What Would Judas Do? last show
TODAY’S TOPIC: WHAT WOULD JUDAS DO?
****** Introduction to last Talk America, May 12, 2006
WHRW fm Public Affairs radio talk show.
Following the theme “From the 60’s to the ‘06’s” throughout the spring semester at Harpur College, in Binghamton, New York, I have dubbed the “baby boomers” and their children “the Judas generation”. They have betrayed the True America represented by the anti-Vietnam war protestors, who did it for the right reasons. (not always clear then)
This, I am always proclaiming, was a bigger historical moment than they realized or realize. A flickering moment of Biblical, millennial, Zodiacal, evolutionary, cosmic focus, it unfolding in the “Woodstock nation” (much more extensive than the actual gathering).
Sudden massive, irreversable social, political and psychological changes were upon us all. Enormous inner turmoil fell on the experience of a generation of youth required to adapt to the cultural effects of unprecedented sexual awareness and openness. This accompanied disillusionment with WWII parental authoritarian ways and motives. Plus, innumerable psychedelic drugs ‘trips’ were taken during this era; altered states of consciousness extensively explored, and new ways of talking about self and others entered into group dynamics. Plus, the expanding computerized communication environment altered the very processes involved in using signs, what people do when they communicate.
Flash-backs of strands from this historical moment are now all-pervasive in the atmosphere of group TokenSpace.
This moment re-defined America not only internally, but in the national and international arenas as well. A student, Bill Glass, went from leader of campus protest ideology to spokesperson for students in Albany when Rockefeller was governor. The movement had a bold, daring, innovative, brilliant edge, a quality of instinctual libidinization, with new intensity of individual and group experience. It was an unprecedented efflourescence of human creativity that was unleashed on earth, as if a psychic strobe-light passed through space-time, burning neural imprints into future psycho-dynamic memory-traces of humankind.
All this got snuffed when Reagan rose.
Until….
*****/
WHAT WOULD JUDAS DO? …
To America : What Mearsheimer and Wald document the Israel Libby Lobby has done
Considering: 3 MOB RIOTS of huge psychohistorical consequence
1. The Crucifixion of Jesus: the mob that yelled “crucify him! crucify him!” at his trial for claiming to be King of the Jews; outside Jerusale,, 30+AD.
2. The lynching of Leo Frank: the mob that yelled “hang the Jew! – or we’ll hang you!” at his trial for the murder of Mary Phagan; outside Atlanta, Georgia, l912.
3. The Kristallnacht pogram: the Nazi and/or fake Nazi mobs manifested unprecedented barbarism, murdering, plundering, desecrating synagogues and persond on November 8/9, 1938. No trial accusing and condemning victims of any guilt preceded this outbreak, except that they were Jews in Germany at that time.
1. has come back by publication of the Gospel of Judas. It’s revelation has been hailed by writers on religion in the New York Times as bringing a kind of vindication of Iscariot (the name, taken from Greek, means ‘traitor’), therefore removing one thorn in the side of those who blame Judaicism in general for crucifying Christ.
This would be the face of the mob of Matthew 27. The last sight seen by the man on the Cross before declaring “It is finished”, and giving up the Ghost.
When Mel Gibson’s movie came out in ’04, and many Jews were heard protesting that it would arouse anti-semitism, many so-called “Christians” took the line that that mob represented humanity, even them, themselves. “We’re all sinners,” some said humbly. But, I submit – as I did so back then to Fox News commentator Cal Thomas – this attempts to have it both ways, on the cross or calling for it, thus denying the difference between the two points of view (looking down on the mob or looking up at the man). I argue that if you “believe in Christ”, whatever else that might mean, it must include the metaphysical difference – the eternal abyss -- of the grade of reality, and consciousness, on one side but not the other. That He is not just One of Them, who has wound up on the wrong side of Roman Law enforcement, with Judas’s help, thus earning him a place among the immortals by accepting the historical blame for betrayal.
Until now. Now, hearing his Gospel, credibility of him as a person and as a witness is restored. He was “doing what he had to do.” The present text survived in one of the Gnostic sects or “churches” that sprang up in Asia minor in the first two centuries around the crucified-God idea.
However, whatever the story behind its appearance now, what the text SAYS is astonishingly relevant. And hardly the benign denoument of the ancient antagonism it is declared to be.
