Eustace Mullins and the Story of the 1952 Speech of Rabbi Emanuel Rabinovich

[Karl Radl]

Eustace Mullins and the Story of the 1952 Speech of Rabbi Emanuel Rabinovich

The 1952 speech of Rabbi Emanuel Rabinovich as recorded in ‘Women’s Voice’ and the ‘Canadian Intelligence Service’ later that year is one of several commonly-cited quotations regarding the existence of a jewish conspiracy or plot of some kind. The speech appears to have originated with Eustace Mullins and like Mullins’ other commonly cited quotation (allegedly) from Israel Cohen’s ‘A Racial Programme for the Twentieth Century’: (1) it is essentially unverifiable. In stating this I am somewhat at variance with my intellectual peers since I don’t automatically jump to a negative conclusion due to the lack of positive evidence: instead I prefer an agnostic position until definite evidence suggests one or the other.

To examine this we need first to comprehend that like it or not Mullins has to be generally regarded as a dubious source since he is the originating source for several quotations that have no verifiable source in and of themselves (i.e. we have to either believe or disbelieve Mullins’ story) and to which Mullins has attached a grandiose but rather unlikely story.

In this particular instance we are forced to rely on Mullins’ account; as related by Morris Kominsky (since I know of no other reference to Mullins’ account as to how the manuscript fell into his hands), (2) where the meeting occurred in Budapest on 12th January with a Bulgarian diplomat getting hold of the transcript then fleeing to Hamburg in West Germany before transiting to the United States and giving it to Mullins.

Now it is important to state that Kominsky is himself not a reliable source as he was a devoted and well-known communist (having run for office as the official communist candidate for the governorship of Rhode Island in 1938) (3) and wrote ‘The Hoaxers’ for the explicit purpose of attacking ‘fascism’ and conservatives more broadly (i.e. he is highly partisan in his work and clearly misrepresents things on several occasions in said work). This is evident from reading the work given that it ignores left-wing fabrications, claims and misquotes (for example the weird and wonderful claims of career communist John Spivak about ‘fascist conspirators’ in the USA or the fictional ‘Cliveden Set’ of fellow career communist Claude Cockburn) and credits any evidence (however spurious or improbable) as ‘debunking’ a claim about the origin of a quote etc.

That said since Kominsky is all we have (as far as I am aware) in relation to a back story for Mullins’ acquisition of this document: so as inadequate as it is we have to make do. Now the story itself is fairly implausible since how would a Bulgarian diplomat get hold of a speech at an (obviously secret) rabbinical gathering at Budapest in Hungary while he was in hiding from the semi-omnipresent Communist authorities no less?

After all if you were on the run for your life then why on earth would you take the trouble of taking along a copy of a speech you had no means to independently verify the worth of? It is possible; of course, that the diplomat in question really believed in the veracity of the text of the speech, but then; as we shall see, this seems unlikely as the text simply does not ring true and displays obvious similarities to the Israel Cohen quotation that also derives from Mullins (which I shall discuss in a separate article).

What also comes to mind is the problem of this diplomat’s defection to the West via Hamburg in that there was only three and a half months between the speech being on the 12th January in Hungary and its publication in ‘Women’s Voice’ in May. This means that the diplomat had to be in Budapest sometime after 12th January, acquire and evaluate the speech then defect to the West via Hamburg somehow get through a long and dedicated debrief by Western intelligence agencies (as a diplomat was a gold-mine of information) and then emigrate to the United States passing on the copy of the speech to Mullins (of whom he would then have had to have heard, contacted and arranged to meet/talk to) by early-mid April at the latest and for Mullins to have then read (presumably after having it translated) the document, verified its authenticity to his liking and written the article and submitted it by mid-late April at the latest.

Clearly this is stretching credulity to its limit as this sequence of events; although not totally impossible, is extremely unusual at best and any papers that a defecting diplomat had brought with him would surely have been seized for evaluation by Western intelligence services as part of any political asylum agreement. (4)

Why on earth Western intelligence services would allow a diplomat to wander around with the text of a clearly inflammatory speech is also beyond me and had the diplomat truly believed in its import then he would have attempted to foist this on Western security services who would have at least filed it even if they ignored it in practical terms as opposed to seeking out Eustace Mullins as soon as possible.

Essentially then Mullins has this diplomat hot-footing it around Europe in a time span that is much too short for this scenario to be reasonably suggested; without any evidence other than Mullins’ second hand testimony, to support it.

It is also extremely unhelpful that Mullins neglects to at least tell us the diplomat’s name so that we could at least independently verify their existence and it doesn’t help Mullins’ credibility that there are no known Bulgarian diplomats or government officials known to have defected in 1952 (let alone via Budapest and then Hamburg). (5)

Aside from these details what Mullins tells us about the speech itself is not much better as according to his article this speech was given on the 12th January: however that was a Saturday. (6) The problem with that is that this was a rabbinical gathering and it was Shabbos (i.e. the jewish Sabbath). Observant jews; especially rabbis, are explicitly commanded by Judaism of whatever variation and sect to perform no work on Shabbos. To hold a rabbinical conference on that day is then an utter anathema to Judaism and the sort of unfortunate mistake that very few observant jews would make.

