An Analysis of a Jewish Anti-Defamation Handbook

[yankeedoodle]

From Karl Radl at Karl's Substack, this is about a book used in 1939 Britain, so, it may seem polite, but, if you could get one that is uesed today - particularly in the US - it would probably be a lot nore aggressive and obnoxious, since the jews have come out of their civility shells since 1939.

An Analysis of a Jewish Anti-Defamation Handbook
https://karlradl14.substack.com/p/an-analysis-of-a-jewish-anti-defamation

A few years ago I came into possession of an unusual literary item: an anti-defamation speaker's handbook, which was produced for the sole reason of defending the jewish people from their detractors (like me).

It is a truism to state that such work rarely falls into the hands of anti-Semites as it is by its nature an item that is quickly thrown away once it has served its purpose and such advice as to what to use and what to avoid in arguments tends to being tacit rather than explicit in nature. We can explain this simply by suggesting that obtaining such a handbook even at a considerably later date than the time it was meant to answer is akin to obtain the minutes of meetings of jewish propagandists and officials who seek to attack anti-Semitism.

This is true in so far as those seeking to make a propagandistic case necessarily wish to keep their arguments amongst themselves so that their opponents cannot anticipate them and use this knowledge to their advantage in any confrontations. In addition handbooks of this kind necessarily operate a policy - which in military terms would be known as elastic defence - in so far as they have a series of counter-arguments and information to challenge their opponents, but these are often covertly or overtly contradictory and should they fall into the hands of their opponents much can be made of this. Hence this handbook is a rare and valuable find for an anti-Semite and I would be lying if I said I was looking for such material: I found it quite by accident at an auction of Judaica that I attended and bought it after realising what it was.

What we shall do here is to look at this work and analyse it in order to understand the mentality of the arguments offered and what the handbook's internal evidence suggests about the mentality of the jewish and pro-jewish partisans it was designed to aid. We shall also briefly look at some of the arguments offered in terms of their factual accuracy for jews, as a group, specialise in making apparently cogent arguments by misrepresenting literature, sources and making un-evidenced logical jumps. (1)

This dependence on the appearance of an intelligent argument; as I have stated before in much of my published work as well as in private correspondence, is central to why jews propound the types of conspiracy-based arguments in both the scholarly and popular literature. It is also why so few of those who label themselves as 'sceptics' notice that the very arguments they decry amongst the majority of what they term 'Nazis', 'racists' and 'fascists' (etc ad infinitum) are used regularly by those whose arguments they often use against said labelled individuals and groups. That this contradiction remains unnoticed is more down to the current mythos, which remains relatively unquestioned among intellectual orthodoxy that the jews are a 'special case' and that they have a 'unique' place in world history. That claim of 'special status' has allowed jews to use their jewish identity as a shield from criticism as for example has been seen in more recent years with the creation of 'new anti-Semitism theory', which seeks to use the status of Israel as jewish state to defend Israel from criticism by labelling all criticism of Israel as anti-Semitic. (2)

Thus when we are analysing this handbook we are gaining a valuable insight into the mind of the jewish opponents of anti-Semitism and the logic that they are using to defend jews. As it happens that logic is less than flattering to the apparent 'victim' - i.e. the jews - than the apparent 'aggressor' as it depicts very markedly their true - rather than their projected and claimed (by both themselves and their apologists) - character.

The handbook itself is a small pocket-size volume of rather cheap - but somewhat hardy - construction entitled 'Jewish Defence Campaign Speakers' Handbook' and as is common to handbooks intended for practical purposes each page only contains a single side of text with the reverse side of the page given over as a 'Notes' page presumably to allow the jew or the pro-jewish advocate to note down thoughts, ideas or references that may occur to him or her during the use of the handbook.

The handbook itself was authored by one Frank Renton. (3) Whether Renton was a jew or a pro-jewish gentile cannot be determined or inferred from the contents of the handbook (4) and nor is the surname listed as one commonly used by jews in Kaganoff's dictionary (5) on the subject. The hand book itself was first published in 1937 - which can be inferred from date in the foreword - (6) and was evidently re-issued as a new edition in early 1939 as we can learn from the references to Kristallnacht throughout the text. There are few historical references but Appendix E 'British Political History in a Nutshell', (7) runs up to the 9th of January 1939 ( and with no reference to any date past this. It is therefore safe to conclude that the new edition was completed shortly after this date as the outbreak of war would have made much of the material in the handbook redundant and the handbook contains no mention of the run up to events in Czechoslovakia and Poland that lead to outbreak of hostilities between the Third Reich and the British Empire.

