Red Star over Bethlehem: The politics of Christmas

Scris de **Admin** Sam Ian 14, 2017 12:38 pm

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It is officially forbidden in France and the United States to display religious symbols in public spaces. The problem, however, is that there are notable exceptions to this rule, exceptions which are not merely occasional but alarmingly ubiquitous

We sometimes hear about the war on terror, the war on drugs, the war on cancer and many others.But in recent years there has been a growing controversy in Western societies concerning the celebration of Christmas. Is it reasonable to talk, as some Christians do, about a “war on Christmas”?Who is waging it and why? Surely, the very idea seems patently absurd, given the ubiquitous public decorations, TV commercials and mass media diffusion of Christmas paraphernalia to talk about a war against the celebration of Christmas. The celebration of Christmas is actually increasing worldwide.

Nevertheless, the question of the separation of church and state in Western multicultural societies in the context of the ‘clash of civilisations’ supposedly driving the war on terror, requires an objective analysis concerning the discourse of a cultural war, an issue hitherto largely misconstrued by both mainstream conservative and liberal media. Here we will discuss some of the key religious problems in the war on Christmas before exploring the wider social and political significance of the festival by looking at some popular Christmas stories and films.

Should public buildings in Western secular societies display Nativity scenes and other religious symbols? What communities in our multicultural societies would be offended by such symbols?

The politically correct left

Last year in the northern French commune of Hénin-Beaumont, David Noël a deputy from the French Communist Party objected to the erection of a Nativity Crib in the town hall. The politician claimed that the crib would be offensive to Muslims and was an attempt by the town mayor, a member of the National Front party, to make a chauvinistic statement about the “Christian values” of French society, in violation of the religious neutrality of the state. The communist deputy (whose name is ironically the French word for Christmas), was concerned about offending Muslims but seemed to have no objection to the French government’s support for Al-Qaeda terrorists in Libya, Syria and several African countries, where they have been slaughtering Muslims and Christians alike for over half a decade with full support from NATO and the politically correct ‘Left’. The revisionist French Communist Party made no objection to the NATO bombing of Libya and they even invited the Wahhabi-fascist ‘rebels’ to attend the annual communist festival in Paris!

The communist deputy did not seem to realise either that Muslims, or at least the kind of Muslims the French state is murdering in Syria – that is to say real Muslims like President Bashar Al-Assad – are not offended by Christian iconography as Islam recognises and venerates Christ and the Virgin Mary.

The principle of the separation of Church and state is a fundamental and laudable value of most Western societies; it stipulates that the state should remain neutral in the face of the multiple competing religious identities of the state’s citizenry. It is officially forbidden in France and the United States to display religious symbols in public spaces. The problem, however, is that there are notable exceptions to this rule, exceptions which are not merely occasional but alarmingly ubiquitous. Such is their ubiquity, in fact, that one would be tempted to reconceptualise state secularism as the replacement of one religion and cultural tradition by another – in the case we will look at here, the culture and religion of the Christians with the culture and religion of the Jews.

In front of the famous Hotel de Ville, the mayor of Paris’ office, a prominent Jewish Menorah is designed on the pavement. No one has ever objected to a religious symbol being placed outside one of the most important government buildings in France. Why? Is France a Jewish country? Is the French republic a Jewish State? If so, does that mean that Christians, Muslims, and other religious groups as well as atheists who constitute the majority of the French population, are second class citizens? Why is it acceptable for Jewish religious symbols to be publicly and permanently displayed outside government buildings in spite of the fact that Jews represent no more than 0,5 percent of the French population while religious symbols representative of the majority culture are forbidden?

Happy Hanukkah!

Although unknown to most of the public, Hanukkah is a Jewish festival which has been increasingly popularised in the United States and Europe since the 1970s. Hanukkah ostensibly celebrates the victory of the Jewish revolt (Maccabean Revolt) against the Seleucid Empire in the 2^nd century BC which led to the re-dedication of the Holy Temple in Jerusalem and a ‘festival of lights’.

