I already wrote a post about the JTA’s fund raising letter, sent last Friday, that offended so many Jewish bloggers. Elisa Spungen Bildner, President of the JTA responded, stating that “A fundraising email appeal JTA sent out Friday under my signature contained words I did not specifically approve, words that seemed to criticize bloggers and Twitterers.” She continues:

JTA’s point was not to insult new media practitioners but to stress the importance of supporting in-depth reporting, too. Inartful words or not, the rationale behind JTA’ s fundraising appeal remains: Quality journalism today is reeling from unprecedented financial pressure and JTA is no exception. We are appealing to our readers to support us, so JTA can remain strong.

Noted blogger Dov Bear, writing before the release of Spungen Bildner’s response observed that:

…wouldn’t it be a bad thing if the old media were to fold up its tent and leave the business of investigating and reporting news to the blogosphere? … Many bloggers are excellent writers, and savvy commenters, but with the exception, perhaps, of Stephen I. Weiss, Shmarya Failed Messiah and some others, bloggers don’t do a whole lot of first-hand reporting. Our most popular Jewish news blogs are aggregators, trading openly on the work and reputation of newspapers, and television stations. The average blogger has neither the time nor the money nor the chops to pursue, source, and assemble a straight news story. Instead, we riff on the work of others, or spread the rumors that serious journalists later investigate, substantiate and turn into news… But, at the end of the day, JTA provides the essential service. Not us.

I don’t think anyone is saying that bloggers and, God help us, twitterers, are a suitable alternative to the type of reporting the JTA or any traditional news outlet does. What we took umbrage to was the implication that we were somehow something to be feared, that our voices were not a legitimate part of, as the email put it, “Jewish storytelling.” In any case, I hope we’re done with this. The JTA has apologized, the JBlogosphere has flexed its muscles and we can go back to our Passover cleaning.

As an addendum, I hope they don’t fire whoever it was that actually authored that fund raising email. Look at all the attention it got the JTA! Take note PR professionals, take note!

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About the author

ck

Founder and Publisher of Jewlicious, David Abitbol lives in Jerusalem with his wife, newborn daughter and toddler son. Blogging as "ck" he's been blocked on twitter by the right and the left, so he's doing something right.

78 Comments

  • Don’t they employ that anti-Zionist nutjob blogger? How dare they request money from pro-Israel Jews? I received the email and told them to stuff it.

  • A lot of bloggers label themselves “freelance journalist”. I think it’s that kind of people that needed this reality check pretty badly. I’m not a dentist because I floss and brush my teeth. A cook is not a chef either.

  • JTA has stubbornly refused to remove from its web site a number of posts from one of the most virulent American Nazis, Jacques Pluss, despite my repeated requests that they do so. See Pluss’posts at http://jta.org/user/profile/67782. To identify Pluss,refer to the History News Network: http://hnn.us/articles/36411.html. Instructive of his views on the Holocausr, is his blog, http://plussholocaustlies.blogspot.com. No reputable organization would give a person advocating genocide such access,no less a Jewish organization. {luss was even expelled from the National Socialist Movement for his extremism.

  • Stanley: My comments on JTA are not offensive. They simply state points from which I believe the readers of JTA might benefit. Apparently, the Editor seems to agree. You seem to want to have a person barred from posting on a site because of his/her political philosophy, and not because of the contents of the posts or comments? Now, as I know that you are a champion of the First Amendment, as am I, does that make any sense? And you might want to take a gander at http://annpidiotaward.blogspot.com/ — which addresses individuals who do not make sense. Jacques.

    • This my last comment ever in re: Jacques Pluss. I hope someone eventually reads it to him in prison, though it’s not clear he has the mental stability to read or remember anything at this point.
      Dear Jacques,
      Enjoy the next decade in prison/as a ward of the county. Watching you meltdown has been wonderful, and for that and no other reason, I wanted to thank you. Good-bye.

