Real or Rigged “International Conference on Fascism and Antisemitism” in Vilnius on 9 November?

Yet again, a conference here in the Lithuanian capital dedicated to combating fascism and antisemitism is announced, without there having been a public call for papers, without a single speaker from among those who actually combat fascism and antisemitism in the country, with nobody from the democratically elected Vilnius Jewish community (not even the long-time editor of Jerusalem of Lithuania who has exposed and combated antisemitism for decades). No Holocaust survivors. None of the nationally relevant questions of the day can be found on the conference program. As ever, outstanding academic personalities from abroad are recruited to lend the gravitas and provide serious papers on an array of topics (which they admirably do), as long as these have little directly to do with the actual contemporary issues here in Lithuania (but the conference introduction by Prof. Dovilė Budrytė does indeed touch on some of the issues, which seem, however, to be largely absent from the actual conference program). The last such event, in 2015, resulted in the Norwegian Embassy withdrawing support and launching an inquiry on behalf of the EEA (European Economic Area) funders of that event.

To make matters worse, the program is skewed to provide further glory for various leaders (and their relatives) of the current rigged-election bosses of the “official” Jewish community that is largely state-sponsored (indeed, the restitution-controlling “Good Will Foundation” is itself a major conference sponsor). The community’s election rules were changed last spring mid-campaign (an act found to be prima facie illegal by the courts) to disenfranchise the 2,200 Jews of Vilnius while gifting electoral power to a roomful of oligarchs (and that was carried out with a small army of security guards that kept members of the community out of their own community premises). Given the official leadership’s condemnation of the Vilnius community’s honest elections as one of “Russian speakers who call themselves Jews,” the goings-on in the hijacked official Jewish community (which allegedly include letting go of Jewish employees in higher admin positions) themselves merit a research paper at an academic conference on antisemitism (more on this by DH, JTA, Pinchos Fridberg, Leonas Kaplanas, Josifas Parasonis).

Shockingly, not a single representative of the democratically elected Vilnius Jewish Community board, comprising 21 elected members, is on the program, even to deliver a one-minute greeting. There is still some time to fix this, and perhaps at long last the Israeli Embassy, itself on the program, will intervene diplomatically to avoid being seen yet again as improperly propping up a kangaroo-election ersatz Jewish community leadership. The ethical conundrum is all the more evocative given that the conference is financed in large part by the “Good Will Foundation” restitution monies deriving from the religious properties of the annihilated Jewish population of Lithuania. In addition to shirking the issues of the day in local antisemitism, the conference shuts out the legitimate representatives of the living remnant Jewish community. This is something for the august foreign scholars flown in, hoteled, and wined and dined, to reflect upon.

But the major issues are known to all, and attendees at the conference might want to bring some of these up at the conference:

Annual neo-Nazi parades that often glorify actual local Holocaust collaborators, permitted by the authorities for the center of Vilnius on March 11th independence day, and the center of Kaunas on February 16th independence day.
Ongoing alleged “national” neo-Nazi blog, abounding in racism and antisemitism, by Mr. “Zeppelinus” who is alleged to still be a high official in the Economy Ministry. He is known for his photoshop “artwork” that features racist and antisemitic invective.
Ongoing glorification of Holocaust collaborators via street names, university lecture hall names and an array of events.
Harassment, defamation and disemployment of those who dare speak up on these topics, most recently the campaign of personal and professional destruction against author Ruta Vanagaite (materials in English in Weekly of Vilnius and Defending History). Only recent did the campaign by prosecutors and police against Evaldas Balčiūnas let up (for perspective, please scroll to bottom of section and peruse upward in chronological order).
Ongoing impact of the “red-brown law” that criminalizes dissent to Double Genocide politics.
Requests for relevant state agencies to issue apologies to the defamed Jewish Holocaust survivors whose names have been marred for history for their (a) heroism in fighting Hitler with the anti-Nazi partisans in the forests of Lithuania during the Holocaust or (b) for their speaking up on issues of Holocaust history.
Policies of defiling Jewish cemeteries via commercial convention centers when such desecration would never even be contemplated for a historic Christian cemetery of medieval Grand Duchy of Lithuania vintage.
Holocaust denial, downgrading, and obfuscation, particularly via state-sponsored projects to distort history in line with the ultranationalist Double Genocide movement.
Alleged cases of East European governments using restitution payments to effectively hijack weak and remnant Jewish communities, with efforts at denationalization, manipulation of opinion on issues relating to Holocaust history and antisemitism and delegitimization of extant Jewish communities (“they are all just Russian speakers”), sometimes with campaigns against legitimate local communities that function democratically.
An array of issues arising in the field of antisemitism, bias and racism, and more generally, Human Rights in the country and the region. See Defending History’s sections on antisemitism, Christian-Jewish issues, dignity of the dead, free speech, glorification of collaborators, Holocaust Survivor rights, LGBT rights, Litvak rights, freedom of the media, neo-Nazi marches, racism, Roma issues, Russian speakers’ issues, women’s rights, and DH’s Prophet Amos Awards.

