>DOUGH
>DOUGH
https://www.timesofisrael.com/trotskys-day-out-how-a-visit-to-nyc-influenced-the-bolshevik-revolution/
Trotsky’s day out: How a visit to NYC influenced the Bolshevik revolution
Author Kenneth Ackerman explores the life of the Jewish radical in the weeks leading up to the overthrow of the Russian Provisional Government
LONDON — Between 1881 and 1917, New York was ballooning into the fastest growing and most ethnically diverse metropolis the world had ever seen.
Jews made up over a fifth of the city’s expanding population of 5.5 million. Most came from the Pale of Settlement — a western region of imperial Russia — fleeing pogroms and violent persecution.
The largest Jewish presence in New York was on the Lower East Side, where Yiddish was the language of the streets, cafes, theaters, cinemas, and the Jewish printing press — which was predominately socialist, left wing, and internationalist in outlook.
In January 1917, a strikingly handsome radical-revolutionary, Lev Davidovich Bronstein — otherwise known as Leon Trotsky — arrived into this vast cosmopolitan-cultural-melting-pot.
Kenneth D. Ackerman, a lawyer and historian based in Washington D.C., has recently published “Trotsky in New York 1917: A Radical on the Eve of Revolution.”
The book recalls Trotsky’s controversial 10 weeks spent in New York before he headed back to Russia to lead the Military-Revolutionary Committee which carried out the overthrow of the Provisional Government in the October Revolution.
In several instances throughout the book, Ackerman documents how the Jewish community played a significant role in Trotsky’s life during his brief stay in the city.
“Many of these Jews in New York knew Trotsky as someone who had outspokenly denounced the Tsar for his anti-Semitism,” says Ackerman. “So he was very popular.”
On the first day Trotsky arrived in New York, he gave an interview to Forverts (The Forward), a Yiddish socialist paper that then had a daily readership of 200,000 — a circulation rivaling that of The New York Times.
The interview turned out to be embarrassing for Trotsky when he couldn’t speak Yiddish with the Jewish reporter. The Bronsteins — for reasons of practicality and commerce — spoke mostly Ukrainian and Russian at the family home growing up.
“Trotsky certainly knew some Yiddish words and phrases from just being around other Jewish people,” says Ackerman. “But he never spoke or wrote in Yiddish in any consistent way.”
“For many years after the Russian Revolution, Trotsky was vilified because of his Jewishness,” Ackerman says. “But he didn’t see it as a major factor.”
Trotsky was born Lev Davidovich Bronstein in October 1879 to a farming family at Yanovka in Kherson province. Then called New Russia, the province now lies in southern Ukraine.
Trotsky’s father, David Bronstein, was a dynamic farmer who dragged himself up the social ladder from peasant to wealthy land owner in just a few years. The Bronsteins’ wealth was made possible from a new government scheme during the mid-19th century that saw the emergence of Jewish agricultural colonies in Kherson.
Trotsky always viewed himself first and foremost as a Marxist-cosmopolitan-internationalist, and while he certainly didn’t disown his Jewish background, he made very few references to it throughout his life — most likely because he associated his father’s bourgeois status with his Jewish roots.
Trotsky came to New York via Barcelona on board the Montserrat, with his wife, Natalya and their two sons, Leon and Sergei.
He was expelled from Europe for his radical views, which called for a global Marxist revolution and the overthrow of the existing capitalist world order. Trotsky had also served time in prison in Russia — and escaped — for his revolutionary activities.
While Trotsky was well respected in the small clique of sophisticated Marxist intellectuals around the globe, who knew him from his razor sharp journalistic prose, he was largely unknown by the general public or mainstream press when he arrived in New York in January 1917.
But that anonymity soon faded. By October that year, as one of the leaders of the Bolshevik Revolution, Trotsky became a figure with a global impact.
He founded the Red Army, commanding it with vicious blood-thirsty gusto.
And he was a principal figure in the early years of the Communist International — the October Revolution would transform the course of 20th century history, and Trotsky, along with Lenin, played a prominent role in that transformation.
Those epic events, however, were still a few months away. In New York, between January and March of 1917, Trotsky was still building his reputation as a radical intellectual who posed a threat to the capitalist-global-world-hegemony.