  • Well Jacques, it actually does make sense. The First Amendment is all well and good, but sometimes you really don’t want somebody relieving themselves in your living room. It makes the place look and smell bad. And sometimes, all you need to know is the person’s philosophy well enough, particularly if you’ve encountered the individual previously, and you can easily prevent the unfortunate bowel movement from taking place by either barring the person with the offensive philosophy, or removing him as soon as he, uh, passes gas. Let’s remember that the internet is already packed with the kind of graffiti that belongs in the bottom of porta-potties, and there’s no reason for any website that cares about preventing the spread of disease and filth to permit the foul chronic-bowel-movers to muck up yet another place or, heaven forbid, to expose bystanders to little sprays of verbal excrement.

  • To: “The Middle.” Okay, fine, do your muck-raker thing (with which I am familiar, not only because of attacks against me, but also because I am related to one of the most famous [some would say ‘notorious’] muck-rakers in all of American history–Lincoln Steffens [ca. 1910, New York, mostly]) and discuss me in light of “bowel movements.” But it doesn’t take even the few years’ training in psychoanalysis which I possess in order to understand that you, my friend, speak of excrement because you can’t let go of your own without sampling it first–nice example of oral-anal fixation, you infant! And by the way, in his masterly psychoanalytical study of the Third Reich, “The Roots of Nazi Psychology” (University of Kentucky Press, 2000), author Jay Gonen notes that the Nazi concept of “Lebensraum” in fact showed that Hitler and co. wanted to eat up territory (oral) and poop out Jews (anal). If you are a Jew, then, and I’m a Nazi, the excrement I’ve left here and there is, in reality, you! Oh, lord! Jacques Pluss.

    • Dr Pluss, is this you?

      Besides, shouldn’t you, as a historian, know that applying psychoanalysis to people you have not had a realistic chance at analysing is nothing but speculative?

  • Of course it’s him, Froylein.

    Pluss, just like so many other topics where you draw idiotic conclusions based on your flawed analyses, you got things all confused again. If I do have any such “oral-anal fixation” as you posit, then yes, the proper conclusion to draw is that I am indeed toying with the excrement…and that would be the subject of my previous comment: you.

  • To “The Middle” and “Froylein”: Believe me,I’ve heard it all before. I’ve had enough of engaging you in what is vulgarly called a “pissing contest.” I think I’ll go and read something valuable now. But before I leave, I just want you to know that I wonder, more and more, why you and those like you think fellows like me are so darned important. Look, especially, at Wertheim. Now, there’s a man obsessed! auf Wiederhoeren, Jacques Pluss.

    • Dr Pluss, we don’t think you’re important; you’ve forced yourself upon us here by attacking a commenter that didn’t even elaborate on your views – this post and this thread are not about you. But now that you’ve put your views and your apparent lack of manners here, you’re cowardishly bugging out by making assumptions about what Middle and I could be doing if this conversation were to continue.
      Just for the record, what vulgarily is called a “pissing contest” is a boastful, open comparison of abilities, knowledge and / or property. I don’t see that this has happened on here unless you’ve read my question re: applying psychoanalysis to people you don’t know as a way of contrasting historical method which inevitably would have led to your methods and your views being challenged. If that is something you are worried about, then it will take a lot of more “valuable” reading that you might be aware of.

    • Why’d you try to kill a woman whose only crime was being brain-dead enough to marry your sorry ass Jiques?

  • Pluss, do let the door hit you hard on your, um, backside, on the way out. The only vulgarity here is you and the ideas you spew, and the only “importance” you possess is that which resides in your mind.

    • Hardly surprising, Middle, as we don’t get more intimate with anything than the things we eat, so the anal-oral canal is our prime road of love.

  • Just for the record, with apologies to the other posters here, I have always wondered how a person as ignorant and apparently as stupid as Jacques Pluss ever received a Ph. D. from the University of Chicago. The First Amendment, which as he correctly asserts I have always championed, restrains any state, and by extension the Federal government from making or enforcing laws abridging the freedom of speech or of the press. It does not maintain or require that anyone should be allowed to say anything anywhere.

  • I’m a go to Jacques Pluss’s house and recite my 14 hour monologue of the collected works of Andrew Dice Clay. Then I’m going to follow that with a series of lewd suggestions to his wife and/or daughters. Finally, if the Pluss women don’t take me up on my offers, I’ll explain a thing or two to Dr. One-Pluss-One-equals-zero about the nature and scope of the 1st fucking Amendment. What a moron.

