Recently, we discovered that in his review of E. Michael Jones’ latest book, Bob Sungenis published another false quote and misrepresented the clear intentions of conservative author, David Brooks, in the process. (To view some of Bob's previous false quotes click here, here, here and here.)
Bob’s eighteen page review of Jones’ latest book (which Bob proclaims is “like a sequel to the Bible” ), appears in Jones’ Culture Wars magazine, May 2008. Bob writes:
"In the wake of the new consensus, a new movement was born – Neo-conservatism, or as David Brooks candidly put it in the Wall Street Journal: “Neo means new and con means Jew” (p. 1007). (The Jewish Revolutionary Spirit: a Review, page 10)
The problem is that David Brooks actually wrote: “con is short for ‘conservative’ and neo is short for ‘Jewish’” and he wrote it in the New York Times, not the Wall Street Journal (article).
Out of eleven words in the actual quote, the quote Bob published gets only three of them right: “and”, “neo” and “con”. And even those words are not in the proper order.
And unless Bob misquoted page 1007 of Jones’ book (which is certainly possible), it is E. Michael Jones who has actually misquoted David Brooks. If true, then Bob may want to rethink his comparison of Jones’ book to the Bible - if for no other reason than to protect the integrity of Biblical inerrancy.
Be that as it may, worse than this completely mangled quote is the fact that Bob (or Jones?) then draws the wrong conclusion from Brooks’ words, implying that David Brooks was "candidly" admitting that “neo-cons” are indeed a political cabal of Jews. If one takes the time to actually read Brooks’ article – which is readily available on the internet - it is clear that Brooks was mocking people who created this name and believe in the “neo-con conspiracy”. That was the point of his entire article: to mock such conspiracy theorists. Whether or not one agrees with Brooks is irrelevant. Bob (or Jones?) gives a false impression as to what Brooks meant. Here is the actual quote, in greater context:
In truth, the people labeled neocons (con is short for ''conservative'' and neo is short for ''Jewish'') travel in widely different circles and don't actually have much contact with one another. The ones outside government have almost no contact with President Bush. There have been hundreds of references, for example, to Richard Perle's insidious power over administration policy, but I've been told by senior administration officials that he has had no significant meetings with Bush or Cheney since they assumed office. If he's shaping their decisions, he must be microwaving his ideas into their fillings.
It's true that both Bush and the people labeled neocons agree that Saddam Hussein represented a unique threat to world peace. But correlation does not mean causation. All evidence suggests that Bush formed his conclusions independently. Besides, if he wanted to follow the neocon line, Bush wouldn't know where to turn because while the neocons agree on Saddam, they disagree vituperatively on just about everything else. (If you ever read a sentence that starts with ''Neocons believe,'' there is a 99.44 percent chance everything else in that sentence will be untrue.)
Below we’ve reproduced a passage that follows immediately after the quote above. In light of the book Bob was reviewing, we find it particularly interesting and ironic:
There are apparently millions of people who cling to the notion that the world is controlled by well-organized and malevolent forces. And for a subset of these people, Jews are a handy explanation for everything.
There's something else going on, too. The proliferation of media outlets and the segmentation of society have meant that it's much easier for people to hive themselves off into like-minded cliques... You get to choose your own reality. You get to believe what makes you feel good. You can ignore inconvenient facts so rigorously that your picture of the world is one big distortion.
And if you can give your foes a collective name -- liberals, fundamentalists or neocons -- you can rob them of their individual humanity. All inhibitions are removed. You can say anything about them. You get to feed off their villainy and luxuriate in your own contrasting virtue. You will find books, blowhards and candidates playing to your delusions, and you can emigrate to your own version of Planet Chomsky. You can live there unburdened by ambiguity.
(Article)
Perhaps Bob (and Jones?) ought to have actually read David Brooks' article before writing his glowing review of Jones' book The Revolutionary Jewish Spirit. At least he would have gotten Brooks’ quote right, although we doubt that Bob (or Jones) would have appreciated what Brooks had to say about conspiracy theorists who "hive themselves off into like-minded cliques" and “books, blowhards…playing to your delusions.”
And of course, this is yet another example proving that Bishop Rhoades was right to tell Bob to stop writing about Jewish issues. Bob’s work in this area is far more representative of an anti-Jewish propagandist than a sober, responsible apologist.
