Jay Currie's anti-Semites

Those who don't make a habit of visiting Jay Currie's joint might want to pay a little visit to check out the rank Holocaust-denying anti-Semitism that is now appearing with alarming frequency there.

Not from Jay himself, of course. He's too busy pushing the "new anti-Semitism" nonsense to pay serious attention to the real thing. But one of his commenters in particular, a decidedly creepy fellow from North Vancouver who calls himself "john begley," has been well and truly outed--and finds only defenders.

Back in the day, "begley" palled around with the now-mouldering anti-Semite Doug Collins, whose views of the Holocaust and the Jews is best summarized by himself:

“I don’t believe in the gas-chamber story,” he said. “I don’t believe the six-million figure.”

Collins, whose columns for the North Shore News are being reprinted by a prominent anti-Semitic group in the U.S., claimed only one million Jews died – of starvation and disease and not in gas chambers.

“I don’t believe there was a systematic organization to eliminate the Jews,” he said in an interview.

“If they had a definite plan to wipe out the Jews, why did so many survive?”

Collins said he doesn't consider himself anti-Semitic or a neo-Nazi but added that "I can't say some of my best friends are Jews."

This was raised by one of Jay's readers in response to a couple of comments by "begley," defending "dear old Doug Collins" and claiming, disingenuously: "specifically collin’s remarks re the Holocaust were simply on the number of victims…..nothing more and nothing less…"

But "begley," who had torn off his mask and stomped on it, just didn't know when to quit. He was back at it yesterday:

as far as his Holocaust stuff goes i remember it was the numbers NOT the degree of sin that he argued….

which is fair enough in a sense…if i was jooish spokesman arguing for dollar retribution from the Germans i’d certainly run the numbers up as high as i could…

Readers will note that the latter comment is a well-worn anti-Semitic trope, found routinely on neo-Nazi sites like Stormfront--and now brought to you courtesy of Jay Currie.

The oddest thing--or perhaps not? The other regulars at Currie's see nothing wrong with this, try to explain it away, throw a few rocks at yours truly and another reader for even bringing it up. And these are the very folks running around bleating about the "new anti-Semitism," sending skirmishing parties to Palestine House and pro-Palestinian protests, and routinely denouncing critics of Israel state policy as "anti-Semitic."

Is it reasonable to suspect that all this pro-Israel rah-rah is for some a mere blind, an alibi? There are far-right Europeans who ally themselves with Israel as a strategy, seeing in that country a bulwark against the Islamists, but that doesn't mean that some of their best friends are Jews. It's hard, in any case, to take seriously those who rail about the "new anti-Semitism" when they reveal themselves to be so complaisant about the old one.