Seven forty of anti-Semitism

As it is well-known, any sedative can relieve you of your illness only for a while. You have to find out the reason for your illness and try to get rid of it in order to recover from the illness. It seems that the vaccination against the former propaganda stamps has been successful in Russian media: those media outlets that still use them are not popular among the readers. However, as it turns out, it is not quite like that. On April 9, 2002, PRAVDA.Ru published the article by Sergey Stefanov, “The State of Israel Was Founded on the Holocaust Myth.” The article was about research conducted by revisionist scientists regarding the subject of the Holocaust. The discussion started gathering steam on the day the article was published. The most interesting aspect here is the fact that the text was directly falsified on several occasions. However, this is not really about the falsification: any kind of faults is possible when you are being fiery about something. The activity of the propaganda machine is a different matter, and this is exactly what happened with “The Central Jewish Resource Sem40” (Seven Forty).

The article that was published on Sem40, “The truth That Tells Lies," did not contain a hyperlink to the PRAVDA.Ru article, to which it was actually devoted, taking into consideration the fact that the text about the “lying truth” (truth means “pravda” in Russian) is three or four times as long as the original article that was written by Sergey Stefanov. Don’t you think that this looks like the style of the Soviet newspapers of the 1970s: “Several Western media outlets distributed false information about..."? this mark is used before telling the audience the things that should be considered to be the truth. In this case, the scenario is the same: Stefanov was denounced as an anti-Semite; it was said that he has lot of hatred against Jews, and then they stop capitalizing his last name. Well, let’s believe that it was because of the “fury” of the Sem40 writer, as these things happen. However, we have to say here that if an Internet publication publishes a review of material that was also published on the Internet, but without a hyperlink to the reviewed material, then this is considered to be totally ill-mannered. A reader is deprived of the opportunity to compare the texts, especially when the author of a review is in a dispute with his opponent. However, this is not our goal: we are not going to teach anyone good manners.

We would like to say another thing. Sem40 decided to dispute not with the text, which reflects PRAVDA.Ru’s policy, but with a news story that was about a different point of view regarding a widely held opinion.

The Sem40 author who wrote the review about Sergey Stefanov’s article did not pay any attention to the fact that there were a lot of people of other European nations killed during World War II; Jews were not alone in this respect. We do not think that it is correct to calculated the losses of one nation only when talking about a war on a global scale. Let’s just try to assume what would happen if someone tried to compare tens of millions of exterminated Slovenians vs. six million exterminated Jews? Will this result in another wave of nationalistic sentiments in society? Who needs all of this?

Secondly, the Sem40 author tried to create a colorful picture of the persecution of Jews (including anti-Jewish events in the USSR), so he mentioned that the police slaughtered Jewish families during the time of the German occupation. Was this so? Yes, it was! However, there were a lot of Jews who survived, not only in the rear, but in the occupied territories as well, and local citizens helped them! Who needs to deny these facts? If someone needs to deny this, then for what purpose?

Finally, about the role of the party. Sem40 apparently interprets the role of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (known for the Russian initials as KPSS) and the role of the newspaper Pravda as "anti-Semitic," which allegedly has its continuation in our on-line publication as well. PRAVDA.Ru was born a lot later than the moment when the KPSS and the newspaper Pravda (which was part of the Central Committee of the Communist Party) stopped their existence. So we could skip that remark, but since we are the spiritual successors of the newspaper that was banned by the presidential decree in 1991, then we would like to ask this question to “the Central Jewish Resource.” What about Pravda 's anti-Semitism, if Pravda’s first managers were Jews? And for quite a long period of time! Why make up myths about the KPSS’s and Pravda's anti-Semitism? What’s the point of that?

It is needless to mention that propaganda is never smart. When a media outlet compares the killed people of one nation to the killed people of another nation, this cannot be called stupid. Rousing international discord is punished not only with state and international laws, it is pursued by the laws of the human living. So what is it all about? Sem40’s editorial office may not like it, but I believe that there is no other definition of its activity than blatant anti-Semitism.

There is a question to the current reality that is illustrated by the “Central Jewish resource.” This was the first time that I have seen the last names of the people of one certain nation marked with a certain color. It stands the reason that, on this site, Jewish last names are marked in blue. It is needless to say what influence this feature has on people of other nations who visit this site and what feelings it evokes in their hearts about Jews.

Peter Yermilin Politics department editor PRAVDA.Ru

Translated by Dmitry Sudakov

PRAVDA.Ru The state of Israel was founded on the Holocaust myth