Kevin MacDonald: Forward columnist J. J. Goldberg is distinguished among Jewish writers for acknowledging that yes, Jews are indeed powerful. The basic message of his 1996 book, Jewish Power: Inside the American Jewish Establishment, was that American Judaism is well organized and lavishly funded. It has achieved a great deal of power, and it has been successful in achieving its interests.
Goldberg’s book is a good rejoinder to those who claim that the Jewish community is hopelessly divided on all issues and therefore doesn’t have any net effect on public policy. His book acknowledged that in fact there is a great deal of consensus on broad Jewish issues, particularly in the areas of Israel and the welfare of other foreign Jewries, immigration and refugee policy, church-state separation, abortion rights, and civil liberties. As I noted in CofC, the massive changes in public policy on these issues beginning with the counter-cultural revolution of the 1960s coincide with the period of increasing Jewish power and influence in the United States.
Goldberg tackled Jewish power again in a recent Forward column, “Purim’s Lessons About Diaspora Power.” Again the point is that Jews are certainly not the weak, beset group typically presented by activist organizations like the ADL. He notes that since WWII, Jewish power increased while the enemies of Jews “declined in numbers and influence.” However, he sees a fundamental change:
Today, quite unexpectedly, we’re back where we started. Diaspora Jews still have resources to protect their interests and values, as they’ve had since World War II. But Jewish communities also face mounting threats from real enemies once again, thanks to the combined effects of the September 11 attacks, the Al-Aqsa Intifada and the Iraq War. Anti-Israel and anti-Jewish activists and ideologues have taken to claiming with unaccustomed boldness that organized Jewry controls and undermines whole governments and industries. Israel’s sworn enemies are broadening their focus and taking aim — with words and sometimes with bombs — at Israel’s closest overseas ally, the Jewish community. Perhaps most important, verbal attacks on organized American Jewish activity are no longer taboo. Diaspora Jewry hasn’t lost legitimacy, but its enemies have regained theirs.
Israel and Diaspora Jewish communities are indeed being criticized as never before. Right now, there is Israeli Apartheid Week aimed at boycotts, demonstrations, and divestment from Israel. At this point, you would have to be living under a rock to be unaware of the iron grip that the Israel Lobby has on US foreign policy and at its role in fomenting the Iraq war.
I would also like to think that people are becoming more willing to openly and honestly discuss Jewish influence in the other areas mentioned in Goldberg’s 1996 book, especially on immigration policy and other areas related to multiculturalism. That is certainly what we at TOO are trying to do.
Goldberg makes two remarkable recommendations:
First, remember that [in the Purim story] Haman plotted to destroy the Jews because Mordecai insulted him. Sometimes your enemies hate you because of something you did, not just who you are. Sometimes a small concession now can save a lot of grief later.
Wouldn’t it be great if people like Abe Foxman, Heidi Beirich, and Mark Potok took that to heart? — that some criticisms of Jews are not just “canards” based on ancient prejudices but reflect real conflicts of interest in the contemporary world. But of course, it’s unrealistic. The organized Jewish community cannot acknowledge Jewish involvement in promoting the Iraq war any more than it can acknowledge its role in promoting and financing immigration and multiculturalism into Western societies. The changes unleashed by Jewish influence in America have been profound–literally transformational. Taking any responsibility would be dangerous indeed for Jews, especially as we see that American politics is increasing defined by racial identity.
Further, especially in Israel, Jewish behavior is on “feed forward” in the sense that the most committed Jews are in determining the direction of policy. It’s always been that way, and in the contemporary world, this means that the fundamentalists, the settlers, and the overtly racialist Zionists are in the driver’s seat, dominating the most right wing government in Israeli history. The result is that Israeli expansionism, apartheid, and the oppression of the Palestinians will not be halted as a result of pressures within the Jewish community. The American Jewish community will continue to support all this — despite the glaring hypocrisy such behavior implies given the role of Jews as a pillar of multiculturalism in the Diaspora. There will be no concessions.
As a result, the ADL’s policy of condemning any discussion of Jewish influence will doubtless continue. Reasonable criticism must be completely suppressed because any leak in the dike is likely to lead to a deluge. And yet, as Goldberg seems to be admitting, Jewish influence can’t be ignored forever. I think he’s probably right. At least, I hope so.