But historian Micheal Hoffman in his book ‘Judaism’s Strange Gods’ writes:

‘The secret of Hanukkah was disclosed by Rabbi Levi Isaac ben Meir of Berdichev…, an important eighteenth-century halachic authority, who revealed that lighting the Hanukkah menorah does not commemorate the victory of the Biblical Maccabees. The arcane traditional doctrine of Chazal concerning Hanukkah is that it actually signifies God “ delight in the Jewish people” themselves, and the vainglorious celebrations.’ (Hoffman p. 344-345)

Hanukkah has nothing to do with European culture or traditions yet gigantic Menorahs are displayed in public spaces in Paris, Berlin and other cities in flagrant defiance of those states’ claims to be upholding secularism. Recently, Europe’s largest menorah was erected in front of the Brandenburg Gate in Berlin and the Israeli press reported that Syrian refugees paid tribute to the symbol of Jewish supremacy. It has now been admitted by an aide to President Putin that Israel is backing the Islamic State terrorists in Syria. The symbolism of Syrians bowing down before ‘Synagogue of Satan’ could not be more potent.

The son of an Israeli killed in the terrorist attacks in Berlin’s Christmas Market in December 2016 was invited to light up this year’s menorah. The corporate media forgot to mention the fact that Israel has been a key supporter of the Wahhabi death squads committing genocide in Syria. In the United States, a giant Menorah is erected outside the White House every year.

The Menorah was first erected in 1978 by the Chabad-Lubavitch Jewish sect under the approval of President Jimmy Carter. The leader of the Chabad-Lubavitch sect, Rabbi Menachem, Mendel Schneerson is on record stating that all non-Jews are subhuman.

There is nothing particularly shocking about the Rabbinical belief that Jews are a master race for those who have studied Judaism’s ‘sacred’ book The Talmud. The book has many references to the superiority of Jews over gentiles. In fact, the Talmud even claims that Jews are, in some instances, superior to God! On the 21^st of December 2001 in a Guardian review of Jonathan Rosen’s book ‘The Talmud and the Internet’, The Chief Rabbi of the United Hebrew Congregations of the Commonwealth of Britain, Lord Rabbi Johnathan Sacks wrote:

“Rosen loves, as do I, that extraordinary moment in the Talmud in which God is outvoted on a point of Jewish law and celebrates the fact that His children have defeated him. In the world of the rabbis, not only do men study the word of God; God studies the words of men.”

Where does that leave us mere mortals then? Here’s what Israel’s Rabbi Ovadia Yosef, head of the Shas Council of Torah Sages has to say about the difference between a Jew and a gentile (goyim).

“Goyim were born only to serve us. Without that, they have no place in the world – only to serve the People of Israel…. With gentiles, it will be like any person – they need to die but [God] will give them longevity. Why? Imagine that one’s donkey would die, they’d lose their money. This is his servant… That’s why he gets a long life, to work well for this Jew. Why are gentiles needed? They will work, they will plough, they will reap. We will sit like an effendi and eat. That is why gentiles were created.”

This is certainly not the view of all Jews, many if not most of whom have never studied the Talmud. But it is the view of the some of the most powerful and influential rabbis of Orthodox Judaism, and they influence policy at the highest levels in the United States and Europe.

The White House Menorah was erected as part of the Chabad-Lubavitch movement’s attempt to lobby congress to pass the ‘Noahide Laws’. In 1991 the US congress voted to create the framework for Talmudic Courts to be established in the United States. Public Law 102-14 and House Joint Resolution 173 effectively means that Jews now have the right to take over the US legal system and incrementally impose Talmudic Law over gentiles.

As we have already pointed out, Judaism believes that Jews are the equivalent of gods on earth and that gentiles are subhuman. The new legal system the Jewish Lobby are attempting to install is intended to give legal expression to the proposition that all gentiles are trash, cattle, refuse and that the Jews are the master race, destined to rule over the ‘nations’ or gentiles.

Gentiles are forbidden to read the Talmud, which is why one never finds copies of the ‘sacred’ book in bookstores – unlike Bibles and Korans which are widely available. One regularly reads and hears criticism of the Koran but no one ever talks about the Talmud. In 1991 US congress voted to make Rabbi Schneerson’s birthday of April 20^th ‘Education Day’. More and more legislation is being passed in the United States and Europe all the time making it illegal to criticise Jews or Israel. On the 2^nd of December, the US Senate passed the Anti-Semitism Awareness Act effectively making any criticism of Jews, Zionism, or Israel a criminal offence. Although the legislation is officially said to be an attempt to acts of violence against Jews – which are sadly on the rise – it is clearly part of an ongoing attempt by America’s Jewish elite to criminalise any criticism of the Zionist project of global domination. Similar laws are being proposed in Europe. Jewish legal supremacy over the world’s gentiles is no longer a theory. It is rapidly becoming legal fait accompli.

