By ALEXANDER DOLITSKY
When I arrived to the United States on February of 1978 as a political refugee from a socialist country, I never thought that America would attempt to destroy itself from within with the radical neo-Marxist ideology (i.e., critical race theory, white privilege doctrine, systemic racism, and Black Lives Matter) and the new progressive bumper stickers—“systemic fixing” and “collective justice.”
I certainly did not expect the public comments on Sept. 11 from State of Alaska Representative, and a former high school history teacher in Juneau, Sara Hannan (D-Juneau). Speaking on the House Floor, she suggested that Nazis’ experiments on Jews during the World War II somehow benefited science and humanity.
My grandfather, Roman Umansky, was brutally killed by Nazis in 1941 in Kiev, Ukraine. I never met my grandfather and many of my uncles and aunts. Nearly 25% percent of my family were executed by Nazi experiments, or on the battlefields; and six million Jews (50% percent of the entire Jewish nation) were executed by Nazis in the six years of the war.
I am puzzled and astonished: How a former history teacher could make such an offensive and inappropriate statement? And why were Alaska’s Jewish communities silent? Why didn’t they condemn Hannan’s ridiculous statement?
They certainly were vocal when Anchorage Mayor Dave Bronson, on Oct. 1, made a much less offensive statement by comparing a mask mandate with the Holocaust.
He later issued the following statement: “I understand that we should not trivialize or compare what happened during the Holocaust to a mask mandate and I want to apologize for any perception that my statements support or compare what happened to the Jewish people in Nazi Germany, that was one of the most evil and darkest times in our world’s history.”
On Aug. 25, 2020, the Juneau Assembly passed an ordinance in creating a Systemic Racism Review Committee to investigate institutional racism in Juneau, including possible institutional anti-Semitic occurrences in Juneau. To my knowledge, the committee had no success in their uncovering institutional racism and institutional anti–Semitism in Juneau. Perhaps Sara Hannan’s offensive statement on the House Floor could be a good first project of the committee.
My close friend, in our private correspondence, had this to say about Rep. Sara Hannan’s comments about Nazis’ experiments on Jews:
“Not at all surprising, given that she [Rep. Hannan] is a Democrat politician. Same goes on at the national level with Jewish leaders and the Democrats. So, you need to ask yourself, what is the basis for the continuing alliance of the Jews with the Democrats. Is it just a historic thing? Or is there something continuing? And what was the historic connection to begin with? Maybe you already know the answer to that one; I don’t. But the Democrats, especially the far–left side, are not only turning their backs on the Jews today (both American and Israel), but are actively accusing them of being racists and intolerant of Palestinians and Arabs. The left is overtly active in trying to cut all American aid and support of Israel and shift it to the Palestinians instead. Even ‘centrist”’ Democrats are embracing Islam and are silent on the anti–Jew/Israel demands from the left. If I were a Jew, I’d certainly wonder about what’s going on and why; and I’d certainly question my being a Democrat if that’s what I was.”
Sometime in the early/mid–October, I was removed from the Juneau Jewish Congregation Sukkat Shalom online group; the administrators have not provided me with a reason of my removal from the group; and I will not ask. I suspect it was done because of my writing for the conservative newspapers and blogs on essential and controversial issues facing our nation.
Well, so much for tolerance, freedom of speech and inclusiveness by my fellow Americans at Sukkat Shalom—true hypocrisy at its finest! Today, I am “Uncle Tom” to the Juneau Jewish community—and so be it!.
Again, my close friend, in our private correspondence, observed it as follows:
“As for your ‘friends’ at the Juneau Jewish Congregation—I think it is an amazing example of how even well–educated and intelligent people can be so blind to their own hypocrisy as long as it fits with the thoughts of the whole group. I’m sure that virtually ALL those people consider themselves and each other as very liberal, open–minded people who value free speech and independent thinking very much. Yet, not only have they excluded you for entirely the opposite of that reason (i.e., they disagree with your thinking and your saying what you think), they apparently are not even aware of how hypocritical they are in doing so! If these well–educated, critical thinkers and leaders of their communities (certainly in their own minds they are) can behave like that so easily, it is really disturbing to realize how easy it must be for less critically thinking people. Yet, another example that George Orwell’s 1984 dystopia is not such an improbable future at all.”