Goldberg’s second bit of advice is: “Don’t abandon your intermarried relatives. They might save your life some day.” In other words, there is likely to be an anti-Jewish backlash at some point, and Jews had better be prepared. It’s an interesting suggestion to look to intermarried Jews for help. Goldberg’s implicit theory is that blood ties are critical in the end, and I couldn’t agree with him more.
Although intermarriage is often condemned in the Jewish community and there are high profile programs like Birthright Israel aimed at reducing it, several Jewish theorists have pointed out that intermarriage has certain strategic benefits for Judaism. Chapter 9 of Separation and Its Discontents has the following quote from two Jewish scholars of the Diaspora:
The successful exercise of influence is best achieved in a community with a large subset of members interacting with politicians and opinion leaders. Through intermarried Jews themselves, and certainly through their social networks involving Jewish family and friends who may be closer to the core of the community, Jewish concerns, interests, and sensibilities can be articulated before a wider, more influential audience. In a recent interview, Presidential aide Robert Lipshutz traced the origin of Jimmy Carter’s concern for Israel to his close friendship with a first cousin, an Orthodox Jew (Carter’s aunt married a Jewish man, and their two children were raised as Jews). Intermarrying Jews, while perhaps diluting the community in one sense, perform compensating strategic functions in another. (Lieberman and Weinfeld, Demographic trends and Jewish survival. Midstream 24 (November), 1978, 16.)
Goldberg’s comment agrees with my conclusion:
The deepest layers of Jewish commitment [i.e., Orthodox, Conservative and other strongly ethnic forms of Judaism] constitute the long-term well spring of Judaism, with the outer layers acting as mere temporary appendages that will be cast off in the long run. This deep inner layer of very intense group commitment provides demographic vigor to replenish those in the outer layers [i.e., they're the ones having the babies] who are gradually moving away from Judaism while nevertheless performing political and social roles that are indispensable for the contemporary vitality of Judaism. Such a perspective essentially agrees with the views of political scientist Michael Walzer (1994, 5), who notes that without radical transformation, secular Judaism cannot reproduce itself; since the Enlightenment, “it [has] remained parasitic on an older religious Judaism that it didn’t and couldn’t pass on.”
Facing the Future as a Minority
Here is an interesting note from Philip Weiss about the power of Jewish ethnocentrism:
Reductivism Sucks
…Green is, like Chomsky, whom he quotes a lot, a materialist; he sees wealth as a great motivation for states and political actors. So do I. The error, though, is that they dismiss religious ideology as a political motivator; and in doing so Green shows himself to be shallow and mechanistic. He reminds me of all the commentators who said that the religious right were voting against their economic self-interest in supporting Bush in 2004. Right. People have other motivations than strict material self-interest. AIPAC is filled with rich people who can’t wait to give away their money. They are motivated by ethnocentrism, and Zionism. The Iraq war was a giant disaster materially, forseeably. It was motivated by various ideologies, including Zionism among the neocons.
The trouble with Green’s analysis is that it overlooks or treats as trivial such facts as:
–Ann Lewis, Democratic Jewish powerbroker, saying in ‘08 that the role of the US gov’t is to support what the people of Israel want; she is expressing a religious fervor;
–The US government helps create a government in Iraq that includes former terrorist groups but specifically excludes Hamas from any government-making negotiations in Israel (why the double standard?)
–Barack Obama runs for president as an anti-Iraq-war candidate and gets past Hillary on that basis, but even as he does so calls for Jerusalem to remain undivided and can’t say a word against Israel’s Iraq, Gaza (why the double standard?)
–Sheldon Adelson gives $300,000 to the Republican Party in 2000 not because of any material interest but because he doesn’t want Jerusalem divided, as the Camp David negotiations suggested it might be, and days after the last tranche of that money is delivered, Douglas Feith, a nobody cipher who helped set up the One Jerusalem lobby out of desire to maintain a greater Israel, is hired to a high position in the Pentagon in the upcoming Bush administration.