The handbook's authoritative nature as being representative of jewish opinion and organisations is confirmed by the author of the foreword Neville Laski who was at the time of his writing - 1937 - President of the Board of Deputies of British Jews. (9) This is further confirmed by the identity of the publisher 'The Woburn Press', (10) which was the official publisher of the Board of Deputies of British Jews, which is the representative body of jews in Britain to the Government having been established by Sephardi jewish merchants and physicians in the 18th century to provide full-time advocacy for jewish interests in the domestic and international politics and policies of the United Kingdom.

That the President of the Board of Deputies of British Jews has endorsed the handbook and that it has been published by the Board of Deputies themselves informs us that the contents of the work were themselves endorsed by jews resident in the United Kingdom and can be taken as representative of their intellectual positions. Whatever the defects in the work these cannot be solely subscribed to Renton for an endorsement written as a foreword as well as using the official Board of Deputies publishing house to bring out the work suggests that that organisation, which is the official representative of jews in Britain is also responsible as the active proponents of any errors that Renton may or may not have made as well as any libels he may or may not have authored.

The handbook begins with a list of twenty-four 'Practical Hints for Public Speakers' (11) and contains some points of interest to us beyond the more usual list of oratory-related tips, which seem somewhat unique to jews as a group. I quote several points that in particular seem to reflect the specific points that are common among jews:

'(5) Rancour and spite will not help our cause.

(6) Avoid pomposity and arrogance; not too much of the "Chosen People", or "That Jewry stands at the graves of her traducers".

(7) Speak to a non-Jewish audience as fellow-citizens and not as non-Jews, Christians, or Gentiles.'

'(9) Whilst rhetoric may be used at open-air meetings, refrain from over-acting and an incessant thumping of the platform edge.

(10) Never commit yourself to possible misstatements of facts and figures. If you cannot answer a question through lack of knowledge, assure your heckler that a reply will be either sent to him or given at next week's meeting.' (12)

'(14) Dress neatly but not conspicuously.

(18) Speakers are advised to read the speeches of such champions of liberty and justice as Abraham Lincoln, John Stuart Mill, Edmund Burke, Lord Macaulay, Ralph Waldo Emerson, and Lloyd George. Reference to poets such as Byron (Hebrew Melodies), Shelley, Wordsworth, Tennyson, William Morris, and Alexander Pope will enable you to cull quotations and perorations for use at public meetings.

(19) Remember that your non-Jewish audience is not definitely anti-Semitic and that it is your duty to state our case in a calm, dignified, and dispassionate manner. You will lose the sympathy of a non-Jewish audience by indulging in a mud-slinging contest.

(20) Bear in mind that you have been entrusted by the Jewish community to defend its honour, and it behoves you to present our case to the British public in a dignified manner. Strict adherence to our case from a non-political angle and your regular attendance at the Speakers' Practice Class will help you carry out this great task with efficiency and dignity.' (13)

The points that I have quoted above, as we might expect, are linked with each other and so in order to understand them we must split up what we can ascertain from them by theme.

It is noteworthy that Renton repeatedly states that vicious attitudes should not be entertained openly while advocating the jewish cause, but does not actually condemn those attitudes; both in their treatment of gentiles and gentile religion in general, which directly contradict his hint that using what he refers to as 'champions of liberty and justice' (14) should be used to bolster the jewish case (when they would condemn his tacit endorsement of anti-gentile principles as opposed to their championing of 'liberty and justice').

When we point out that the non-condemnation of these attitudes is a tacit endorsement. We do so on the grounds that the pro-jewish case that Renton outlines is based on nineteenth century - so-called rationalist - ideals of 'liberty and justice'; some of the major influences on and authors of which Renton cites in point 18, but that while endorsing these ideas Renton selectively interprets the logic against those of which he disapproves rather than applying that logic to the jews as well (who Renton implicitly informs us are exempt from any criticism or having to conform to what they preach to others).

This makes Renton a hypocrite in his underlying logic and does not bode well for the factual nature of his case or the validity of the strategy he recommends against the case he offers (i.e., his strategy in promoting pro-jewish arguments contradicts the actual pro-jewish arguments he is promoting).

Instead of condemning the pro-jewish arguments he is actually promoting which go against his ideas. Renton merely gives advice to his audience as to their presentation and specifically - by implication - to make the argument less about what the pro-jewish cause entails, but rather about the problem of jewish suffering.