And as Ackerman’s book recalls, until April 1917, the United States had still not entered into World War I. Many Jews and Russian emigres in New York — the most anti-war city in the US at the time — publicly voiced their opposition to America’s involvement. These Jews viewed it as helping the Tsar, who had promoted the anti-Semitism that drove them out of Russia in the first place.
Trotsky was among those figures leading the anti-war protests both in public speeches and in newspaper articles that were printed in the New York Yiddish press. This helped create a period of intense paranoia among the political class, especially against Jews and Eastern Europeans across New York, Ackerman explains.
“In New York in 1917, there was a huge suspicion of socialists, labor leaders, and outsiders,” he says. “Much of this was fed by the labor movement in America, starting in the 1880s. Many of the more radical labor leaders were from Eastern Europe. Emma Goldman — who was Jewish — was also one of the most prominent anarchists at that time. And she was vilified for her political views.”
The city was famous for its exploitative labor — immigrants made up most of the workers, sweat shops were the norm, and people often worked up to 10 hours straight, hoping to earn maybe a dollar for their efforts.
Consequently, a labor movement began to emerge.
“Jews were very active in radical movements and unions,” says Ackerman. “And as Jewish leaders became more visible, Trotsky became exhibit number one.”
Trotsky’s name thus became associated with two major conspiracy theories.
The first was known as the German Libel — the charge that the Bolshevik Revolution was a mere creature of the German military effort to defeat Russia in WWI.
This also stated that Trotsky had received $10,000 from an unidentified German source in the city. Others claimed that if the money had not come from German and socialist immigrants, it potentially could have come from a powerful lobby of Jewish bankers in New York City.
“The second conspiracy theory became known as the Jewish Plot,” Ackerman explains. “The idea was that Jewish bankers paid Trotsky to overthrow the government and create Bolshevism.”
The notion that bankers would finance a radical socialist, whose end goal was to destroy the financial system that gave them extreme wealth in the first place, seems rather preposterous.
However, as Ackerman’s book explains in some detail, the Trotsky-Jewish conspiracy — in 1917 especially — took a very specific form. It centered on the most conspicuous Jewish financier in New York at the time, Jacob Schiff.
Schiff had openly used his wealth to pressure Russia into changing its anti-Semitic polices. Moreover, Schiff had refused to allow his bank to participate in American war loans to Britain or France as long as they allied themselves with Russia. The suggestion of a link between Schiff and Trotsky came directly from the United States government — specifically, its Military Intelligence Division (MID).
Ackerman’s book cites how MID files from this period are rife with slurs against high-profile New York city Jews like Schiff and others, connecting them to Bolshevik leaders.
Ackerman claims these allegations were coming from individuals who clearly had anti-Semitic agendas.
“Trotsky was being tracked by British Intelligence at this time,” says Ackerman, “and several of the people the British had on their payroll were people from Russia with clear track records of anti-Semitism. Including, Boris Brasol, who at the time was circulating copies of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion to American and British Military Intelligence, making the case that Jews were running Bolshevism and posing a threat.”
“Schiff had, of course, contributed to groups advocating the overthrow of the Tsar,” says Ackerman. “But once the Tsar was overthrown, Schiff was aligned with the Kerensky government. So he was not aligned at all with Trotsky or the Bolsheviks.”
But this charge of Jewish bankers backing Trotsky and the Bolsheviks didn’t vanish overnight. According to Ackerman, it became part of the lexicon of anti-Semitism throughout the 1920s and 30s.
“That memo from military intelligence leaked,” says Ackerman, “and it was repeated in many places. It became part of Nazi anti-Semitic propaganda and grew over the years.”
As a result of these various allegations and conspiracies, returning to Russia wasn’t easy for Trotsky. After hearing that Nicholas II had abdicated on March 15, 1917, Trotsky sought to immediately travel back to Russia to stir the fires of revolution.
But he was arrested on his return boat journey by harbor police in Canada. They got a tip off from British Intelligence officers by telegram, just before he boarded a ship in New York, heading back towards Europe. Trotsky would be held as a prisoner of war for a month in Nova Scotia.