–Obama’s own national security adviser, Gen’l Jones, going to J Street and saying that the Israel/Palestine conflict is the one issue that it is in the best interest of the US to resolve to guarantee greater security for its citizens; and lo, J Street is smeared in Israel; and Obama makes no progress on this stated objective…
It goes on and on. This is an important conversation; because the old materialist left needs to integrate an understanding of the power of religious thinking into its analysis. Yes I know religion is the opiate of the masses. It turns out that religious feeling and ethnocentric feeling too pervades human life, even in the elites.
That’s interesting about the importance of intermarriage as a political tool. I personally have noticed that dynamic to a great degree where I reside. For example, a jewish woman with an english/irish sounding name, or a nonjewish man in a very high position who strangely speaks and acts in jewish interests–and lo and behold his wife is Jewish. It’s another variation on the theme of crypsis. Recall that many of the non-jewish commissars had jewish wives. This tells you where political power really resides in conjugal relationships.
Another dynamic I have noticed is the conversion to Christianity for political ends. I live in a very conservative christian part of the country where creationism and ecclesiastical matters are the prevailing metaphysic. I notice a trend of Jews “converting” and sporting crosses or religious icons conspicuously, whereas it seems to me they still act in Jewish ethnic interests.
Richard Faussette in his essay “Race and Religion” touches on the effect of more orthodox or unassimilated jews setting policy while there is a diffusion of reformed Jews into the surrounding community, enacting the policy. This is a fascinating essay!! Does anyone know where I can find more Richard Faussette essays, or does anyone have any professional or biographical info on him?
None of this explains why Jews live in other people’s nations.
There is nothing new here. We know this stuff.
Why do Jews do what they do? Why not live in Israel? What would stop them from ruling the world from israel? It doesn’t make sense.
Ultimately what do Jews want? When the people turn on them do they actually think that the jews who married non Jews are going to save them? What else do they plan this time to save themselves?
Neoboudica,
Why did the Mongols, English, Romans, Phoenicians, Assyrians, etc. do what they did? In his book Cabala of Power, Israel Shamirs tries to answer the question of what the Jews want. In very poetic prose too.
“Anti-Israel and anti-Jewish activists and ideologues have taken to claiming with unaccustomed boldness that organized Jewry controls and undermines whole governments and industries. Israel’s sworn enemies are broadening their focus and taking aim — with words and sometimes with bombs — at Israel’s closest overseas ally, the Jewish community. ”
I really get the sense that this is correct, that opponents to Jewry are growing bolder with time. One brave man standing up against Jewry tends to embolden others. Its a little like the “Whack-a-mole” game, where you knock down one opponent, but another one soon pops up. After a while, the epithet of “Anti-Semite!” starts to lose its sting.
“Intermarrying Jews, while perhaps diluting the community in one sense, perform compensating strategic functions in another.”
I think this is a double-edged sword. Those who are just part Jewish will not have the same Semitic ethnocentricity or racial identity as full-blooded Jews. Apparently, they do not tend to experience the intense Judaic education program, and can be expected to identify with White interests, as they will have White relatives. For example, A 1/4 Jew can be expected to be more concerned about White dispossession and less desirous of increasing non-White immigration as a safeguard against a potential North American Holocaust against Jews.
“Those who are just part Jewish will not have the same Semitic ethnocentricity or racial identity as full-blooded Jews.”
I have found that half Jewish individuals tend to be even more radical than average full bloods. It’s as though they have something to prove. Yes, dammit, they are members of the tribe!
Jews Lied Us Into War:
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=3233040656682863939&hl=en#
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Yes Jews lied us into war. They came up with something called “preemptive action” which is the same as aggression against those who have done nothing to us and goes against rule of law and the Constitution and our way of life.
Aggression against others who had done nothing to Germany was Hitler’s crime according to the Nuremberg trials. Jews should pay for dragging us into such a situation. Double standards and the Jews. gggrrrrr
Everyday there is something in the newspaper about more terrorism, death, chaos and war in Iraq and Afghanistan. These places are torn apart just like Palestine. Jews are responsible for more death and pure destruction than any other group on Earth.
The entire world would be justified in a pre emptive strike on international jewry.
