Victimizing Victims Victimizing You !
Victor
Victor Mature
Victim
Victim de juer
In the land of Killer Mommy, nothing energizes the base like a little victimology.
It's happened again at Harpur college, apparently.
In 1988, it was the Jewish Student Union (JSU) that got spray-painted with swastikas and "kill kike" graffiti. The JSU president at the time, James Oppenheim, was charged (fingerprints on the can), but got off on a technicality. No one else was ever accused; no one ever thought he didn't do it. If he did, what he did was stage a fake-hate crime, making his people, the Jews, victims of a Nazi-like perpetrator. But people who fake or inflict injury on themselves, or their group, in order to stir up the 'pity me'-sympathy vote not just guilty of the deed, as much as anyone who would have actually done it; they are maleficient and deformed individuals in a certain way. This wasn't made clear at the time; Oppenheim was coddled and allowed to finish out the school year before the case was brought up at Vestal, the courtroom of which was beset with high priced suits with New York laywers inside. (Meanwhile, yours truly was sidelined by suspension with pay the spring semester, fighting to retain job inb face of charges of anti-semitism)
Now its happened again. First we learn that just after the semester started in September, Swastikas and anti-semitic grafitti were found on the walls in Clevland hall dormitory. But this is only reported in the Binghamton Press and Sun-Bulletin a week or so later, as having happened. Sitting on it, they had been. Seething was President deFleur. Letter is issued,utterly condemnation this abominable behavior. By her resolve to provide a secure and vital campus enviornment, by God this would not be tolerated. Or words to that effect. Now, today ( Oct. 6) it is announced that one of Clevand's students, Adam (...didn't get the last name, but it sounded Jewish) is fingered as culprit, and booted out of the University.
*****/
Not so fast, sez me. What has come back calls for something beyond levity
(but including it, where tasteful -- as in "I couldn't give a Borat's ass what they think is anti-semitic now".)
The event in '88 was in November, the 7th or 8th, as I recall, just after the election of Bush 41, and prior to the night the JSU announced a kristalnacht/holocaust remembrance. The hate of Jews/Nazis (both are there: it is a Jungian union-of-opposites) is converted into something good. Memory of the suffering of millions in WWII is brought back afresh. Nevermind the idiot over there saying "it's fake -- you are being manipulated." Opportunities like that for good people to show solidarity with World War II American causes don't pop up every day. The Righteous Students and Holy Faculty made damn sure they carpeed that diem. They were kumbayaying Oh! Brother, 100's strong on the West Gymn lawn.
A parallel might be, if a Baptist minister shot up and set his own church on fire. Probably hasn't happened. But there was Tawanda Brawley, caught red-handed. And a Sociology prof at Clairmont college, Ca., caught spray painting swastikas, "Kill Kike", "N----er", anti-lesbian slurs. She, it turns out, a radical femininst, lesbian (openly, I think; it's an opinion), was also needing a hate-jump-start for some socialist/worker/minority political initiative. She was seen doing it, and turned in, after going to the police and playing the victim of a racist, feminist- hate attack.
As a psychosemiotic group* historical event, it has the same form and dynamic as the Reichstag Fire in Hitler's Germany. An attack is staged on a symbolic Instance, an icon or paradigmata of group process permeating the whole through its communications ("news" -- sign-uses) Then those who have secretely staged the attack emerge as righteous punishers of those who would do such a thing. Perhaps a victim is 'found', or framed; for example, the one(s) everybody was supposed to think smeared up her car, or set fire to the Reichstag. Then the group gets to merge its own guilt arroused by silent identity with the deceivers and the deception with those who pulled it off. And that is how the group purifies itself of guilt by sacrifice, tout corte. The formula has become so blatantly obvious it barely calls attention to itself as the twistedness it is, anymore. It's like we have come to expect mothers to kill their kids (ourselves).
Now, the context in which the pair of fake-hate episodes occurred on the campus of Harpur College needs noting. It was clear to me at the time ('88) that something decisive was occuring on many levels. Later, it became clear that this was the openiong of a karmic cycle. The psycholical core -- primal scene; trauma injury -- was the Jew/Nazi complex, coupled with the WWII/Allied victory motif. The Bush's, G.H.W. following Reagan; his son G.W. now, in 10.'06 are an entity in TokenSpace whose story spans the duration. (cf. Kitty Carlisle's book, "The Family") Their story, with side-bars, provides a central strand in the thead of American history of the period. The Jew/Nazi complex intertweaving with the Bush family story; interweaving with ....?
Always, without fail ... some kind of weird sexual story.
It's absolutely guaranteed. Lots and lots of rapes, as by Serbs, Arab/Muslims, black people; goes without saying. But now it goes with killing them when done, as in JohnBenet Ramsey, the girl in Bailey, Colorado, and the Amish school girls. The sexual story has gone into parodies of childish perversion: John Mark Karr as manly man; U.S. Marines as really fine, nice guys ("best friend, worst enemy"), horny young male pages in shorts e-mailing Congressman Foley ...
