This is part 5 of a series on Nick Mamatas, American SF writer and editor and his radical politics and all that is associated with it.
For a response to N Mamatas dismissing this blog as ‘not intentionally very funny’ the same day I published the last in an extensive series (13 articles) on Holocaust Revisionism from within the genre community see Part 1 of this series.
For Mamatas’s ‘thinking’ when explaining away the disturbing coincidence of the far Left’s agreement on the slogans and cant of the self-same ideologues with the nakedly anti-Semitic far Right when it comes to the Jew among the nations, see Part 2. Also a reply to Mamatas’s devastating criticisms (no not really) of my series.
For Mamatas’s hearty recommendation (the blog that goes at the top of his list) of the radical anti-Semitic UK SWP blog Lenin’s Tomb, see Part 3. Part 4 – ‘Nick Mamatas, the Apex SF crew, gay rights and the Middle-East’ is exactly what it says it is.
Now for part 5… You see it all gets even uglier (well for those readers with a moral compass and intelligence – certainly a rarity within and without the genre community). Nick Mamatas features here – glowingly – as one of PM Press’s authors.
So? Well the thing is PM Press‘s (initiated in 2007 by AK Press founder Ramsey Kanaan and several other members of AK Press like Craig O’Hara) publications (on and offline) are a caricature of hardcore boiler-plate radical Leftist prattle inclusive of far Left anti-Semitic drivel.
Its featured authors include the likes of Noel Ignatiev. Here is one of his memorable articles for PM Press entitled ‘Memoir of an Ex-Jew 11: The Last Installment’. It is part of an extensive series by Ignatiev at PM Press entitled ‘Memor of an an Ex-Jew’. (ho hum)
An excerpt:
The anti-war movement publishes flyers and holds rallies opposing U.S. wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, without mentioning the elephant in the room, the Israel Lobby, and whoever tries to raise it is hushed up. (The situation has improved since the Meersheimer/Walt article and book.)
The capitalist system is not a capitalist plot but the world we live in and reproduce daily. Even if every capitalist were a Jew and every Jew a capitalist, I would still be anti-capitalist rather than anti-Jew, because the capitalist system is the illness and Jews are at most prominent among its carriers.
Very um memorable, chilling, blithely bigoted, barely a pretense of no prejudice, if at all. Ex-Jew! Frankly that’s letting the mask slip, not good form that – if Ignatiev were smarter and PM Press likewise, they should know to use a title like ‘memoir of an ex-Zionist’. Keep the cover terms and code language firmly in place. I for one prefer the refreshing honesty of ex-Jew, I gotta say.
There is plenty more where this came from at PM Press.
The above is typical eye-rolling caricature of the very worst of the radical Left – the Joooos with their power and control of the US political sphere for their own nefarious ends blabla and if you dare call it out well we all know the power of the Jooooos to stifle brave dissent and speakers of truth to power blabla. You know who else SAYS EXACTLY WORD FOR WORD the same things about the Joooooos? Neo-Nazis and Muslim extremists. Word for word. I’m sure it’s just another of those meaningless coincidences though. Ignatiev endorses – no surprises – the odious anti-Semitic guff of profs Stephen Walt and John Mearsheimer.
In Walt and Mearsheimer’s anti-Semitic screeds including their book The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy (praised by David Duke for one), among other assorted lies and libels, Walt and Mearsheimer claimed the Jewish/Israel lobby in America drove the US into war in Iraq for the benefit (somehow) of the nefarious Jew nation. Ignatiev with his nudge nudge wink wink clearly appears to take this ‘thesis’ very seriously. Ignatiev after all clearly endorses the book of Walt and Mearsheimer’s without a single caveat or tut-tut. This is the political company Mamatas keeps at PM Press. An author who endorses the Walt & Mearsheimer thesis (a thesis specifically infamous or notorious for its claim that the Jooooos – oh I mean the Israel Lobby – nefariously inspired/manipulated the Americans to invade Iraq for the nefarious imperialist purposes of self-same Joooos – oh I mean Israel).
No the writings of Ignatiev cannot by themselves be used against Mamatas, merely because both men are authors published by the same radical political publishing company, even as both men share the same radical Left political worldview. That would be a dishonest smear on Mamatas. Nevertheless this is the odious company Mamatas keeps at PM Press, and Mamatas certainly doesn’t have boo to say about it. Ignatiev is an author PM Press certainly doesn’t even pretend to bury in the basement. Hardly. PM Press endorses the anti-Semite Ignatiev as a rhetorician of considerable weight and speaking truth to power. What does that ALONE tell us (those of us with a moral compass and some intelligence – no Mamatas not you and your goonsquad) about PM Press?
If one does a search for ‘Israel’ at the PM Press website, one gets a lot of results. Perusing them, they were unsurprisingly and predominantly caustically negative, hostile, mendacious, brazenly one-sided censure of the Jew among the nations i.e. cookie-cutter left-wing anti-Semitic articles, interviews etc. The only times I picked up articles that weren’t anti-Semitic were the references to science and the arts, archaeology, that kind of thing. Most of the first few page search results are to Ignatiev’s memorably titled ‘Memoir of an ex-Jew’ articles. This is the ‘revolutionary’ anarchist/communist press of which Nick Mamatas is a proudly featured author, and Mamatas’s name is conspicuous at PM Press. Mamatas’s latest book Sensation is being published by PM Press (only released last month) and it features conspicuously at the PM Press website. As to be expected, Mamatas is promoting this book heavily at this time.