  • Particularly to Stanley Wertheim: Stan, just to set the record straight on comments you’ve made on JTA about my novel, “Jumping Fences. An Artfully Crafted Madness,” first, it is NOT a rave, it is NOT political, and it was considered marketable by two literary agents to whom I sent it early in 2005. Both, however, wanted (insisted, in fact) that the very long volume be divided into three shorter works, corresponding to the book’s three main sections. I wanted to publish it integrally, not as a trilogy, so I founded Aargau Books LLC to set the volume out as I wished it to appear. Got it? As for the bio-sketch you gave me on your JTA post, well, I really couldn’t give a damn about you or your family, past or present. What I can say is that you are a man of no character, no matter what or whom you are descended from.

    • Why do you look like someone who was both lobotomized and shat all over himself in your mug shot, Jiques?

  • Dear “Middle”: Of course, you’re able to make judgements about my character because you know me so very well, and on a personal level, correct? Of course not. But it is typical of “Jewish know-it-all” blabber (just see how many mistakes and half-truths Stan Wertheim has made about my background, my political beliefs, and a whole mass of other material about me) to claim judgements or make assertions about which you actually know very little, yet have the gall to expound upon. Is that because you believe you’ve been “chosen?” And if so, for what, exactly? Remember that being “chosen” carries with it responsibilities and obligations (like being honest) as well as privileges! Why, for someone who has had so much to say, you don’t even have the courage to post under your real name! Now, that’s real “gutsy” on your part, isn’t it? At least a bottom-crawler like Wertheim, who has never had a decent thing to say about just about anyone or anything, uses his own name, that is, unless he wants to “impress” someone with his German ancestry or Aryan-sounding birth name of Klaus-Helmut Wertheim. But Stan, you’re about as American as anyone from New York City ever could be! As for the idiot, above, who calls himself “ok,” why don’t you hop into your car, if you own one, and drop on by my place. My address is on most of my blogs. And, pal, if you ever get anywhere near any “Pluss women,” why, they’d kick your behind. From my 26 year old wife, you have that promise. My daughter’d be more difficult to get ahold of quickly. She is married and resides in Wertheim’s beloved Germany, near Munich. And, a number of years back, she changed her first name from Rebecca to Claire, since she thought Rebecca sounded far too Jewish. She was right. In conclusion, a nice warm fire awaits you all–in Hell! The Reverend Dr. Jacques Anthony Reinhard Heydrich Pluss.

    • You are welcome to use your real name wherever you want. I choose to keep mine private. You choose to espouse some putrid views and I don’t. Nobody invited you here, you dropped by of your own volition. If you don’t like the fact that I don’t use my real name, go elsewhere.

      • Haha, that’s too funny. Does the culture-savvy daughter know that “Claire” carries a social stigmata in Germany, namely that of being trashy?

  • Hi, There, “Middle”: Did YOU KNOW that most countries which “house” Jews did NOT invite them there, either? Jews have NO inherent Nationality–just a portable “culture of conspiracy.” As for you, “froylein,” my daughter, married to a German MD, changed her name in America–and some time ago. But that’s not really the point, is it? You’d say just about anything to make someone appear negative, “trashy,” whatever, if it applied to a National Socialist, right? In terms of your comment about the name “Claire,” give me a written source, back up your ridiculous assertion, inform me on your training and expert knowledge of the cultural linguistics of names, and don’t just spout the usual, fabled yiddish nonsense, okay? Here in America, as in any culture, certain names carry certain connotations among one or another subculture. What, you don’t like “Claire” because it’s not particularly Jewish nor is it used often by Jewesses? Well, what’s your actual name? Is it Shalamith or Maria? Or are you really a man–yep, that’s it! You are a man! And that makes your hiding “in deep cover”, Goylein, even more cowardly and sad. Why don’t you take off your prosthetic breasts and drop by my place, along with that idiot who calls himself “OK” and claims to understand the meaning and intent of the First Amendment? Got the courage? I doubt it. Reverend Dr. Jacques Anthony Reinhard Heydrich Pluss.

