Review of Civilization: The West and the Rest, by Niall Ferguson (2011) London: Allen Lane. 402 pages.
If you’ve ever found yourself saying, as I have, that your major political preoccupation is the salvaging of the best of “Western Civilization” [WC], you may then have been queried, “What is it? What aspect of WC is so important?”
[Let us pause here while you review your own list…]
Perhaps a bit of uncertainty? Not sure how long a list to compile? Not sure of your priorities? Isn’t it a matter of taste? And importantly, most of us are not at all sure how WC came about.
Niall Ferguson will certainly help you out here. He is the now well-known and popular (e.g., The Accent of Money) Scottish economic historian, teaching at Harvard and the London School of Economics, and frequent TV commentator. The book under review was the basis for a six-part documentary, for Channel 4 in Britain, “Civilization: Is the West History?”. (Aha! That ought to wake you up, all you readers of The Occidental Observer.)
First of all, while not too sure where WC begins and ends, Ferguson certainly has a lot of positive things to say about it. By that he means not just “High Visual Culture”, art, architecture, and music, but all the cultural and technological achievements. His Wikipedia entry includes a poignant quote concerning how fragile and vulnerable WC is today, how much its virtues are taken for granted by Westerners, and how much WC is appreciated by those who have found blessed relief in WC after escaping their ancestral culture, a favored example being the Somali woman, Ayaan Hirsi Ali, with whom he now lives [ahem….].
His book begins with a list of what he is amused to call “killer apps”, the factors which he believes were responsible for WC’s existence, in the first place, and its major achievements including the takeover of much of the world. Even if you think he has left something out (see below), you’ll be given a good head start in making up your own list.
Ferguson will be detested by some leftists or liberals for emphasizing the positive contributions that countries of the West made to “the Rest” in the course of colonial empire building. He does acknowledge unpleasant and sometimes horrifying acts which Westerners have perpetrated against other races. But he reviews with a remarkable and refreshing realism the long history of much worse homicide and warfare against fellow Westerners culminating in the two World Wars. The homicide rate in 13th-century England was 100 per 100,000, compared to, say, the 69 per 100,000 of today’s S. Africa or Columbia’s 53. The fact that he refuses to grovel in guilt means that the extreme PeeCees are still not likely to give him a pass. But because Ferguson is such a well-known member of the intellectual establishment he can get away with a lot. As far as he goes, he’s our ally.
Anyway, here are his “killer apps”:
Competition
Science
Property rights
Medicine
The consumer society
The work ethic
Each is then elaborated upon on with historical detail that is both entertaining and instructive. A factor that you might be worried was omitted probably will turn up in the elaboration. E.g., “race realists” typically hypothesize that differences in genetically influenced IQ and personality traits underlie the West’s achievements. Ferguson is aware of such hypotheses. But he says:
Can it really be that England became the first industrial nation mainly because bad sanitation and disease kept life exceptionally short for the majority of people, giving the rich and enterprising minority a better chance to pass on their genes” (p. 10 and 200n)
For the supposed empirical evidence for natural selection in England, he sites Gregory Clark’s A Farewell To Alms. (Clark does implicitly implicate genes but doesn’t mention them.) Instead, Ferguson claims that “institutions” are the key to it all. He can’t imagine that the above natural selection pressures could not have been at work in France and Italy which he implies were not as characterized by the “killer apps” as England. This would seem arguable, given the likes of Leonardo da Vinci, Galileo, or Pasteur. He, himself, speaks of “Western Civilization 1.0” as existing in the Fertile Crescent, Athens and Rome. The severe “competition” that he describes for Europe may well have been fomented by geographical circumstance, e.g., rivers and mountain ranges that divided up Europe and discouraged a European monoculture. But most of his other “institutions” (could we call them all “factors”?) must surely have been influenced by an increase in human brain power. Ferguson has surely begged the question of the origin of his “institutions” which seem unlikely to have arisen in the absence of natural selection (of genes) for human talent. However, one can perhaps forgive him for not venturing far into topics that have led to such eminent intellects as James Watson being quickly removed from conventional learned society.
Ferguson’s non-reductionist emphasis on several “apps” will be widely appreciated. But the resulting complexity, paradoxes and confounds, to which much of social science would want to apply multivariate statistics and partial correlations, he tries to deal with using his nimble mind and considerable historical knowledge, mainly by comparing different cultures with regard to a particular “app”. Not easy, given the potential for interactions including gene-culture co-evolution (not mentioned).
In Chapter 1, on competition, Europe is compared with China. Where Europe was a morass of small, decentralized and highly competitive fiefdoms, eventually coalescing into still numerous “nation states”, China during the Ming period (14th –17th centuries) was a vast, stable, unified empire, challenged only by Mongols and Japanese pirates now and then. As early as the 11th century, the Chinese had already invented many important technologies (e.g., printing presses and gunpowder that was used for military explosives). But after the 15th century all that inventiveness and creativity seems to have tapered off — thanks to a Confucian zeitgeist rewarding conformity and obedience and a government that exerted firm, stabilizing control everywhere, isolated from foreign commerce and influence. Europeans, with a more tractable written language, then leaped ahead of them in innovation and capitalist economies.
The kind of “competition” which Europeans experienced will strike many readers as pretty rough stuff. Ferguson points to “benefits” of the unending wars and pogroms, referring to technological and other creative innovations. But leftists are apt to feel queasy in being told that war is a good way to achieve such “benefits”. Isn’t this precisely what Christians and Communist utopians have been trying to get away from for centuries? Ferguson seems to be giving ammunition to those for whom morality is determined by what is biologically adaptive (shades of Ragnar Redbeard.)