Turning from issues to personalities, it is curious to see if any of those who have locally stood up against antisemitism, fascism and the related forms of hate have been invited to this conference. The list includes Vytenis Povilas Andriukaitis, Kristina Apanavičiūtė Sulikienė, Mausha Bairakas, Evaldas Balčiūnas, Chaim Bargman, Ruta (Reyzke) Bloshtein, Milan Chersonski, Aleksandrs Feigmanis, Pinchos Fridberg, Simon Gurevich (Simonas Gurevičius), Leonas Kaplanas, Vilma Fiokla Kiurė, Rachel Kostanian, Andrius Kulikauskas, Julius Norwilla (Norvila), Josifas Parasonis, Jacob Piliansky, Rūta Vanagaitė, Nida Vasiliauskaitė, Lina Žigelytė.

Modern Lithuania is a successful vibrant democracy featuring robust and respectful dialogue at many levels. What a shame that an international conference on antisemitism and fascism seems, once again, to be misconceived in the spirit of covering up the issues that need to be discussed and excluding the voices that dare discuss them, all in a misguided effort to present some smug PR in place of a table of honest and frank discourse. And, unethically financed by a misnamed “Good Will Foundation” from the funds of the religious property of the massacred Jewish population.

Residents of Vilnius who might be inclined to come and politely speak up are invited to register for this Thursday’s conference.

Originally published on 2017-11-07

Source: Difending History

Origins of images: Facebook, Twitter, Wikimedia, Wikipedia, Flickr, Google, Imageinjection, Public Domain & Pinterest.

Read our Disclaimer/Legal Statement!

Donate to Support Us

We would like to ask you to consider a small donation to help our team keep working. We accept no advertising and rely only on you, our readers, to keep us digging the truth on history, global politics and international relations.

Save

READ MORE!

Ukraine Re-Writes History by Celebrating Nazi Collaborator

For the approximately 200 Canadian military trainers currently deployed to Ukraine, it is likely that on the first of January they would have witnessed a torch lit procession. Throughout Kiev and numerous other towns in Western Ukraine, thousands of civilians took to the streets – not to usher in the New Year – but to celebrate the 110th anniversary of the birth of a man named Stepan Bandera.This was not the first time Ukrainian nationalists marched with torches to celebrate Bandera’s birthday, but it was the first time such a spectacle was an officially sanctioned affair.On December 28, 2018, Ukrainian ...

Terrorist al-Nusra Front is blamed for massacre and abduction of Syrian civilians.

Is the U.S Fighting Terrorism or Manufacturing It?

President Obama’s final foreign policy speech at MacDill air force base in Tampa, betrayed its purpose through the venue. The Tampa, Florida, base is home to Special Operations Command and Central Command — Special Operations playing an ever increasing role in counter terrorism. The gist of the speech seemed to assert that the US is and should stay true to its values when fighting terrorism. An assertion when at the same time Congressman Ted Lieu, a California Democrat, has written a letter to Secretary John Kerry warning him the US could be charged with war crimes in aiding Saudi Arabia’s bombing ...

Independence on Nakba Day – Accountability and Healing as an Israeli Aggressor

I am an Israeli-American. I was raised in a middle-class academic ‘Liberal Zionist’ household (aligned with the Israeli Labor Party and Meretz), which is an inherent contradiction. Liberal Zionism maintains a belief in universal human rights yet it supports a Zionist ideology that endorses and promotes Israel as a Jewish state – one that has been systematically carrying out a project of apartheid and ethnic cleansing of the native Palestinian people. Since I can remember, my birth town of Jerusalem has been highly segregated. Growing up, I never interacted with Palestinians other than Abed the soft-spoken gardener from Hebron (aka El ...

The U.S. Prospects against the Russians and Chinese in World War III

The Saker reports that Russia is preparing for World War III, not because Russia intends to initiate aggression but because Russia is alarmed by the hubris and arrogance of the West, by the demonization of Russia, by provocative military actions by the West, by American interference in the Russian province of Chechnya and in former Russian provinces of Ukraine and Georgia, and by the absence of any restraint from Western Europe on Washington’s ability to foment war.Like Steven Starr, Stephen Cohen, myself, and a small number of others, the Saker understands the reckless irresponsibility of convincing Russia that the United ...