I do not believe that Jimmy Carter came up with the idea of a Palestinian homeland and attempted to bring peace in the ME because his aunt married a jew. That is a little far fetched.
His actions during the time of the Camp David talks and his actions since that time reveal that he was interested in countering Jew power and influence in our government.
He was also influenced because he is about the only public figure that I know who is a true believer. Most politicians talk about religion but that’s all it is.
You cannot under estimate Carter’s upbringing as a Christian in the South which is something you obviously do not understand as others who presume to speak about the Christian beliefs.
These people love Israel, the Israel of the Bible. Carter has spoken about his perceptions of the Jordon River from his Bible reading and then his amazement when he first saw the real thing and that its only a trickle of water.
I don’t understand the reluctance people have to Jimmy Carter. He is no friend of the Jews and missed a second term in the WH because of them.
Interesting points about intermarriage, Kevin. There was an article a few days ago speculating about whether Chelsea Clinton will convert to Judaism before her upcoming wedding to a Jewish guy:
http://www.philly.com/inquirer/world_us/20100305_For_Clinton_wedding__various_faith_options.html
Talk about marrying into power!
Good point. I should have mentioned the many Jewish wives of prominent figures in the USSR. It’s part of the strategy. Kevin M
“…secular Judaism cannot reproduce itself; since the Enlightenment, “it [has] remained parasitic on an older religious Judaism that it didn’t and couldn’t pass on.”
I love it…the core adherents of a parasitic creed parasitized by less-committed parasites. It seems that we have a genuine instance of “meta-parasitism”.
If only it were quantitatively self-cancelling.
“I have found that half Jewish individuals tend to be even more radical than average full bloods. It’s as though they have something to prove. Yes, dammit, they are members of the tribe!”
This has been my experience as well. In college I noticed that the half-Jews were often the most fervent, not so much in the religious sense but in terms of ethnic identity. The most militantly pro-Israel and Zionist types, who would do things like wear IDF t-shirts on campus and study/practice Krav Maga and aggressively and proudly assert/display their identity, were invariably half-Jews.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1255852/So-WERE-Tory-ministers-gay-flings-Christopher-Hitchens-Oxford.html
Hitchens, an atheist, married his first wife, Greek Cypriot Eleni Meleagrou, by whom he has two children, in a Greek Orthodox church and his second, American Carol Blue, in a New York synagogue.
http://www.vdare.com/sailer/050102_wolfe.htm
Wolfe particularly doesn’t win any friends among male reviewers by pointing out that intellectuals, like Charlotte Simmons’ Adam, tend to be less masculine than jocks like Jo-Jo, who, through sheer sense of alpha-male entitlement, forces his tutor (Adam) to stay up all night ghostwriting his history class reports.
Adam Kirsch in the neocon N.Y. Sun was so unhinged by this that he threatened Wolfe with the neutron bomb of accusations—anti-Semitism—although Wolfe’s wife, the mother of his three children, is Jewish. (Kirsch got so many of the book’s details wrong that it’s hard to tell if he read it or just skimmed, looking for the naughty bits.)
I think the protection of a mixed marriage can work both ways.
For a Euro like Tom Wolfe whose novels just portray the Tribe’s MO so accurately in their single minded approach to their mutually reinforcing trademark twins of gain: that of practical amoral financial and political advantage (whilst simultaneously pretending principles of the exact opposite).
A Tribe wife brings is an insurance policy against typical Auntie Sem vomit emitted by types like Kirsch.
For a L’Enfant terrible Trot like CH who has been plugged into the lucrative Leftist then Neo-con networks all his adult life I assume a guarantee of the continuation of the kind of congenial life he has enjoyed which only comes with having a Tribe wife.
Oh, come on…I knew Hitchens was a fool, an atheist, and a lush, but a rump ranger-turned-miscegenist? How could these attributes possibly go together?
Tom Wolfe’s another story. He’s an A-1 nice guy and the very antithesis of a philosemite. I’m quite surprised that his wife is Jewish (if that’s actually correct).
