Alex Gordon

Jewish Biography: Wilhelm Reich and the Sexual Revolution

Reich’s calls for a return to the sexual practices of primitive societies repulsed many. Marcuse criticizes Reich in Eros and Civilization, although he is also a neo-Marxist and a supporter of the sexual revolution: “Sexual liberation per se becomes for Reich a panacea for individual and social ills. […] A shameless primitivism begins to prevail, foreshadowing Reich’s wild and fantastic predilections in the years to come.” Criticizing Reich for “primitivism” became a common view of his theory and practice. [Alex Gordon]

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Alex Gordon, International, Staff and Bylined Contributors

‘Instead of an Epitaph’: A Yom HaShoah Reflection

The Nazis were defeated in World War II, but Nazism lives on and continues to make up smears about the Jews, including the popular claim that they did not fight in World War II. The blood libel “Jews didn’t fight” coexisted with the official false statement: “It was not Jews who were killed during the occupation, but Soviet citizens.” The places of mass extermination listed “Soviet citizens” as having been murdered. The Holocaust was hushed up in the USSR: Jews in these places were executed not because they were Soviet citizens, but because they were Jews. [Alex Gordon]

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Alex Gordon, International, Israel, Jewish History, Staff and Bylined Contributors

Jewish Biography: Ilya Ehrenburg, One Handshake Away

In 1940, Ehrenburg came to the USSR from occupied Paris. He returned to the country, where the repression of 1937 proved to him the cruelty of the authorities. The writer received frightening news from Izvestia in 1939: although he continued to be on the newspaper’s staff, his reports and articles would not be published. The USSR was changing its attitude toward Jews because of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Treaty. [Alex Gordon]

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Alex Gordon, Antisemitism, Books, Poetry & Short Stories, International, Jewish History, Staff and Bylined Contributors

Democracies Have Inherent Self-Destructive Tendencies According to Academicians

Arrow received the Nobel Prize in economics in 1972 for proving the impossibility of simultaneously meeting the requirements of reasonableness and equality and the impossibility of establishing the ranking of social priorities. According to the Gödel-Arrow theorem, any electoral system is flawed. [Alex Gordon, PhD]

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Alex Gordon, International, Science, Medicine, & Education, Staff and Bylined Contributors, USA

Jewish Biography: Eduard Bernstein, Socialist Reformer

In 1878, Bernstein read Friedrich Engels’ just-published book Anti-Dühring, under the influence of which he became a Marxist and entered into correspondence with the author of the book, who later became his friend. Engels accused the philosopher Eugene Dühring of “Judophobia exaggerated to the point of caricature.” [Alex Gordon]

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Alex Gordon, Antisemitism, Jewish History, Staff and Bylined Contributors

Envy, Jealousy Aroused by Jews Prompted ‘Protocols of the Elders of Zion’ Forgery

The German historian, philologist and jurist Theodor Mommsen, author of The History of Rome and winner of the 1902 Nobel Prize for Literature, however, gave a rational explanation for the satanic design of antisemitism: its main cause was rooted in “envy and primal instincts, […] a barbaric hatred of education, freedom and humanism.” [Alex Gordon]

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Alex Gordon, International, Israel, Jewish History, Staff and Bylined Contributors

Jewish Biography: Leon Trotsky, ‘The Red Prophet’

In 1926 Trotsky, who was engaged in an unequal struggle with Stalin in the Moscow party organization, encountered manifestations of antisemitism on the part of his Bolshevik comrades. In a letter to another Bolshevik leader, Nikolai Bukharin, he asks: “Is this possible? Is it possible that in our party, in the workers’ cells, here in Moscow, people resort to antisemitism with impunity? Is it possible?” [Alex Gordon]

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Alex Gordon, Antisemitism, International, Jewish History, Staff and Bylined Contributors

Jewish Biography: Leon Blum, Natural Socialist

Reflecting on the Dreyfus affair, on the aggression of the anti-Dreyfusards, Blum puzzledly asked: “What drove them to do this? What drove them? Even today, 35 years later, when I reflect on the past with a mature, cold rationality, it seems to me that I still do not have some of the elements of an answer to this question.” [Alex Gordon]

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Alex Gordon, Books, Poetry & Short Stories, Holocaust, International, Jewish History, Staff and Bylined Contributors

OpEd: Who Are the True Colonizers in the Middle East?

By Alex Gordon HAIFA, Israel — In the world of “progressives,” Israel’s struggle for existence is presented as something outdated, unfashionable, and not modern. This perception is linked to a picture of the conflict that is convenient and profitable for them. The Israelis are seen as imperialists oppressing the aboriginal Arabs. But the fact is

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Alex Gordon, Antisemitism, International, Israel, Jewish History, Middle East, Opinion, Staff and Bylined Contributors, USA