Eventually he was released.
It wasn’t long before Trotsky was back in Russia, playing a leading role in the October Revolution.
Today, Trotsky’s name is never far from controversy or debate. Both sides of the political spectrum claim their lineage to him. The far-left see his uncompromising ways as a necessary method for implementing drastic political change with speed and commitment. But so too do neoconservatives on the right.
Looking back at his career, which mythology of Trotsky should we believe?
Was he the psychopathic-blood-thirsty-totalitarian, who believed mass violence and red terror was the ultimate price worth paying for a Marxist utopia? Or was he a humane sophisticated intellectual who —despite his flaws— did believe in ideas like social justice, egalitarianism, and brotherhood of fellow man?
“In the early days of the Russian Revolution, Trotsky put all of the elements in place for the Stalinist dictatorship,” says Ackerman. “He was a strong supporter of war communism, the centralization of power in the Bolshevik Communist Party, and he helped create the secret police, the Cheka. All of these things helped to create a dictatorial-communist-state.”
But in later years, Trotsky began to recognize the evil he helped to construct, Ackerman believes.
Consequently, Stalin had Trotsky murdered in 1940, and tried to erase him from Russian history.
“Love him or loath him, though,” says Ackerman, “Trotsky really was one of the truly consequential figures of the 20th century. By setting in motion the Bolshevik Revolution, he changed the world both for good and for bad.”
>https://www.timesofisrael.com/growing-end-jew-hatred-movement-sparks-controversy-amid-right-wing-links/
Growing ‘End Jew Hatred’ movement sparks controversy amid right-wing links
Organization pushing resolution nationwide to declare April 29 ‘End Jew Hatred Day,’ but viewed with suspicion by progressives for roots in conservative activism
>https://www.dailywire.com/news/felon-who-worked-on-flint-mayors-campaign-arrested-for-allegedly-grooming-raping-child-has-hiv
>She wrote pulp fiction?
A magazine made with inexpensive paper and printing, containing shocking or sensationalist text fiction by low-paid writers.
The Coast Guard says it is important to note that Title 42 never applied to individuals intercepted at sea.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ram%C3%B3n_Mercader
It was a mountaineering ice axe known in French as a piolet, made by the Austrian manufacturer Werkgen Fulpmes.
Mercader cut off about half the length of the handle.
The ice axe is now on display at the International Spy Museum, in Washington, D.C.
>https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ram%C3%B3n_Mercader
His last words are said to have been: "I hear it always. I hear the scream. I know he's waiting for me on the other side."
He claimed to be an experienced mountaineer, and bragged to police interrogators, "I had a rare ability to handle the piolet, since two blows were sufficient for me to crack through an enormous block of ice".
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revolutions_of_1917%E2%80%931923
Revolutions of 1917–1923
The Revolutions of 1917–1923 were a revolutionary wave that included political unrest and armed revolts around the world inspired by the success of the Russian Revolution and the disorder created by the aftermath of World War I. The uprisings were mainly socialist or anti-colonial in nature. Some socialist revolts failed to create lasting socialist states. The revolutions had lasting effects in shaping the future European political landscape, with for example the collapse of the German Empire and the dissolution of Austria-Hungary.
The complete failure of Comintern-inspired revolutions was a sobering experience in Moscow, and the Bolsheviks moved from world revolution to socialism in one country, Russia.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tambov_Rebellion
On 12 June 1921, Tukhachevsky received permission from Vladimir Antonov-Ovseenko to begin the use of chemical weapons (left over from World War I stockpiles) against the remaining rebels. They ordered their troops to clear the forests with poison gas, stipulating that it "must be carefully calculated, so that the layer of gas penetrates the forests and kills everyone hiding there." Publications in local Communist newspapers openly glorified liquidations of "bandits" with the poison gas. Antonov's army was encircled and destroyed, leaving the rebellion practically defeated by the end of June. By the month of September, the rebels had been reduced to a thousand due to the massive arrival of red troops. By the end of that year, there were no more than 4,000 rebels left on the warpath. With almost all their leaders dead, the last parties took refuge in swamps and forests under constant persecution.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emma_Goldman
Emma Goldman was a Russian-born anarchist, political activist, and writer. She played a pivotal role in the development of anarchist political philosophy in North America and Europe in the first half of the 20th century.
