Landes, a medievalist and historian of apocalyptic movements,
takes us through the first years of the third millennium
(2000-2003), documenting how a radical inability of Westerners to
understand the ...medieval mentality that drove Global Jihad prompted
a series of disastrous misinterpretations and misguided reactions
that have shaped our so-far unhappy century. These
misinterpretations in 2000, 2001, 2002, and 2005, contributed
fundamentally to the ever-worsening moral and empirical
disorientations of our information elites (journalists, academics,
pundits). So while journalists reported Palestinian war propaganda
as news (lethal journalism), they were also reporting Jihadi war
propaganda as news (own-goal war journalism). These radical
disorientations have created our current dilemma of pervasive
information distrust, deep splits within the voting public in most
democracies, the politicization of science, and the inability of
Western elites to defend their civilization, and instead, to stand
down before an invasion.
The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, first published in Russia around 1905, claimed to be the captured secret protocols from the first Zionist Congress in Basel in 1897 describing a plan by the ...Jewish people to achieve global domination. While the document has been proven to be fake, much of it plagiarized from satirical anti-Semitic texts, it had a major impact throughout Europe during the first half of the 20th century, particularly in Germany. After World War II, the text was further denounced. Anyone who referred to it as a genuine document was seen as an ignorant hate-monger.Yet there is abundant evidence that The Protocols is resurfacing in many places.The Paranoid Apocalypsere-examines the text's popularity, investigating why it has persisted, as well as larger questions about the success of conspiracy theories even in the face of claims that they are blatantly counterfactual and irrational. It considers the medieval pre-history of The Protocols, the conditions of its success in the era of early twentieth-century secular modernity, and its post-Holocaust avatars, from the Muslim world to Walmart and Left-wing anti-American radicalism. Contributors argue that the key to The Protocols' longevity is an apocalyptic paranoia that lays the groundwork not only for the myth's popularity, but for its implementation as a vehicle for genocide and other brutal acts.
"Drawing on the dynamics of apocalyptic movements (outrageous energizing hopes, aggressive denial when disappointed), Landes looks at the turn of the millennium (2000) in terms of a radical mismatch ...between two millennial styles, an Islamist pre-modern (Caliphators) and a Western post-modern (Woke). Due to a striking cognitive failure, Westerners could neither see nor discuss the foe they faced, and repeatedly, convinced they were bending the arc of history towards justice, took sharp wrong turns. We continue to do so"--.
This article examines the close relationship between the consistent practice of lethal journalism (in this case reporting Palestinian war propaganda as news) among Western journalists, and the sudden ...appearance of the 'new antisemitism' at the turn of the last millennium. It looks closely at two cases - the al-Durah 'murder' (September 2000) and the Jenin 'massacre' (April 2002), and the manner in which this allegedly professional journalism opened the door to a host of postmodern antisemitic themes, from Holocaust inversion to progressive supersessionist projections, and the manner in which Jihadists bent on destroying the West have used through this unacknowledged hostility to Jews - it's merely criticism of Israel - as the West's soft underbelly.
This article examines a double discourse by the Palestinian leadership, one in English and one in Arabic, which plays a central role in their negotiating strategy with Israel since the onset of the ...Oslo 'peace process' (1993). Using language very close to Western terminology, Palestinians in English speak of 'Occupation' and 'Settlements' with the 1967 borders as the defining issue; while in Arabic, they speak of 'Occupation' and 'Settlements' in terms of the 1948 borders (i.e., all of Israel is an 'Occupation' and Tel Aviv is an illegal 'settlement'). As a zero-sum negotiating strategy this makes perfect sense: convince Israel to concede 'land for peace' (1967 borders), when in reality this means 'land for war' (1967 borders as launching pad for war to 1948 borders). The western news media, allegedly committed to accurate reporting, shows no knowledge of the Arabic discourse and presents what Palestinians say in English as reliable reflections of their actions and intentions. As a result of this failure to identify the double-discourse, the Western legacy media presents Palestinian war propaganda as news to their Western audiences, unwittingly helping the Palestinians in their deception.
Danoongate Landes, Richard
Can “The Whole World" Be Wrong?,
11/2022
Book Chapter
At the end of the last chapter, I discussed the case of Dave Brown’s cartoon of Ariel Sharon as Chronos devouring a Palestinian baby as an electoral gambit, and the disturbing way that Tim Benson ...casually explained how cartoonists decide whom to insult, and whom to reward for those insults. Since Jews do not issue fatwas, it is open season on them, with prizes for those who elicit the loudest cries of pain from Jews. Muslims do, however, issue fatwas, which means one had best be very careful about anything that might offend them. In this chapter, we look at another
2000 Landes, Richard
Can “The Whole World" Be Wrong?,
11/2022
Book Chapter
Having profiled the various players (part two), let us take up the narrative thread from part one, viewing the opening two decades of the twenty-first century from the perspective of millennial ...beliefs in action. In those first years, two global millennial movements went apocalyptic, that is, mobilized to transform the world from its current state, permeated with evil, into “heaven on earth.” On the one hand, Muslim triumphalists (chapter 6) sought to restore and extend the dominion of Islam over the whole world, the global Caliphate where Sharia would assure true justice. It had an active cataclysmic side (Jihad) and
Al Durah Landes, Richard
Can “The Whole World" Be Wrong?,
11/2022
Book Chapter
On September 30, 2000, a nuclear explosion went off in the global public sphere. That evening, Charles Enderlin, senior Middle East Correspondent for France2, and former member of the IDF spokesman’s ...unit, broadcast footage from his Palestinian cameraman, Talal abu Rahma, accompanied by the cameraman’s “eyewitness” narrative.¹ The news report affirmed that abu Rahma had captured, on-camera, the killing of a defenseless twelve-year-old Palestinian boy, Muhammad al Durah, in the arms of his father, despite their pleas. . . . Enderlin announced that they were the “target of fire coming from the Israeli position.” The footage and its accompanying narrative
Y2KMind Landes, Richard
Can “The Whole World" Be Wrong?,
11/2022
Book Chapter
Although the term Y2K has different associations in the minds of many—the false prophecy of a computer bug at midnight December 31, 1999¹—I cannot think of any other term that can better describe a ...mindset that, despite long antecedents, took root, like a seed crystal in a super-saturated solution in the year 2000. For a full generation, the West had generated and deployed a set of progressive ideological goals that at once greatly enhanced the culture’s diversity and creativity, and at the same time, undermined its very fabric.² By 2000 things looked bullish for that mindset: the advance
