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Can "The Whole World" Be Wrong?: Lethal Journalism, Antisemitism, and Global Jihad
Landes, a medievalist and historian of apocalyptic movements, takes us through the first years of the third millennium (2000-2003), documenting how a radical inability of Westerners to understand the medieval mentality that drove Global Jihad prompted a series of disastrous misinterpretations and misguided reactions that have shaped our so-far unhappy century. These misinterpretations in 2000, 2001, 2002, and 2005, contributed fundamentally to the ever-worsening moral and empirical disorientations of our information elites (journalists, academics, pundits). So while journalists reported Palestinian war propaganda as news (lethal journalism), they were also reporting Jihadi war propaganda as news (own-goal war journalism). These radical disorientations have created our current dilemma of pervasive information distrust, deep splits within the voting public in most democracies, the politicization of science, and the inability of Western elites to defend their civilization, and instead, to stand down before an invasion.
794 pages, Kindle Edition
Published November 1, 2022
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Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews
February 22, 2023
This book is an outstanding explanation for the profound antisemitism of today's progressives. It thoroughly and systematically explains how it's possible for the LGBTQ community to support Arabs who throw gay people off rooftops, how the US and European media supports the PLO which has no free media against Israel which has a robust free media, how progressive women's groups support an Arab society where women are honor killed and raped against Israel where women are fully equal with men, how anti apartheid liberals support the Arabs who are open practitioners of apartheid and vilify the Israelis who have a thriving Israeli Arab community, how the Democratic party has become the anti Israel party and supports the totally undemocratic Palestinian Authority where no elections are held against the open democracy of Israel. It's antisemitism for sure - but more than that. Everybody who believes in rational thought and is interested in the future of our civilization should read this book.
July 16, 2023
An amazing book, meticulously researched. I learned so much about the mainstream news media and so many terms that pinpoint the zeitgeist of the 21st century: moral schadenfreude, Y2K Mind, oikophobia. Enlightening and at times funny, it is also a warning. I particularly like the "Astoundingly Stupid Statements Discussed in This Chapter" at the end of several chapters because of their irony.
January 8, 2024
This is one of the most important books I’ve read over the last 20 years. I recommend it to anyone who wants a deeper understanding and penetrating analysis of the forces at work since the start of the 21st century.
January 25, 2024
Important book for anyone interested in understanding what's behind the global bias against Israel in the media and self proclaimed progressives/"woke" people.
July 16, 2023
How does one write a book like this and pay so little attention to the impact of the war in Iraq?
So much of what explains why people acted the way they did, falling over themselves to not seem Islamophobic, wasn't in all cases because people were what Landes calls demopaths. It was because the single most consequential action of the struggle between the West and Global Jihad (something I do not deny existed, like so many of Landes's bogeymen) was the blundersome Iraq invasion which neither advanced the fight against Global Jihad nor in any way avenged 9/11, yet it did result in hundreds of thousands killed. In fact, nothing did better work for the two prongs of Landes's Global Jihad, the actual fighting and on the political front, than the Iraq war. In its wake planeloads of Western-born Muslims would rally to ISIS's banner, and the divisiveness of it both between Western allies and internally within western polities, made easy pickings for anti-Western arguments, whether they were coming from radical clerics or college faculty.
Whether or not you agree with that view of the Iraq War, for very many not wanting to look like you supported something that was exactly what your worst accusers accuse you of was what motivated so much of what Landes complained about, not just postmodern brain. Israel's support for this war and its supporters' criticism of those who opposed it also plays a role here, along with the slow partisanization both by the Israeli government itself, but also by Republicans and Democrats.
After the US government, despite the disagreement of most of its allies, launched a war of choice on a number of ever-changing false or unfalsifiable pretexts and post-hoc justifications that resulted in hundreds of thousands of dead Muslims, it does in fact become a little bit more difficult to deny some of the rhetoric coming from those Muslims about the West being against Islam, no matter what President Bush said about Islam being a religion of peace in an attempt to take the high ground after 9/11 (something only Landes and a few Never-Trumper Ex-Bushies seem to remember at all).
