I did some blogs recently about the Ukraine war. These happened to lead me into some discussions on someone else’s blog comment boxes. I thought the discussion was worth working up into a blog post about crying games.
Recently Awful Avalanche wrote something about the near annihilation of Lithuania’s Jews during world war two. It seems the small surviving Jewish population in Lithuania has come up with an interesting way of challenging the recent neo-fascistic trend in that country. They are demanding compensation for the massacres of that war.
Generally I do not like the idea of reparations many years after events, going to people who were not directly effected by the events. However, this tactic seems effective in forcing the the quasi Nazi government of Lithuania to back off. They have actually paid out something and made apologetic noises.
No doubt the experiences of the Ukrainian Nazis in provoking Russians is giving them some pause. Lithuanian culture also harbours this irrational hatred of Russians. They used to have the same hatred for Jews and Poles, but they seem to have mostly forgotten that.
They need the Poles these days. They really need to be on the good side of the international Jewish community. Anti semites used to deliver a lot of twaddle about how everything wrong in the world was the fault of Jewish bankers.
However, the old Jewish banking families, the Rothschilds and others, are not delusions. They have historically had a great and malign influence. They still have a lot of clout.
Some time ago I researched and wrote up a piece about the development of the state of Israel and the historical experiences of Jewish people. It stirred up a storm then. I suspect it will be understood better now.
However, I am not going into it here. What is really worth a blog is the exposition of just what I mean by ‘crying games’. The big obstacle to the truth of most historic events is all the “crying games” that go on.
Jewish people are just as guilty of it as anyone else. The great way to get attacked and canceled is to look into the reality of these events. But with the Avalanche blogger and his following, I got a respectful hearing.
I would just say that I agree with Avalanche that the Lithuanian Jews were among the hardest hit Jewish communities in Europe during the war. They were pretty much wiped out.
The truth is this; in these Eastern Europe atrocities from the last world war, the Jews were among the biggest victims. However, most of them managed to survive. Most of them bribed their way out of it, or if you prefer, paid extortion.
Only a few total lunatics, acting on their own, were really out to annihilate the Jews. The Germans had the idea they were eventually going to move them to Palestine. Local Nazis were mostly gangsters looking to rob Jews and other sanctioned victims.
There is so much hypocrisy about all this. There is little discussion of what happened to the Roma people during that time. The Israeli Jews have until recently been able to use this as a kind of ‘free pass’ for what they have done to the Palestinian people.
The upshot is that you should always be very skeptical about atrocity stories. The more they are forbidden to be questioned, the more likely there is something more to it. Be especially suspicious when there appears to be no point to this, because the basic facts are in no serious dispute.
War crimes and their perpetrators should be seen for what they are. No one should be excusing or minimizing them. No one should be exaggerating them either.
Crying games, demands for pity and for evil behaviour to be excused, are to be sharply rejected.
The main disagreement over the subject were about the numbers, the magnitude, of the massacre of Jews. Several sets of figures were trotted out. My theme was that the only accounts of any historic event which should be trusted are from professional, scientific historians.
Truth must matter. That is why I have much respect for real historians who try to discover what really happened in controversial events such as the second world war. They are usually subjected to vicious abuse from all sides of each controversy, from the denier or minimizer to the exaggerators and thought policers.
The best, most objective historians have found from available census records that the world population of jews was about fourteen million just before the ‘holocaust’ events and around thirteen million right after. That is not the grandiose figure often cited, but still an awful lot of people.
This is not just a ‘numbers game’. It is important to get this right. One reason it is hard to get a clear picture of these events is because the Jewish population was under persecution in several countries in the decades prior, was moving around a lot, and often trying to stay hidden.
As for Soviet figures, the Bolshevik party was famous for exaggerating or just making up numbers. That is why they were so bad at planning and economic management. Their body counts in the world war should not be taken seriously.
From this it was decided that I must be an anti-communist, due to my ideas about ‘bolsheviks’ and the Soviet Union. I am more used to being called a communist. I do not really like the word communist because I do not think public ownership of means of production is the way to go.
I am much in favour of socialism, organization of society for needs, not profit. Real old style communists, there are still some around in Toronto, call me a Trotskyite. Unless they really are Trotskyites.
I say that the Soviet Union was completely messed up by Stalin and no model for anything. So I must be a Trotskyite. Yet when I talk about how I like the Chinese communist party model of development, my Trotsky friend jumps back a step, unsure what label to hang on me.
I found that Avalanche is a staunch defender of the Soviet Union and believes it was very meticulous about recording the effects of the German invasion on its subject population. Maybe, but they were less meticulous about the victims of the Stalin purges and the Gulag.