If so, maybe she was a tribute of sorts, tossed into his lap like a bouquet…
The question of what happens to the children of Jew-Gentile marriages is an interesting one. There has actually been quite a bit of research done on the subject, as the Jewish community is very concerned about it. There is an interesting study here:
http://www.bjpa.org/Publications/downloadPublication.cfm?PublicationID=2816
Some points of interest are:
1) Jews who intermarry are less committed to Judaism to begin with:
“We know, thanks to two decades of research, that people who intermarry on the whole have less Jewish capital than those who marry a Jew; they have less Jewish education, come from households with fewer Jewish practices, and have fewer Jewish friends in childhood”
2) Less than half of the children of intermarriages are being raised as Jews:
“Looking at all children of intermarriages, about 42 percent are being
raised exclusively as Jews, versus 50 percent in another religion”
3) Only 1/4 of the children of Jew-Gentile marriages identify as Jews by adulthood:
“There is no doubt that intermarriage poses significant problems to the community—while there’s a very good chance that a child with two Jewish parents will identify as a Jew in adulthood, there’s only about a one-in-four chance of this being true for people with intermarried parents.”
4) To remain Jewish, it is very important that the children of an intermarriage have Jewish peers (which is often not the case):
“It is vitally important that any Jewish child have a peer group
that shares her or his beliefs and practices and reinforces the sense of shared destiny and identity. Without this, even children with two Jewish parents are at a major disadvantage.”
On the whole, I think the evidence shows that Jews are right to be very worried about intermarriage, because it seems to really weaken the Jewish identity of the children. If only 1/4 of the children identify as Jews, that is very bad news for the Jewish community.
There may be many half-Jews that are eager to prove their Jewishness, but the evidence seems to show that they are not typical. Steve Sailer is one example of a half-Jew (apparently), who identifies with the interests of Whites.
The whole Jewish intermarriage issue begs the attention of an article on TOO, and I look forward to this (if there hasnt been one already). Some more interesting tidbits:
1) Jewish population growth is apparently negative in the US:
“All would agree that Jews in America are demographically endangered. In addition to the usual suspects of assimilation and intermarriage, the survey revealed that Jews in America are getting married later and having fewer children – so few that we are experiencing negative population growth”
2) Jewish intermarriage rates are thought to be about 38% (not as high as previously reported, but still high).
“According to Hebrew University sociologist Steven M. Cohen, one of the 1990 survey’s critics, removing those weights puts intermarriage at 38 percent — a figure now gaining acceptance.” http://www.jweekly.com/article/full/12390/new-study-debunks-52-percent-intermarriage-rate/
3) At current intermarriage rates, 100 secular Jews now drop to 41 by the second generation, then drop to 17 by the third generation, and then to 7 by the fourth generation (this uses the higher intermarriage rate though). In contrast, 100 Hasidic Jews increase to 3,400 by the fourth generation (http://www.simpletoremember.com/articles/a/WillYourGrandchildrenBeJews/)
I would find it interesting to hear from one of the scholars at TOO. Is Jewish intermarriage a good thing (it seems so) or a bad thing for White Nationalism? Can we expect this trend to ultimately lead to more Steve Sailers and a significantly smaller Jewish community?
Looking around my own neighborhood and community, watching tv, I would say that white people should be the ones worried about inter marriage.
Right. I don’t think it is fully understood by the average member of the White middle class how quickly Blacks and Hispanics are genetically adulterating our racial stock…and not with their best genes, either.
Anyone who lives in a mixed or “borderline” neighborhood – where a White neighborhood abuts a non-White neighborhood – can’t help but notice that interracial pairings, mostly involving trashy little White females and the most stupid, larcenous, and belligerent non-White males, seem to be at least as numerous as pairings between Whites, even with due allowance for implicit perceptual bias. (After all, such pairings are depicted by the mass media as “edgy”, exciting, fashionable, and the wave of the future.) These couplings appear far more likely to result in illegitimate children.
If you’re “off the front lines”, so to speak, you may not notice it. You see it in the media, but you may tend to think that it “doesn’t really happen all that much”. If so, I regret to inform you that it does happen, in great profusion, all over the place…and the trend is accelerating.
