Father Dave Watch -- September

geoffff


This will be an occasional posting on this form of clerical antisemitism as the mood takes.

At the risk of giving the puffed up little bully more credit and attention than he deserves, there is something going on here that most certainly should be watched. Let me explain but first a few preliminaries.

David Smith is an ordained Anglican priest who has entered the secular world of politics in a substantial way.  In doing so he has forfeited any lingering notion of the benefit of clergy and that most certainly includes respect and special dealing. The same goes for his colleagues. This is Australia and this is the 21st century and he has bought into perhaps the most divisive and dangerous set of issues of our time.

These are real people whose lives are in the balance. They are not the playthings of the smug, safe and supercilious with an agenda, on the other side of the planet, be they Christian or Communist or both.

On the other hand the fact that David Smith  is driven by a religious mind and indeed sees what he does as part of his mission on Earth is most certainly relevant. Especially in this case.

It is also  relevant that Smith is openly associated with the Socialist Alternative (although  not a member -- they never are). Again especially in this case and not just because the Communist mind is just another manifestation of the religious mind..

There is precedent.   We have seen this before closer probably to David Smith's English colleague, Stephen Sizer. 


This gentlemen.

The original useful idiot




Hewlett Johnson became the Dean of Canterbury in 1931 and was still kicking around in 1964 .It is difficult to imagine a period of more tearing moral challenge in our shared human blood raw saga since Moses said shove it Big Fella we will take our chances with the people smuggler in the Sinai desert, and he was right at the centre of British religious and moral teaching. Johnson I mean. Regrettably, not Moses.

What he taught was appalling

Over those 33 years, Johnson devoted the bulk of his astonishing energy to proving that Soviet Communism, especially as practised by Stalin, was heaven on earth: “While we’re waiting for God, Russia is doing it.” In his bestseller The Socialist Sixth of the World, which was published not long after Stalin’s most extensive programme of mass murder, he wrote: “Nothing strikes the visitor to the Soviet Union more forcibly than the complete absence of fear.”

No Communist outrage could put Johnson off his stride. He supported the Nazi-Soviet Pact of 1939. In the face of all evidence, he praised the Soviets for their toleration of religion, excitedly reporting, after a private audience with Stalin, that the great man favoured freedom of conscience. He always refused to condemn Stalin. Neither would he condemn the Soviet invasion of Hungary in 1956.

What a morally depraved man. Right up there with fiddling with the kids.

George Orwell said at the time that the first to go over to the Nazis when Paris fell would be the Red intellectuals and other Stalin pets. They did even before Paris fell.  The same would happen in London, he thought. For certain he had in mind the Red Dean.

A nod from Stalin that it's OK by him for Hitler to take Britain if he can, as well  as Poland and France and  for certain it would have been OK by the Dean of Canterbury as well.  He would have kept his job if Hitler came.  Indeed, with the Duke of Windsor, and no doubt many others he likely would have been in line for promotion to one or another of many suddenly vacant posts. 

Which takes us back to Sizer, Smith and company.  Is the comparison too harsh?

Yes it is. On Johnson.

 Johnson in his era was not a beacon of what to avoid when the dark dangerous side of the religious mind decides to dabble in the politics of the souls of millions.
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The ability to hold two or more mutually exclusive positions at the same time without any attempt at a temporal  reconciliation, while charged with the supernatural or superstitious, is within the range of normal human thinking I guess as a day trip to Byron Bay and Nimbin will show.

Dull normal. But normal. Usually harmless and for many perhaps beneficial and probably we all practice a form of it. But usually in private between one or more consenting adults.

 When it comes to these men however it gets very sinister.

Take a look around their site and try to overlook that annoying little pop up with the bell. It's all there. The same old names mostly from the same old propaganda churns of the vicious hard left that have been  feeding fuel on this bushfire since the sixties.  Even Counterpunch and Information Clearing House are there. I bet Mondoweiss is too if you could be bothered looking.

I even found a repost of the worst blood libel account of the Sabra and Shabila camp massacres I have ever seen. None of it I will paste here. This muck is intended to inflame.

 None of it should be accepted given the source but the astonishing thing is that beneath all the twisted hate mongering is one fact that cannot be denied. These appalling murders were carried out by Christians and not by Israelis. Father David Smith sees not the slightest historical irony in his casual palm off of responsibility on to the Jews.

It takes a certain kind of religious mind to be able to do that. One that should keep out of politics.

This filth is manufactured to incite hatred as surely as the Innocence of Muslims. This priest is retailing war propaganda of the most vile kind in a way that not even Johnson did in his day. Like Johnson, Fr David Smith is not a modest man.

Father Dave has a lot more explaining that he could be doing if he was in good faith. The main question that is begged has barely been scratched. But this is enough for now.

cross posted Israel Thrives
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