions obtained in the Russian state trials are capable of three explanations:

   1. That the accused were guilty.
   2. That they were tortured, and perhaps blackmailed by threats to relatives and friends.
   3. That they were actuated by despair, mental bankruptcy and the habit of loyalty to the Party.

For Koestler's purpose in Darkness at Noon 1 is ruled out, and though this is not the place to discuss the Russian purges, I must add that what little verifiable evidence there is suggests that the trials of the Bolsheviks were frame-ups. If one assumes that the accused were not guilty — at any rate, not guilty of the particular things they confessed to — then 2 is the common-sense explanation. Koestler, however, plumps for 3, which is also accepted by the Trotskyist Boris Souvarine, in his pamphlet Cauchemar en U.R.S.S. Rubashov ultimately confesses because he cannot find in his own mind any reason for not doing so. Justice and objective truth have long ceased to have any meaning for him. For decades he has been simply the creature of the Party, and what the Party now demands is that he shall confess to non-existent crimes. In the end, though he had to be bullied and weakened first, he is somewhat proud of his decision to confess. He feels superior to the poor Czarist officer who inhabits the next cell and who talks to Rubashov by tapping on the wall. The Czarist officer is shocked when he learns that Rubashov intends to capitulate. As he sees it from his 'bourgeois' angle, everyone ought to stick to his guns, even a Bolshevik. Honour, he says, consists in doing what you think right. 'Honour is to be useful without fuss,' Rubashov taps back; and he reflects with a certain satisfaction that he is tapping with his pince-nez while the other, the relic of the past, is tapping with a monocle. Like Burkharin, Rubashov is 'looking out upon black darkness'. What is there, what code, what loyalty, what notion of good and evil, for the sake of which he can defy the Party and endure further torment? He is not only alone, he is also hollow. He has himself committed worse crimes than the one that is now being perpetrated against him. For example, as a secret envoy of the Party in Nazi Germany, he has got rid of disobedient followers by betraying them to the Gestapo. Curiously enough, if he has any inner strength to draw upon, it is the memories of this boyhood when he was the son of a landowner. The last thing he remembers, when he is shot from behind, is the leaves of poplar trees on his father's estate. Rubashov belongs to the older generation of Bolsheviks that was largely wiped out in the purges. He is aware of art and literature, and of the world outside Russia. He contrasts sharply with Gletkin, the young G.P.U. man who conducts his interrogation, and who is the typical 'good party man', completely without scruples or curiosity, a thinking gramophone. Rubashov, unlike Gletkin, does not have the Revolution as his starting-point. His mind was not a blank sheet when the Party got hold of it. His superiority to the other is finally traceable to his bourgeois origin.

One cannot, I think, argue that Darkness at Noon is simply a story dealing with the adventures of an imaginary individual. Clearly it is a political book, founded on history and offering an interpretation of disputed events. Rubashov might be called Trotsky, Bukharin Rakovky or some other relatively civilized figure among the Old Bolsheviks. If one writes about the Moscow trials one must answer the question, 'Why did the accused confess?' and which answer one makes is a political decision. Koestler answers, in effect, 'Because these people had been rotted by the Revolution which they served', and in doing so he comes near to claiming that revolutions are of their nature bad. If one assumes that the accused in the Moscow trials were made to confess by means of some kind of terrorism, one is only saying that one particular set of revolutionary leaders has gone astray. Individuals, and not the situation, are to blame. The implication of Koestler's book, however, is that Rubashov in power would be no better than Gletkin: or rather, only better in that his outlook is still partly pre-revolutionary. Revolution, Koestler seems to say, is a corrupting process. Really enter into the Revolution and you must end up as either Rubashov or Gletkin. It is not merely that 'power corrupts': so also do the ways of attaining power. Therefore, all efforts to regenerate society by violent means lead to the cellars of the O.G.P.U., Lenin leads to Stalin, and would have come to resemble Stalin if he had happened to survive.