Judas, in the text, is indeed “called to one side” during the week preceding Passover, though it is not clear what it was for, and many of the things next recorded have nothing to do with the betrayal evens until the last sentence, which looks tacked on. He is emphatically called the “13th”, excluded in numerical essence from the 12 (= number of completion) disciples bringing the Gospel of his resurrection (Acts 1). He has unlawfully gained access to holy precincts forbidden to mortals – “misled by his star”, Jesus puts it. It is recorded that “the disciples” have a vision of a great hall, with a great altar and 12 priests receiving sin sacrifices. In someone’s name. “What are they like?” – Jesus demands to know, asserting “It is in my name they are sacrificing.” The list of sacrificers is intriguing: “some men their wives, some their children, some men sleep with men, some are riotous in praise and blame, others commit many kinds of sins of property.” (from recall). This is a veritable three tree-ring record of development of male-ness toward spiritual maturity (individuation): Overcoming, in himself: -power of the woman; power of the child; power of other men; power of ‘street life’; the power of vice; power gained from satisfaction in wimping out; … in order to be what he is (so that the outcome unfolds the origin).
What is most intriguing about the list is its parallel with what was unleashed by the Vietnam war and “the 60’s”. These sins they were to suffer for were: feminism (witches); homosexuality; child-sacrifice (represented by the war itself; later, abortion); Abu Ghraib torture-sport (later coming),
What is important, I say, is Jesus’ seeing this in advance, prophesying it was THEY, the disciples (r descendants) who would receive sacrifices for these sins in his name; and renouncing it. I see that as the key message for these times. He does not go so far as to say, on my reading, that they were sinning BY sacrificing, but he was removing His name – token of his spiritual presence – from it entirely. In astrological/Zodiacal terms, it belonged to the preceding Age, which his sacrifice would replace. This is the strongest metaphysical condemnation that could be laid down without over-riding ‘freewill’, the freedom to grow from one’s own work. He saw the institution withering away, but also saw it being perpetuated on another level by “judas priests”, we called them.
**********/
Summary. What would (a) Judas do? --- betray (through intimacy with the light of spiritual goodness) and profit.
Jesus, not Judas, is the central figure of the Gospels, adulated by the brotherhood of 12 disciples, pure in motive, spirit, teaching, example. The mob (Jews, sinners, lost humans) will turn on him because what he is – The Son of Man -- condemns them: their collective way of being. By teaching and example he identifies this as sacrifice-based spirituality: a way of being that sheds blood for forgiveness of sin. It corrupts their maleness. Sacrificing wives and children; sleeping with men; taunting each other to violence; practicing wasteful and degrading indulgences, corrupting normal social affairs. He represented a higher spiritual plane. This difference is metaphysically irreconcilable. Therefore he was put to death by the people.
All that Judas saw … and was willing to betray. It makes no difference if he was designated to do it; he could have refused. “The Son of man indeed goes as is written; but woe be unto that man by whom the Son of Man is betrayed: It would have been good for that man if he had not been born.” (Matt. 26.24). The inner form of his act – its ‘maxim, in Kant’s terminology; formula of its intention – is betrayal of stolen intimacy for profit (he could have turned down the 30 pieces of silver, and not betrayed with a kiss). Jesus allowed him access to the circle of 12, knowing him to be a “13th”” spirit, presumably in order to do this particular job, thus relieving him of the responsibility of requiring any true follower to do such an intrinsically abhorrent thing.
From an external objective perspective, the attempt to link Judas and Jesus as two sides of a grandly interpreted tale of God’s Plan of Salvation for humankind,
represents an attempt to predicate on metaphysical incompatibles – like classifying gravitational with hydro-electrical energy. The two logically incompatible sides are the two points of view of the Cross, where a categorical difference either is or is not perceived. To those to whom a categorical difference is perceived, to predicate on both sides -- refer to “the Crucifixion” --as if the difference perceived from the side one hanging on it and that of the mob below didn’t exist – is to allow that difference to be negated. In logical terms, to predicate on a subject term S* with intent to assert truth, versus falsehood, takes S* to refer to an existing thing. When it, as a sign-use, stands for a conjunction of incompatible opposites, e.g., “A and B”, when “B implies not-A”, yielding “A and not-A”, it (S*) becomes a way of importing self-contradictions into the universe of discourse. The extended formula for (the result of) taking “S* or not-S*” as alternatives, at higher predicate levels of sign use, is: A and (A and not-A). “The Judas principle” could then be defined as “the attempt to have the same term S* used in two way, one as presupposing existence, the other as conjoined with its negation.”