Western media routinely play up the ‘threat of Islam’ and the attempt by Islamic fundamentalists to impose Sharia Law on Western countries, yet the public remains completely unaware of the fact that all around them, a far more oppressive, violent and hateful superstition is subverting all our institutions: Judaism. According to Micheal Hoffman, on Christmas Eve Hasidic Jews often cut a year’s supply of toilet paper for Sabbath use. In Kabbalistic literature Christianity is considered to be excrement from the body of the Jewish people. (Hoffman p 328)

The Rabbinical war on Christmas has been increasing every year in Israel, where Christian symbols are being banned. Secular Israeli Jews have been increasingly drawn towards Christianity in recent years, with many Jews attending Christmas mass. The rabbis fear they will escape from their clutches and convert to Christianity.

Judaism is NOT the religion of the Biblical Jews

So what exactly is Judaism? Contrary to popular belief Judaism is the continuation of the Pharisee sect of the Bible. The Pharisees were an extremely violent and corrupt Jewish sect who murdered their own prophets and the ‘King of the Jews’ Jesus Christ. In John 8.44, Christ says of the Pharisees:

‘You are of your father the devil, and you want to do the desires of your father. He was a murderer from the beginning and does not stand in the truth because there is no truth in him. Whenever he speaks [a]a lie, he speaks from his own nature, for he is a liar and the father of lies.’

Christ is not referring to all Jews but rather to ‘those who say they are Jews and are not but are the Synagogue of Satan'(Revelations 3.9): the Pharisees. We are talking about an ideological struggle waged by a revolutionary/saviour sent by God to mend the corrupt ways of man and the post-Christian counter-revolution exemplified by the Pharisees and those who would fall under their spell.

One often hears of Christianity being referred to as a ‘Jewish sect’. Christianity, however, is the completion of the Jewish religion. It is Orthodox Judaism which is the ‘Jewish sect’, a sect formed in reaction to the revolutionary message of Christ, who preached a doctrine of love and salvation for all regardless of race. As philosopher Jean-Francois Lyotard writes:

‘The truth of the Jew is in the Christian. Left to the letter, to his letter, the Jew is simply dead. Christian breath reanimates the letter, brings it back to life, gives it back its soul’.

There is no such thing as ‘Judeo-Christian’ civilisation. Christianity and Judaism are polar opposites.

After the Pharisees forced the Romans to crucify Christ, the sect sank further into iniquity, continuing to practise usury, a practice condemned by the Church until the 16th century. Usury had mired the Roman imperial economy in debt. When Emperor Titus destroyed the Jewish Temple of Jerusalem in 70 AD, the Pharisees went into exile in Babylon, where they incorporated many pagan Babylonian practises into their religion.

The Pharisaic religion was not written down until 215 AD. Judaism is therefore, a post-Christian religion which hijacked Jewish identity for the purposes of what true Christians would call negationism, that is to say denying the divinity of Christ. The ‘erroneously entitled ‘Jewish’ religion is based on the oral traditions of the rabbis who lived after Moses rather than the written law communicated from God to Moses on Mount Sinai in the Old Testament of The Bible.

The Old Testament in Hebrew is Torah She Bichtav and this collection of texts forms an integral part of the Christian religion. The Jews or rather Pharisees on the other hand, worship the ‘Torah She Beal Peh, which Micheal Hoffman defines as: ‘ All the traditions and laws of the Pharisees transmitted by word of mouth until committed to writing after the crucifixion of the Messiah of Israel; the first book of which is the Mishnah.’ (Judaism’s Strange Gods,p369)

The religion practised by the Pharisees bears little or no relation to the religion of the Jews in the old testament. It was a religion created in reaction to Christianity and is apparently still under construction. For example, only 21 volumes of the Talmud have been published in English translation and no one seems to know how many more volumes of these writings are to come. The Pharisaic religion is a textual manifestation of the borderless Zionist entity. Only a minority sect of Judaism believes that the Old Testament of the Bible should be the object of study. They are called Karaites and are persecuted by Orthodox Jews who follow the non-biblical Torah She Beal Peh and the Talmud. While the Talmud appears to grow according to Rabbinical whim and imagination, the Christian Bible may be in for a radical bowdlerization. Abe Foxman, the head of the Jewish Anti-Defamation League, believes the New Testament is responsible for the holocaust. In her influential book ‘Anti-Semitism in the New Testament’ Lillian C. Freudmann argues that all passages critical of Jews in the New Testament should be purged from the text. Her book was well received by Christian Zionists.

