Gilad Atzmon: 'I Have a Reputation for Being a Suicidal Activist'

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Anonymous December 13, 2010 4:51 pm (Pacific time)

Words (even lyrics) can indeed become deeds when they are propagandized.

One famous melody (to which a variety of lyrics have been attached) was scored around 1856 by William Steffe. The first known lyrics to Steffe’s melody were called "Canaan's Happy Shore" or "Brothers, Will You Meet Me?" and the song was sung as a campfire spiritual. The tune spread across the United States, gaining a reputation as the best song of its time.

In a few years, Thomas Bishop (from Vermont) joined the Massachusetts Infantry before the outbreak of the Civil War and compiled what became another popular set of lyrics to Steffe’s melody (circa 1860) titled "John Brown's Body", which became one of his unit's walking songs. According to writer Irwin Silber (who has written a book about American Civil War folk songs), the original lyrics were about John Brown, the famed American abolitionist.

Early in the Civil War, Thomas Bishop's battalion was dispatched to Washington, D.C., and it was there, near the nation’s Capital that Julia Ward Howe initially heard this song during a public review of the troops outside Washington on Upton's Hill, Virginia. Julia Ward Howe's companion at the military review was the Reverend James Freeman Clarke, who, upon hearing the song sung, suggested to Howe that she write new words for the fighting men's song.

As regarding the military review and music that day, Rufus R. Dawes, then in command of Company "K" of the Sixth Wisconsin Volunteer Infantry, later stated in his memoirs that the man who started the singing the song was Sergeant John Ticknor of his company. By this time, the tune’s prior association with the John Brown was long forgotten or unknown to most listeners, who that day heard only a rough and somewhat oddly-phrased marching song about a ‘John Brown’ who had been an abolitionist.

Howe took the Reverend’s suggestion to heart. While staying at the Willard Hotel in Washington on the night of November 18, 1861, Howe awoke with the words of now famous lyrics to the song in her mind, and in near darkness Howe wrote the verses to the what is now known for nearly a century and a half in the U.S.A. as the "Battle Hymn of the Republic".

Of her writing of the lyrics, Howe later reminisced:

“I went to bed that night as usual, and slept, according to my wont, quite soundly. I awoke in the gray of the morning twilight; and as I lay waiting for the dawn, the long lines of the desired poem began to twine themselves in my mind. Having thought out all the stanzas, I said to myself, 'I must get up and write these verses down, lest I fall asleep again and forget them.' So, with a sudden effort, I sprang out of bed, and found in the dimness an old stump of a pen which I remembered to have used the day before. I scrawled the verses almost without looking at the paper.”

Howe's "The Battle Hymn of the Republic" was first published on the front page of The Atlantic Monthly of February 1862. The sixth verse written by Howe, which is less commonly sung, was not published at that time. The song was also published as a broadside in 1863 by the Supervisory Committee for Recruiting Colored Regiments in Philadelphia.

Both "John Brown" and "Battle Hymn of the Republic" were published in Father Kemp's Old Folks Concert Tunes in 1874 and reprinted in 1889. Both songs had the same Chorus with an additional "Glory" in the second line: "Glory! Glory! Glory! Hallelujah!"

As a background note: Julia Ward Howe was the wife of Samuel Gridley Howe, the famed scholar in education of the blind. Samuel and Julia were also active leaders in anti-slavery politics and strong supporters of the Union. Samuel Howe was a member of the Secret Six, the group who funded John Brown's work.

Source of above: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Battle_Hymn_of_the_Republic

The melody and Howe’s lyrics lend themselves to the satire which follows:

They’ve taught us since our childhood who to hate and who to love;
They put us in our classrooms to salute a Flag above;
Then they sent us off to battle with the banner of a dove;
Our Flag keeps marching on.

(Chorus)
Glory, glory, hallelujah!
Glory, glory, hallelujah!
Glory, glory, hallelujah!
Our God is marching on.

We’ve placed it near the watch-fires of a hundred circling camps,
We’ve builded it an altar in the evening dews and damps;
We’ve saluted it beside our dim and flaring lamps:
Our Flag keeps marching on.

(Chorus)
Glory, glory, hallelujah!
Glory, glory, hallelujah!
Glory, glory, hallelujah!
Our God is marching on.

We fought to raise our Flag with burnished guns of steel:
They’ve taught well us on TV with whom our scorn must deal;
Our heroes, schooled by media, crushing serpents with our heel;
Our flag is marching on.

(Chorus)
Glory, glory, hallelujah!
Glory, glory, hallelujah!
Glory, glory, hallelujah!
Our God is marching on.

We’ve sounded forth a trumpet that has rarely called retreat;
We’ve sifted out the hearts of men before our judgment-seat:
Oh, be swift, your souls to answer us, be quick upon your feet!
Our Flag is marching on.

(Chorus)
Glory, glory, hallelujah!
Glory, glory, hallelujah!
Glory, glory, hallelujah!
Our God is marching on.