Oh, and there's the other thing Landes doesn't talk about much: Trump. Except for those two things, Trump and Iraq, Landes has a decent take of what's left of 21st century history.
Yes, the leaders of Global Jihad had a lot more popular sympathy than our media wanted to admit; yes, men like bin Laden and ISIS want to kill us all and promulgate sharia; yes, Israel gets hosed in the press; yes, Western Media is far too credulous of the Palestinians, no matter how many times the former get caught making it up; yes, Israel is the front line of that struggle (the way Ukraine is the front line against Russia); yes, Western politicians think a lot more about their Nobels than the facts on the ground.
I mostly agree with what Landes has to say about how things are portrayed. I agree with him about the "their side, right or wrong" mentality of the postmodern left. But, again, in the case of the United States, a large part of being defiant about these issues was due to Iraq at first and later due to Trump's very first agenda item being a Muslim ban, something that many Americans felt were not how we roll.
Again, even if you personally or Landes personally doesn't share that view, if you want to understand why people were acting a certain way, then you have to know what they're thinking. Those things were much more in the front of most Americans' minds.
This could be used as a strong argument for why it's so odd that Pro-Palestinian planks show up in every disparate lefty protest group no matter what their organizing theme is. Somehow, what everyone insists is only a matter of a few square miles here or there in Land For Peace®, is the key to solving wealth inequality, climate change, the legacy of slavery in the United States, and women's rights. The reason isn't, as Landes's reality implies, that everyone in the United States is a fervent antisemite. It's that they aren't (apathy is the supermajority here), and, so when those people show up you in every group, ask yourself why.
Answering that question will tell you more about the games that are played in the media and the Professional Left than insisting it's propaganda penetrating broad swaths of a population that's actually depressingly indifferent. Twitter is not real life, for better or worse.
I think if Landes really intended to reach and convert the progressive/liberal audience he claims to want to reach, rather than just beat them up, he would have taken more care with those issues.
So much of what explains why people acted the way they did, falling over themselves to not seem Islamophobic, wasn't in all cases because people were what Landes calls demopaths. It was because the single most consequential action of the struggle between the West and Global Jihad (something I do not deny existed, like so many of Landes's bogeymen) was the blundersome Iraq invasion which neither advanced the fight against Global Jihad nor in any way avenged 9/11, yet it did result in hundreds of thousands killed. In fact, nothing did better work for the two prongs of Landes's Global Jihad, the actual fighting and on the political front, than the Iraq war. In its wake planeloads of Western-born Muslims would rally to ISIS's banner, and the divisiveness of it both between Western allies and internally within western polities, made easy pickings for anti-Western arguments, whether they were coming from radical clerics or college faculty.
Whether or not you agree with that view of the Iraq War, for very many not wanting to look like you supported something that was exactly what your worst accusers accuse you of was what motivated so much of what Landes complained about, not just postmodern brain. Israel's support for this war and its supporters' criticism of those who opposed it also plays a role here, along with the slow partisanization both by the Israeli government itself, but also by Republicans and Democrats.
After the US government, despite the disagreement of most of its allies, launched a war of choice on a number of ever-changing false or unfalsifiable pretexts and post-hoc justifications that resulted in hundreds of thousands of dead Muslims, it does in fact become a little bit more difficult to deny some of the rhetoric coming from those Muslims about the West being against Islam, no matter what President Bush said about Islam being a religion of peace in an attempt to take the high ground after 9/11 (something only Landes and a few Never-Trumper Ex-Bushies seem to remember at all).
Oh, and there's the other thing Landes doesn't talk about much: Trump. Except for those two things, Trump and Iraq, Landes has a decent take of what's left of 21st century history.