    • Hi, There, “Middle”: Did YOU KNOW that most countries which “house” Jews did NOT invite them there, either? Jews have NO inherent Nationality–just a portable “culture of conspiracy.”

      Hi there, Puss. Did YOU KNOW that 25% of all Nobel prizes in Medicine have been awarded to Jews. Imagine how much higher that figure would be if the National Socialists known as Nazis weren’t genocidal pigs. As for being a nation, we have been a nation with a literary tradition, monotheism, a day of rest for millenia. We also gave birth to another major faith a long, long time ago. Perhaps you’ve heard of it.

      Now, I would appreciate it if your nasty remark about the “culture of conspiracy” was your final unpleasant comment about Jews on this site. Discuss other topics, including Froylein’s prosthetic breasts if you like (was that your best attempt at humor?!).

    • Mr Pluss, as a matter of fact, I’m German, have grown up in Germany, studied – among other subjects – linguistics and sociology at university.

      You might not be aware of that there is no academic degree called “MD” in Germany. It does not exist, and I wonder if your story has got enough substance for you to pull up the corresponding German title without looking it up. On a side-note, US American degrees are generally not acknowledged in Germany without additional studies and certification. You may use a degree acquired in the US or another country in a title, but only if your name is followed by the name of the institution that issued the degree in brackets.

      Certain French first names and a selection of other first names are particularly popular among the lower social walks of German society. There’s so much awareness of that matter that middle class parents would not give their children certain names in order not to affect their future negatively.
      Biblical names, on the other hand, have enjoyed constant popularity among the higher middle class for decades.

      “Claire” is not a particularly pleasant-sounding name to German ears, phonetically resembling the German term for a septic tank.

      Please don’t mind me bringing to your attention that “Yiddish”, like any name of a language, needs to be capitalised in English.

      I’m not afraid of you at all, Mr Pluss, as little as I am afraid of any short man. And since you seem to have developed a weird fascination with my breasts (Should this be reminiscent of the seductive powers Nazis would ascribe Jews?), rest assured that at donning a genuine F-cup chest, I’m even bustier than you.

  • Does this web site have any kind of moderator? Why does it continue to provide a forum for this psychiatric basket case? He has actually managed to maneuver some posters into becoming Defenders of the Faith. Remember, this is a man who exists only on the Internet, where he can project his sick imagination. I find him amusing because I knew him personally, although only slightly. He is an inconsequential little twerp who projects ever more fantastic personal identities. If you follow their development, his full title is The Reverend Doctor Obersturmbannführer Jacques Anthony Rinehard Heydrich Pluss (Heydrich was head of the Gestapo). He tries to project some sort of pseudo German identity, although his ancestry is American and French Swiss, and of course, if he were now in Germany he would be in prison or, more likely a mental institution. He is still using terms like “Aryan,” that originally denoted a person speaking an Indo-European language and was twisted by the Nazis to refer to tall blond Nordic-type Caucasians—you know, like Hitler and Goebbels, who were short, dark little men like Pluss. As one of you pointed out, he seems to know little about Germany, and certainly very little about the German language, which he occasionally apes. He was apparently unaware that the word “Klär” is a popular term for sewer! I suppose it’s only luck that prevented his daughter from calling herself “Klo” Klaus-Helmut is not an Ayrian name, Jacques; it’s a German name.

  • Stanley, chill out. First of all, his comment required a response. Second, you probably noticed the request that he refrain from posting any nastiness about Jews?

  • Hello, “Middle.” Your request that I not post anything “nasty” about Jews is impossible for me to fulfill, so this is a good time for me to refrain from commenting or posting on this site at all. But I am glad that I’ve engendered some rise in the blood pressures of at least a few individuals here! By the way, I’m told that Stanley Wertheim is going to die soon! Is that right? Or am I confusing him with someone else? No need to respond personally–but do check in on old Stan once in a while for me, would you? auf Wiederhoeren, Rev. Dr. Jacques Anthony Reinhard Heydrich Pluss.

  • I recall spotting Pluss and Wertheim together at a roadside cafe in a dusty town just north of Asuncion.