NATO: Proudly Delivering Death Since 1949 – A Book Review

THE GLOBALIZATION OF NATOAuthor: Mahdi Darius NazemroayaClarity Press (2012)ISBN: 978-0-9852710-2-2 Pages: 411 with complete indexAvailable to order from Global ResearchThe world is enveloped in a blanket of perpetual conflict. Invasions, occupation, illicit sanctions, and regime change have become currencies and orders of the day. One organization – the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) – is repeatedly, and very controversially, involved in some form or another in many of these conflicts led by the US and its allies. NATO spawned from the Cold War. Its existence was justified by Washington and Western Bloc politicians as a guarantor against any Soviet and ...

Export of Kosovostan Jihad in the Middle East: The Christian Genocide in Syria

Many of us go through life searching for our purpose, for something that we are passionate about. After years of searching finally I stumbled upon mine a few years ago. Having the world hear Syrians telling their side of the story while living through this imposed war is what ignited that fire in me. As a Syrian American that was born in Syria and lived in both countries my entire life, I feel a strong link to my heritage, my birth country, my culture, my language, my customs, my nationality, and my history. We have been bombarded with lies and propaganda ...

Understanding NATO, Ending War

On 4 April 2019, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, better known as NATO, marked the 70th anniversary of its existence with a conference attended by the foreign ministers of member nations in Washington DC. This will be complemented by a meeting of the heads of state of member nations in London next December.Coinciding with the anniversary event on 4 April, peace activists and concerned scholars in several countries conducted a variety of events to draw attention to, and further document, the many war crimes and other atrocities committed by NATO (sometimes by deploying its associate and crony terrorist armies – ISIS, ...

Dear America – Open Letter to the Americans

Origins of images: Facebook, Twitter, Wikimedia, Wikipedia, Flickr, Google, Imageinjection, Public Domain & Pinterest.Read our Disclaimer/Legal Statement!Donate to Support UsWe would like to ask you to consider a small donation to help our team keep working. We accept no advertising and rely only on you, our readers, to keep us digging the truth on history, global politics and international relations.SaveSave

A Note on the Crime Against Venezuela

To clarify the importance of the January 23rd coup attempt in Venezuela we remember that ever since WWII the customary motivation for violations of the Convention on Genocide has been to gain a region’s natural resources. For example Iraq, Libya, Syria, Haiti, Central African Republic, Democratic Republic of Congo, South Sudan, Guatemala, and others. The people of resource-rich areas are forced into flight, exile, refuge elsewhere, or are attacked by disease, or starvation, or directly murdered by military programs, or divided internally into civil wars assuring the death of multitudes.Damages are inter-generational with the effects of depleted uranium weaponry or ...

When the Cowboy-Actor Star Brings Democracy: The 1983 Grenada Case

Grenada is an independent state, a member of the U.N., located in the southern portion of the Caribbean Sea very close to the mainland of the South America (Venezuela). The state is composed by southernmost of the Windward Islands combined with several small islands which belong to the Grenadines Archipelago, populated by almost 110,000 people of whom 82% are the blacks (2012 estimations). The state of Grenada is physically mostly forested mountains’ area (of volcanic origin) with some crater lakes and springs. In the valleys are bananas, spices and sugar cane grown. The country is out of any natural wealth ...

Kosovo: What Everyone (Really) Needs to Know

Preface Kosovo is today one of the most disputed territories in Europe and a real Balkan powder keg which can explode again at any time. It is a province within the Republic of Serbia, recognized as such by both Serbia’s constitution and the Resolution 1244 by the Security Council of the United Nations (the UNSC Resolution 1244, June 10th, 1999). However, Kosovo parliament with a clear Albanian majority proclaimed the independence of Kosovo (without a referendum) in February 2008 that was recognized by the majority of the Western countries followed by their puppet clients all over the world (in reality, today ...

Ethnic Cleansing in Palestine

Ilan Pappé is a historian, socialist activist, professor at the University of Exeter, and supporter of the Campaign for Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS). Of Israeli origin, he is a world-renowned scholar on the Palestinian-Israeli conflict and has written numerous books on the subject, including The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine and The Idea of Israel: A History of Power and Knowledge.Pappé was interviewed by Alejandra Ríos for Left Voice, where this article first appeared.Alejandra Ríos (AR): You’ve talked and written about the concept of homeland as justification for destroying the native population. What is the meaning of this concept and ...