Of course, Koestler does not say this explicitly, and perhaps is not altogether conscious of it. He is writing about darkness, but it is darkness at what ought to be noon. Part of the time he feels that things might have turned out differently. The notion that so-and-so has 'betrayed', that things have only gone wrong because of individual wickedness, is ever present in left-wing thought. Later, in Arrival and Departure, Koestler swings over much further towards the anti-revolutionary position, but in between these two books there is another, Scum of the Earth, which is straight autobiography and has only an indirect bearing upon the problems raised by Darkness at Noon. True to his life-style, Koestler was caught in France by the outbreak of war and, as a foreigner and a known anti-Fascist, was promptly arrested and interned by the Daladier Government. He spent the first nine months of war mostly in a prison camp, then, during the collapse of France, escaped and travelled by devious routes to England, where he was once again thrown into prison as an enemy alien. This time he was soon released, however. The book is a valuable piece of reportage, and together with a few other scraps of honest writing that happened to be produced at the time of the débâcle, it is a reminder of the depths that bourgeois democracy can descend to. At this moment, with France newly liberated and the witch-hunt after collaborators in full swing, we are apt to forget that in 1940 various observers on the spot considered that about forty per cent of the French population was either actively pro-German or completely apathetic. Truthful war books are never acceptable to non-combatants, and Koestler's book did not have a very good reception. Nobody came well out of it — neither the bourgeois politicians, whose idea of conducting an anti-Fascist war was to jail every left-winger they could lay their hands on, nor the French Communists, who were effectively pro-Nazi and did their best to sabotage the French war effort, nor the common people, who were just as likely to follow mountebanks like Doriot as responsible leaders. Koestler records some fantastic conversations with fellow victims in the concentration camp, and adds that till then, like most middle-class Socialists and Communists, he had never made contact with real proletarians, only with the educated minority. He draws the pessimistic conclusion: 'Without education of the masses, no social progress; without social progress, no education of the masses.' In Scum of the Earth Koestler ceases to idealize the common people. He has abandoned Stalinism, but he is not a Trotskyist either. This is the book's real link with Arrival and Departure, in which what is normally called a revolutionary outlook is dropped, perhaps for good.

Arrival and Departure is not a satisfactory book, the pretence that it is a novel is very thin; in effect it is a tract purporting to show that revolutionary creeds are rationalizations of neurotic impulses. With all too neat a symmetry, the book begins and ends with the same action — a leap into a foreign country. A young ex-Communist who has made his escape from Hungary jumps ashore in Portugal, where he hopes to enter the service of Britain, at that time the only power fighting against Germany. His enthusiasm is somewhat cooled by the fact that the British Consulate is uninterested in him and almost ignores him for a period of several months, during which his money runs out and other astuter refugees escape to America. He is successively tempted by the World in the form of a Nazi propagandist, the Flesh in the form of a French girl, and — after a nervous breakdown — the Devil in the form of a psychoanalyst. The psychoanalyst drags out of him the fact that his revolutionary enthusiasm is not founded on any real belief in historical necessity, but on a morbid guilt complex arising from an attempt in early childhood to blind his baby brother. By the time that he gets an opportunity of serving the Allies he has lost all reason for wanting to do so, and he is on the point of leaving for America when his irrational impulses seize hold of him again. In practice he cannot abandon the struggle. When the book ends, he is floating down in a parachute over the dark landscape of his native country, where he will be employed as a secret agent of Britain.

As a political statement (and the book is not much more), this is insufficient. Of course it is true in many cases, and it may be true in all cases, that revolutionary activity is the result of personal maladjustment. Those who struggle against society are, on the whole, those who have reason to dislike it, and normal healthy people are no more attracted by violence and illegality than they are by war. The young Nazi in Arrival and Departure makes the penetrating remark that one can see what is wrong with the left-wing movement by the ugliness of its women. But after all, this does not invalidate the Socialist case. Actions have results, irrespective of their motives. Marx's ultimate motives may well have been envy and spite, but this does not prove that his conclusions were false. In making the hero of Arrival and Departure take his final decision from a mere instinct not to shirt action and danger, Koestler is making him suffer a sudden loss of intelligence. With such a history as he has behind him, he would be able to see that certain things have to be done, whether our reasons for doing them are 'good' or 'bad'. History has to move in a certain direction, even if it has to be pushed that way by neurotics. In Arrival and Departure Peter's idols are overthrown one after the other. The Russian Revolution has degenerated, Britain, symbolized by the aged consul with gouty fingers, is no better, the international class-conscious proletariat is a myth. But the conclusion (since, after all, Koestler and his hero 'support' the war) ought to be that getting rid of Hitler is still a worth-while objective, a necessary bit of scavenging in which motives are almost irrelevant.

To take a rational political decision one must have a picture of the future. At present Koestler seems to have none, or rather to have two which cancel out. As an ultimate objective he believes in the Earthly Paradise, the Sun State which the Gladiators set out to establish, and which has haunted the imagination of Socialists, Anarchists and religious heretics for hundreds of years. But his intelligence tells him that the Earthly Paradise is receding into the far distance and that what is actually ahead of us is bloodshed, tyranny and privation. Recently he described himself as a 'short-term pessimist'. Every kind of horror is blowing up over the horizon, but somehow it will all come right in the end. This outlook is probably gaining ground among thinking people: it results from the very great difficulty, once one has abandoned orthodox religious belief, of accepting life on earth as inherently miserable, and on the other hand, from the realization that to make life liveable is a much bigger problem than it recently seemed. Since about 1930 the world has given no reason for optimism whatever. Nothing is in sight except a welter of lies, hatred, cruelty and ignorance, and beyond our present troubles loom vaster ones which are only now entering into the European consciousness. It is quite possible that man's major problems will never be solved. But it is also unthinkable! Who is there who dares to look at the world of today and say to himself, 'It will always be like this: even in a million years it cannot get appreciably better?' So you get the quasi-mystical belief that for the present there is no remedy, all political action is useless, but that somewhere in space and time human life will cease to be the miserable brutish thing it now is.