  • Ah well, Tom, don’t know about that one, but the Wertheim family is indeed well-known over here while “Pluss” is most definitely not a German family name. There aren’t even any people of that name living in Germany (I’ve checked the appropriate registries). Considering that names retain their original spelling as a rule and that double-S used to be “ß” always at the end of words no matter how strong / weak the preceding vowel sound, I also checked the registries for “Pluß” and there were no hits either. Since “ß” is a combination of “s” and “z” in Kurrent, original German handwriting, I also checked the registries for “Plusz” and again – nada. As “sz” is always transliterated, the only possible origin of Pluss’ family name appears to be Hungary as Hungarian has got the non-transliterated “sz”. Hungarian then again is a Uralic language, so Pluss’ family background is not to be found in Germany or any German-speaking countries.

    Thought I’d add that FYI.

  • Wertheim is associated with department stores, no? Wasn’t there a Wertheim store designed by Erich Mendelsohn on the Potsdamerplaz?

  • …Sorry for the misspelling. I may be thinking of his Columbus-Haus.

  • Make that Messel and Leipziger Platz. 🙂 The Wertheim family was / is Jewish. They started as retailers, and Wertheim has occasionally been credited with inventing the European department store and starting the first department store chain (I’m going to do a post on that one, so no spoilers here). They were dispossessed by the Nazis. The last Wertheim branch in Berlin was turned into a branch of Karstadt last year.

    The whole story is pretty interesting as most German department store chains are struggling or have gone out of business recently. All of them were originally Jewish owned, but their owners were dispossessed. But I’ll write more on that one of these days.

  • Yes, Froylein is quite correct. There was also a branch of the Wertheim store on the Ku’damm. I visited the new Karstadt last July. The Wertheim family is indeed Jewish. We probably originated in the town of Wertheim in the Schwarzwald, but before the advent of the Nazis many members of the family lived in Westfalen, now North Rhine-Westphalia. My mother was assistant manager of the Tietz department store in Dusseldorf. I was born in the town of Warburg. I am still a German national and travel on a German passport.

  • The Nazis made a big electoral issue of the big department stores crowding out the small shops, or so I seem to remember from that modern German history lecture class.

    • Mr Wertheim, that’s pretty interesting. Often Jews from the area of Swabia and surrounding areas fled their native towns during the Rintfleisch (also spelt “Rindfleisch”) and Armleder progroms. Many moved East into then-barely populated Russia. A large share of the families had returned by the time Renaissance roled around, later re-migrants often fled the Czarist progroms to, what they believed to be, progressive, cosmopolitan Berlin.

      I’m going to Berlin over the weekend and – hopefully – get to take a few pictures to illustrate my post with.

      Tom, that accusation already came up in the early 20th century when the department stores showed to be the more successful business model and later on during the Weimar Republic as well, for which a strong inverted correlation between the general state of the economy and anti-Semitism has been documented.

      As it pleased them, the Nazis accused Jews of either being part of or being behind either or both, a Bolsheviki and a US American-capitalist conspiracy.

      Add Protestant theology (wealth is a sign of God’s grace + state authorities must not be questioned), centuries-old anti-Jewish stereotypes, and distinctively German envy to the mix, and you get a vicious potion.

