Amerikanized version of Holocaust rolled out: MIM upholds journalistic standards by MC5 The Democratic Party in the United $tates has picked its nominee for president, Al Gore. On August 8, it announced his new running mate, Joseph I. Lieberman, a Senator from Connecticut. Lieberman's wife Hadassah Lieberman promptly made her contribution to a false Amerikan version of history by saying in her first major speech for the campaign: "'I am in the place that commemorates the American heroes, the soldiers who actually liberated my mother in Dachau and in Auschwitz." U.S. soldiers were there in Dachau, but they were not in Auschwitz. Overall, the Soviet army made the largest contribution to the liberation of Jews from the Nazis. If the United States had not sent any troops, the Soviet Union would have prevailed, but if the Soviets had not sent as many troops to fight as it did, there is no way the U.S. troops would have prevailed against the Nazis. There were too few U.S. troops sent, and too late in the war. What readers should expect for journalistic standards MIM had planned on thanking the New York Times for correcting Mrs. Hadassah Lieberman. It was not U.S. soldiers who liberated Auschwitz, where Hitler decimated 4 million people as part of his extermination program for most non-Aryan peoples. It was the Soviet Red Army that liberated Auschwitz. Unfortunately, MIM is not entirely able to thank the New York Times for the correction in its print version, done properly in brackets. The reason is that the Internet edition of the New York Times contains no correction for Lieberman's speech at all. MIM never runs any statement by anyone, even as a direct quote, without correcting it if MIM knows it to be factually wrong. Like any responsible newspaper, MIM Notes clarifies the issues of fact if it has to quote someone in factual error. A newspaper that does not correct issues of fact becomes responsible for them whatever their source. The New York Times failed to do this in its Internet edition, reprinting Hadassah Lieberman as if some kind of god. Either it was Soviet Red Army troops that liberated Auschwitz, or it was American troops or it was a combination. However, someone concretely marched through there in World War II. Hence, it is definitely a matter of fact and not what bourgeois papers refer to as "opinion." Being pre-scientific, the bourgeois papers also botch scientific issues that are not a matter of simply facts but how they are related. The bourgeois papers refer to many matters of cause and effect as a matter of "opinion." Hence, for a long time, the idea that cigarette smoking caused cancer was thought to be an "opinion." Many other issues of cause and effect are in the same boat as far as pre-scientific bourgeois journalism is concerned; however, something like who liberated Auschwitz is supposed to be a directly observed matter of "fact" even by bourgeois journalist standards, so there is no excuse for the Lieberman quote being un- rebutted anywhere. MIM Notes standards of journalism exceed New York Times standards for the following reasons: 1) We never throw up our hands and say a matter of cause and effect is a matter of "opinion." MIM does its best to sort out the equivalent of tobacco company lies about smoking not causing cancer. The New York Times and similar bourgeois papers only say smoking causes cancer when everyone agrees, including the tobacco companies. Not surprisingly, this allows everyone who profits from lying to say everything is a matter of "opinion" and get the New York Times's implicit backing. Only after decades of law suits and ridicule, the tobacco companies admitted that smoking causes cancer; then the bourgeois law and journalists recognized that it was a matter of "fact" and not just opinion. In contrast, as soon as MIM knows the scientific evidence, it does not matter if usually profit-oriented special interests oppose the scientific truth: MIM Notes reports it and does not leave erroneous science or pseudo-science un-rebutted. 2) MIM Notes journalistic standards are also higher than New York Times standards, because MIM never claims to be "neutral" or "objective" while the New York Times often does and then fails in being "neutral." No humyn activity is ever neutral. That is especially true in a world divided by class, nation and gender. Such divisions cannot be wished away by rhetoric of objectivity. For its part, MIM Notes has chosen an agenda of following those issues related to war, environmental destruction, world hunger, homelessness and disease. The very choice of an agenda of questions to investigate is not neutral at this time in history when the humyn species is divided and not living in higher stages of communism. As the leading imperialist paper of international news in the United $tates, the New York Times fails most miserably in giving equal time to the Third World governments, leaders and peoples that the U.$. government opposes. When the United $tates bombs Libya or Iraq, one can predict in advance that 85% of the space in the article will go to regurgitating U.S. Government sources and 5 to 15% will go to the other side of the conflict. Far from being "objective" the New York Times does not even provide "equal time" or "fairness" in reporting. Straight talk on the Jews Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan has questioned Lieberman's loyalty, whether it is to Israel or the United $tates first.(2) MIM says this question reveals the illusions the Nation of Islam has about the United $tates. It is the United $tates propping up Israel and it is the United $tates that is the world's number one imperialist power, not Israel. Whether or not Lieberman is loyal to one imperialist or another is not a question the oppressed care much about. In the MIM party organizations, no anti-Semitism is allowed. We oppose Clinton and Gore, but not because Gore has a Jewish running mate or because Clinton fooled around with Lewinsky. People who think Gore has done a good job except for the Lewinsky thing or the Jewish running mate should vote for Gore. At the moment, idiotic books are emerging trying to equate Stalin and Hitler, even from the Jewish point of view and from a point of view revising World War II historical interpretation. Some dumb- ass phony communists claiming to uphold Stalin in the ex-Soviet Union are making matters worse by actually affirming that Stalin really was an anti-Semite, Stalin's grandson being one of these morons. Whether it was intentional or not, Mrs. Hadassah Lieberman's statement is bubbling just below the surface very widely in the Jewish people. With a large portion of the world's Jews living in the United $tates, and with the United $tates being Israel's principal ally, there is a material pull toward fitting into Amerikan culture exerting an influence on Jews as a people, even more than the average ethnic group in the U.