And this would define the “Judas Priest” syndrome, foreseen by Jesus in the new Gospel: those who continue receiving sacrifices in his name. Thus unctuously sacralizing the profane. Symbolically, this would be profiting off sacralized sex as spirituality. This is what the heavy metal group Judas Priest does, and very beautifully, too. Perhaps one of the only honest (“square” text x token) musical groups left, after Nirvana. It is the other, half-right and half-unconscious Christian judas priest groups who predicate America on what the Zionist-Israeli lobby has defined – linking America’s 50 states to a 51st state, without asking their permission – under the mutually adverse psychodynamics of “Judeo-Christian”. Once “Judeo” gets linked with “Christian”, “Israel” linked to “America” cannot be far behind. The article of Mearsheimer and Wald “The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy” details some of the outcome of the inner link. It is that which the Gospel of Judas addresses timelessly, but in these times.
2. Leo Frank and Jesus
“And the Dead Shall Rise”, 700+ page book by ( ) on Leo Frank, convicted murderer of Mary Phagan, focuses on the group of Georgia’s finest citizens who lynched “the Jew” in l913. The title invites comparison of this mob with the one calling for Jesus’ crucifixion long ago. The comparison depends on taking both as mob-mentality induced slaughter of innocents, sad examples of man’s inhumanity to man.
An event honoring the life of Leo Frank was held in 2004 at Cornell University, from which he graduated, class of ’06. A broadway musical in the 1980’s was based on Leo Frank’s career. A 1986 Supreme Court decision over-turned the Georgia Court’s conviction on technical grounds – Leo Frank was deprived of his right of appeal due to the lynching -- while not addressing the question of guilt itself. These are some of the indications of how interest in the case has revived. And retrospectively, in psychohistorical terms, it’s no wonder. Called “the crime of the century” at the time, the same constellation of group-fantasy elements of “the times” comes into dynamic play with powerful effect. This case has it all, folks, and if you are ultra-sensitive about religious, ethnic, or cultural identity being affronted by the way language was used then, and now, off-stage a bit, it would probably be best if this were skipped until later.
This constellation is not confined to this resurrection of Leo Frank, who “died for a crime he did not commit”, however. It is recurring at the original site, Marietta, Georgia, almost a century later, in a community spat between Rabbi Steven Lebow and Rev. Randy Mickle over use of the United Methodist mega-church for the hi-school baccalaureate. It seems that Rabbi Lebow has been invited privately by a graduate, Julia Levy, also a member of his congregation, to be the main speaker at the event the school traditionally held in Rev. Mickle’s church. This would have positioned the Rabbi behind the Rev’s pulpit, dedicated to the preaching of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Rev. Mickle said “No”, but said a floor-level podium could be used. The Rabbi demurred; was then disinvited. This was a widely watched latent sectarian conflict, pitting public school multiculturalism, sacralilized, against the defenders of a Christian doctrine. The achool event was eventually moved elsewhere.
The interesting hitch is that Lebow lives only two miles from where Franl was lynched, and has paid respects to his memory as having suffered a grievous miscarriage of justice.
A side-bar from Mickle’s side leads to his record of anti-gay rights activism. He has been a political opponent.
In another connected aside, Rabbi Eric Yoffie, president of the Union of Reformed Jews, was guest speaker at the recent commencement at Rev. Jerry Falwell’s Liberty University. In the address, he shocked the audience by calling for blessing of same-sex marriage. He and Falwell agree to disagree on that one – boos were heard from the audience, admonished with “I have never been booed in a synagogue”. But they agree to agree on Israel ueber alles in American foreign policy, again re-inforcing the link between Bush/Republican Christian Zionists and organized Judaism. Thing is, Joffie is one of the best ones. And he had chosen to go down for the gays.
This is the constellation of elements: Jews, Christians, homosexuals (symbols of deviant sexuality in general), and ‘racism’ (cf. the role of Jim Conley), going over to conflicts that bitterly and permanently divide people and ‘generations’ thereafter. Becomes their “history”. On analysis, these conflicts can be traced to irreconcilable psychological differences which have been framed in moral/religious drag, then marketed in public TokenSpace consciousness by signs used in communicating “issues”. Once killing gets involved, all bets are off.