However, my understanding of the Soviet motive for cranking up and then later downplaying the magnitude of the holocaust is this; they wanted to gain the loyalty of the Zionists and the Israeli state. When the Zionists turned on them after they had won their Jewish state, they then dropped the subject. But the Zionists are still using the misinformation generated and attacking anyone questioning it.
This thread also caused me to reference “The Crying Game”, one of my favourite movies, which I sometimes call the “Scorpion and Frog” movie. The writer/director, Neil Jordan, got an Oscar in 1992 for it. It was also nominated for ‘best picture’ but was probably too controversial to win that.
The film is set in Northern Ireland during “the troubles”. An IRA cell kidnap a black British soldier and hold him hostage for a prisoner exchange. One of the Irishers, Fergus, becomes sympathetic to him and tries to help him escape.
The soldier is accidentally killed by his own side. Fergus gets ‘court martialed’ and condemned by the IRA command. He escapes to England and looks up the dead soldier’s girlfriend to deliver a message from him. There are a great many shock plot twists in this, so I do not want to ruin them for you before you all rush to rent the movie.
It is one of these ‘multilevel’ films, but one of the salient themes is all the trouble people cause themselves by their misguided and sentimental attachments, and the ways in which malignant people are able to exploit these attachments.
“Crying Game” is a distinctly Irish trope, along with “Patriot Games”. They have a nice song about “Patriot Games” as well. The Irish tend to have small patience for these games.
Of course the Irish do understand the need to resist injustice. Had they not fought back for centuries with everything they could muster, they would not exist as a people today. The English, more specifically the radical protestant fanatics, did everything to eliminate them.
Yet when they finally got the boot off their throats, they let go of the past and got on with building a better life for themselves. Today they have a higher per capital GDP than Britain. Protestants are moving from the north to find jobs in the south.
Twice, after the peace of 2021 in the south, and the accord of 1998 in the North, they had to deal with an armed faction which would not recognize that they had won what was really needed, and wanted to keep fighting. Some nefarious individuals are always drawn into that type of war. Some fighters get addicted to the power that war gives them and do not want to settle down.
But in today’s Ireland there are no lunatics running around frothing at the mouth, screeching about how no one understands what it is like to live next to this huge and malevolent power. The world must immediately invade the United Kingdom and break it up into small states so that the Irish can feel secure.
Today Ireland has normal relations with the United Kingdom. A large trade passes between the two countries. People travel freely to and from them.
Never mind the condition now between Ukraine and Russia. Compare Ireland to the situation between countries like Poland or the Baltics, regarding Russia. We must ask pointedly just where all this nonsense comes from.
It does not derive from its pretended cause. Russian rule over these countries was not particularly oppressive when compared with the way the colonial powers have ruled their subject peoples. Countries which have never been under Russian rule also have this antiRussia thing.
The real problem seems to be that Russia cannot be fitted into western systems of power and control. Therefore it must be broken up so that it can be. If that is not possible, then it must be isolated.
The cause of anti Jewish hatred is similar. The Catholic church has a very unfortunate historic tendency to being unable to tolerate competition. As well, Jews are too good at business and no one wants to compete.
Alas, Jews have developed their own very nasty version of the crying game. Socially critical Israeli Jews have called it “killing and crying”. We need the Palestinian’s land so we have a place to feel safe and at home.
Look how terrible the world has been to us. But when we come to take the Palestinian’s land they fight us. So we are forced to kill them, but we feel so terrible about it.
These ideas are engendered by pathocratic elites who want to ride their populations for their own purposes. They are able to first indoctrinate mentally disturbed people with these ideas, then use these groups to enforce those ideas on the general populations. People tend to believe whatever those who appear to have power tell them to believe.
The success of this kind of control depends on the conformist tendency of a given society. The Irish are a very conservative people but also noted for their skepticism. Jews, however, are said to be very reluctant to criticize other Jews. We are told that Slavic people tend to go along with whatever group they are in.
This brings me back to the “Crying Game” movie and the “Frog and Scorpion” parable, repeated twice within it. The Scorpion asks the frog to ferry it across a river on its back, telling some great sob story about why it needs to get over there quickly.
Frog; “No, you’ll sting me”.
Scorpion; “I wouldn’t sting you. I would drown myself.”
Frog agrees to take Scorpion across. Halfway over, Scorpion stings frog.
As they both sink, Frog asks Scorpion why?
Scorpion; “It’s just my nature.”
There are twin morals to this. One is that those who cannot control their impulse to sting, even to prevent their own destruction, you definitely do not want riding you. Two is that those whose nature is to be trusting and helpful without using some critical thinking, will keep getting ridden by scorpions, getting stung, and drowning.
Yet scorpions always seem to find frogs to ride. That may be because human scorpions are so good at drawing them into crying games.
However, Humans are not amphibians and insects. They have advanced brains with reasoning ability and consciences. People who cannot use both must be prevented from having any influence in human society.
That is the only way to bring about peace.