  • Hi,Posters on Jewlicious! I’m not very taken by stories about German Department Stores. But I found the “Pluss Exchanges” quite racey in a way. It just so happens that I’ve known the Pluss family for some time. I’m not surprised that Dr. Jacques is not very welcome on your site (which I’ve recently discovered and I like). Nevertheless, I must assert, in Pluss’ defense, that he is one of the most forthright people I’ve met. He is one of the few “thinking Nazi’s” in America and he’s never, as far as I can tell, made any attempt since the mid-2000’s to hide his convictions. It is kind of a shame that he has been, by the way, the subject of much misinformation. For example, he does come from a German-speaking country–having been born in Zurich, Switzerland to a Swiss father (a physician) and an American mother (then a medical student and a friend of mine prior to her death), and his father’s family (spelled ‘Pluss’ with an unmlaut over the ‘u’) has been in the Canton of Aargau for centuries. Perhaps “froylein” doesn’t consider Switzerland a German-speaking country since that Nation recognizes four official languages, German being the most prevalent. As for Jacques, I doubt he’s ever claimed to be German, nor would he, I think, claim fluency in the German language, although I’ve been with him and his family and heard him speak German pretty well for someone who has not spoken the language much in the last 30 or so years. So, to Mr/Dr Wertheim, you are again (as Jacques states) not quite correct in terms of your “fact searching”. Nor are you correct when you suggest that Jacques would find himself in legal trouble in Germany, since he’s been in that country four or five times in the last ten years, and he’s engaged in no neo-Nazi activity there or in Switzerland. Believe me, he’s not at all stupid. But perhaps you are. I will reserve judgment, since I do not know you personally–but, as a professional librarian for many years, I have seen that your volumes on Crane (mostly, apparently, ‘edited stuff’,and I wonder whether or not you’ve ever written a full length book on Crane on your own) have not received universally laudatory reviews. My own research tells me that you are a retired English professor, a second rate scholar from a fourth rate “university.” Oh, and come on, your Ph.D. from NYU can’t compare with Pluss’ Ph.D. from The Univ. of Chicago. So, Nazi or not, Pluss has you beat! As for you, Mr. “Middle,” why tell Pluss not to criticize Jews while you try to bash him left and right? I am partly Jewish by descent, and I find your treatment of Pluss to be discriminatory. If he’s done anything, he’s put you on the same footing as him; some would say that is a shame. Ms. Jessica Strauss

    • Jessica, I’d be inclined to give your explanations some credit if the IP address didn’t tell me you’re the very same person as Pluss.

      “Plüss”, by the way, doesn’t make any sense either. Try coming up with a better story, Pluss, you’re tiresome.

    • Hahahahaha. Thanks “Jessica” for writing from Jacques Pluss’s computer. I’m quite certain that you speak the truth when you say that you “know the Pluss family for some time.”

      Let me assure you, Pluss, that you and I are not on the same footing. Not even close. Any “bashing” of you is well-deserved and any “discrimination” I exhibit towards anti-Semites is merited.

      Now please, since you’ve promised us that you’d leave, please understand how disappointing it is to see you back. Try to be a man of your word and stay away.

    • How did you miss the only opportunity you’ll ever have to be even slightly witty by not giving your “wife” the name Jill Minus, Jiques?

  • I can’t understand why this web site continues to post these crazed messages from Jacques Pluss, but for the record (sigh), I am senior editor of The Correspondence of Stephen Crane 2 vols. Columbia U Press, 1988), among other books. My Stephen Crane Encyclopedia (1997) is entirely written by me (literary “encyclopedias” are a genre distinct from general encyclopedias). This book received entirely laudatory reviews in academic journals such as American Literary Realism and Nineteenth-Century Literature from people who signed their reviews. It is now being translated into Japanese. Some anonymous negative reviews appeared on amazon.com, all written by a faculty member from that fourth rate New Jersey diploma mill where Pluss and I both taught, until he walked out on his classes in the middle of a semester. I am also the author of some 75 to 100 articles, notes, and book reviews in academic journals.

    I don’t know whether Pluss actually traveled to Germany or not. German courts have issued contrary opinions on internet Nazism that is accessible Germany if it is written or propagated by persons who are not German nationals, and Pluss’s claim to being German in any sense is as bogus as his being a Viet Nam war veteran, a clergyman (The Universal Life Church is a sham), or the American representative of Stille Hilfe, now only a Munich nursing home for aged Nazis, that he claims has secret representatives whom he calls his “superiors.” Nevertheless, he continues to live as a Google clown because sites like this post his nonsense. Amusingly, he is reviled on neo-Nazi sites where he posts under the names of long dead war criminals because other posters understand that he is too crazy even to be a Nazi in 2010.

    If a person is held to be a German national, he is subject to German law, no matter where he lives. Ernst Zundel was deported from Canada where he lived for 30 years, although he had not been in Germany since the age of 19 and is now imprisoned at Mannheim. Also, if a non-German national behaves or as a neo-Nazi or Holocaust denier in Germany, he is also subject to German law. There is an open warrant out for David Irving, who is paradoxically also banned from entering Germany.