MacDonald is pleased with Goldberg’s ostensible acknowledgement of some Jewish culpability in the events commemorated by Purim. However, either Goldberg is ignorant of the history of Purim, which is hard to believe, or he is intentionally whitewashing the events in order to appear to be a conciliatory Jew.
According to the story of Purim, the Jew, Mordecai, was ordered to bow before Haman, advisor to the King of Persia. Mordecai refused, because Jews may not bow down to anyone except God. Had Mordecai not refused to bow before Haman, he would have committed a sin. Thus Mordecai did not need to apologize for anything. Moreover, the fact that he did not apologize did not cause the Jews a lot of grief later, as Goldberg suggests. Quite the contrary, it allowed them to exterminate their enemies, even when these were no longer a threat. Haman had obtained an edict from the King to kill Mordecai and rid Persia of its Jews. However, once Haman was caught and hanged for his perfidy and Mordecai appointed in his place, the edict pronouncing the planned elimination of the Jews would have been shelved.
Purim is celebrated not because of deliverance from Haman. It is celebrated because of a victorious belated preemptive war of total extermination against those who hated the Jews, an event which occured nine months after Haman and his sons were hanged. In other words, the wholesale extermination of an entire population, thousands of years ago, whose guilt consisted of not liking the Jews, is celebrated to this day.
“Intermarriage”, i.e., Jewish seduction. It goes way, way back: Lilith and whomever wandered by, Esther and the Persian king, Judith and Holofernes, Salome and John the Baptist, Monica and Bill….neatest thing is that, remarkably often when you find a non-Jewish male Red, in US and revolutionary Russia, here and everywhere, there’s a Jewess pulling the strings: Lenin and Inessa Armand, Ayres and Bernadine Ohrnstein, aka “Dohrn”, even Filipino leader of communist Hukbalahap uprising in Phillipines, post WWII, had a Jew wife – he met her while getting his Reducation in U.S. The Tribe simply does not miss a beat.
Jewish women can be predatory; there’s no doubt about that. But one should probably try to avoid criticizing Jewish females for mating with some long-term evolutionary goal in mind, as this takes considerably more intelligence and discipline than goes into the relatively uncritical mating decisions of many White women.
If White females were able to grasp the Big (evolutionary / reproductive) Picture, intelligent enough to distinguish those with good genes from those with poor or mediocre ones (versus those with fat wallets from those with thin ones), and moral enough to care about their own race, the White race would not look like it does today. It would look much better, the way it did in the days of Cro Magnon, back before White skulls and White musculatures began to shrink like popped balloons.
Reproductive selectivity is a key evolutionary attribute. If the only selection criteria that White women can respect is how rich, pretty, docile, or fun and entertaining a particular male happens to be, then evolutionarily speaking, they are nothing but birds of ill omen. Sadly, when it comes to reproductive discrimination, most White females are not much better than Black females, who (with a few exceptions) are not much better than alleycats.
I’m not saying that Jewish women have their pick of the best White males because White females are too stupid and self-centered not to let them go begging. It’s more complicated than that. In fact, many of the White men latched onto by predatory Jewesses are inferior specimens who owe everything they become to their Jewish connections, and any White female capable of understanding that deserves credit. What I’m saying is that when it comes to reproduction, Jewesses seem to be far better at weighing the interest of their group than White women are.
More generally, if White women were doing their jobs and actually breeding with the fittest White males as they should be, there would be no easy pickings for Jewesses. All of the choicest, most promising morsels would be taken and jealously guarded. White women would have located all of the healthy, muscular, intelligent and big-brained members of the group and bred with them. Instead, millions of them stare at photos of Johnny Depp, Brad Pitt, and yes, Will Smith like lobotomized monkeys while males with some degree of actual bio-cognitive fitness get zero play from them for all the wrong reasons.
So as we criticize Lilith, we should not forget to pay a bit of critical attention to the high-level reproductive irrationality of our own women, which is almost certainly contributing to the situation we’re complaining about here. Whatever evil indoctrination may be responsible for their idiocy, they need to learn how to see past it. (And that goes for White males too, many of whom seem to think that the only woman worth having looks and behaves like a botoxed, drug-addled porn starlet with plastic tits and collagen lips.)