Monday, March 12, 2007

Churchill gets Nifonged

The Urban Dictionary defines Nifonged as: the railroading or harming of a person with no justifiable cause, except for one's own gain.
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From Reuters:

A historian has uncovered a pre-World War Two article Winston Churchill wrote about the persecution of Jews but then decided not to publish.

In the long lost article, the wartime leader disapproved of the treatment they experienced, but did say of the Jews: "They have been partly responsible for the antagonism from which they suffer."

Cambridge University lecturer Richard Toye, reflecting on his find, said: "While most people would accept that Churchill was no anti-Semite, this sheds fascinating new light on his views about Jews which were very inconsistent."

While researching in the university's Churchill archives, the historian uncovered the unpublished article in a pile of proofs and press cuttings. "It was a dramatic moment," he said […]
Quite a story if it was true.

But Toye didn’t uncover a “long lost article [by] the wartime leader;” and the article doesn’t reveal Churchill to have been a closet anti-Semite, which Toye all but says he was.

From the International Herald Tribune:
[...] Geoffrey Alderman, a British historian who is a columnist for The Jewish Chronicle in London, said in an interview Sunday that "we have known about this for some time" because the article appears in a collection of Churchill's writings compiled by Martin Gilbert, Churchill's official biographer, that was published in the 1980s.

Alderman added: "It does not challenge" the prevailing view of Churchill as supportive of the Jews. "I think it's a flash in the pan."

But Toye said Churchill had sought to publish the article in 1937 in Britain and the United States. Churchill "was apparently happy to put his name to this article in 1937" and was "happy to endorse sentiments contained in articles that were written for him," Toye said.

Gilbert said Churchill had refused to permit the article to be published. He identified the ghost-writer as Adam Marshall Diston, a member of Oswald Mosley's British Union of Fascists. It was not clear why Churchill commissioned him to write an article in his name.[...]
And this from the TimesOnline:
[…] Gilbert said Richard Toye, the lecturer who “found” the article and includes it in a new book, Lloyd George and Churchill ( It’s to be released Mar. 16 in the UK by Macmillan. JinC), must have failed to consult Gilbert’s compilation of Churchill’s writings published in the 1980s, which describes it.

“I’m amazed. My book would have been on the shelf in the same library. I immediately recognised the name of the article,” said Gilbert, whose own new book, Churchill and the Jews, will be published this summer.
Gilbert no doubt was being more than a touch ironic when he said he was “amazed” Toye hadn’t consulted his book.

Besides having at-hand access to Gilbert's book, Toye could very easily have contacted Gilbert, the world’s leading Churchill scholar, to ask Gilbert what he knew about the “long lost article.” Serious scholars do that sort of thing all the time; and Gilbert has a reputation for being very responsive to other scholars’ inquiries.

But if Toye had consulted Gilbert’s book (I'm assuming Toye didn’t consult Gilbert’s book and then later “forget” he did.) or contacted him, Toye and Cambridge University couldn’t now be trumpting, on the eve of publication of Toye’s book, that he'd “unearthed” the “long lost aricle.”

In a TimesOnline op-ed, “Racism is too real to be used as a cheap gibe,” Stephen Pollard, Chairman of the European Institute for the Study of Contemporary Anti-Semitism, gives Toye some knocks and then reminds us that unjustified insinuations of anti-Semitism serve to deaden us to real instances of it which, unfortunately, are on the rise in Britian.

Scott Johnson at Powerline posted on the story. I hope you give his post a look.

In a day or two I’ll post again on Toye’s blatantly promotional claims. I'll also post asking why Cambridge University has been helping hype them.

8 comments:

Anonymous said...

cedarford, Please direct me to the text or texts upon which your comment is based.

JWM said...

Dear Cederford,

I echo Straightarrow's query.

John

Anonymous said...

"The dispatching of the Czar's family was done by a Jewish cell, and Jews were blamed for the act widely, though Lenin and other non-Jews were part of the decision."

Cedar, that's a new one for me, interesting theory. May I get a reference work?

And JWM, I found an ad at National Review online about a forum planned for Thursday in Washington DC entitled "What went wrong at Duke?"

I can;t find an email for this site, and I'm too dimwitted to know how to post a hyperlink.

Anonymous said...

I went on NRO and found this article by Hess, figured their ad-server engine would pop up the ad. No luck.

-AC

Anonymous said...

Duh, googled ("what went wrong at duke" Washington) and found it.

It is the Independent Women's Forum presenting Jeffrey Toobin (CNN), Allison Kasic (IWF), Christina Sommers (War against boys), and Stuart Taylor (NRO).

And it is 5pm on Thu.

-AC

Anonymous said...

cedarford, I am not disputing what you say. I am not in a position to do so. I just want to know where I can find the work this came from so I may purchase a copy for myself. Or be on the lookout if it is out of print.

Anonymous said...

Thanks for the help AC, I should have specified that it wasn't and "ad" per se, but part of a post on NRO's always-excellent Phi Beta Cons blog (the only reason, other than reading Victor David Hanson, I go to NRO.)

And Cedar, I echo Straight's post, I just need some edifying.

Anonymous said...

Cedarford said: "But you know that. Your request for links is somewhat duplicitous."

Well, dude, your posts are so long and contain so many assertions that I hear a buzzing in my head and skip by them, mostly. I suspect others have a more severe reaction.

But I did read these, as I know nothing about the Russian revolution, and I did go to Wikipedia to read the article.

I have to say that the article struck me as being very conspiracy theory ridden, on a high level read, and with no other knowledge of the subject. Which always makes me suspicious.

I did also note, that aside from the one reference, you continually used phrases such as: "is well understood" and "is well known."

I'm not sure I'd take wikipedia as my sole source of knowledge for any subject, given their ongoing and well publicized (!!) problems.

Sorry for the long post, if I'd had longer, I would have written less.

-AC