Near the beauty of the lilies Christ walked where you might be,
The modern day of Zion has transfigured you and me:
Our flag is crossing oceans as we kill to make men free,
Our flag is marching on.

(Chorus)
Glory, glory, hallelujah!
Glory, glory, hallelujah!
Glory, glory, hallelujah!
Our Flag is marching on.

Our ships go where they need to on the cresting of a wave,
Our people always mighty; we hold homage to our brave,
The world shall be our footstool, ideologies our slave,
Our Flag is marching on.

(Chorus)
Glory, glory, hallelujah!
Glory, glory, hallelujah!
Glory, glory, hallelujah!
Our God is marching on.

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Mevashir December 13, 2010 8:48 am (Pacific time)

the conflict is a spiritual battle with only a spiritual solution: youtube * com/user/Singvangelist?feature=mhum#p/c/EC6C7F78AFA174BD/0/tRIh0gifMtg

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Mevashir December 13, 2010 8:56 am (Pacific time)

superb comments by mr ebrahim

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Zahir Ebrahim | Project Humanbeingsf December 11, 2010 10:41 pm (Pacific time)

Hello.

While I have never met or spoken to Gilad Atzmon, there is one thing I respect him for. It is my understanding that he left the Jews-only state on a matter of principle and now lives in the UK or elsewhere. If this is indeed the case, then I find much weight and un-hypocritical substance to his overall support of the Palestinains and his critique of Der Judenstaat.

What do I mean?

I have explained it in the following missive which collects my long held position on Israeli Jews' courageous dissent in support of the victims of Jews-only state's unbriddled quest for Lebensraum:

How many Jews does it take to confuse me? : Response to 'How many Rabbis does it take to create a Racist State?' December 10, 2010'

http://print-humanbeingsfirst.blogspot.com/2010/12/how-many-jews-does-it-take-to-confuse.html

The answer there is of course: Only One.

Having said that, Gilad Atzmon, at least to my mind, invokes mixed messages in his equally unbriddled critique of Jewish fundamentalism and the weight of 3000 years of history upon the battered Jewish psyche. At times, I feel repulsed by his critique because of how he does it:

What do I mean?

It is outlined in the following response to Gilad's sardonic expression of disgust with Jews' bizarre 'sense of humor' that is often seen belittling Christians and other goyem, and in this instance, pissing on what is sacred to many Christians on a television entertainment program:

Response to Gilad Atzmon's 'In Defence Of Larry David' : Don't see the courage or the genius in pissing and spitting on others' sacred things, pee and spit on your own!

http://print-humanbeingsfirst.blogspot.com/2010/03/respto-gilad-larrydavid-jews-piss-spit.html

This rather revolting expression of dissent by Gilad Atzmon against his own peoples unequivocally demonstrated to me that the old Jewish adage 'enemy of my enemy is my friend' doesn't necessarily always work as well for others as it does for every hectoring hegemon. It is both shortsighted and self-defeating to adopt it in a moral struggle, but is entirely realpolitik in a hegemonic conquest.

Gilad writings in general are informative and revealing - but I stopped reading them after I read that objectionable piece by him. It revealed to me a character that I didn't really like despite all the manifest goodness in his many other zealous endeavors. You win some and you lose some. This one I lost - by having lost some confidence in a courageous activist and reformer who had gained my respect.

Now I am confused anytime I see Gilad Atzmon's name - see, it only takes one moral Jew to confuse me - and wonder whether the primary motivation for Gilad's support of the 'untermensch' Palestinians stems from his antagonism towards the 'ubermensch' Jews' fundamentalisms?

Is Gilad Atzmon primarily the Jews' secular/atheistic/new-age-messianic reformer, or is he primarily a moral Jewish activist supporting the Palestinians in their struggles against his own oppressing peoples?

While surely both are worthy and moral pursuits, the twain aren't the same thing. Albeit, in periods of chaos and confusion, as the times we live in today, they can often intersect, as they evidently do in this case. Combining them can only lead to the Palestinians ultimately being short-changed when they stop intersecting, and start conflicting.

If I was a Palestinian, and I am not of course, I would try to comprehend all the motivations of the various prominent Western peoples and Western dissent chiefs who make Palestine their cause celebre, and do it far more acutely than the prima facie evidence might indicate. Some are clearly aboveboard, in fact beyond description. Some others, well, ... to cut a long narrative short, perhaps a few are in it for their own hidden reasons which I need not enumerate here. It is already evident that many of these Western chiefs have not served Palestinian interests well despite all their overt gestures to the contrary. A few examples may be found in "The endless trail of red herrings".

I wish Mr. Gilad Atzmon well. I hope he can be a tad more circumspect in respecting others' sacred things when trying to fix his own. Especially, for the sake of the Palestinians for whom he evidently forsake the vile hypocrisy outlined in my first link above.

Thank you.

Zahir Ebrahim
Project Humanbeingsfirst.org

 

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