Americans are no Different than Germans were (and are)

Daniel Goldhagen blamed the Holocaust on «the Germans» (by which he meant the German people), and said that they perpetrated the Holocaust because they positively enjoyed murdering «the Jews». But, as has long been well understood by historians (except when they fail to point to it as being a disproof of Goldhagen’s bigoted and indefensible anti-German thesis), Hitler had to work long and hard in order to bring about a consensus, first amongst his own leadership group, and then in the population as a whole, favoring the extermination-option. Hitler, Der Fuehrer, «The Leader», clearly was the catalyst turning the chemical ...

Manipulation: The US State Department’s New Program to Take On Hungarian Media

Hypocrisy may be the only consistent guiding principle of US foreign policy. Here's a prime example of the "do as we say, not as we do" that is the core of how Washington does business overseas: In the same week that the the US Justice Department demanded that the Russian-backed RT America network register as a foreign propaganda entity or face arrest, the US State Department's Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights and Labor (DNL) has announced that it is launching a program to massively interfere in NATO-partner Hungary's internal media.So the US Justice Department is cracking down on RT America for what ...

A Brief History of Fascism in the United States

“We could become the first country to go fascist through free elections.” — William Shirer, The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich Generally, we avoid using the word “fascism” in polite company, and until recently, a person pointing out parallels between Nazi Germany and the current United States would invite elevated eyelids along with the outworn charge of sounding like a “conspiracy theorist“. The current electoral cycle seems to be changing that, so I will trust that now is the right time to convey some ideas I’ve been marinating regarding fascism in my US Homeland. The ruling plutocrats are clearly ferrying the ...

President Slobodan Milosevictalking to reporters at the Sava centre, Belgrade, Serbia, in the run-up to elections, Dec 1993., Image: 6033063, License: Rights-managed, Restrictions: , Model Release: no, Credit line: Profimedia, Alamy

How Politicians, the Media, and Scholars Lied about Slobodan Milosevic’s 1989 Kosovo Speech

One of many Serbian Orthodox churches in Kosovo (14th century)A couple of months ago I chanced upon the Emperor’s Clothes Website.I noticed their startling claim that we have been systematically lied to about Yugoslavia, including Slobodan Milosevic. As they told it, he was not guilty of racist incitement and genocide; rather he advocated multiethnic peace. Since their views sharply contradicted my own, I started systematically checking their references by obtaining the relevant original documents. I have yet to find a single claim in error.This was particularly surprising regarding the famous speech that Slobodan Milosevic delivered at Kosovo Field in 1989 ...

Western Imperialism ‘Must Go’

For years now, the Western elite have been incessantly pushing the slogan that ‘Assad must go.’ Under the pretext of removing an ‘evil’ dictator and helping the people of Syria, the West has been funding, arming and training an array of Al-Qaeda affiliated legions to force regime change in the country. Contrary to helping the people of Syria however, this has only worked to bring pain, misery and tragedy to Syria.Even the former US Defense Secretary, Chuck Hagel, admitted that the insistence on ‘Assad must go’ has “paralyzed” any rationale Syrian strategy. Whenever the West appears to have moved on ...

A Hybrid War to Break the Balkans?

In the spirit of the New Cold War and following on its success in snuffing out South Stream, the US has prioritized its efforts in obstructing Russia’s Balkan Stream pipeline, and for the most part, they’ve regretfully succeeded for the time being. The first challenge came from the May 2015 Color Revolution attempt in Macedonia, which thankfully was repulsed by the country’s patriotic citizenry. Next up on the destabilization agenda was the political turmoil that threatened to take hold of Greece in the run-up and aftermath of the austerity referendum, the idea being that if Tsipras were deposed, then Balkan ...

How Ukraine Turned into An Arms Dealer? Supplying Weapons to Al Qaeda and ISIS-Daesh

The Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP) together with the Balkan Investigative Reporting Network revealed a scheme of weapons supply to the terrorists of ISIS and Jabhat al-Nusra.There is no secret that the U.S. provides the so-called moderate opposition and Kurdish militia in Syria with arms and ammunition most of which are the weapons remained after the Soviet-led Warsaw Pact disbanded.The U.S. DOD, through U.S. SOCOM, MacDill Air Force Base, Florida, as well as Picatinny Arsenal, American military research, and manufacturing facility located in Dover, New Jersey, acquired arms in some Eastern European countries including Ukraine for their further ...

Baltic States Sacrifice Economy on Altar of Politics

Making negative statements concerning Russia, the Baltic States set Moscow against themselves and force it to respond. Especially they irritate it making unproven warlike statements for the sake of “common line” of the EU or NATO on the issue. But as John Steinbeck said “all war is a symptom of man’s failure as a thinking animal.”After major information campaign in the Baltic States aimed to discredit Zapad 2017 military exercise, Russia tries to find the most vulnerable places to hurt the Baltic States. It is absolutely evident, that such sphere is economy. For a long time Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia ...