Listen now (67 mins) | I am joined by Jeremy Carl and he shares the story of his conversion to Christianity, why Jews don't feel the same way Christians as Christians do about them, the Groypers and much, much more.
I am writing to share a further impact that this podcast has had on me.
I have renounced communism.
There are two seemingly related issues, yet perplexingly, they are not. One does not undo the other.
The first intractable issue is that I am throughly propagandized by the c*p. This is not a recent realization. While I was unaware of it during my life in China (2006-2012), (2014-2019), I have understood it to be the case ever since my return to the West five years ago. I don't know how to untangle it. It is a Gordian knot.
It is not a battle in my thinking. It lives in an ambiguous state that has been superimposed over love, memory and experiences. It is kudzu.
The second issue lived way down in the deep pre-propaganda sub-currents.
Last Friday evening, November 1st, I found myself pacing and thinking about things. To my shock and horror, I realized that I still believed in communism. What happened next was swift. There was a lock and there was a key.
The lock appeared before me as a childhood memory. The memory was ordinary, banal even. I asked my father, "What is communism?". My father, who's own father was a communist, and who was at this time in Co-op City far left, replied. He gave a half shrug, he spread out his hands palms up and said "Communism is like Christianity without Christ". I thought or said something to the effect of 'Oh. That's not so bad '.
Behold. In my hand there was a key. On it was written: To Imminentize the Eschaton. I slipped the key into the lock. The fit was precise, perfect. I turned the key (repentance). My soul was thereby freed from spiritual bondage.
To you, good sir, for having placed the key in my hand, my undying gratitude.
It is with apology that I admit to anyone reading that the first issue remains.
Belief in communism is not a requirement to be inculcated with the Chinese project. If I could go so far as to say it this way, belief in communism is an encumbrance to the Chinese project. It is useful only as a general structural framework.
I taught English as a foreign language at various Chinese universities. I remember many of my Chinese students comically groaning at having to attend their boring, obligatory Marxism classes.
My husband, a Mississippian, former card carrying American communist, who had studied under David Harvey, pointed out to me something that surprised me. The Marxism classes were censored. Left out were volatile, potentially destabilizing elements.
I hope to make headway on the first issue as I follow along with you, Kruptos, in your propaganda series based on the writing of Ellul.
I also have one more comment to make. I described the change in demographic composition in Co-op City during the 1970s with the usual cliché of "white flight". I don't want to just leave it at that, because it strikes me as unfair.
I remember smoke on the horizon. Multiple fires burned every day and every night and not a single day or night went by without the fires. I remember standing on my balcony on the 27th floor beside my father. He showed me which direction was Harlem and which direction was the south Bronx. Harlem had some quiet days, but the south Bronx never failed to burn. It was said in those days that the fires were set by the landlords. The value of the land beneath the buildings were of far greater value than the structures built on top. Of no value at all were all the former inhabitants of those buildings.
The children of the former inhabitants of the burned down buildings in the south Bronx were bussed into our capacious schools in Co-op City. The adults used to argue about that, until, one by one, their voices turned to silence through their departure from my city.
I find that I am now looking at that as a prefiguration of today's mass migration.
Once again, MH, thank you for sharing your journey. I have been reading C.S. Lewis as of late and it strikes me that the first sin may not have been pride, but impatience. We wanted knowledge, but did not want to wait on God to give it or not. So we took it. And ever since we have been trying to build paradise over and over again and it always leads to the same end: Babel’s end. The heavenly city, the new Jerusalem, comes down and is given to us by God. We do not build it ourselves.
My whole worldview used to be so very wrong. I sincerely repent for the myriad ways by which it has led me astray. I can make the acknowledgement, but it does little to disturb a nearly perpetual sense of alienation.
Listening to this podcast today, I felt threads stitching me in, weaving me into a larger story. I find it fascinating that it is a Jewish story. More obliquely, it might tie me to a broader story of the world as well.
I'm not even Jewish. I don't even have any direct relationships with anyone who is Jewish. I'll call myself adjacent participant.
Today's podcast has given me an explanatory treasure. Looking for the messiah in the wrong place. I heard a term for the first time on this substack - to imminentize the eschaton. I understood it when I heard it, in the sense that I did not require a dictionary, but today the meaning was brought home.