Historically, the main reason leftism is radicalized in America today, and accelerating among our youth, is because young people of the post–Vietnam war generation had never experienced economic hardship and/or oppression by a totalitarian regime; they have been intensely subjected to political correctness, wants, and irrational and wasteful handouts instead of hand–up.
Far–left progressives are not as they think of themselves—liberal or open minded. In fact, they are illiberal and intolerant deflationists—i.e., I am going to serve you a ball of soup once a month at your place, as long as you don’t crash into my ocean–front home to ask for a real substantive help for your well–being.
Far–left progressivism is now a religion to some groups; and they possess the typical zeal and emotional attachment to a far-left dogma—socialism and neo-Marxism—which blinds them to having a rational and open mind. Indeed, they are hypocritical fools!
The cry of the poor is not always just. The best revenge against hypocrites and leftists is to live well and prove them wrong.
American leftism—true hypocrisy at its finest!
Alexander B. Dolitsky was born and raised in Kiev in the former Soviet Union. He received an M.A. in history from Kiev Pedagogical Institute, Ukraine, in 1976; an M.A. in anthropology and archaeology from Brown University in 1983; and was enroled in the Ph.D. program in Anthropology at Bryn Mawr College from 1983 to 1985, where he was also a lecturer in the Russian Center. In the U.S.S.R., he was a social studies teacher for three years, and an archaeologist for five years for the Ukranian Academy of Sciences. In 1978, he settled in the United States. Dolitsky visited Alaska for the first time in 1981, while conducting field research for graduate school at Brown. He lived first in Sitka in 1985 and then settled in Juneau in 1986. From 1985 to 1987, he was a U.S. Forest Service archaeologist and social scientist. He was an Adjunct Assistant Professor of Russian Studies at the University of Alaska Southeast from 1985 to 1999; Social Studies Instructor at the Alyeska Central School, Alaska Department of Education from 1988 to 2006; and has been the Director of the Alaska-Siberia Research Center (see www.aksrc.homestead.com) from 1990 to present. He has conducted about 30 field studies in various areas of the former Soviet Union (including Siberia), Central Asia, South America, Eastern Europe and the United States (including Alaska). Dolitsky has been a lecturer on the World Discoverer, Spirit of Oceanus, andClipper Odyssey vessels in the Arctic and sub-Arctic regions. He was the Project Manager for the WWII Alaska-Siberia Lend Lease Memorial, which was erected in Fairbanks in 2006. He has published extensively in the fields of anthropology, history, archaeology, and ethnography. His more recent publications include Fairy Tales and Myths of the Bering Strait Chukchi, Ancient Tales of Kamchatka; Tales and Legends of the Yupik Eskimos of Siberia; Old Russia in Modern America: Russian Old Believers in Alaska; Allies in Wartime: The Alaska-Siberia Airway During WWII; Spirit of the Siberian Tiger: Folktales of the Russian Far East; Living Wisdom of the Far North: Tales and Legends from Chukotka and Alaska; Pipeline to Russia; The Alaska-Siberia Air Route in WWII; and Old Russia in Modern America: Living Traditions of the Russian Old Believers; Ancient Tales of Chukotka, and Ancient Tales of Kamchatka.
Read: Neo-Marxism and utopian Socialism in America
Read: Old believers preserving faith in the New World
Read: Duke Ellington and the effects of Cold War in Soviet Union on intellectual curiosity
Read: United we stand, divided we fall with race, ethnicity in America
Read: For American schools to succeed, they need this ingredient
Read: Nationalism in America, Alaska, around the world
Read: The case of the ‘delicious salad’
Read: White privilege is a troubling perspective
Read: Beware of activists who manipulate history for their own agenda