At the core is the blood of an innocent victim. For Jesus (sans Judas) this is univocal: He is the victim. For the 1913 case of the little factory girl, the victim is ambivalent: Mary Phagan, certainly; Leo Frank, posthumously. The revival of interest in his case must be predicated on the assumption of his innocence. If he did it, he is the monster some web-sites depict him as (“drug addicted, bi-sexual sadistic torturer rapist killer”). There is a third possibility: the black man did it, victimizing both. But that is far fetch on its face and doesn’t fit the evidence. However, it can lead to the KKK organization, the second generation of which was begun at this time. Along with the Anti-defamation League of the B’nai B’rith (Frank had been president of its Atlanta chapter, where a sizeable Jewish community had come to exist by turn of century). This was to contain the “anti-semitism” likely to have erupted if the case got seared into public TokenSpace by Baptist preacher rhetoric. According to one account, this had helped inflame the mob to chant “Hang the Jew or We’ll hang you!” It was a time of rapid expansion of Jewish immigrants along the eastern seaboard. The prosecutor of the case, who went on to become Governor of Georgia, played the role of Bill the Butcher in The Gangs of New York, holding off the lower east side Irish Catholic immigrants before the War Between The States. Thus the question of who killed Mary Phagan, and the guilt or innocence of Leo Frank, becomes a metaphysical marker, a true “X” point in history.
3. Judas/Priests and Kristallnacht
Background: the book “the Pink Swastika” – the homosexual roots of Nazi Germany
A. Wotan enters Heydrich (Herschel Grynzspan was merely a (probably planted) pre-text, a propaganda excuse for unparalled barbarity in civilized Europe.
One must see a picture of the 41 dots spread across the map of 1938 Germany marking cities where the Kristallnacht mob riot occurred to appreciate its enormity.
The authors of “The Pink Swastika” cite the roots of this outbreak to the decadence of Weirman German society, specifically its homosexuality. They tracer the strain of pre-Christian old Norse “Wotan” worship; the “Hellenes Teutonic”, idolizing large, powerful Blond Nordic human body types; cultic sex-magik practices of the Golden Dawn-Thule society (Aleister Crowly); glorification of a breed of German uber-mench, beyond good and evil, whose superior genetic strain would lift that of bourgeois humanity. The Friecorps, Hitler Youth, SA and SS elites were of this mold and had little use for outdated bible-based moral scruples. It was undoubtedly a psychic turbulence, a ‘blow out’ as in the 60’s, for which many psychohistorians see the Great Depression of the 30’s, and WWII, as a self-punishing reactions. And it is undoubtedly “anti-Judeo-Christian”. However, it is only half-right, and misleading, to view the metaphysics of the pro-‘Butch’ vs. ‘Femme’ homosexual split as key to the psychodynamics of anti-semitism, as do the authors of “The Pink Swastika”.
B. The authors of “The Pink Swastika” get it half- wrong: Judeo-Christians NOT attacked by Nazi’s because their moral/spiritual superiority, made them enemies of Third Reich ideology. This is an American right-wing fundamentalist spin, used to justify Republican party “family values” politics. THE EFFECT IS TO EQUATE RESISTING THE HOMOSEXUAL AGENDA AND FIGHTING NAZIS.
The politics of this is straight Zionism.
1. After Israel became the Jew’s refuge from the holocaust, anti-Nazi became synonymous with pro-Israel. 2. The United States is anti-Nazi (it is premised), having defeated them in WWII with great loss of life. Therefore, 3. the United States is pro-Israel. Or so the reasoning goes. This thinking has dictated policy ever since Harry Truman signed the deal in 1948. It is the premise of Steven Speilberg’s enormously disseminated movies Schindler’s List and Saving Private Ryan. Of the last tape of Osama Bin Laden accusing America of waging a “Zionist war”. And of the Libby Lobby, equating U.S. and Israeli interests.
Two points count against the author’s interpretation of German anti-semitism.
First, Christianity per se was not attacked by the Hitler regime (as the author’s “Judeo-Christian hatred” thesis claims). Some segments of Roman Catholicism actively cooperated. In Croatia, scene of the most vile atrocities, nationalistic Church-killer priests carried out unspeakable barbarities. Showing it is not Jewishness alone that arouses such behavior.
Second, many Jews and Jewish groups, particularly Reformed Liberal, do not reject homosexuality as sinful, or think that Nazi homosexuality drove the genocide. Authority for the first claim is Rabbi Eric Yoffie’s defense of gay-rights at Liberty U.. For the second, I can only plead ignorance of it, if it is held. Although the book of Leviticus stares any and every reader of Moses’ Pentateuch in the face with the author’s proscription right there in chapter 18 verse 22, whoever it was, it is one of the Old Testament laws most widely ignored in the breech, as it were.
