Excommunication and Censure: the Depravity of Harvey Weinstein
The article presented here below, entitled “The Specifically Jewy Perviness of Harvey Weinstein,” first appeared in the Jewish publication Tablet on 9 October 2017; and is now prefaced by an apology written by its author, Mark Oppenheimer. Since the revelations about Weinstein’s sexually depraved conduct were made public, the organized Jewish community has been actively distancing themselves from him.
This censure has taken the form of numerous articles including this one penned by Oppenheimer and an equally damning piece that appeared in The New Yorker. Ironically, however, Oppenheimer revealed a bit too much about Jewish sexuality and the dark underbelly of the Jewish cinematic elite; especially by invoking the works of Philip Roth.[1] Oppenheimer was forced to write an apology because of the revelatory nature of his piece.
The figurative excommunication of Harvey Weinstein is consistent with the notion that academic Kevin MacDonald articulates when speaking about the group ethic of Judaism and its enforcement within the Jewish Community:
the interests of individual Jews were consistently subordinated to the interests of the group. From the standpoint of the group strategy, the goal was to maximize the total resources of the community, not to allow each individual member to maximize his interest.[2]
The comments underneath Oppenheimer’s exposé are a good gauge of the readership’s opinions. To some readers, Oppenheimer in his critique of Weinstein’s reprehensible behaviour, compromised the Jewish community’s interests as well. It is worthy to note that the Tablet charges users to comment beneath its stories and this reader felt that the two dollar expense was worth it:
Dear Mark,
Really?! These Jews are perverts because they want to take revenge on gentiles?
I think David Duke or Louis Farrakhan are looking for speech-writers, which I think you would better contribute to than supposedly pro-Jewish publications like Tablet.
Sincerely,
Sruli BroockerPS – I paid $2 to comment because I felt it was worth refuting this treif.[3]
In other words, it would be best for the Jewish community to distance themselves from Weinstein lest it reflect poorly on the whole community; but Oppenheimer went too far. As far as the comment’s author is concerned the article is treif or non-kosher. MacDonald reveals a strikingly similar pattern of community enforcement that governed Jewish business practices in his monograph A People That Shall Dwell Alone: “There were constant condemnations and bans of excommunication against those who ‘reveal the secrets of Israel’, to merchants or noblemen.”[4] Oppenheimer had revealed some thinly veiled secrets indeed.
It is also interesting to note that Weinstein’s harassment of gentile actresses including Ashley Judd and Emma Watson, would have received less criticism than his harassment of a Jewish woman. He is guilty of that as well: “But it turns out there was a Jew(ess) in the bunch, none other than Lauren Sivan, of the potted-plant episode.”[5]
MacDonald writes about the Jewish religious ideology deriving from the Pentateuch and the Talmud that
took strong cognizance of group membership in assessing the morality of actions ranging from killing to adultery. For example, rape was severely punished only if there were negative consequences to an Israelite male. While rape of an engaged Israelite virgin was punishable by death, there was no punishment at all for the rape of a non-Jewish woman.[6]
Could it be that Weinstein was pilloried in the press because of his treatment of Sivan in particular? As the passage from MacDonald illustrates, there is a historical precedent.
An Apology Regarding Yesterday’s Weinstein Story
Yesterday I published a piece on Harvey Weinstein that many found offensive. The analysis I offered was hasty and ill-considered, especially in light of the even graver accusations that were published by the New Yorker this morning. I take this as a lesson in the importance of knowing as much as one can about a given story, and in taking the time to think and feel things completely through before opining. I apologize for not doing so in this case.
The Specifically Jewy Perviness of Harvey Weinstein
The disgraced film producer is a character straight out of Philip Roth, playing out his revenge fantasies on the Goyim.
At first squint, Harvey Weinstein seems like a very familiar type. Isn’t he the old, same old, another rich, entitled, powerful man with a bad dye job abusing his might to coerce women into sex? Isn’t Harvey just like Roger Ailes, or Bill O’Reilly, or, for that matter, Bill Clinton? But look at the details of the case and you’ll see that the answer is no. Harvey is different. Harvey, sadly, is a deeply Jewish kind of pervert.