Yes, the leaders of Global Jihad had a lot more popular sympathy than our media wanted to admit; yes, men like bin Laden and ISIS want to kill us all and promulgate sharia; yes, Israel gets hosed in the press; yes, Western Media is far too credulous of the Palestinians, no matter how many times the former get caught making it up; yes, Israel is the front line of that struggle (the way Ukraine is the front line against Russia); yes, Western politicians think a lot more about their Nobels than the facts on the ground.
I mostly agree with what Landes has to say about how things are portrayed. I agree with him about the "their side, right or wrong" mentality of the postmodern left. But, again, in the case of the United States, a large part of being defiant about these issues was due to Iraq at first and later due to Trump's very first agenda item being a Muslim ban, something that many Americans felt were not how we roll.
Again, even if you personally or Landes personally doesn't share that view, if you want to understand why people were acting a certain way, then you have to know what they're thinking. Those things were much more in the front of most Americans' minds.
This could be used as a strong argument for why it's so odd that Pro-Palestinian planks show up in every disparate lefty protest group no matter what their organizing theme is. Somehow, what everyone insists is only a matter of a few square miles here or there in Land For Peace®, is the key to solving wealth inequality, climate change, the legacy of slavery in the United States, and women's rights. The reason isn't, as Landes's reality implies, that everyone in the United States is a fervent antisemite. It's that they aren't (apathy is the supermajority here), and, so when those people show up you in every group, ask yourself why.
Answering that question will tell you more about the games that are played in the media and the Professional Left than insisting it's propaganda penetrating broad swaths of a population that's actually depressingly indifferent. Twitter is not real life, for better or worse.
I think if Landes really intended to reach and convert the progressive/liberal audience he claims to want to reach, rather than just beat them up, he would have taken more care with those issues.
August 7, 2024
Wow !
It was after 911 that I first heard the phrase “Islam is the religion of peace.” It was obvious why. Then I heard it again during the Obama Administration, however, the context eluded me and I moved on with my life. After I retired in 2017 I began reading, to catch up on the world that I missed while working for 35 years. I focused on my birthright, Israel - and, in part, why American Jews were silent when Obama failed to veto UN Resolution 2334. Eventfully, I figured this out. But the topic of this book, eluded me for some time. Wish I had read this book much sooner.
This is a masterclass on Western elite suicide. How Islam highjacked Western leaders by using democracy - Trojan Horse style, to destroy democracy itself. The author chronicles several incidents (Al Durah and Jenin) where lies were told and the world believed the propaganda. After painstaking investigation and documentation, the author rightly concludes these incidents never happened as portrayed. But it was too late. The lie had made itself around the world and the damage was done.
The author told of the Global Progressive Left and the psychology of why it fell victim to Islam’s propaganda. He exposed the media and how journalism propagated the lies. He discussed the nature of Islam as the premodern zero-sum honor cult as well as anti-Zionist Jews and their pathology of self criticism.
Fascinating book.
It was after 911 that I first heard the phrase “Islam is the religion of peace.” It was obvious why. Then I heard it again during the Obama Administration, however, the context eluded me and I moved on with my life. After I retired in 2017 I began reading, to catch up on the world that I missed while working for 35 years. I focused on my birthright, Israel - and, in part, why American Jews were silent when Obama failed to veto UN Resolution 2334. Eventfully, I figured this out. But the topic of this book, eluded me for some time. Wish I had read this book much sooner.
This is a masterclass on Western elite suicide. How Islam highjacked Western leaders by using democracy - Trojan Horse style, to destroy democracy itself. The author chronicles several incidents (Al Durah and Jenin) where lies were told and the world believed the propaganda. After painstaking investigation and documentation, the author rightly concludes these incidents never happened as portrayed. But it was too late. The lie had made itself around the world and the damage was done.
The author told of the Global Progressive Left and the psychology of why it fell victim to Islam’s propaganda. He exposed the media and how journalism propagated the lies. He discussed the nature of Islam as the premodern zero-sum honor cult as well as anti-Zionist Jews and their pathology of self criticism.
Fascinating book.
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews