RAW defends satire

[This is an email sent out by Robert Anton Wilson on April 1, 2004, to a group email list that included Eric Wagner, R.U. Sirius and others. In this one, RAW responds to Bruce Kodish, who takes him to task for allegedly blurring the lines between real antisemitism and a more satiric variety. Michael Johnson, who seems to know everything, explains, "Bruce Kodish is one of the more prominent writers on the current Institute for General Semantics scene, and published a bio of Korzybski not long ago, although none of the 60-odd libraries I have acccess to have bought it. Kodish wrote a book called Drive Yourself Sane. After that book came out he revealed his rather obvious partisanship for the Israelis and not for the Palestianians. This set RAW off. I remember him writing "He should drive himself sane." Eric Wagner shared this with me, and so I share it with you. I've put RAW's comments in bold. -- The Mgt.]

Dear Bob,
 Where does guerilla ontology end and helping spread rumors begin?
Regards,
 Bruce


You came in too late on this one. I passed on a
 JFK theory blaming  Israel
along with a parody by meself blaming extra-terrestrials


 I didn't think that I came too late. I read what you were passing on, the
"L.B.J. is a Sephardic Jew," etc. stuff.   And though it goes without
surely don't consider you an antisemite. Not at all, not at all. 

[Why, thank you,sir. Wd you go so far as to say you don't
consider me a fascist, a cannibal or a CIA disinformation
agent? Wot with the death of humor in this moribund republic,
I badly need testimonials on all those issues,
among udders....
--Damned Old Crank]


Guerilla ontology ends where satire becomes invisible...
 which depends on IQ and hilaritas of each reader.

However.....8-)

[Oh damn here it comes..
-D.O.C.]

 Where satire approaches invisibility (For example, foo's later missive?) 
then the possibility exists for the 'satire' to get taken seriously and to
affect readers and listeners in a multitude of ways, perhaps negative
ways. And then--does the satirist have any responsiblity for some of those
results? Maybe.

[How much responsibility wd you assign Swift for any English
owners who began buying and eating the babies of their
Irish tennants?
 Or Mark Twain for  those who decided
the oyster really exists to provide a gourmet treat
for JD Rockefeller?
 Or Flaubert for any increase in
adultery among French housewives?
More to the point -- how much do you blame J Joyce
for the anti-semitic ravings of citizen Cusack
in Ulysses?
How strict yr form of Political Correctness?
--DOC]

 Yelling "Fire" in a crowded theatre may qualify as the paradigm of
irresponsible speech. Can passing on conspiracy theories, even with
satirical intent, become irresponsible in a similar way? Maybe. When and
where does it begin to do so? Well, it seems like a matter of degree,
depends upon context, etc.

[Without irony, I cite Rev Ivan Stang as one who
has more sense of humor and more unnerstandin' of my
dumb ideas than you have-- he says  I recognize strong
maybes and weak maybes. http://www.maybelogic.com/
You seem to brood inordinately over very
very very very very weak maybes.
--DOC]

 Antisemitic speech doesn't insult me. I take it seriously because as you
know "as the thinker thinks..." and antisemitic doctrines help create and
perpetuate toxic neuro-evaluational environments. People's lives may be at
stake, including my own and those of close friends and relatives. The
antisemitic garbage that you were 'passing on' and then parodying has
reached pandemic levels in the Arab/Islamic world, thinly masked within
anti-zionism, and has grown among many educated Europeans (especially
leftists) and many of their American academic 'friends', among others.
Synagogues have been bombed in Turkey and North Africa, and burned and
vandalized in Europe. Jews are getting attacked and murdered again for
'being' Jews.


[So I shd fight that yr heavyhanded moralistic way,
and not the way for which
I seem to have some real talent, namely satire a la Swift
and reductio ad absurdum a la Voltaire?
--DOC]


 I have no objection to displaying examples of antisemitism for
examination, critique and parody. I   object to how it is done. For
example, when the example is presented with insufficient quotes, i.e. ,
without framing of the material as an example of "bullshit" or with
insufficient critique. Or if a satire has enough invisiblity that it may
get mistaken for the 'real' thing. Then the satirist may become a
promoter. Or mistakenly get 'identified' as an antisemite. It could
happen.

[See my essay "How to Read" in COINCIDANCE:A HEAD TEST
or az Hugh Kenner once said,
"The  fear of the Word is the beginning of reading"
--DOC]

 Such considerations might at least inspire writers and speakers to think
twice or thrice about possible consequences of what they put out--unless
they think of themselves as all-knowing or just could not care less. 
Call it cogitus interruptus to avoid premature verbal ejaculations.