****** Introduction to last Talk America, May 12, 2006
WHRW fm Public Affairs radio talk show.
Following the theme “From the 60’s to the ‘06’s” throughout the spring semester at Harpur College, in Binghamton, New York, I have dubbed the “baby boomers” and their children “the Judas generation”. They have betrayed the True America represented by the anti-Vietnam war protestors, who did it for the right reasons. (not always clear then)
This, I am always proclaiming, was a bigger historical moment than they realized or realize. A flickering moment of Biblical, millennial, Zodiacal, evolutionary, cosmic focus, it unfolding in the “Woodstock nation” (much more extensive than the actual gathering).
Sudden massive, irreversable social, political and psychological changes were upon us all. Enormous inner turmoil fell on the experience of a generation of youth required to adapt to the cultural effects of unprecedented sexual awareness and openness. This accompanied disillusionment with WWII parental authoritarian ways and motives. Plus, innumerable psychedelic drugs ‘trips’ were taken during this era; altered states of consciousness extensively explored, and new ways of talking about self and others entered into group dynamics. Plus, the expanding computerized communication environment altered the very processes involved in using signs, what people do when they communicate.
Flash-backs of strands from this historical moment are now all-pervasive in the atmosphere of group TokenSpace.
This moment re-defined America not only internally, but in the national and international arenas as well. A student, Bill Glass, went from leader of campus protest ideology to spokesperson for students in Albany when Rockefeller was governor. The movement had a bold, daring, innovative, brilliant edge, a quality of instinctual libidinization, with new intensity of individual and group experience. It was an unprecedented efflourescence of human creativity that was unleashed on earth, as if a psychic strobe-light passed through space-time, burning neural imprints into future psycho-dynamic memory-traces of humankind.
All this got snuffed when Reagan rose.
Until….
*****/
WHAT WOULD JUDAS DO? …
To America : What Mearsheimer and Wald document the Israel Libby Lobby has done
Considering: 3 MOB RIOTS of huge psychohistorical consequence
1. The Crucifixion of Jesus: the mob that yelled “crucify him! crucify him!” at his trial for claiming to be King of the Jews; outside Jerusale,, 30+AD.
2. The lynching of Leo Frank: the mob that yelled “hang the Jew! – or we’ll hang you!” at his trial for the murder of Mary Phagan; outside Atlanta, Georgia, l912.
3. The Kristallnacht pogram: the Nazi and/or fake Nazi mobs manifested unprecedented barbarism, murdering, plundering, desecrating synagogues and persond on November 8/9, 1938. No trial accusing and condemning victims of any guilt preceded this outbreak, except that they were Jews in Germany at that time.
1. has come back by publication of the Gospel of Judas. It’s revelation has been hailed by writers on religion in the New York Times as bringing a kind of vindication of Iscariot (the name, taken from Greek, means ‘traitor’), therefore removing one thorn in the side of those who blame Judaicism in general for crucifying Christ.
This would be the face of the mob of Matthew 27. The last sight seen by the man on the Cross before declaring “It is finished”, and giving up the Ghost.
When Mel Gibson’s movie came out in ’04, and many Jews were heard protesting that it would arouse anti-semitism, many so-called “Christians” took the line that that mob represented humanity, even them, themselves. “We’re all sinners,” some said humbly. But, I submit – as I did so back then to Fox News commentator Cal Thomas – this attempts to have it both ways, on the cross or calling for it, thus denying the difference between the two points of view (looking down on the mob or looking up at the man). I argue that if you “believe in Christ”, whatever else that might mean, it must include the metaphysical difference – the eternal abyss -- of the grade of reality, and consciousness, on one side but not the other. That He is not just One of Them, who has wound up on the wrong side of Roman Law enforcement, with Judas’s help, thus earning him a place among the immortals by accepting the historical blame for betrayal.
Until now. Now, hearing his Gospel, credibility of him as a person and as a witness is restored. He was “doing what he had to do.” The present text survived in one of the Gnostic sects or “churches” that sprang up in Asia minor in the first two centuries around the crucified-God idea.
However, whatever the story behind its appearance now, what the text SAYS is astonishingly relevant. And hardly the benign denoument of the ancient antagonism it is declared to be.