Jews, then, in an etymological sense are Christians, while Jews in common parlance are, for the most part, people under the nefarious cultural influence of Pharisaic Rabbinism, a Satanic and racist death cult which oppresses ‘Jews’ and gentiles alike. I wish to make it abundantly clear that what I refer to as Satanic and racist are the comments on the subhuman nature of gentiles by rabbis quoted above. Those views are not representative of all Jews, many of whom are atheists and have a different view of themselves and the world. A culturally or racially self-identifying Jew, therefore, is no more a Pharisee than a culturally educated but non-practising Catholic such as this writer can claim to be a Christian. Yet most culture has religious origin and shapes in some form or other one’s Weltanschauung.

Much of the Talmudic corpus deals with how ‘Jews’ should defraud, rob, enslave and kill gentiles.But, as Micheal Hoffman notes, the book has many ‘get-out clauses’, contradictory statements designed to deceive gentiles, sentences which can be used by Jews to defend the religion when accused of hate speech by gentiles.

Rabbis advocate the death penalty for the gentiles guilty of reading the ‘sacred’ Talmud. Phariseeism is not a religion based on revelation like Christianity or Islam. Rather, it is a form of self-worship, where Biblical concepts are twisted and deformed in order to justify the myth that today’s so-called Jews are the ‘chosen people’, destined to rule over humanity. In his letters, St Paul admonishes the Jews for believing that their genetics makes them a chosen people. He teaches that it is only those who have faith in Jesus Christ who are ‘chosen’.’If you belong to Christ, then you are Abraham’s seed, and heirs according to the promise’ (Galatians 3.29)

French philosopher Alain Badiou in his book ‘St Paul: the Foundation of Universalism’ notes how the discourse of faith based on the singular Christian event reconciles Jewish semiotics of the revealed Law and the promise of things to come with the Greek love of ‘Sophia’ or wisdom. It is a philosophical event perhaps unique in human civilisation. Badiou, like American theologian Earl Doherty who wrote the polemical book ‘The Jesus Puzzle’, is more interested in the philosophy of Christ than his much-disputed historicity.

It is this anti-racist universalistic aspect of Christianity which makes the Nativity a revolutionary event in history. The Christian myth has, as some have argued, many parallels or similarities to other myths: Zoroaster, Mithras, Dionysus and Horus may be important precursors to the parturition of Christ reflecting, some argue, real astrotheological phenomena. It is a contested topic beyond the scope of this essay.

Christmas and class struggle

In our secular post-Christian world of commodity fetishism, Christmas has in the last few decades mutated into a festival which serves to dispel the darkness of winter by lighting up streets and decorating fir trees, as well as encouraging shopping. Christmas is the annual ‘something-to-look-forward-to’ in a spiritually backwards civilisation where Western man’s soul is consumed by the meaningless objects of its desire.

Many festive paraphernalia such as the Christmas Tree are European pagan traditions, where Europeans in the cold darkness of winter brought nature into the house. For a long time, many Christians considered Christmas to be unChristian! Puritanical Christians in England banned Christmas for several years as they believed it was immoral and a Catholic relic of royalty. German sociologist Max Weber in his essay ‘The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism’, shows how the strict, egotistical ethics of protestant Christianity played a major role in the development of capitalism.

Jewish historian Bernard Lazare in his book ‘L’Antisémitisme, son histoire et ses causes‘- Antisemitism, its history and causes’ argues persuasively that Jewish intellectuals played a key role in the protestant reformation. The theory of a Judaic origin in Protestantism is also defended by German economist and sociologist Werner Sombart in his book ‘Die Juden und das Wirtschaftsleben (The Jews and Economic Life) .

Oliver Cromwell, leader of the ‘English Revolution of 1649’ allowed the Jews back into England and a great period of industrial development followed. The technological advances of Judeo-Protestant England were, however, won at great expense to British workers who found themselves enslaved in some of the most brutal labour conditions in European history.

In his book ‘The Stations of the Sun: A history of the ritual year in Britain’ Ronald Hutton notes that the hostility towards Christmas festivities came largely from capitalists who feared that the revelry of the lower classes would spark social revolt.

Dickensian Christmas

Charles Dicken’s novella ‘A Christmas Carol’ did much to awaken the oppression of the poor by greedy capitalists. In the story, Ebeneezer Scrooge is a money lender who, instead of celebrating Christmas, counts his money, refuses to give alms to the poor, and only grudgingly allows his underpaid clerk Bob Cratchit to have Christmas Day off with full pay. Scrooge is visited by the ghost of his deceased business partner Jacob Marley who is forced to wander the world in chains for the sins of his past life.