Let's stop on that a minute, because one feature of the formula of the sacrifice story that comes out over and over through these complex thread weavings is what in psychosemiotics* is called "Reversal". The paradigm of this is: one person condemning another precisely for that which they are themselves guilty. This is not easy to communicate rigorously, though vividly understood as a distinct occurrence when happening, especially to oneself. It is not just Captain Queeg obsessed with catching whoever ate his stawberries. This is the form of the Reichstag fire come home, between Me and Thee, when Thou would'st claim my soul belongs to your deity. This makes Me a Toilet Bowl, into which you dump the gold*.
The form of the hate-reversal -- "I don't hate you, I love you!" --is called "reaction formation" in Freudian psychology. It is the involuntary reversal of a repressed, forbidden thought from entering consciousness in undisguized, raw, form. It is the major mechanism activated by the "suffering victim" (Nazi persecuting Jew) complex. The historically peculiar thing today is the coincidence of this psychodynamic reversal and reverse sexuality, as in homosexual intercourse (anal penetration, among males). These strands twist in Rovian political rhetoric, driven by hate, into "Reverse gays: Ken Mehlman, "Jeff Gannon/Guckert", others, who work against homosexual causes for get Republicans elected by appeal to "moral values".
The mechanism of reaction-formation bounces back and forth off tokens of "gays" and "the Jews", as these come up from the unconscious bringing guilt and trauma for the group. The scrifice dynamic shows what there is beyong hypocricy. (cf. Hastert blaming the Democrats.)
Reversals, off tokens of hate, rule America's brainwaves.
Victor Mature
Victim
Victim de juer
In the land of Killer Mommy, nothing energizes the base like a little victimology.
It's happened again at Harpur college, apparently.
In 1988, it was the Jewish Student Union (JSU) that got spray-painted with swastikas and "kill kike" graffiti. The JSU president at the time, James Oppenheim, was charged (fingerprints on the can), but got off on a technicality. No one else was ever accused; no one ever thought he didn't do it. If he did, what he did was stage a fake-hate crime, making his people, the Jews, victims of a Nazi-like perpetrator. But people who fake or inflict injury on themselves, or their group, in order to stir up the 'pity me'-sympathy vote not just guilty of the deed, as much as anyone who would have actually done it; they are maleficient and deformed individuals in a certain way. This wasn't made clear at the time; Oppenheim was coddled and allowed to finish out the school year before the case was brought up at Vestal, the courtroom of which was beset with high priced suits with New York laywers inside. (Meanwhile, yours truly was sidelined by suspension with pay the spring semester, fighting to retain job inb face of charges of anti-semitism)
Now its happened again. First we learn that just after the semester started in September, Swastikas and anti-semitic grafitti were found on the walls in Clevland hall dormitory. But this is only reported in the Binghamton Press and Sun-Bulletin a week or so later, as having happened. Sitting on it, they had been. Seething was President deFleur. Letter is issued,utterly condemnation this abominable behavior. By her resolve to provide a secure and vital campus enviornment, by God this would not be tolerated. Or words to that effect. Now, today ( Oct. 6) it is announced that one of Clevand's students, Adam (...didn't get the last name, but it sounded Jewish) is fingered as culprit, and booted out of the University.
*****/
Not so fast, sez me. What has come back calls for something beyond levity
(but including it, where tasteful -- as in "I couldn't give a Borat's ass what they think is anti-semitic now".)
The event in '88 was in November, the 7th or 8th, as I recall, just after the election of Bush 41, and prior to the night the JSU announced a kristalnacht/holocaust remembrance. The hate of Jews/Nazis (both are there: it is a Jungian union-of-opposites) is converted into something good. Memory of the suffering of millions in WWII is brought back afresh. Nevermind the idiot over there saying "it's fake -- you are being manipulated." Opportunities like that for good people to show solidarity with World War II American causes don't pop up every day. The Righteous Students and Holy Faculty made damn sure they carpeed that diem. They were kumbayaying Oh! Brother, 100's strong on the West Gymn lawn.
A parallel might be, if a Baptist minister shot up and set his own church on fire. Probably hasn't happened. But there was Tawanda Brawley, caught red-handed. And a Sociology prof at Clairmont college, Ca., caught spray painting swastikas, "Kill Kike", "N----er", anti-lesbian slurs. She, it turns out, a radical femininst, lesbian (openly, I think; it's an opinion), was also needing a hate-jump-start for some socialist/worker/minority political initiative. She was seen doing it, and turned in, after going to the police and playing the victim of a racist, feminist- hate attack.
As a psychosemiotic group* historical event, it has the same form and dynamic as the Reichstag Fire in Hitler's Germany. An attack is staged on a symbolic Instance, an icon or paradigmata of group process permeating the whole through its communications ("news" -- sign-uses) Then those who have secretely staged the attack emerge as righteous punishers of those who would do such a thing. Perhaps a victim is 'found', or framed; for example, the one(s) everybody was supposed to think smeared up her car, or set fire to the Reichstag. Then the group gets to merge its own guilt arroused by silent identity with the deceivers and the deception with those who pulled it off. And that is how the group purifies itself of guilt by sacrifice, tout corte. The formula has become so blatantly obvious it barely calls attention to itself as the twistedness it is, anymore. It's like we have come to expect mothers to kill their kids (ourselves).