Born in Kaunas, Lithuania (then within the Russian Empire), to an Orthodox Lithuanian Jewish family, Goldman emigrated to the United States in 1885. Attracted to anarchism after the Chicago Haymarket affair, Goldman became a writer and a renowned lecturer on anarchist philosophy, women's rights, and social issues, attracting crowds of thousands. She and anarchist writer Alexander Berkman, her lover and lifelong friend, planned to assassinate industrialist and financier Henry Clay Frick as an act of propaganda of the deed. Frick survived the attempt on his life in 1892, and Berkman was sentenced to 22 years in prison. Goldman was imprisoned several times in the years that followed, for "inciting to riot" and illegally distributing information about birth control. In 1906, Goldman founded the anarchist journal Mother Earth.
If I can't dance, I don't want to be in your revolution
>In 1906, Goldman founded the anarchist journal Mother Earth.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mother_Earth_(magazine)
A wagon load of anarchist records and propaganda material was seized, and included in the lot is what is believed to be a complete registry of anarchy's friends in the United States. A splendidly kept card index was found, which the Federal agents believe will greatly simplify their task of identifying persons mentioned in the various record books and papers. The subscription lists of Mother Earth and The Blast, which contain 10,000 names, were also seized.
This bulletin serves as a report to the American people on the activities of the American Red Cross (ARC). It begins with a quote from President Woodrow Wilson. The quote, along with the first two paragraphs, stand in sharp contrast to the original, neutral mission of the ARC under the leadership of Clara Barton. Under the management of the War Council, the ARC was now the “mobilized heart and spirit of the American people,” an organization dedicated to serving “Americans in all parts of the world were determined to help their home country.” The bulletin includes brief information on supplies and money collected during fundraising campaigns.
https://qposts.online/post/17
https://www.timesofisrael.com/a-conspiracy-debunking-rothschild-is-writing-the-book-about-jewish-space-lasers/
A conspiracy-debunking Rothschild is writing the book about Jewish space lasers
Professional mythbuster Mike Rothschild isn’t related to the well-known banking family, but he’s out to expose the antisemitic theories that, left unchecked, can lead to violence
To a conspiracy theorist, last week seemed to offer evidence that the Rothschild family is plotting to undermine Elon Musk.
It started when the Tesla tycoon bashed the Democratic Party and said in a tweet that he would switch to voting Republican. A user named David Rothschild responded, mocking Musk and portraying him as an entitled whiner because Musk comes from a rich white family that benefited from apartheid in South Africa.
Then, Rothschild himself became the target of ridicule as other users, predictably, pounced on his last name to assert that the scion of the Jewish banking family had no standing to criticize someone over issues of social privilege. “A Rothschild complaining about other people’s privileges. The joke tells itself,” one user wrote.
As if on cue, another Rothschild soon chimed in to defend the Musk mocker. “David M. Rothschild is an NYC-based economist,” tweeted a user named Mike Rothschild. “He is not related to the banking family. People might be thinking of David M. de Rothschild, an adventurer and environmentalist, 5x great-grandson of Mayer Amschel. Not all Jews are related.”
That the last names are purely coincidental is exactly the kind of lie a Rothschild would try to peddle — that is, if you’re a conspiracy theorist.
https://www.nbcnews.com/think/opinion/qanon-fanatics-are-rebranding-their-secret-war-it-could-work-ncna1274258
QAnon fanatics are rebranding their 'secret war.' And it could work.
This new movement is taking its cues from the Christian right and the tea party, making national issues a Main Street problem.
July 18, 2021
By Mike Rothschild
A few years into waiting for “the storm” to sweep away former President Donald Trump’s enemies, some believers in the prophetic QAnon conspiracy theory have decided to take matters into their own hands.
These “digital soldiers” aren’t picking up guns or marching on the Capitol — though many actually did that. Instead, nearly 100 Q-aligned candidates ran for Congress in the 2020 election, according to watchdog site Media Matters for America, with dozens of others running for governor, state legislature seats and county offices. Some were hardcore Q evangelists, while others had merely retweeted a QAnon hashtag. But all had shown some deference for a violent prophecy cult that was turning conspiracy theories into gospel.