I spent my childhood in a place that was a socially engineered society, complete with scholastic experimentation which was subsequently disseminated throughout American K through 12 schools, created by a group of Jews in New York city.
I wonder if you might be thinking 'oh boy, here come the crazy talk'. To which I can only say 'ya just can't make this stuff up'.
There's got to be something out on the interwebs about it. I choose not to look it up right now. I don't want to contaminate my present perception with fact checking, so I'll just base it off of what I remember of the oral history.
The place is called Co-op City. It is located in the Bronx in New York. It was created on reclaimed swap land. It was backfilled with garbage (cough cough mafia money). Onto this "land" tall buildings of brutalist architecture were installed.
The social plan may sound a lot like today's "woke", but trust me it was not so brain dead as wokedom, also it included an economic component.
The rhetoric was socialist with an emphasis on racial equality.
I don't know if it was actually written down anywhere, but everyone knew that the racial makeup was supposed to be comprised of one third white, one third black and one third "other". That part didn't pan out. This was 1970s, white flight NYC. I grew up as a racial minority. The other 2 to 4 white kids in any given class would inevitably be Jewish.
My mother and two sisters wanted desperately to leave. High crime and all that. I sided with my father who wanted to stay. Maybe I just lacked good sense. Honestly though, I think it was because I was a well adjusted kid, socially engineered environment or not.
Finally, my father relented and we left for a small town in upstate New York, when I was on the cusp of twelve years old.
My father began to listen to right wing radio and his views changed a lot. Mine did not. I think that early instilling of far left values put me on a very wrong track for a very long time.
To imminentize the eschaton rings so clear and true to me now as the project of the left. Things make sense to me now in a way that they did not just this morning, before I heard the podcast. I am grateful to have been able to listen to your conversation.
Thank you for sharing that. I am so glad to hear that it had an impact and helped put some things in place for you. So many of us here in this sphere have been and are still doing the same. So much we took for granted we now have to re-assess and learn to understand things differently.
May be your first Jewish subscriber…? Appreciate your work in general and think this is a fair assessment of the JQ.
Thank you for the kind words. Welcome aboard.
I am writing to share a further impact that this podcast has had on me.
I have renounced communism.
There are two seemingly related issues, yet perplexingly, they are not. One does not undo the other.
The first intractable issue is that I am throughly propagandized by the c*p. This is not a recent realization. While I was unaware of it during my life in China (2006-2012), (2014-2019), I have understood it to be the case ever since my return to the West five years ago. I don't know how to untangle it. It is a Gordian knot.
It is not a battle in my thinking. It lives in an ambiguous state that has been superimposed over love, memory and experiences. It is kudzu.
The second issue lived way down in the deep pre-propaganda sub-currents.
Last Friday evening, November 1st, I found myself pacing and thinking about things. To my shock and horror, I realized that I still believed in communism. What happened next was swift. There was a lock and there was a key.
The lock appeared before me as a childhood memory. The memory was ordinary, banal even. I asked my father, "What is communism?". My father, who's own father was a communist, and who was at this time in Co-op City far left, replied. He gave a half shrug, he spread out his hands palms up and said "Communism is like Christianity without Christ". I thought or said something to the effect of 'Oh. That's not so bad '.
Behold. In my hand there was a key. On it was written: To Imminentize the Eschaton. I slipped the key into the lock. The fit was precise, perfect. I turned the key (repentance). My soul was thereby freed from spiritual bondage.
To you, good sir, for having placed the key in my hand, my undying gratitude.
It is with apology that I admit to anyone reading that the first issue remains.
Belief in communism is not a requirement to be inculcated with the Chinese project. If I could go so far as to say it this way, belief in communism is an encumbrance to the Chinese project. It is useful only as a general structural framework.
I taught English as a foreign language at various Chinese universities. I remember many of my Chinese students comically groaning at having to attend their boring, obligatory Marxism classes.
My husband, a Mississippian, former card carrying American communist, who had studied under David Harvey, pointed out to me something that surprised me. The Marxism classes were censored. Left out were volatile, potentially destabilizing elements.
I hope to make headway on the first issue as I follow along with you, Kruptos, in your propaganda series based on the writing of Ellul.
