Gilad Atzmon

{{bronze}}[[File:Gilad Atzmon.jpg|thumb|right|165px|The Holocaust religion's givin' him the blues]]
{{pundits}}
{{cquote|American Jewry makes any debate on whether the ''[[Protocols of the Elders of Zion]]'' are an authentic document or rather a forgery irrelevant. American Jews do try to control the world, by proxy.|||Gilad Atzmon<ref>https://web.archive.org/web/20180722163305/http://oliverkamm.typepad.com/blog/2005/03/atzmon_watch.html</ref>}}

'''Gilad Atzmon''' {{lived|1963}} is a writer, saxophonist and political activist. Born in [[Israel]], but now living in London, he prefers to be thought of as "a Hebrew-speaking [[Palestinians|Palestinian]]" due to his anti-Israeli views,<ref>http://thescotsman.scotsman.com/features/39I-thought-music-could-heal.3804991.jp?CommentPage=1&CommentPageLength=1000</ref> which have a tendency to spiral into a particular variety of [[antisemitism]]. Atzmon is a near-perfect example of how the extreme right and the radical left can become [[Horseshoe theory|practically indistinguishable]].

==The Holocaust==

Atzmon has been accused of [[Holocaust denial|denying]] the [[Holocaust]]; a blatant fib. Although he says, "I have never denied the Holocaust or any other historical chapter," he also claims to "find the notion of 'holocaust denial' to be meaningless, and on the verge of idiotic."<ref>http://www.gilad.co.uk/writings/gilad-atzmon-being-in-time.html</ref> He has declared "the Holocaust narrative, in its current form, doesn’t make any historical sense".

"If, for instance, the [[Nazis]] wanted the [[Jews]] out of their Reich," he asks, "or even dead, as the [[Zionist]] narrative insists, how come they marched hundreds of thousands of them back into the Reich at the end of the war?" He continues:

{{quotebox|65 years after the liberation of [[Auschwitz]] we should reclaim our history and ask why? Why were the Jews hated?  Why did European people stand up against their next door neighbours?  Why are the Jews hated in the Middle East, surely they had a chance to open a new page in their troubled history?  If they genuinely planned to do so, as the early [[Zionism|Zionists]] claimed, why did they fail?  Why did America tighten its immigration laws amid the growing danger to European Jews? We should also ask for what purpose do the holocaust denial laws serve?  What is the holocaust religion there to conceal?  As long as we fail to ask questions, we will be subjected to Zionists and their Neocons agents’ plots.  We will continue killing in the name of Jewish suffering. We will maintain our complicity in Western imperialist crimes against humanity.

As devastating as it may be, at a certain moment in time, a horrible chapter was given an exceptionally meta-historical status. Its 'factuality' was sealed by draconian laws and its reasoning was secured by social and political settings.  The Holocaust  became the new Western religion.  Unfortunately, it is the most sinister religion known to man.<ref>http://www.gilad.co.uk/writings/truth-history-and-integrity-by-gilad-atzmon.html</ref>}}

Atzmon follows the notion of a "Holocaust religion."  He states that, "it has its priests (Simon Wiesenthal, Elie Wiesel, Deborah Lipstadt, etc.) and prophets (Shimon Peres, Benjamin Netanyahu and those who warn about the Iranian Judeocide to come)," along with, "its commandments and dogmas ('never again', 'six million', etc.)," and, "an esoteric symbolic order (kapo, gas chambers, chimneys, dust, Musselmann, etc.) ...is coherent enough to define the new 'antichrists' (the Deniers) and it is powerful enough to persecute them (Holocaust denial laws)." According to Atzmon, "[i]n the new religion it is 'the Jew' whom the Jews worship" and concludes that the typical follower of the Holocaust religion "is there to 'schlep' the entirety of world Jewry to Zion at the expense of the indigenous Palestinian people. For the Socialist Jew, the project is slightly more complicated. For him redemption means setting a [[New World Order|new world order]], namely a [[socialist]] haven."<ref>https://web.archive.org/web/20140327124133/http://www.iamthewitness.com/Gilad-Atzmon-Purim.html</ref>