    If

  • Interesting comments from Mr. Wertheim, but as a duly-ordained minister in the Universal Life Church, I must object to his characterization of it as a “sham.” I am currently at work on a multi-volume explication of ULC teachings. (You’ll be happy to know that ULC, per moi-meme, unqualifiedly rejects anti-semitism. And btw, Middle, there is a God.)

    If you’re engaged or in a serious relationship, I’ll be happy to help you out in any way I can.

  • Perhaps I should have qualified my comment, Mr. Morrissey. Pluss is a member of a breakaway group from the Universal Life Church known as the Monastery. As I understand it, the only requirement to become a minister in this group consists of filling out a questionnaire and paying a fee. People usually join so that they can, in some states, legally perform weddings and other services that may require a license. Pluss most likely does it so that he can add another questionable title to his already bizarre list of absurdities.

    If I am mistaken about the Monastery branch of the ULC, I will be glad to stand corrected.

    Since I have been married for over 50 years, I doubt that I need help with my relationship, which is indeed serious, but I’ll ask my wife, who will probably have some suggestions.

  • Acting ex cathedra, I hereby brand Pluss a heretic. Ienjoin all ULC members from any further contact with him, unless and until he fully repents of his anti-semitic and pro-Nazi misdeeds.

  • How else to explain the Republican Party’s rising from the dead?

  • Mr Wertheim, Middle and I are both advocates of a stricter comment moderation policy, but the one who charmed us into blogging here has got a much higher tolerance level.
    Also, don’t take Tom too serious; he’s the residing Apostolic Nuncio on here.

  • “Dear” Froylein: You are a complete idiot. Of course ‘Pluss’ with an umlaut makes sense. You just don’t know anything about Swiss names. What would you like? Must he scan a copy of his Swiss passport on the Net? Oh, but why should he even bother. As far as the rest of you are concerned, if this comment even “makes it to the stage” (which I doubt it will–cowards), the prejudice you exhibit against Pluss (and no, it’s not Pluss writing this; we share the shame IP address because my laptop wireless router is connected to his modem) is astounding, almost as astounding as the senile spewings of that obsessed, senile old character, Wertheim, happen to
    be. You infuriating, deceitful people aren’t worth Pluss’ time, he knows. Now I know he was correct. You all aren’t worth my time, either. Still, it was a pleasure to see how seriously you do take Jacques, while claiming he’s not to be taken seriously at all. From me, a sure “Goodbye.” Jessica Strauss.

    • Bye Jacques, sorry you destroyed your own career with stupidity, hopefully you are either in prison and can read this, or dead and your Nazi cheerleader friends will get to enjoy it.

  • I have decided to come back so I can leave again. Come and meet me in New Jersey!

  • I have decided to come back so I can leave again and maybe I’ll come back again or leave again, depending on whether I wish to return or to leave again. In short, come and meet me in New Jersey!

    ———————————————

    Hah-chah-chah-chah-chah!

  • Tom Morrissey:

    How else to explain the Republican Party’s rising from the dead?

    Osmosis.

    Think about it. 😉

  • No Pluss, with an umlaut could not etymologically possibly be a German name, any more than Jacques could be. However, what difference does that make? There are many Germans who do not have etymologically German names. It’s Pluss’s insistence on being somehow German that should be a source of concern. For American neo-Nazis, some of whom, unlike Pluss, are not seriously mentally ill, all of German history is encompassed in those 12 years of barbarism with which these moral morons want to be associated. They are not interested in Goethe, Schiller, Thomas Mann, Heine, Einstein, and Freud. To them the epitome of German culture are murderers and psychotics like Heydrich and Hess. This is what Germany needs to surmount and not only among American crazies. It is an enormous burden.

  • Incidentally, as I am sure most of you know, there is no relationship between the IP address of a computer and the modem with which a computer receives or transmits through the Internet. You can use the modem in Starbucks, and your IP address, which is unique is unaffected.

      • You can find him in the police reports. Poor Nazi that he is, Jiques cannot seem to resist trying to blow up a gas station that his wife worked at.