Now, the context in which the pair of fake-hate episodes occurred on the campus of Harpur College needs noting. It was clear to me at the time ('88) that something decisive was occuring on many levels. Later, it became clear that this was the openiong of a karmic cycle. The psycholical core -- primal scene; trauma injury -- was the Jew/Nazi complex, coupled with the WWII/Allied victory motif. The Bush's, G.H.W. following Reagan; his son G.W. now, in 10.'06 are an entity in TokenSpace whose story spans the duration. (cf. Kitty Carlisle's book, "The Family") Their story, with side-bars, provides a central strand in the thead of American history of the period. The Jew/Nazi complex intertweaving with the Bush family story; interweaving with ....?
Always, without fail ... some kind of weird sexual story.
It's absolutely guaranteed. Lots and lots of rapes, as by Serbs, Arab/Muslims, black people; goes without saying. But now it goes with killing them when done, as in JohnBenet Ramsey, the girl in Bailey, Colorado, and the Amish school girls. The sexual story has gone into parodies of childish perversion: John Mark Karr as manly man; U.S. Marines as really fine, nice guys ("best friend, worst enemy"), horny young male pages in shorts e-mailing Congressman Foley ...
Let's stop on that a minute, because one feature of the formula of the sacrifice story that comes out over and over through these complex thread weavings is what in psychosemiotics* is called "Reversal". The paradigm of this is: one person condemning another precisely for that which they are themselves guilty. This is not easy to communicate rigorously, though vividly understood as a distinct occurrence when happening, especially to oneself. It is not just Captain Queeg obsessed with catching whoever ate his stawberries. This is the form of the Reichstag fire come home, between Me and Thee, when Thou would'st claim my soul belongs to your deity. This makes Me a Toilet Bowl, into which you dump the gold*.
The form of the hate-reversal -- "I don't hate you, I love you!" --is called "reaction formation" in Freudian psychology. It is the involuntary reversal of a repressed, forbidden thought from entering consciousness in undisguized, raw, form. It is the major mechanism activated by the "suffering victim" (Nazi persecuting Jew) complex. The historically peculiar thing today is the coincidence of this psychodynamic reversal and reverse sexuality, as in homosexual intercourse (anal penetration, among males). These strands twist in Rovian political rhetoric, driven by hate, into "Reverse gays: Ken Mehlman, "Jeff Gannon/Guckert", others, who work against homosexual causes for get Republicans elected by appeal to "moral values".
The mechanism of reaction-formation bounces back and forth off tokens of "gays" and "the Jews", as these come up from the unconscious bringing guilt and trauma for the group. The scrifice dynamic shows what there is beyong hypocricy. (cf. Hastert blaming the Democrats.)
Reversals, off tokens of hate, rule America's brainwaves.
posted by Sid Thomas | 11:58 PM
2 Comments:
Quoted from a letter discussing body-image in the current context.
Here is the phrase from this essay on Britney Spears by a sociologist at Washington
State, that caught my eye:
"It is as if the Britney myth becomes a myth of sainthood, not of sainthood
obtained through good deeds but rather sainthood obtained through the transcendence
of her self by the iconization of her body."
http://www.libertyforum.org/showflat.php?Cat=&Board=news_culture&Number=294959305
The French Philosopher Baudrillard is very interesting on the subject of icons,
though he is an iconoclast.
From the same paragraph:
"Throughout [his book] _Seduction_ Baudrillard discusses the idea that the
Other is no longer killed, or tamed, or confronted, but rather produced. We produce
the other and what is produced is the effigy of â'masculine hysteria'.
In this hysteria, the femininity of men, their desire is projected onto the production
of women who are then made to resemble man's utopian fantasy. Is Britney Spears
such an invention?"
The killing and taming of the Other is, of course, what drives the current War hysteria
psychologically (Reich has a good analysis in the "Mass Psychology of Fascism").
The current spate of school killings, pedophilia scandals, fixation on torture,
and of course the war all indicate a psychological unhealthiness that current society
does not now how to cleanse.
The connecting symbol is "infantilism" -- the regression to infancy.
If you connect the symbols together into a picture here is what you get: a child
is in a safe enclosed space, which is filled with light, and outside all is dark
and scarry. Outside, the living are being killed. What this is an (unconscious)
image of is of an abortion -- it is the negative photographic image of which the
positive goes like this: the child is in the dark womb; he struggles for the light
and transcendence outside, and is born anew into the light.
In other words, the social, psychological themes being adumbrated are a reversal
(and hence a potent psychological symbol for) the missing spiritual birth experience,
which provides, on the standard theory, the somatic underpinning of our concept
of God.
God-reversal (making politics diabolical) has induced a reaction which fixates an
unclean image -- the notion that children must be sacrificed in a blood killing
to purge the uncleanness and regress to a safe and secure infantile state (consumer
society). Icons like Spears are simply part of this symbolic, archetypal complex.
However, if we fail to understand the darkness involved and heal it, we may well
have susceptible individuals act out the symbolism.
Batten down the hatches, storm coming.
So did I explain that right to him?
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