==Other views==

Atzmon comments on Jewish objections to Charles Dickens' Fagin and Shakespeare's Shylock; he believes that this attitude is misguided, as both characters are pretty accurate: "Fagin is the ultimate plunderer, a child exploiter and usurer. Shylock is the blood-thirsty merchant. With Fagin and Shylock in mind Israeli barbarism and organ trafficking seem to be just other events in an endless hellish continuum."<ref>http://www.gilad.co.uk/writings/symbolic-identifiers-and-jewish-stereotypes-by-gilad-atzmon.html</ref>

Atzmon has also called America "the Jewish promised land," stating that its "ruthless materialism" makes it culturally perfect for the Jews.<ref>https://web.archive.org/web/20170611202514/https://www.alterinfo.net/Gilad-Atzmon-Messing-with-the-Zohan_a24032.html</ref>

==Supporters==

Sunny Singh, an author and senior lecturer in creative writing at London Metropolitan University, has written favorably about Atzmon, stating that she appreciates his writing even though she does not always agree. She has been criticized for her support of the man but scoffed at these objections, comparing criticisms of Atzmon to [[Muslim]] criticisms of [[Salman Rushdie]].<ref>http://sunnysinghonline.blogspot.com/2011/09/as-for-rushdie-and-mistry-so-for-gilad.html</ref> Another advocate is 
broadcaster/politician
 [[George Galloway]]. On a 2015 edition of ''Sputnik'', his programme for RT, Galloway said he was "enthralled" by Atzmon's ''The Wandering Who'' and was reading a chapter from the book every night to his (fourth) wife with the result "we went to bed thinking of you".<ref>[https://cst.org.uk/news/blog/2015/01/06/when-george-schmoozed-gilad "When George  Schmoozed Gilad"], Community Security Trust blog, 6 January 2015.</ref>

==Raise Your Banners and Hope not Hate==

In 2011 Atzmon was invited to perform a concert at Raise Your Banners, a music festival in Bradford.<ref name=ryb><capture>http://raiseyourbanners.org/index.php?page=gilad-atzmon-concert</capture></ref>  Atzmon's critics attacked the Arts Council for giving the festival a £4,000 lottery grant; an Arts Council spokesperson responded by arguing that Atzmon was attending as a musician rather than a political writer,<ref>http://www.thejc.com/news/uk-news/58408/lottery-cash-funds-jew-hate-jamboree</ref> despite Raise Your Banners describing itself as a "festival of political song"<ref>http://raiseyourbanners.org/index.php?page=About-RYB</ref> and its website speaking approvingly of Atzmon's "fiery political rhetoric".<ref name=ryb/>

Amongst the concert's protestors were Nick Lowles and his antifascist organization [[Hope not Hate]].<ref>http://www.hopenothate.org.uk/blog/article/1487/pull-the-plug-on-gilad-atzmon</ref> Atzmon responded to Hope not Hate's attack by quoting from an article about Lowles published by the organization Civil Liberty; after Civil Liberty was exposed as a front for the [[BNP|British National Party]], Atzmon removed the quotation from his website.<ref>http://hurryupharry.org/2011/11/21/atzmon-quotes-from-bnp-website-to-attack-hope-not-hate/</ref>

The protests were dismissed by Raise Your Banners: "The request has come principally from the Jewish Socialists’ Group and some individual supporters of Raise your Banners festival", said festival secretary Sam Jackson. "We have discussed the matter with the Palestine Solidarity Campaign and are satisfied that PSC have no boycott of Gilad Atzmon or events that he is involved in."<ref>http://engageonline.wordpress.com/2011/11/22/raise-your-banners-reply-to-the-call-to-cancel-the-appearance-of-gilad-atzmon-at-their-festival/</ref> [[Red herring|This is a curious defense]], as the Palestine Solidarity Campaign is itself no stranger to accusations of antisemitism.

==References==

{{reflist|2|80%}}

{{DEFAULTSORT: Atzmon, Gilad}}
[[Category:Antisemites]]
[[Category:Holocaust denialists]]
[[Category:Internalized discrimination]]
[[Category:Musicians]]
[[Category:Living people]]
[[Category:British people]]

Categories: Antisemites, Holocaust denialists, Internalized discrimination, Musicians, Living people, British people