Marley informs Scrooge that he will be visited by three spirits on three consecutive nights, the Ghost of Christmas Past, The Ghost of Christmas Present and the Ghost of Christmas Future. What follows is a series of events wherein Scrooge is confronted by the pain of his youth where an absent father and his own subsequent miserliness make him a lonely man.

The ghost of Christmas Present brings him to Bob Cratchit’s poor household during Christmas where he sees a dying child Tiny Tim and, moved, is powerless to intervene on his behalf. In part three, Scrooge sees his funeral which is perfunctorily attended by businessmen while news of his death is celebrated by the debt-laden poor.

When Scrooge wakes on Christmas Day he is a changed man; he merrily joins Bob Cratchit’s family, gives him a pay raise and embodies the spirit of Christmas. Dickens wrote the novella in order to protest the evils of capitalism in 19^th century Britain, where poor children were forced to work in factories and starvation and disease were rampant. As theologian John Grondelski points out, the story is also a critique of Malthusianism. When Scrooge is approached by charities seeking money for the poor, he dismisses them: “if they would rather die, they had better do it and decrease the surplus population!”

Many of today’s billionaires hide their greed behind a veneer of ‘philanthropy’ but their real aim is to control and kill off the poor of this world, lest they rise up against the capitalist order. Former US Secretary of State, Henry Kissinger once called the world’s poor “useless eaters.” The real problem in the world is not over-population as Malthusians and many global warming fanatics maintain but grinding poverty.

Dickens’ Christmas Carol helped bring along Judeo-Protestant war on Christmas to an end, reminding the cold-hearted oligarchs of this world that when God sent his only son to man, he was born in a stable, and it is “easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God” (Matthieu 19.24)

Some claim that Dickens had a Jew in mind when creating Ebenezer Scrooge, due to his Hebrew name. There is scant evidence in the literature on Dickens for this argument. But even if it were true, this would not make Dickens into a racist. Dickens is critiquing the inhumane behaviour of Scrooge and how hatred makes haters miserable. Scrooge, through divine intervention, becomes a new man. The notion that every human can be completely transformed regardless of race, ethnicity or nationality is unique to Christianity where Paul in Ephesians 4.24 says “And that ye put on the new man, which after God is created in righteousness and true holiness.” Likewise, in order to become a communist one must become a new man.

The war on Christmas today is an attempt by capitalists to erase all reference to the Nativity and replace them with meaningless totems of mirth and consumerism on the one hand and symbols of Jewish supremacy on the other. Last year Australia’s Education Minister James Merlino issued a directive to state schools banning the singing of Christmas Carols on the grounds that they violated state neutrality with regard to religion. This trend is being replicated all over the Western world. Meanwhile, we see Jewish Menorahs being boldly and shamelessly erected in public places marking the fake festival of Hanukkah.

Christian communism and the wonderful life

The notion of a ‘War on Christmas’ is regularly promoted by reactionary corporate media such as Fox News and duly derided by the corporate liberal media. The result is that the real problem is never addressed. For example, Fox News anchor Bill O Reilly who supports the theory of the war on Christmas says that liberals should be promoting Christmas as it boosts businesses. But liberals are promoting Christmas. Our cities are always lit up with decorations and advertising for Christmas in most Western countries often begins in November! Is O Reilly suggesting Walmart should have a Crib with Mary and Joseph decked out in the latest fashion wear?

The liberal establishment are promoting Christmas as a meaningless consumerist festival of self-indulgence and, at best, watered-down a la carte Christianity. During the 1930s, the ultra-conservative John Birch Society blamed communists for seeking to secularise Christmas traditions but they completely ignored the fact that in 1935 the Soviet Union reintroduced Christmas celebrations, albeit in a limited form.

Under the construction of socialism in the USSR, communists began to restore the best features of tradition such as the importance of family and religion, not as counter-revolutionary concessions, but rather as part and parcel of the revolutionary communist process. Joseph Stalin had trained as an Orthodox priest and continued to read the Bible throughout his life. Comrades often referred to Stalin as ‘The Priest’ and the communist revolutionary was occasionally wont to use expressions such as ‘God be with you’. Today, many Russians are demanding that Stalin be made a saint for having saved Russia from the evils of fascism. Many Jews also fondly remembered the Stalin era when Birobidzhan, first Jewish state, was established, where Yiddish cultural traditions were promoted.