The only easy way out is that of the religious believer, who regards this life merely as a preparation for the next. But few thinking people now believe in life after death, and the number of those who do is probably diminishing. The Christian churches would probably not survive on their own merits if their economic basis were destroyed. The real problem is how to restore the religious attitude while accepting death as final. Men can only be happy when they do not assume that the object of life is happiness. It is most unlikely, however, that Koestler would accept this. There is a well-marked hedonistic strain in his writings, and his failure to find a political position after breaking with Stalinism is a result of this.

The Russian Revolution, the central event in Koestler's life, started out with high hopes. We forget these things now, but a quarter of a century ago it was confidently expected that the Russian Revolution would lead to Utopia. Obviously this has not happened. Koestler is too acute not to see this, and too sensitive not to remember the original objective. Moreover, from his European angle he can see such things as purges and mass deportations for what they are; he is not, like Shaw or Laski, looking at them through the wrong end of the telescope. Therefore he draws the conclusion: This is what revolutions lead to. There is nothing for it except to be a 'Short-term pessimist', i. e. to keep out of politics, make a sort of oasis within which you and your friends can remain sane, and hope that somehow things will be better in a hundred years. At the basis of this lies his hedonism, which leads him to think of the Earthy Paradise as desirable. Perhaps, however, whether desirable or not, it isn't possible. Perhaps some degree of suffering is ineradicable from human life, perhaps the choice before man is always a choice of evils, perhaps even the aim of Socialism is not to make the world perfect but to make it better. All revolutions are failures, but they are not all the same failure. It is his unwillingness to admit this that has led Koestler's mind temporarily into a blind alley and that makes Arrival and Departure seem shallow compared to the earlier books.

1944

THE END

[Ralph Furely]

secret agent of britian..

[high_treason]

leading men". Also, notice the description: "traverses the country of the Greeks, extending to Khazaran and the mountains of Armenia".

Well just a quick comment, Muslim and Arab Scholars never called Byzantines Greeks, they called them Rum...Romans, also Modern day Turkey was called Anatolia, the Armenians had a kingdom there but lost it to the Seljuk Sultan Alp Arslan (Whose ancestor was a Muslim Khazarian warrior) who established the Sultante of Rum during that period, after the disasterous defeat of the Byzantines at the battle of Manzikert. The Armenians in turn made another kingdom calling it Ceilicia or something like that sorry not sure of the name, until they lost it completely by the time of the Mamluks.

So my guess regarding the location of the Khazar would either be on top of Georgia which was a kingdom on its own back then but that would put the Bulgar Turks close to them as well and this would fit historically with Ahmed Ibn Fadlan's account of the Bulgar's conversion to Islam and their war with the Khazars. The other location which will have no ties to anything just based on the word Greek would encompass the Sultanate of Rum. Maybe it was referring to Alp Arslan's historical roots.

This is just my own opinion and a guess at best.

[Alex]

Jews are Khazars you can tell because none of them look Arabic or Semitic in the least, except for the Sephardim who were North African Berber Troglodyte cave dwellers converted around the year 700 AD who migrated to Spain. Actually, many "Latinos" are crypto-Sephardi, the term "Latino" comes from "Ladino" which mean "Spanish Jew" the ADL even has a specific program to help "Latinos" Untold millions of them came here when Queen Isabelle kicked them out of Spain.

[blueocean]

These Talmudic jews seem to be very good at lying to other people and telling them that THEY are jews too (like the British israelite movement) so as to have them join their talmudic satanic movement.

They do that to all the countries and all the religions.  They also intermarry and promise the other party wealth and power.

I wonder how it is with chinese and japanese and other peoples who don't look like sephardic OR ashkenasi jews. Have they infiltrated there too and how?

The kabbalistic jews are very much like "The Dominion" ............  ( for those who watched star trek deep space nine).

[Milton]

Koestler got Israel's right to exist right though. The UN pronounced Israel officially born. That is the only right to exist that Israel has and it is a wrong right. He said the only way to get rid of Israel was genocide. He is wrong. The UN can pronounce Israel
officially dead. The only thing that dies is the State, no people in this case, just the state.

[targa2]

Ben Freedman talked about this issue 15 years before Koestler, so Koestler is not the issue.  The is also a Russian Jewish historian who had the same take on the Khazars before that.  I can't find the link from my new computer for the Russian. Eduardo something.