I also have one more comment to make. I described the change in demographic composition in Co-op City during the 1970s with the usual cliché of "white flight". I don't want to just leave it at that, because it strikes me as unfair.
I remember smoke on the horizon. Multiple fires burned every day and every night and not a single day or night went by without the fires. I remember standing on my balcony on the 27th floor beside my father. He showed me which direction was Harlem and which direction was the south Bronx. Harlem had some quiet days, but the south Bronx never failed to burn. It was said in those days that the fires were set by the landlords. The value of the land beneath the buildings were of far greater value than the structures built on top. Of no value at all were all the former inhabitants of those buildings.
The children of the former inhabitants of the burned down buildings in the south Bronx were bussed into our capacious schools in Co-op City. The adults used to argue about that, until, one by one, their voices turned to silence through their departure from my city.
I find that I am now looking at that as a prefiguration of today's mass migration.
Once again, MH, thank you for sharing your journey. I have been reading C.S. Lewis as of late and it strikes me that the first sin may not have been pride, but impatience. We wanted knowledge, but did not want to wait on God to give it or not. So we took it. And ever since we have been trying to build paradise over and over again and it always leads to the same end: Babel’s end. The heavenly city, the new Jerusalem, comes down and is given to us by God. We do not build it ourselves.
What you say makes sense to me. I can certainly imagine how impatience tinges our grasp for knowledge.
Then, in our haste to build paradise for ourselves, we f**k it up yet again!
Better we await our master"s return and with Him the coming of the heavenly city of a new Jerusalem, a place given to us by God.
My whole worldview used to be so very wrong. I sincerely repent for the myriad ways by which it has led me astray. I can make the acknowledgement, but it does little to disturb a nearly perpetual sense of alienation.
Listening to this podcast today, I felt threads stitching me in, weaving me into a larger story. I find it fascinating that it is a Jewish story. More obliquely, it might tie me to a broader story of the world as well.
I'm not even Jewish. I don't even have any direct relationships with anyone who is Jewish. I'll call myself adjacent participant.
Today's podcast has given me an explanatory treasure. Looking for the messiah in the wrong place. I heard a term for the first time on this substack - to imminentize the eschaton. I understood it when I heard it, in the sense that I did not require a dictionary, but today the meaning was brought home.
I spent my childhood in a place that was a socially engineered society, complete with scholastic experimentation which was subsequently disseminated throughout American K through 12 schools, created by a group of Jews in New York city.
I wonder if you might be thinking 'oh boy, here come the crazy talk'. To which I can only say 'ya just can't make this stuff up'.
There's got to be something out on the interwebs about it. I choose not to look it up right now. I don't want to contaminate my present perception with fact checking, so I'll just base it off of what I remember of the oral history.
The place is called Co-op City. It is located in the Bronx in New York. It was created on reclaimed swap land. It was backfilled with garbage (cough cough mafia money). Onto this "land" tall buildings of brutalist architecture were installed.
The social plan may sound a lot like today's "woke", but trust me it was not so brain dead as wokedom, also it included an economic component.
The rhetoric was socialist with an emphasis on racial equality.
I don't know if it was actually written down anywhere, but everyone knew that the racial makeup was supposed to be comprised of one third white, one third black and one third "other". That part didn't pan out. This was 1970s, white flight NYC. I grew up as a racial minority. The other 2 to 4 white kids in any given class would inevitably be Jewish.
My mother and two sisters wanted desperately to leave. High crime and all that. I sided with my father who wanted to stay. Maybe I just lacked good sense. Honestly though, I think it was because I was a well adjusted kid, socially engineered environment or not.
Finally, my father relented and we left for a small town in upstate New York, when I was on the cusp of twelve years old.
My father began to listen to right wing radio and his views changed a lot. Mine did not. I think that early instilling of far left values put me on a very wrong track for a very long time.
To imminentize the eschaton rings so clear and true to me now as the project of the left. Things make sense to me now in a way that they did not just this morning, before I heard the podcast. I am grateful to have been able to listen to your conversation.
Thank you for sharing that. I am so glad to hear that it had an impact and helped put some things in place for you. So many of us here in this sphere have been and are still doing the same. So much we took for granted we now have to re-assess and learn to understand things differently.
The kindness, the acceptance in your reply means so much. I feel not alone!