As despicable as you may find Ailes, O’Reilly, and the other grabby goyim, you’ll recognize their behavior fits a pattern as old as time itself, as trite as Fox’s complaints about the “war on Christmas”: Men crave sex, and the worst of them will obtain it by whatever means necessary. These despicable gents have power and influence, and they aren’t above promising a lucrative gig—or threatening to take it away—to get laid. In these transactions, women are nothing but objects, and any “consent” is just an illusion. Morally, the men are no better than the pimps who crowd into James Franco’s character’s bar on The Deuce, the new HBO show; psychologically, they are no more complex than the johns. Cash in, cum out. The women are collateral damage.
Harvey did something unique—no less odious, but different. Harvey performed. As we now are hearing (whether we want to or not), he allegedly made a woman watch as he masturbated into a potted plant. And if you want to understand this bizarre behavior, don’t look to Roger Ailes, or David Vitter, or Paul Crouch—look to Philip Roth.
Better than perhaps any other author, Roth captured the particular anxiety of the Jewish American man in the twentieth century, finally coming into power but, having not grown up with it, unsure of what he’s supposed to do now. All those years craving unattainable Gentiles, but never before the means to entice them. The result is Alexander Portnoy of Portnoy’s Complaint, a grown man whose emotional and sexual life is still all one big performance piece, just as it had been when he was a teenager and pleasured himself with a piece of liver.
As a boy, Portnoy fantasized about attaining a mythical shiksa goddess whom he nicknamed Thereal McCoy (get it?), who ice-skates “in her blue parka and her red earmuffs and her big white mittens—Miss America, on blades! With her mistletoe and her plum pudding (whatever that may be),” but as a grown-up he graduates to the real woman he nicknames The Monkey. And what does he do to abase her? He has her perform with an Italian whore. Yes, he eventually joins in, but not before they enact a bad movie—not Hollywood, but San Fernando Valley triple-X. And his nickname for her, The Monkey? That comes from an episode in her life, from before Portnoy met her, when a couple swingers picked her up and wanted her to eat a banana while she watched them copulate. For having a past that gets him hot, she gets degraded with an animalistic nickname. Her history as an actor is what he wants her for.
Harvey is cut from the same cloth. Growing up in Queens, he fantasized of fame and fortune, and, once he got them, he struggled to maintain them by building himself into a larger-than-life figure. He yelled at employees like he was a studio boss from the 1920s—the only thing missing was a riding crop. He ran Oscars campaigns like they used to in Old Hollywood. And he harassed women not necessarily to use them as instruments of his pleasure, but to use them as instruments of his power.
It goes without saying that nearly every one of these women—Rose McGowan, Ambra Batillana, Laura Madden, Ashley Judd, etc.—was a Gentile, all the better to feed Weinstein’s revenge-tinged fantasy of having risen above his outer-borough, bridge-and-tunnel Semitic origins. But it turns out there was a Jew(ess) in the bunch, none other than Lauren Sivan, of the potted-plant episode. In that small way, he inadvertently broke out of the Portnoy mold, performing his inadequacies not for the great all-American odeon but for a woman who could be his cousin. Harvey can run from who he is, but he can’t hide.
Endnotes
[1] Henrik Palmgren to author, 10 October 2017; Oppenheimer refers to the works of Philip Roth including Portnoy’s Complaint (New York: Random House, 1969) and Operation Shylock: A Confession, (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1993).
[2] Kevin MacDonald, A People That Shall Dwell Alone: Judaism as a Group Evolutionary Strategy, with Diaspora Peoples, (Lincoln, NE: Writers Club Press, 2002, originally published by Praeger Publishers, 1994), pp. 227-228. Hereafter PTSDA.
[3] Mark Oppenheimer, “The Specifically Jewy Perviness of Harvey Weinstein,” Tablet, 9 October 2017. This is a comment that appears below the article proper.
[4] Kevin MacDonald, PTSDA, p. 230.
[5] Mark Oppenheimer, “The Specifically Jewy Perviness of Harvey Weinstein,” Tablet, 9 October 2017.
[6] Kevin MacDonald, PTSDA, p. 228.
