NOTE: As regular readers know, I am of course very much a Zionist myself. I am also a political leftist, albeit a skeptical one, including of claims of leftists at times. Finally, I'm a secularist with a graduate theological degree, which gets us to the facts of the matter.
I had decided to follow this Emmanuel Goldstein, which surely is not his actual name, but rather lifted from "1984," per Wiki, after some comments by him on The Dissident, followed by him following me.
I noticed many of his posts were rants without coherence. Then, a May 15 piece about Zechariah 9-14 dropped other masks, namely:
It is important to study chapters 9-14 of Zechariah as a cohesively unified narrative and not as two further-subdivided designations of “Deutero-Zechariah” and “Trito-Zechariah” argued by scoffing “higher critics” denying divine inspiration. ...
The fact all of Zechariah was authored by Zechariah the (grand)son4 of Iddo is provable, but unfortunately for brevity’s sake that’s not a topic for today. The specific canard peddled by the “higher critics” worthy of refuting here is their “Trito-Zechariah” theory positing” chapters 12-14 is completely different from 9-11.” ...
The mainstream realm of bogus “hermeneutical study” paving the way for a racially literalized Zionist-Nazi misapplication of Zech. 13:8-9 necessitates these escalating steps of unbiblically outrageous total disregard for the Hebrew Jewish scriptures inspired by the direction of Almighty God
OK, this secularist with a graduate theological degree isn't standing for that. Beyond this fundagelical being wrong (the piece comes off like he swallowed a fundagelical commentary or a non-KJV version of something like a Scofield Reference Bible), the last paragraph claiming that critical scholarship is all in the service of Zionism is bullshit.
BULLSHIT. I did not "restack with a note," but instead, independently posted, this, with link:
I am one of those scoffing “higher critics,” and this piece may be the last straw in leading me to unfollow Goldstein again. That’s even more true where, at the end of the piece, he shows himself to be a fundagelical Christian of some sort, and “May be” has now become “will.” His writings on the current situation in the Middle East use language more turbulent than in this piece (seriously) and that last paragraph puts some of them in a new light. I suspect that he’s one of these Messianic Christians, like Joey Dauben of my long-ago knowledge, who does things like Jesus-based Passover Seders even though seders didn’t exist at the time of Jesus and also that, per some scholarship, he might not have been killed on Passover week anyway.
It drew comment from him, to which I doubled down (NOT quoting him here):
I am actually one of “those people” myself. I’m a secularist with a graduate theological degree, undergraduate degree in classical languages. Hebrew today is quite rusty, but biblical Greek not totally so (nor classical or ecclesiastical Latin).
This is not to argue that Zionism is not somewhat distorted. It is to argue that fundagelical Christianity is just as much so, to put it bluntly, without getting into arguments about various types of millennialism, or amillenialism or anything else (per fundamentalist versions of old mainline Calvinists and Lutherans vs modern evangelicals).
And, that's that.
I had, even before the "unfollow" decision, noted that the actual URL is "adversusbabylon." So, is Zionism the "beast"? Or is this guy a fundamentalist Calvinist or Lutheran for whom the papacy is the beast? I discounted that because he has nothing along those lines, at first. But I looked again. Take this piece:
The Jesuits used Freemasonic British intelligence to propagate the “Christian Zionist”/dispensationalist doctrine to the Protestants that “the Jews” must collectively gather in Palestine as a prerequisite for the Second Coming of Jesus Christ
So, he doesn't attack the papacy, but Jesuitical thought? Even though the Jesuits weren't created until after Brother Martin Luther's death, otherwise, that's exactly the type of shit he said. And, having seen the Lutefash eruption in the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod, while this guy bashes what he calls "fascism," he might actually like certain elements of actual fascism. (Actually, per this piece blathering about dialecticist issues, he's as likely, or more likely, to be a thrown-off Trot, or Hoxha-ist [think about it] as anything.)
And, while he differs from Luther and Calvin in calling the papacy the antichrist, he fuses that with elements of their thought and modern American fundagelicalism:
This second beast/False Prophet, by the way, is the United States (the first beast is the Holy Roman Empire)
And that is followed by this:
All roads lead right back to Rome.
OK, at this point, he is all over the milennialist map. That said, Luther missed a beat, with his antisemitic ravings plus his claim the papacy was antichrist, by not claiming the papacy was under Jewish control. Call this "Jewish incense burners" or "Jewish Mass transubstantiation bells" instead of "Jewish space lasers."
I am trying to relate this to his broader political stances. My best guess, per this piece, is that if you take old time paleoconservative Walter Karp and ran him through some type of libertarian political filter plus a millennialist theological filter, you'd get this guy. And, that's a hugely toxic brew.
And, per the people he recommends? Michael Ginsberg follows 9/11 "truthers." "The Straight Juice" has a "plandemic" type note at the top of their feed as of May 15.)
Beyond that? Per this piece, I don't know what he "is," but he's anti-third party. (And, Ken Silverstein accused ME of political moral purity.) And, the rest of that piece is scary / batshit crazy, starting with the claim that "Luigi Mangione" (his scare quotes and yes he means them as such) is controlled opposition.
And, other than the above? A few additional notes.
First, posting THIS at this length at this piece:
For simplicity sake—because the philosophical word salads of Marxist and Fascist rabble-rousers are too headachingly atrocious to further sift through and dissect—all you need to know is that Hegelian dialectic is grounded on preservation of the status quo and therefore fundamentally “right-wing,” preserving the core of a reactionary construct perpetually. (this is why Fascism is based on “regular” Hegelianism in contrast to Marxism which inverts it—the two are ideologically opposed in their structural application of the dialectic) If the “standard” trajectory of Hegelian dialectic as represented in Fascism points “rightward,” then an inversion turning it “right side up” therefore points “left” on the political spectrum.
When everything you write yourself is word salad, is pots and kettles.
Second, neither Marx nor Engels was Zionist, nor religiously observant Jews. Lenin has bits of Jewish ethnic heritage, but never claimed to be Jewish either religiously nor ethnically. Stalin was totally NOTA on this.
Third, back to the Zechariah piece? Calling the Magen David a "hexagram," by appearing to me to play on "pentagram," probably goes past anti-Zionism and into antisemitism.
And with that, I've wasted more than enough time on this dude and will probably block him at some point in the near future. (In case his degree of cyberstalking is more than it first appears to be, I didn't do that immediately.)
Dude never did answer about his actual religious beliefs, but, yeah, I could see him being in the same neighborhood as the Lutefash.