$.- dominated world. Chameleon leaders It's much easier to excite interest by young Jews and others in Auschwitz by saying things like U.S. troops liberated Auschwitz, than by telling them the truth about Stalin. That is why there is a spate of books trying to justify why the Jews took the wrong side in the Cold War, why as a group they turned their back on Stalin as soon as the Soviet peoples lost over 22 million dead with the Jews being nearly first in line as beneficiaries of that fight during World War II. MIM has to report that since World War II, particularly in the last generation, most Jews have lost their political sanity. World War II was horrible, so horrible that within a generation, Jews as a group found themselves cutting historical ties they had just made with communist allies. At a material level, it has meant joining the oppressor Amerikan nation in the United $tates or establishing the worst sort of settler nationalism in Israel. At a political level, it means now that the Cold War is over, the Jewish leaders have to explain why they stabbed Stalin in the back and why they even kept quiet about restitution for victims of the Holocaust in order not to embarrass pro-Cold War governments. Strategic errors in internationalism Before the existence of Israel, it was often said that the Jews are cosmopolitan for having no nation and for residing in many countries. Residing in many countries raises strategy questions for Jews and any other dispersed people trying to maintain good relations with other peoples. Mrs. Hadassah Lieberman has contributed to poisoning relations between ex-Soviet peoples and the Jews. To our knowledge, she has not corrected the statement she made; even though it is bound to upset the people still alive who remember millions lost fighting in World War II. Just as Bob Dole is alive today in the United $tates, World War II veterans in the ex-Soviet Union and their loved ones still live. If Lieberman refused to correct her statement poisoning ethnic relations under the dictatorship of the proletariat, she would end up in re-education camp. Instead of sharing a common triumph against the Nazis, the majority of Jews have often turned their back on the Soviet (now ex-Soviet) peoples. For many Soviet peoples, Jewish cosmopolitanism meant a special ticket out of the social-fascist regime, through alliance with Jews abroad, especially through links with U.$. imperialism. The Jews who fled the phony Soviet Union that emerged after Stalin died made their way through U.$. influence and were seen as traitors difficult to bond with. The most unfortunate part is that those Jews who wished to assimilate into the Russian or other ex-Soviet nations could not help but having special privileges to escape the Soviet Union; although many peoples would have liked to go to live in middle class U.$. splendor. The predictable decision of some Jews to migrate to Israel and the United $tates made it more difficult for those Jews who wished to assimilate. MIM would like to clarify that internationalism for us does not mean bourgeois internationalist solidarity. Proletarian internationalism is solidarity for the benefit of the most oppressed. MIM's kind of internationalism does not refer to special bourgeois benefits obtained from having allies in several countries. On the other hand, it may in fact be easier for Jews to understand proletarian internationalism, an advantage that accrues to our side of the struggle--especially when we tend to history and not allow gross distortions. A large minority of Jews will turn traitor to their oppressor nation status and give it up to join with the international proletariat. MIM has reported before on the Russian chauvinist side of anti- Semitism; however, now we point to the strategic errors of the Jews themselves and their ties to U.$. imperialism poisoning their relations with peoples everywhere. The U.$. comrades have a relatively easy job left to ourselves of making sure that Jews are not targeted specially by the oppressed. It was Hitler who placed all the evil of oppressor nations on the Jews. Here we are going to go all the way in attacking the oppressor nations, not just a small fragment of them. This is what our comrades in the ex-Soviet lands need to understand. The material reason for the difficulties concerning anti-Semitism in the ex-Soviet lands is the existence of a white proletariat there. To this white proletariat it seems that Jews had a special out, going to Israel, an imperialist country causing special difficulties or going to the United $tates, another imperialist country. Hence, from the point of view of the ex-Soviet proletariat that is also white racially, there seems to be a different situation than in the United $tates where whites as a group are oppressor nation and benefit from super-profits. The whites in the ex-U.S.S.R. may not realize that Jews are just another minority of whites assimilated into the U.$. imperialist oppressor nation. The proletariat of the ex-U.S.S.R. also needs to know that the Jews only moved from one imperialist society to another in the Brezhnev and Gorbachev eras. Focus on the Jews often reflects illusions about Soviet social-imperialism. It was one thing to complain about Israel's leaning toward the United $tates instead of the Soviet Union under Stalin, but it was another thing to say Jews were especially traitorous to the international proletariat in the 1970s and 1980s. The white proletariat in the ex-Soviet territories is open to the strange arguments of neo-Nazis and some Arab compradors. In reality, the central blame should be placed on U.$. imperialism and secondarily on Israeli imperialism, and never just on the Jews as a group, a path that leads to the Hitlerite redemption of oppressor nations and imperialism. It is not just Jews integrated into U.$. imperialism. It is also Italians, Irish, English, Germans etc. There are even some historically Russian-American, Ukrainian-American people etc. in the United $tates. Much ex-Soviet anti-Semitism today has its material roots in the relative ease of migration of Soviet Jews, which MIM is not going to deny. Even today the ex-Soviet peoples such as the Russian people cannot as simply move to the United $tates. However, we must warn the ex-Soviet proletariat not to fall for the divide and conquer strategy of U.$. imperialism. The imperialists know what they are doing with their uneven immigration and citizenship policies. Nor can the mistakes or intentional strategies of the bourgeois leaders like Lieberman erase the actual historical bond between the Jews and the Soviet peoples. Note: 1. New York Times National Desk, 9 August 2000, Internet version, http://archives.nytimes.com/archives/search/fastweb?getdoc+allyear s2-qpass+db365+564127+1+wAAA+Lieberman%7EAuschwitz%7E 2. USA Today 15 August 2000, http://www.usatoday.com/news/conv/209.htm