Judas, in the text, is indeed “called to one side” during the week preceding Passover, though it is not clear what it was for, and many of the things next recorded have nothing to do with the betrayal evens until the last sentence, which looks tacked on. He is emphatically called the “13th”, excluded in numerical essence from the 12 (= number of completion) disciples bringing the Gospel of his resurrection (Acts 1). He has unlawfully gained access to holy precincts forbidden to mortals – “misled by his star”, Jesus puts it. It is recorded that “the disciples” have a vision of a great hall, with a great altar and 12 priests receiving sin sacrifices. In someone’s name. “What are they like?” – Jesus demands to know, asserting “It is in my name they are sacrificing.” The list of sacrificers is intriguing: “some men their wives, some their children, some men sleep with men, some are riotous in praise and blame, others commit many kinds of sins of property.” (from recall). This is a veritable three tree-ring record of development of male-ness toward spiritual maturity (individuation): Overcoming, in himself: -power of the woman; power of the child; power of other men; power of ‘street life’; the power of vice; power gained from satisfaction in wimping out; … in order to be what he is (so that the outcome unfolds the origin).
What is most intriguing about the list is its parallel with what was unleashed by the Vietnam war and “the 60’s”. These sins they were to suffer for were: feminism (witches); homosexuality; child-sacrifice (represented by the war itself; later, abortion); Abu Ghraib torture-sport (later coming),
What is important, I say, is Jesus’ seeing this in advance, prophesying it was THEY, the disciples (r descendants) who would receive sacrifices for these sins in his name; and renouncing it. I see that as the key message for these times. He does not go so far as to say, on my reading, that they were sinning BY sacrificing, but he was removing His name – token of his spiritual presence – from it entirely. In astrological/Zodiacal terms, it belonged to the preceding Age, which his sacrifice would replace. This is the strongest metaphysical condemnation that could be laid down without over-riding ‘freewill’, the freedom to grow from one’s own work. He saw the institution withering away, but also saw it being perpetuated on another level by “judas priests”, we called them.
**********/
Summary. What would (a) Judas do? --- betray (through intimacy with the light of spiritual goodness) and profit.
Jesus, not Judas, is the central figure of the Gospels, adulated by the brotherhood of 12 disciples, pure in motive, spirit, teaching, example. The mob (Jews, sinners, lost humans) will turn on him because what he is – The Son of Man -- condemns them: their collective way of being. By teaching and example he identifies this as sacrifice-based spirituality: a way of being that sheds blood for forgiveness of sin. It corrupts their maleness. Sacrificing wives and children; sleeping with men; taunting each other to violence; practicing wasteful and degrading indulgences, corrupting normal social affairs. He represented a higher spiritual plane. This difference is metaphysically irreconcilable. Therefore he was put to death by the people.
All that Judas saw … and was willing to betray. It makes no difference if he was designated to do it; he could have refused. “The Son of man indeed goes as is written; but woe be unto that man by whom the Son of Man is betrayed: It would have been good for that man if he had not been born.” (Matt. 26.24). The inner form of his act – its ‘maxim, in Kant’s terminology; formula of its intention – is betrayal of stolen intimacy for profit (he could have turned down the 30 pieces of silver, and not betrayed with a kiss). Jesus allowed him access to the circle of 12, knowing him to be a “13th”” spirit, presumably in order to do this particular job, thus relieving him of the responsibility of requiring any true follower to do such an intrinsically abhorrent thing.
From an external objective perspective, the attempt to link Judas and Jesus as two sides of a grandly interpreted tale of God’s Plan of Salvation for humankind,
represents an attempt to predicate on metaphysical incompatibles – like classifying gravitational with hydro-electrical energy. The two logically incompatible sides are the two points of view of the Cross, where a categorical difference either is or is not perceived. To those to whom a categorical difference is perceived, to predicate on both sides -- refer to “the Crucifixion” --as if the difference perceived from the side one hanging on it and that of the mob below didn’t exist – is to allow that difference to be negated. In logical terms, to predicate on a subject term S* with intent to assert truth, versus falsehood, takes S* to refer to an existing thing. When it, as a sign-use, stands for a conjunction of incompatible opposites, e.g., “A and B”, when “B implies not-A”, yielding “A and not-A”, it (S*) becomes a way of importing self-contradictions into the universe of discourse. The extended formula for (the result of) taking “S* or not-S*” as alternatives, at higher predicate levels of sign use, is: A and (A and not-A). “The Judas principle” could then be defined as “the attempt to have the same term S* used in two way, one as presupposing existence, the other as conjoined with its negation.”