What the liberal and conservative factions of the corporate press ignore is that the so-called ‘war on Christmas’ has always been a war waged by capitalists and in particular the Pharisees. Karl Marx, in his essay ‘On the Jewish Question’ says that the essence of Judaism is the worship of Mammon or money. Judaism, for Marx, is the hidden agenda behind the ideology of ‘human rights’, for human rights under capitalism are the rights of the propertied class. For Marx, only concrete social and political rights can count, as man is an historical and social animal. Marx, whose ancestors were Jews, saw Judaism as a corrupt sect designed to enslave humanity, including most Jews. Marx, defending atheism, argued that ‘The social emancipation of the Jew is the emancipation of society from Judaism.’

Only when the Jews stop seeing themselves as superior to everyone else will they achieve emancipation. Marx saw Judaism and Christianity as being equally false and harmful to human freedom. But Frederich Engels, who came from a Christian background, had a more positive view of Christianity. In his essay ‘On the History of Early Christianity’ Engels noted how early Christianity was a form of primitive socialism. Quoting French writer August Renon, Engels writes “If I wanted to give you an idea of the early Christian communities I would tell you to look at a local section of the International Working Men’s Association.”

The ancient polymath Lucian of Samosata noted that the Christians ‘ despise all material goods without distinction and own them in common — doctrines which they have accepted in good faith, without demonstration or proof.’

Contempt for private property forms the basis of Christian philosophy. Reactionary Christians, both Protestant and Catholic, have been denying the truth of Christianity for centuries. In Acts 2. 44-45 it says ‘Omnes etiam qui credebant pariter et habebant omnia communia– all who believed were equal an had all things in common. This is the biblical basis of Marxism: From each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs. It was clearly understood to be the basis for an ideal Christian society by the early doctors of the Church. The 4^th century Bishop Ambrose of Milan was unequivocal in his endorsement of communism as Christian political economy.

St Augustine also endorsed communism writing:

‘Let us therefore, brethren, abstain from the possession of private property; or from the love of it, if we may not from its possession; and we make a place for the Lord.’

St Basil wrote ‘ if every man took only what was sufficient to his needs, leaving the rest to those in want, there would be no rich and no poor’.

Yet, the Catholic Church and all the protestant churches spent the entire twentieth-century railing against communism as a threat to ‘Christian values’.

The Christian churches and the reactionary right-wing authorities openly conspired against the working man throughout the twentieth century. When Frank Capra’s film ‘It’s a wonderful life’ was released in 1946 it was denounced by the FBI as communist propaganda. The film tells the story of George Bailey, a banker who runs a family business helping middle-class families to buy their own homes. Bailey is opposed by vulture capitalist Henry. F Potter who drives him into bankruptcy and despair. As Bailey is about to contemplate suicide, he is saved by a guardian angel who shows him what the world would have been like without him. In the end, Bailey realises that family and friends are more important than money and the local community raises the money to keep him in business.

The FBI believed Frank Capra was a communist and had an extensive file on him. They were not entirely wrong. From a poor, Italian Catholic background Capra visited the Soviet Union in the 1930s and was deeply impressed by the progress he witnessed there. In a period where bankers were ruining the lives of ordinary Americans, Capra intended to make a film about an American Soviet but was told it would not pass the censors. The film ‘It’s a wonderful life’ is a modern version of the Dickens’ Christmas Carol’ – human, Christian and communist values triumph over greed. The FBI believed it was a remake of a Soviet Film called ‘The Letter’ which I have been unable to locate.

For Engelsian communists like me, Christmas is about celebrating the birth of Christ as a mytho-historical event portending hope for a more just world. Jesus of Nazareth is king of the poor – a world historical revolutionary and founder of a new higher form of civilisation. Born in a stable, adopted son of a worker, Christ would not select his apostles from among the haughty and corrupt rabbis of the temple, but the fishermen, the workers of his time, who as the apostles found the Church, the revolutionary party of the toiling masses.

Christianity is in its essence the world historical proletarian revolution, while Judaism is the reactionary, fascist counter-revolution. For Christ, they would become the revolutionary class that overthrows the corruption of the Pharisaic elites and false doctrine of racism, hate and usury. Like all revolutionaries, Christ is no petty bourgeois pacifist but comes with a sword to fight for man’s soul; he storms the Temple and drives out the money-lenders! Unlike the haughty Pharisees of the Temple, Christ commands his followers to “love thine enemy.” No Christian or communist could ever hate a Jew but a Christian must pray for his conversion and salvation while a communist must convince him to become a communist and therefore an enemy of Judaism. In this dark Pharisaic age, that is the red star of Bethlehem which should accompany all our thoughts, words and actions.