So - in essence - Renton is telling his reader to defend the jews by subtly switching the ground on which the argument is based from having to argue a positive thesis to merely arguing against something, which as anyone who has written extensively on almost any subject will know is a lot easier than trying to present your own thesis on a given subject. Renton however does realise that a positive thesis is also required, but as an ancillary to the negative case that the handbook suggests so he does in fact provide some positive arguments to use, but comparatively speaking they are very few compared to the 'rebuttal' type of arguments that Renton focuses on.

If we think about these two observations regarding Renton's advice to his jewish and philo-Semitic audience. It suggests that what Renton is doing is implicitly recognising that - and explicitly pointing out to his reader - the general weakness of jews as a people in argument, debate and propaganda is that they have an extreme tendency towards egoism, which causes them to become extremely irate and insulting very quickly when challenged on a subject or talking about a subject that they believe is vital to their egoistic and/or physical survival.

Renton's focus on presenting a negative case plays to the strength of these weaknesses in so far as if a jew screams and hyperventilates on a speaking platform then it can be ascribed by him or those who are also speaking to his or her 'passion' for the subject and thus potentially turned from a propagandistic nightmare to a propagandistic tool on behalf of jewry. However it should be noted that Renton also implicitly recognising the possibility; and even likely probability, that jewish speakers will simply engage in flinging insults and accusations against their opponents thus giving credence to the anti-Semitic motto: 'the jew is the great master of the lie'.

The next theme that we encounter is the jewish view of gentiles that is implied by Renton in his statements. When Renton admonishes his reader in point 19 to 'remember that your non-Jewish audience is not definitely anti-Semitic' what he is implicitly telling us is that jews - then as now - naturally perceive any gentile to be naturally anti-Semitic, because of the explicit and implicit jewish assumption of their absolute superiority as the 'Chosen of Hashem'. This is made explicit by Renton when he tells his reader in point 6 to avoid referring to themselves as the 'Chosen People' and then in point 7 to not refer to their audience as anything other than fellow human-beings. What Renton is telling us as anti-Semites here is that the jewish weakness - as indicated above - is their individual and collective ego, which is heavily tied in to their collective and individual vision of themselves as the 'Chosen People' (either of Hashem or in some other religious or secular way) and if you prick that ego then the jew will shoot themselves down in the eyes of their audience.

This again demonstrates that Renton is no empty prophet who does not practice his preaching in so far as he consistently advises jews to be careful and to present - like he does - a 'case for humanity for the jew' rather than merely a case for the jews as the 'most wonderful people in the world' and therefore further drive a wedge between the jews and their victims. Instead Renton suggests - and indeed practices - that the tactics and techniques of the con-man be adopted by the jews and their philo-Semitic supporters in order to gain as much support as possible from those who don't know much about jews as a people and just assume that they are 'like everyone else' and have 'particularly suffered from injustice'.

We can also note that the jewish attitude implicit in Renton's comment that things like 'jewry stands at the graves of her traducers' is not exactly complementary to gentiles as the implication - likely based on the jewish assumption that their opponents are part of Amalek and therefore they should be physically exterminated as decreed by Hashem and explained by the great jewish sage Moses Maimonides in his 'Mishneh Torah' - is that all opponents of the jews will be systematically killed by the jews for their opposition to the 'Chosen of Hashem'.

In summary of this then we can say that Renton is advising his jewish and philo-Semitic readers to not show the fact (and even outright deny) that jewry has a disdainful attitude towards non-jews and that jews 'are just like everyone else' thus effectively conning the audience into unwarranted sympathy for the jews through lying by omission. Renton is ruthless in this, but this we may say is probably justified in his mind by the fact that he believes - understandably perhaps - that world jewry is fighting for its very existence against the anti-Semitic developing superpower of the time: the Third Reich.

The next theme we should notice from Renton's points is the egocentrism that he implicitly acknowledges as being the basis of jewish behaviour and thought processes. Renton notices this by his comments about the jewish habit of becoming very irate very quickly about being challenged as the sub-text of that comment is that a jew - generally speaking - cannot stand to be corrected and that they will necessarily see it as a criticism of themselves (i.e., an attack on their ego), and will respond accordingly by what Renton calls: 'mud-slinging'.

This Renton implicitly acknowledges distinguishes jews from gentiles in so far as gentiles are less likely to see a criticism of their thoughts, arguments or general beliefs to be an attack upon their person (i.e., gentiles are generally speaking less egoistic than jews) and that gentiles are also less likely to respond by 'mud-slinging' than jews are.

We need to note Renton's implicit recognition of the egocentric basis of jewish behaviour and thought processes in his comments about the jewish identity as the 'Chosen People' in so far as he implicitly tells his jewish readers that they need to swallow their ego and pretend - like any good con-man - to be 'just like everyone else' in order to defend themselves from harm appealing to the self-awarded authority of the jewish community over individual jews in point 20.

We should also notice that in point 20 Renton shows us that he recognises another easily confirmed observation about jews in so far as he admonishes his jewish reader to attend speakers classes so that they can best represent the jewish community, but what is implicit within in this is that jews are extremely egoistic creatures and believe that they - as the 'Chosen of Yahweh' - will naturally have the oratorical prowess of a Cicero or an Ingersoll. This is amusing of course as one can but easily imagine a slightly rotund jew waddling onto the speakers platform and - per Renton - screaming hatred at gentiles for an hour and then at the conclusion of the speech demanding that the gentiles serve the jews as a dog serves its master. This amusing as it is to observe does demonstrate to us the fact that jews are extremely egocentric in so far Renton constantly - throughout the handbook - admonishes his jewish readers to stop thinking they can do everything themselves and are already perfect.

Well they are supposedly the children of Hashem now aren't they?

Further Renton notices other indicators of the egocentric nature of jews when he tells his jewish and philo-Semitic reader in point 14: 'dress neatly but not conspicuously.'

This - of course - implies that jews have a tendency to buy the most expensive and flamboyant clothing that they possibly can in order to show off how wealthy they are and 'keep up with the Goldbergs'. This is informs us by implication that in Renton's judgement the jews are egocentric characters and are want to tell the barely clothed starving gentile workman or the struggling gentile single mother what to do while sitting on their fat rump in their flashy clothes dropping mildewed crumbs from their table that they expect gentiles to believe, because the words come from a jew.

The last theme which we should notice from Renton's list is that in point 10 he admonishes his jewish and philo-Semitic reader not to engage in gross distortion of facts and figures (although Renton implies that subtle distortions are acceptable, because they are much harder to detect), because that lends itself to the standard anti-Semitic argument that the jew is a habitual liar and does not really care about truth, but rather is simply out for himself and does not care one jot what happens to non-jews (or even other jews for that matter).

Renton is so concerned that jewish speakers will simply lie through their teeth to their gentile audiences and be caught out by those who happen to know something of what they are talking about that he goes as far as to tell his jewish readers to assure their detractor/heckler/opponent that a response will be forthcoming to them 'soon' (i.e., Renton provides a simple standard response).

Of course Renton likely recognised that the jewish speakers he is trying to reach out to would not actually send any 'response' to their detractor, but would instead use his suggested counter as a way out of the sticky situation of being caught knowingly lying by an adroit individual or group.

With that we conclude our analysis of Renton's list of 'Practical Hints for Public Speakers' and the next article in this series will focus on the quotes, assertions and claims that Renton suggests his jewish and philo-Semitic readers use in their own speeches defending the jews and attacking anti-Semites so that we can learn from - and how to rebut - them in our present day struggle.

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References

(1) The classic modern example of this is Alan Dershowitz's defence of Israel that was intelligently dissected and shown to be deliberately misleading by an anti-Zionist jew in Norman Finkelstein, 2005, 'Beyond Chutzpah: On the Misuse of Anti-Semitism and the Abuse of History', 1st Edition, Verso: New York.

(2) A concise and learned, although essentially liberal and somewhat illogical, analysis of this can be found in the controversial recent work: Matti Bunzl, 2007, 'Anti-Semitism and Islamophobia: Hatreds Old and New in Europe', 1st Edition, University of Chicago Press: Chicago.

(3) Frank Renton, 1939, 'Jewish Defence Campaign Speakers' Handbook', 2nd Edition, Woburn: London

(4) Although Neville Laski in his Foreword mentions Renton's 'long experience' in 'communal work' in the jewish community (Renton, p. iii), which would seem to imply that Renton was active in the jewish community, it does not indicate whether he himself was jewish, but merely that he was pro-jewish for reasons that we cannot determine and do not wish to speculate unduly upon.

(5) Benzion Kaganoff, 1978, 'A Dictionary of Jewish Names and their History', 1st Edition, Routledge & Kegan Paul: London.

(6) Renton, p. iii

(7) Ibid., pp. 80-85

( Ibid., p. 85

(9) Ibid., p. iii

(10) Ibid.

(11) Ibid., pp. 9-11

(12) Ibid., p. 9

(13) Ibid., p. 10

(14) Ibid.