Thing is Mamatas has always been open and oh so proud of his fringe radical left-wing politics (that includes his implicit support for the platform of the rabidly anti-Semitic SWP/Socialist Workers Party across the Atlantic – see parts 3 and 4 of this series). No problem to the Apex folk though (with which Mamatas is associated. See Part 4 most pertinently for the details here). The same Apex that issues a special Arab/Muslim issue in Muslim sensitivity outreach after the Elizabeth Moon kerfluffle last year.
It’s not just a double standard and the hypocrisy and cravenness that goes with it (even if one strongly disapproves of Elizabeth Moon’s and W Sanders’s comments – see part 4 of this Mamatas series – it doesn’t come close to the extreme Judenhass of the radical Left). The likes of the UK SWP, the Lenin’s Tomb blog and PM Press (all relevant to Nick Mamatas’s political posturing, see the earlier chapters in this series as well) are shrilly conspicuous as far as this oldest hatred and scapegoating is concerned, no matter how they may all deny it and brush it aside with a shrug. It is more troubling and disturbing than that – there is a blindness to what is staring us in the face. Perhaps that is why so few see it. It is too obvious.
Burying one’s head in the sand appears to be the way for many not caught in know-nothing groupthink to handle these uncomfortable facts (and I’m focusing on the genre community here, but it applies of course to the wider world too). Actually given that the SF genre is frankly for the most part one of transparent escapism for those of a literary or bookwormish bent desperately seeking ‘a sense of wonder’ in a world where wonder and mystery have been explained away; it’s perhaps to be expected that persistent escape and DENIAL is the way these disturbing uncomfortable facts are dealt with. At best. Genre writers have been reading and writing about exotic locales and adventures on other worlds and dimensions for so long, many of them have left planet earth altogether. Of course non-genre folk (i.e. most everybody else) have their own escapes – reality TV, heroin, sports, ideology…
Nick Mamatas has given a further reply to my series – predictably having no bearing on anything I actually write – all bluff and bluster, fatuous gibberish, but inadvertently revealing none the less (especially in his commentary further down that blog thread comments section where his like-mindless know-nothing ego strokers and sycophants wallow in a mutual love-fest. It would be funny if it wasn’t so sad). I may reply to it when I have the time.
I note that Mamatas once tweeted on writer and director David Mamet, calling him an asshole (over Mamet’s leaving the Left). Mamatas I consider it a compliment that you insult me as you do Mamet. David Mamet has published a book called The Wicked Son, an eloquent and thoughtful non-fiction account of old and new anti-Semitism and Jewish self-loathing. To be grouped with the likes of David Mamet by Nick Mamatas is – no matter how inadvertent and unintended – high praise indeed.
To Tim Lieder (marlowe1.livejournal.com/) publisher of Dybbuk Press and editor, the so-called ‘Zionist Jew’ (a convert to Judaism), who has been venting his spleen at my blog and my series on Nick Mamatas (who let us not forget is a rank and file soldier/comrade of the anti-Zionist radical Left) with the most grossly absurd misrepresentations, preposterous distortions, fabrications and idiotic scatological name-calling (yes Lieder is a ‘Zionist Jew’ – well he thinks he’s one at any rate – and *ostensible* supporter of Israel); I will save you having to write a further unintentionally laughable, substanceless response to my latest article on Mamatas by writing it for you.
“Tim Lieder replies to the Red Wolf on ‘Nick Mamatas’s ties to the far left-wing anti-Semitic PM Press’ article”
Shitbuff fatheadfucker twit fucker dipshithead red wolf claims that because PM Press publishes Nick Mamatas and dipshitheadfucker claims that PM Press is anti-Semitic, Nick Mamatas is therefore anti-Semitic. fucktard red wolf thinks a guilt by association argument has validity and merit! What a tool. Then again what do you expect from red wolftard, he pisses and libels genre folk, calling them Holocaust Revisionists for daring to consider that James P Hogan’s fiction has merit and is removed from his odious Holocaust Denial.
I apologise for the scatology (not my style), but I am imitating Tim Lieder.
To those *intelligent* readers (not Lieder, nor Mamatas and their mindless echo-chamber goonsquads at their respective blogs) who are perplexed at my apparent parody of Lieder above, it could only be because you haven’t been reading Lieder’s blog posts in this regard (seriously it’s not actually a parody, I played it as straight as I could). Likewise if you are perplexed as to why ‘the Zionist Jew’ (with ‘Zionists’ like this who needs enemies?) goes to bat for Nick Mamatas the far left-wing communist/anarchist (in light of everything I detail in this Mamatas series and given Mamatas’s politics); I will be publishing replies to Lieder on this front. Lieder has so far written three responses to my blog and the Mamatas series – they get progressively more off-the-charts nonsensical and out-to-lunch witless. The third reply of Lieder’s to my blog is a major foul-up especially (although they all are). I save explication and elucidation for the forthcoming replies.
Season of the Red Wolf 