   I do try to follow my own advice, as I don't consider myself exempt.

  [As I wrote 2 years ago ---   http://www.rawilsom.com/thoughts
Bloomsdayy 2001


  Schrodinger's Jew

       97 years ago today Leopold Bloom, a fictitious man, wandered the
streets of Dublin, a real city; and Joyce scholars still argue about his
odd odyssey. I would like to add to the confusion with a note about Bloom's
"Jewishness."

"Is" Leopold Bloom a Jew?

Not according to Orthodox Rabbinical law, which defines a Jew as the child
of a Jewish mother. Bloom as the child of a Protestant mother "is not" a
Jew.

According to Nazi law, however, a Jew "is" a person with a known Jewish
ancestor. Bloom as the son of Rudolph Bloom [born Rudolph Virag], "is" a
Jew.

See how easily a person can "be" and "not be" a Jew at the same time?

On the third hand, most humanists define a Jew as one who believes in and
practices the Judaic religion. By this definition, Bloom who neither
believes in nor practices any religion "is not" a Jew. But Marilyn Monroe,
who practiced and probably tried to believe in Judaism while married to
Arthur Miller, "was" a Jew by that definition-- for those few years, if not
before or after.

Extensionally or phenomenologically, a Jew "is" somebody considered Jewish
by all or most of the people he meets. By this standard the multi-ordinal
Bloom "is" a Jew again.

Once more: in terms of pure existentialism a Jew "is" somebody who chooses
to consider themselves Jewish. Bloom obviously doesn't consider himself
Jewish but Irish, most of the time. Only when under verbal assault by the
anti-semitic Citizen in Barney Kiernan's pub does Bloom define himself as
Jewish ["And Jesus was a Jew too. Your god. He was a Jew like me."] Here he
obviously has in mind the "known Jewish ancestor" rule, because he adds
"And so was his father," to which the Citizen replies, as a correct
Catholic, "He had no father," and Bloom, unfamiliar with that theology --
logic played with deuces, eights and one-eyed jacks wild -- can only
pragmatically reply, "Well, his uncle then."

But recalling the incident later, Bloom says "And he called me a Jew, which
as a matter of fact I'm not." Here he returns to his customary "believer in
Judaic religion" definition.

I suppose Joyce made Bloom such a tangled genetic and cultural mixture to
expose the absurdities of anti-semitism; but I also suspect that he wanted
to undermine that neurolinguistic habit which postmodernists call
"essentialism" and which Korzybski claimed invades our brains and causes
hallucinations or delusions every time we use the word "is."

--Dam o' Crnk]

 Bruce Kodish's Weblog at
 http://www.newciv.org/nl/newslog.php/_v256

 "Words are powerful enough to lead to love,
but can lead to hatred and terrible pain as well.
 We must be extremely careful how we use them."
 --Joseph Telushkin


[Postscript--

I confess that I have never written anything "in prose
or worse" not sbject to misunderstanding. Vide infra, dig?

"Both  Leary and Wilson have been funded by the CIA since at least the late
sixties....Wilson does have a sense of humor, but remember his smirking
antics are at your expense." --Anonymous leaflet, NYU, 30 April 1990

"Wilson describes himself as a 'guerilla ontologist,' signifying his intent
to attack language and knowledge the way terrorists attack their targets:
to jump out from the shadows for an unprovoked attack,  then slink back and
hide behind a hearty belly-laugh." -- Robert Sheaffer, Skeptical Inquirer
Summer 1990

"A male feminist...a simpering pussy-whipped wimp." -- Lou Rollins,
Lucifer's Lexicon

Douglas Rushkoff managed to misread my unbelief in absolutes
as dogmatic belief in Fundamentalist Materialism.

Etc

--ye olde crank


olga666@rattlebrain.com
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http://www.deoxy.org/learyraw.htm
a midi pommes bleues

The ultimate weakness of violence is that it is a descending spiral,
begetting the very thing it seeks to destroy. Instead of diminishing evil,

it multiplies it... Returning violence for violence multiplies violence,
adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars. Darkness cannot
drive out hate; only love can do that.
    --Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

If you look into your own heart, and you find nothing wrong
there, what is there to worry about? What is there to fear?
          --KungfuTse

Hatred does not cease by hatred at any time. Hatred ceases
by love. This is an old  rule.
    --Gautama Buddha