And this would define the “Judas Priest” syndrome, foreseen by Jesus in the new Gospel: those who continue receiving sacrifices in his name. Thus unctuously sacralizing the profane. Symbolically, this would be profiting off sacralized sex as spirituality. This is what the heavy metal group Judas Priest does, and very beautifully, too. Perhaps one of the only honest (“square” text x token) musical groups left, after Nirvana. It is the other, half-right and half-unconscious Christian judas priest groups who predicate America on what the Zionist-Israeli lobby has defined – linking America’s 50 states to a 51st state, without asking their permission – under the mutually adverse psychodynamics of “Judeo-Christian”. Once “Judeo” gets linked with “Christian”, “Israel” linked to “America” cannot be far behind. The article of Mearsheimer and Wald “The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy” details some of the outcome of the inner link. It is that which the Gospel of Judas addresses timelessly, but in these times.
2. Leo Frank and Jesus
“And the Dead Shall Rise”, 700+ page book by ( ) on Leo Frank, convicted murderer of Mary Phagan, focuses on the group of Georgia’s finest citizens who lynched “the Jew” in l913. The title invites comparison of this mob with the one calling for Jesus’ crucifixion long ago. The comparison depends on taking both as mob-mentality induced slaughter of innocents, sad examples of man’s inhumanity to man.
An event honoring the life of Leo Frank was held in 2004 at Cornell University, from which he graduated, class of ’06. A broadway musical in the 1980’s was based on Leo Frank’s career. A 1986 Supreme Court decision over-turned the Georgia Court’s conviction on technical grounds – Leo Frank was deprived of his right of appeal due to the lynching -- while not addressing the question of guilt itself. These are some of the indications of how interest in the case has revived. And retrospectively, in psychohistorical terms, it’s no wonder. Called “the crime of the century” at the time, the same constellation of group-fantasy elements of “the times” comes into dynamic play with powerful effect. This case has it all, folks, and if you are ultra-sensitive about religious, ethnic, or cultural identity being affronted by the way language was used then, and now, off-stage a bit, it would probably be best if this were skipped until later.
This constellation is not confined to this resurrection of Leo Frank, who “died for a crime he did not commit”, however. It is recurring at the original site, Marietta, Georgia, almost a century later, in a community spat between Rabbi Steven Lebow and Rev. Randy Mickle over use of the United Methodist mega-church for the hi-school baccalaureate. It seems that Rabbi Lebow has been invited privately by a graduate, Julia Levy, also a member of his congregation, to be the main speaker at the event the school traditionally held in Rev. Mickle’s church. This would have positioned the Rabbi behind the Rev’s pulpit, dedicated to the preaching of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Rev. Mickle said “No”, but said a floor-level podium could be used. The Rabbi demurred; was then disinvited. This was a widely watched latent sectarian conflict, pitting public school multiculturalism, sacralilized, against the defenders of a Christian doctrine. The achool event was eventually moved elsewhere.
The interesting hitch is that Lebow lives only two miles from where Franl was lynched, and has paid respects to his memory as having suffered a grievous miscarriage of justice.
A side-bar from Mickle’s side leads to his record of anti-gay rights activism. He has been a political opponent.
In another connected aside, Rabbi Eric Yoffie, president of the Union of Reformed Jews, was guest speaker at the recent commencement at Rev. Jerry Falwell’s Liberty University. In the address, he shocked the audience by calling for blessing of same-sex marriage. He and Falwell agree to disagree on that one – boos were heard from the audience, admonished with “I have never been booed in a synagogue”. But they agree to agree on Israel ueber alles in American foreign policy, again re-inforcing the link between Bush/Republican Christian Zionists and organized Judaism. Thing is, Joffie is one of the best ones. And he had chosen to go down for the gays.
This is the constellation of elements: Jews, Christians, homosexuals (symbols of deviant sexuality in general), and ‘racism’ (cf. the role of Jim Conley), going over to conflicts that bitterly and permanently divide people and ‘generations’ thereafter. Becomes their “history”. On analysis, these conflicts can be traced to irreconcilable psychological differences which have been framed in moral/religious drag, then marketed in public TokenSpace consciousness by signs used in communicating “issues”. Once killing gets involved, all bets are off.
At the core is the blood of an innocent victim. For Jesus (sans Judas) this is univocal: He is the victim. For the 1913 case of the little factory girl, the victim is ambivalent: Mary Phagan, certainly; Leo Frank, posthumously. The revival of interest in his case must be predicated on the assumption of his innocence. If he did it, he is the monster some web-sites depict him as (“drug addicted, bi-sexual sadistic torturer rapist killer”). There is a third possibility: the black man did it, victimizing both. But that is far fetch on its face and doesn’t fit the evidence. However, it can lead to the KKK organization, the second generation of which was begun at this time. Along with the Anti-defamation League of the B’nai B’rith (Frank had been president of its Atlanta chapter, where a sizeable Jewish community had come to exist by turn of century). This was to contain the “anti-semitism” likely to have erupted if the case got seared into public TokenSpace by Baptist preacher rhetoric. According to one account, this had helped inflame the mob to chant “Hang the Jew or We’ll hang you!” It was a time of rapid expansion of Jewish immigrants along the eastern seaboard. The prosecutor of the case, who went on to become Governor of Georgia, played the role of Bill the Butcher in The Gangs of New York, holding off the lower east side Irish Catholic immigrants before the War Between The States. Thus the question of who killed Mary Phagan, and the guilt or innocence of Leo Frank, becomes a metaphysical marker, a true “X” point in history.
3. Judas/Priests and Kristallnacht
Background: the book “the Pink Swastika” – the homosexual roots of Nazi Germany
A. Wotan enters Heydrich (Herschel Grynzspan was merely a (probably planted) pre-text, a propaganda excuse for unparalled barbarity in civilized Europe.
One must see a picture of the 41 dots spread across the map of 1938 Germany marking cities where the Kristallnacht mob riot occurred to appreciate its enormity.
The authors of “The Pink Swastika” cite the roots of this outbreak to the decadence of Weirman German society, specifically its homosexuality. They tracer the strain of pre-Christian old Norse “Wotan” worship; the “Hellenes Teutonic”, idolizing large, powerful Blond Nordic human body types; cultic sex-magik practices of the Golden Dawn-Thule society (Aleister Crowly); glorification of a breed of German uber-mench, beyond good and evil, whose superior genetic strain would lift that of bourgeois humanity. The Friecorps, Hitler Youth, SA and SS elites were of this mold and had little use for outdated bible-based moral scruples. It was undoubtedly a psychic turbulence, a ‘blow out’ as in the 60’s, for which many psychohistorians see the Great Depression of the 30’s, and WWII, as a self-punishing reactions. And it is undoubtedly “anti-Judeo-Christian”. However, it is only half-right, and misleading, to view the metaphysics of the pro-‘Butch’ vs. ‘Femme’ homosexual split as key to the psychodynamics of anti-semitism, as do the authors of “The Pink Swastika”.
B. The authors of “The Pink Swastika” get it half- wrong: Judeo-Christians NOT attacked by Nazi’s because their moral/spiritual superiority, made them enemies of Third Reich ideology. This is an American right-wing fundamentalist spin, used to justify Republican party “family values” politics. THE EFFECT IS TO EQUATE RESISTING THE HOMOSEXUAL AGENDA AND FIGHTING NAZIS.
The politics of this is straight Zionism.
1. After Israel became the Jew’s refuge from the holocaust, anti-Nazi became synonymous with pro-Israel. 2. The United States is anti-Nazi (it is premised), having defeated them in WWII with great loss of life. Therefore, 3. the United States is pro-Israel. Or so the reasoning goes. This thinking has dictated policy ever since Harry Truman signed the deal in 1948. It is the premise of Steven Speilberg’s enormously disseminated movies Schindler’s List and Saving Private Ryan. Of the last tape of Osama Bin Laden accusing America of waging a “Zionist war”. And of the Libby Lobby, equating U.S. and Israeli interests.
Two points count against the author’s interpretation of German anti-semitism.
First, Christianity per se was not attacked by the Hitler regime (as the author’s “Judeo-Christian hatred” thesis claims). Some segments of Roman Catholicism actively cooperated. In Croatia, scene of the most vile atrocities, nationalistic Church-killer priests carried out unspeakable barbarities. Showing it is not Jewishness alone that arouses such behavior.
Second, many Jews and Jewish groups, particularly Reformed Liberal, do not reject homosexuality as sinful, or think that Nazi homosexuality drove the genocide. Authority for the first claim is Rabbi Eric Yoffie’s defense of gay-rights at Liberty U.. For the second, I can only plead ignorance of it, if it is held. Although the book of Leviticus stares any and every reader of Moses’ Pentateuch in the face with the author’s proscription right there in chapter 18 verse 22, whoever it was, it is one of the Old Testament laws most widely ignored in the breech, as it were.
posted by Sid Thomas | 2:30 AM
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