  • Well, you may have banned Pluss from this site, but I suggest that you look at http://www.vnnforum.com/showthread.php?p=1096043 and read it carefully, especially the last part. It will give you a good idea of how mentally ill an individual you’ve been entertaining. The Vanguard News Network is the most vicious American Nazi web site. In case you’re wondering, Walter Schellenberg was an SS counterintelligence official under Heinrich Himmler.

    Because of my family background, I’ve been informally studying German and foreign Nazis all my life. My correspondence in English and German with Albert Speer is in the Columbia U Library. Pluss is a special case among American Nazis because he is highly educated, which is his only accomplishment. He hasn’t held a real job since his late 40s. This is why he uses the title “Dr.” constantly. People who have a Ph. D. tend to use it only in a professional capacity. Most American Nazis, are thugs, psychotics, and criminals. They are more often found in prisons than anywhere else. Pluss affects the invective of the semi-literate racist. it apparently makes him feel more manly. Physically, he is a pudgy little fellow, about 5″6′ tall at best.

    He is correct in assuming that I am fascinated by what causes a person of such background to become an obsessive anti-Semite. However, I am hardly as obsessed with him personally, as he maintains. Read the VNN posts to see who is obsessed with whom. He has constructed a really strange fictional biography of me. For example, he maintains that the English department at William Paterson College fired me as their chairman. I was appointed chairman of the department by the administration in 1970. The next year, the rules changed and the position of department chairman became elective. I had no desire to become involved in politics, so I resigned. The department begged me to stay, only because nobody else wanted the job, which became entirely bureaucratic and had no authority left whatsoever. I resigned in 1972. A year later my department council unanimously nominated me for promotion to full professor. I tell this story to give you some idea of the extent to which one can trust the veracity of “factual” content in Pluss’ tirades.

    Another example that involves this site is his statement that I demonstrate “an all-encompassing lack of knowledge regarding how wireless laptops work–and this came about because a friend of mine, writing against him along with me, routes her wireless laptop through my desk-top modem, so, naturally, he and his army of assholes believed I was simply writing on my desk-top and using another name.” Pluss apparently has no idea what an IP address is, and more significantly, he expects you to believe that he has a friend named Jessica Strauss. He omits this name in telling the story on the VNN site.

    Pluss operates on a very high level of unreality. He has claimed to be a Viet Nam veteran, a psychoanalyst, an operative for a secret SS organization under the auspices of Stile Hilfe, a nursing home for aged war criminals outside Munich, and he has even claimed that his mother was Jewish. fortunately all this is only on the Internet and is despised by other American Nazis because he is an embarrassment, even to them. I have nevertheless been warned by the ADL that because of his fragile state of mental health, they consider him potentially dangerous. I am taking this seriously.

  • If it’s okay with you, Stanley, I’d rather not visit that site. What he says, here or there, is irrelevant to me. However, since he knows you by name and has expressed fairly harsh sentiments, you are right to be cautious. The reason I removed his last posting is that he promised something along the lines of dancing on your grave.

  • Yes, I understand. Pluss has been limits of the First Amendment for some time now. Almost three years ago, he wrote a diatribe given prominence by the History News Network, that advocated for the physical extermination of all African Americans and Jews. A number of prominent American Nazis and racists, including Matt Hale, Hal Turner, and Bill White have recently been imprisoned for making physical threats against people. Pluss uses allusions and such as dancing on a person’s grave or keeping someone under the radar. He is also so apparently deranged

  • [Sorry, my post seems to have become garbled and posted itself mid stream] Pluss uses allusions such as dancing on a person’s grave or keeping someone under the radar that are indirect threats but that would require interpretation in a court. He is also so apparently deranged that even other Nazis dismiss him as a bad joke rather than a threat.

    Nevertheless, I believe that American Jews are too complacent about the recent significant increase in anti-Semitism manifested especially in dozens of Neo-Nazi and White Identity sites on the Internet. In a time of economic crisis and social change, finding common enemies, however, imaginary, is appealing, especially to uneducated people and to the young. Jews have good reason to make certain that they are not cast in the role of victims, as they have often been. Coming from a prominent German Jewish family, I am very sensitive to this. There is, of course, no parallel between 21st Century America and Europe and Germany in the 1930s, but I do see certain risks in not being aware of a growing and potentially serious problem.