Like so many of QAnon’s predictions, these candidates mostly failed. The majority didn’t get past their primary or ran in solidly Democratic districts and had no chance of victory. A few won at the state level, and constant media fixture Marjorie Taylor Greene, who has spouted QAnon-friendly conspiracy theories for years, won her deeply Republican congressional district in Georgia. But she was an outlier.
Post-2020, Q believers are once again gearing up to run for office and grow their movement, but with two major strategy changes. One is that Q believers are now getting involved in local elections for school boards and city councils and showing up at board meetings to scream about Q-linked topics. The other is that many of these candidates no longer identify as believers in QAnon — or even acknowledge that a movement with that name ever existed. They’re taking their “secret war” to new recruits looking to strike back against a way of life they feel is eroding — without the public acknowledgement that such a war exists. In doing so, they have the potential to expose new audiences to their violent mythology, without having to explain away the baggage that comes with the term “QAnon.”
https://www.theguardian.com/world/live/2023/may/14/russia-ukraine-war-live-zelenskiy-arrives-in-berlin-after-germany-announces-further-27bn-of-military-aid
Russia-Ukraine war live: Zelenskiy thanks Germany for support in Berlin visit
Ukrainian president’s visit comes after Germany announces further €2.7bn of military aid
Russian missiles strike home town of Ukraine’s Eurovision entry
>Russian missiles strike home town of Ukraine’s Eurovision entry
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/may/14/russian-missiles-strike-home-town-of-ukraines-eurovision-entry-during-contest
Russian missiles strike home town of Ukraine’s Eurovision entry during contest
University town of Ternopil, home of Tvorchi, targeted by missiles with two people injured
The hometown of Ukraine’s Eurovision entry came under fire from Russian missiles during the song contest on Saturday.
Ternopil, the university home town of electronic music duo Tvorchi, was among the places targeted, according to Dame Melinda Simmons, the British ambassador to Ukraine.
Simmons wrote on Twitter: “Meanwhile, this #Eurovision night Ukraine is under another Russian missile attack.”
Praising Ukraine’s participants in the song contest, Simmons added: “Tvorchi (definitely) win the prize for graphics. The staging was brilliant.
“And poignant as their university home town of Ternopil was targeted by (Russian) missiles this eve.”
Local authorities, writing on Telegram, said the strike had hit warehouses owned by commercial enterprises and a religious organisation, injuring two people.
Tvorchi said this week they hoped to shine a spotlight on their country’s fight for freedom.
Earlier on Saturday, Ukrainian troops advanced in the eastern city of Bakhmut. Forces are advancing in two directions in Bakhmut but the situation in the city centre is more complicated, deputy defence minister Hanna Malyar said.
“The enemy is not able to take control of the city,” Malyar wrote on the Telegram messaging app.
Separately, Volodymyr Zelenskiy asked Pope Francis on Saturday to back Kyiv’s peace plan and the pope indicated the Vatican would help in the repatriation of Ukrainian children taken by Russians.
The Ukrainian president was in Rome for a one-day visit, also meeting Italy’s president, Sergio Mattarella, and the prime minister, Giorgia Meloni.
Zelenskiy, who was visiting Rome for the first time since the war began, spoke with the pope for 40 minutes and presented him with a bulletproof vest that had been used by a Ukrainian soldier and later painted with an image of the Madonna.
A Vatican statement said that in their private talks, Zelenskiy and the pope discussed “humanitarian gestures”, which a Vatican source said was a reference to the Vatican’s willingness to help with the repatriation of Ukrainian children.
Kyiv estimates nearly 19,500 children have been taken to Russia or Russian-occupied Crimea since February 2022, in what it condemns as illegal deportations.
“We must make every effort to return them home,” Zelenskiy said in a tweet afterwards, saying he had discussed it with the pope.
The Ukrainian president also said he asked the pope to “join” Kyiv’s 10-point peace plan.
“I asked (the pope) to condemn Russian crimes in Ukraine. Because there can be no equality between the victim and the aggressor,” Zelenskiy said in his tweet.