Ascribe to Malice
The Corrupting of the American Mind
Dear Reader,
I apologize for my long absence. I have been terribly busy compiling and completing a collection of work about the ramifications of October 7th on young Jews around the world called One Hundred Days of Night. (Early versions are available for purchase, message me privately if you are interested).
As I focus on finding ways to reach a larger audience, I will not be able to spend as much time writing and editing this column, but I will do my best to publish as often as I can. Some of the pieces may have been written earlier, like this one, and may be missing some of the more recent news developments, but the content and the context remains unchanged.
It can be overwhelming to even look at the news sometimes because the sheer number of antisemitism, even in just the headlines, can be overwhelming. I am trying very hard to provide as much of an alternative to that as I can, but it is extremely difficult.
If you support this work, please consider supporting me financially, either by subscribing, making a one-time contribution, or purchasing a copy of One Hundred Days of Night.
And if you, your community, or anyone you know would be interested in hosting a poetry reading, I would be more than happy to come and read with you.
Thank you for your patience and your continued support. I am wishing everyone a Chodesh Tov, a good month, a good Passover, a good year, and a good life. May you be a blessing.
Am Yisrael Chai.
Ted Goldstein
(Stanford University, where a phD student recently called for the assassination of President Biden and expressed enthusiasm for Hamas in a public debate. Accrording to the U.S. News and World Report, Stanford is currently tied with Harvard as the 3rd Best University in America, and tuition [including room and board] is approaching $90,000 a year.)
They say that you should never ascribe to malice that which can be explained by stupidity.
By the same token, anything that cannot be explained by stupidity can only be ascribed to malice.
The antisemitism we are seeing emerge in American society has two parts: its stupid followers, and its malicious leaders.
The stupid followers are, unfortunately, many of our former friends.
It has been hard for me to come to terms with calling my former friends, many of whom were considered Highly Gifted, stupid, but it is easier than calling them evil.
For example, following October 7th, an ex-friend of mine raised $1200 for the UNRWA children’s fund on Instagram. She was so proud of herself and all of her friends who, despite having so little disposable income, found a way to pony up money to feed a dozen terrorists for a week.
When I saw her post, I was outraged. I wanted to message her and tell her that she had just bought missiles for Hamas to launch at Israeli kindergartens. I wanted to tell her that UNRWA was a front for Hamas, that the “teachers” they employed were also kidnappers – I wanted to tell her she had raised money for evil.
But there was no point.
As I see it, there are only two options to explain why she, a very outspoken feminist, was able to proudly give money to an organization so intimately involved with what may be the largest femicide of our lifetimes.
Either A, she knew how corrupt UNRWA was and continued to contribute, which would imply malice, or B, she had no idea how corrupt they were and invested no time in investigating her donations, which would imply stupidity, but not malice.
At the same time, I know multiple people, many of whom were graduates of Highly Gifted magnets and top 20 universities, who proudly “Flooded Brooklyn for Palestine” on November 8th, the 85th anniversary of Kristallnacht.
When I asked one of them if they knew that it was the anniversary of Kristallnacht, they said no, and they even had the gall to thank me for educating them.
They, however, still marched.
Is it malicious to “flood” a Jewish neighborhood with thousands of people using the chants of our enemies on the anniversary of the world’s most infamous pogrom?
Yes, it is.
However, it is not malicious to have no idea what Kristallnacht was; it is ignorant.
That said, I can guarantee that whoever planned that rally knew exactly what day it was. Just like they knew exactly what the word “flood” would evoke for Jewish people. Just like they knew that most of their followers would have no idea what Kristallnacht was.
There is an important lesson from Kristallnacht for us here.
The Nazis had hoped that Kristallnacht would be a populist uprising against the Jews in which everyday German citizens rose up against their Jewish oppressors.
But they did not, so the Nazis had to plant agitators, of whom they had many, to give the pogrom the appearance of popularity.
The Nazis planned Kristallnacht for the 15th anniversary of their heroic Beer Hall Putsch. The Nazis, like the antizionists, had a keen eye for anniversaries.
Whoever planned the “Flood Brooklyn for Palestine” protest was masterfully malicious. They knew exactly what they were doing, what the significance was of that date, and, most importantly, they knew how to disguise it so that useful idiots like my former friends would popularize it.
The organizers and leaders of the antizionist movement are clearly malicious. There can be no other explanation.
The antizionist propaganda machine is excellent.
In just fifteen years, it has taken over the entire global progressive movement. It has become so powerful that it has even taken over the progressive discourse on climate change.
“No climate justice, on occupied land,” chanted Greta Thunberg at a European summit on climate change. The irony of this being chanted in Europe, the great occupying force of the globe, seemed to have been completely lost on them.
Now, is this malice or stupidity? Surely, it must be stupidity. Especially since, if we took their chant at face value, they seem to be telling the occupying nations of the world that,
her claim would imply that there should be no climate justice anywhere in the world that is under occupation, which seems antithetical to her movement entirely.
The climate activists who have been convinced to place antizionism before climate justice are stupid.
The antizionist activists who made it happen are not.
Since 2007, Hamas has been expanding its ideological empire into the progressive circles of the world. First it was the U.N., then it was the universities, and then it was the primary schools.
When I was in high school, I did not know a single person who supported Hamas in any way.
After graduating from college, more than 50% of my fellow graduates have supported Hamas in one way or another, either through rhetoric or raising money for UNRWA.
In the immortal words of H.L. Mencken, “nobody ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American public,” and our public is quite stupid.
But our Ivy League professors are not. Our Harvard educated lawyers are not. Our politicians and presidents are not.
So then why then are they all carrying water for Hamas?
If they are not stupid, what other explanation can there be besides malice? How can we explain the number of professors who have openly praised Hamas in the past 120 days?
At the beginning of this war, I thought the universities failed in their obligation to educate their students through institutional laziness and moral equivocacy.
However, I now see that this was not a failure at all – it was a great success.
It was a great success for Hamas propaganda, and it could not have happened without the success of their supporters in academia.
These professors are not stupid; they are well-educated enough to know that November 8th was Kristallnacht or that UNRWA was funding Hamas.
Yet they intentionally push these types of actions on their students – the explanation can only be malice.
The university administrations will continue to equivocate about the role of the university in policing speech.
As large and ungainly bureaucratic institutions, the main purpose they serve is to continue to exist as large ungainly bureaucratic institutions.
We can and should not expect much from them in the way of anything.
But what is to be done about these professors?
Moral Relativism is a metastasizing tumor in our body politic. The longer we allow these professors to preach malice unopposed, the sicker our society becomes. We must take a stand against the advocates of evil. We must not allow terrorism to be taught to our kids. We must destroy Hamas and its supporters at any cost.
My friends are stupid, that is their only crime. They are too stupid to know the difference between the truth and lies their teachers taught them.
I will not condemn them for trusting in people they were meant to trust.
I will, however, say that any professor who has any connections ot UNRWA, Hamas, or has in any way promoted these organizations and their supporters, must be removed from academia.
Now that UNRWA has been exposed, their lackeys should be as well.
Any academic who gave money to UNRWA and has not apologized since learning that their donations went towards hiding Israeli hostages should be investigated.
They are either stupid or evil or both, and, either way, there is no place for them in the classroom.