Further the simple lack of any mention of meeting on Shabbos and any stress for the need for urgency (since if this was not so then there is no precedent in Judaism for engaging in work on Shabbos unless it is an absolute emergency or is to save [jewish] life) are not present in the text of the speech itself: (7) thus suggesting that the speech itself is unlikely to have been written by an observant jew let alone a rabbi.

Indeed the historical context of such a meeting in Budapest during one of Stalin’s more vicious (and last) crack-downs on ‘anti-party’ forces and more particularly among jewish elements within Hungary and the Hungarian Communist Party (the HCP) who were believed (not unjustifiably) to be sympathetic with Zionism and pursuing their own agenda contrary to that advocated by Stalin and his stooges.

From 1950 to 1953: the NKVD and their agents and proxies in Hungary were ruthlessly pursuing the Catholic Church as well as any individual of jewish origin who was known to be religious or identify strongly with jewish interests. Indeed a Soviet advisor; in 1950, suggested to the HCP that it was en hoc to jewish interests and thus needed to purge the jewish nationalist elements (i.e. Zionists) from their positions of influence. (8)

Hardly the time or the place for a (presumably secret) conference of (presumably senior) rabbinical figures to come together and speak of their control over Russia/the Soviet Union, how they were going to exterminate Russians and so forth: is it?

Well unless the rabbinical figures in question wished to commit suicide by NKVD anyway.

I will also remark that the name Rabbi Emanuel Rabinovich is probably a pun (which is ironically one of the few things that do suggest themselves as credible in the back story) since effectively the name means: the Teacher (Rabbi) who is the son of a line of Teachers (Rabinovich) who is the Messiah (Emanuel).

That is; to be frank, a bit too sophisticated for Mullins to have made up, and seems to me to have ring of truth to it: as the pun essentially says that the speaker is the Messiah of the jewish people who comes from the house of David (i.e. is of the line of teachers aka the spiritual descendants of the temple priesthood [as well as possibly their literal ones a-la the Kohanim and Levites]) and who is telling the other teachers that they are living in Messianic times and thus jews can now shirk the yoke of the exile and rule the world as Yahweh’s chosen people.

That; in a speech utterly (and oddly) devoid of it, is typical jewish intellectual humour and as such it suggests that the name (which is quite probably a pseudonym) is genuine: however the rest of the background to the speech; as I have outlined, is at best implausible and at worst almost certainly spurious.

I would even go as far as to say that the back story that Mullins gave for the origin and context of the speech bears all the hallmarks of an ‘off the cuff’ fictional story that hasn’t been thought out particularly well, but rather is contrived on the spur of the moment to deflect awkward questions.

As such then we can see that the background and story that accompany the speech are lacking in any significant evidence to support the speech being genuine and indeed much of it suggests that the speech is probably not or; at the very least, the story that Mullins gave about its origin is fictional not factual.

References

(1) My comments and analysis of this quotation can be found at the following address: http://semiticcontroversies.blogspot...rogram-for.htm
(2) Morris Kominsky, 1970, ‘The Hoaxers: Plain Liars, Fancy Liars, and Damned Liars’, 1st Edition, Branden Press: Boston, pp. 127-129
(3) http://politicalgraveyard.com/geo/RI/ofc/gov.html
(4) A good parallel to understand what was involved in such a defection is Konstantin Volkov’s attempt to do so and the need to evaluate a defector closely as well as pump them dry of information about the enemy. Also see S. J. Hamrick, 2005, ‘Deceiving the Deceivers: Kim Philby, Donald Maclean, and Guy Burgress‘, 1st Edition, Yale University Press: New Haven and Christopher Andrew, Richard Aldrich, Wesley Wark (Eds.), 2009, ‘Secret Intelligence: A Reader’, 1st Edition, Routledge: New York
(5) On this see Vladislav Krasnov, 1986, ‘Soviet Defectors: The K.G.B. Wanted List’, 1st Edition, Hoover Institution Press: Stanford
(6) http://www.timeanddate.com/calendar/?year=1952
(7) The full text of the speech can be found at the following address: http://www.rense.com/general45/full.htm
(8) Laszlo Borhi, 2010, ‘Stalinist Terror in Hungary, 1945 - 1956’, p. 135 in Kevin McDermott, Matthew Stibbe (Eds.),2010, ‘Stalinist Terror in Eastern Europe: Elite Purges and Mass Repression’, 1st Edition, Manchester University Press: Manchester

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This was originally published at the following address: http://semiticcontroversies.blogspot...y-of-1952.html