With Chapter 2, on science, we have another cultural comparison, this time between the West and the Muslim (7th century onward) world. Early and medieval Muslims had made great progress in developing mathematics (from Greek and Indian origins), science, medicine and cartography, but by the 11th century Muslim clerics and Sultans were snuffing out science as blasphemous (what took them so long?) At the same time, European governments were actively supporting science — in spite of Christian clerical objections. Ferguson describes the decline of the Ottoman empire and the reversal of Turkey’s decline by Atatürk, who adopted many of the features of WC including a more sensible alphabet. Ah! So a decline can be turned around? An inspiration! Ferguson also has a high, perhaps “neo-connish”, regard for Israel, relative to Muslim countries, as a highly successful (e.g., number of patents registered) outpost of WC. He notes Iran’s accelerating support for science but also its continuing lack of a “key part of the West’s winning formula”: property rights, rule of law and truly representative government. What about Israel’s lack of respect for Palestinian property rights? No mention of that here, although if those rights had been respected Israelis would undoubtedly be getting along better with their neighbors.
A comparison of a successful North America and a relatively unsuccessful South America is the theme of Chapter 3, on property. After dismissing many climatic, geographical and resource differences, Ferguson concludes that the crucial difference lies in the North’s democracy that is founded on “the rule of law….the sanctity of individual freedom and the security of private property rights, ensured by representative, constitutional government.” [p. 97] Just having elections is not enough. South America’s problem began with the Spanish government owning all the land, after which a criollo elite obtained the use of large tracts of land along with ownership of the indigenous population’s labor (previously owned by the Inca elite). So most people, whether Iberian immigrants or indigenous Indians, didn’t get to have more than “tiny plots of land”. Lack of experience with democracy or administrative responsibility are cited as factors, as well. Oddly, Ferguson makes no mention of Hernando de Soto (Polar), the well known Peruvian economist whose Institute for Liberty and Democracy (ILD) has done so much to promote property rights (especially for the poor) both in Peru and elsewhere in the world.
In contrast, British immigrants to North America could all become substantial landowners entitling them to vote for representatives to a legislature — even though ¾ were initially indentured servants. Since these mostly Protestants tended also to be imbued with a good work ethic, another “killer app”, they worked hard to improve their material conditions.
Simon Bolivar, the liberator and ruler of much of early 19th-century South America, gave up on establishing a political system like North America’s, given the chronic warfare which he attributed, in part, to racial diversity. But Ferguson argues that “multi-coloured Brazil” is leading South America to an economic prosperity which he anticipates will be on a par with North America (i.e., he’s not certain), and he asks without answering, “Why not in Africa, too?” Neither the stability of a multi-racial society nor the inherent traits (IQ or personality) of African ethnies are questioned.
It would seem that Ferguson is trying to have his cake and eat it too. He glibly provides reasons for attributing WC to institutions rather than to any inherent traits of the people who created it. Certainly some “apps” have been quickly adopted around the world, e.g., consumption/consumerism. Yet he ignores the question of why those institutions were created by those particular people. And are they all readily adaptable to other cultures? E.g., the rule of law? His Chapter 4, on medicine, reports on the phenomenal scientific achievements of Europeans — whose relatively high IQ is surely genetically influenced. In fact, he later concedes that Jewish dominance of Western intellectual life suggests a “genetic as much as a cultural advantage” (p. 235). Jews yes, but gentiles no? Why? He also derides the “pseudo-science of eugenics”. But the success against Tay Sachs syndrome among Ashkenazi Jews was eugenic, as is genetic counseling generally. What is “pseudo” about all that? And how can Ashkenazi Jews have a high average intelligence in the absence of eugenic practices?
Chapter 5, titled “Consumption”, is a wide-ranging paean to consumerism as a powerful force for the spread of WC beginning with textiles and clothing fashions. There is Ricardo’s Law on the division of labor, the Austrian economist Friedrich von Hayek’s prophetic enthusiasm for the market over state planning, and a description of the competition between the remarkably similar programs of Stalin and Hitler who are eventually displaced by the capitalism of today. Wisely, he later points to “over-consumption” as a factor in the financial crises we’ve been experiencing (thanks to debt) and to the likely environmental catastrophes that we face as more of the world embraces our consumerism and resource depletion. For now, he suggests that we are threatened by “our own lack of understanding of, and faith in, our own cultural heritage.” Amen to that.
The (Chap. 6) work ethic “app” relates, of course, to Weber’s Protestant ethic, except that things are more complicated, e.g., by the thoroughly successful Jewish work ethic, and the likelihood that the Protestant part came after an already highly developed work ethic on the part of Northern Europeans. Oh? But no genes mentioned here either.
The book ends, heuristically, by addressing the theme of Armageddon and the possible decline of WC — an unsurprising parallel being drawn with Rome’s decline following Hun and Goth terrorism and immigration. Given his numerous “apps” and their corollaries, Ferguson goes to some length in emphasizing the complexity of a civilization such as ours, which makes predicting its future dicey. But the end could come fast! “The Roman empire…did not decline and fall sedately. It collapsed within a generation. … Comparably swift collapses have been a leitmotiv of this book” (p.302). “If ever an empire fell off a cliff … it was the one founded by Lenin”(p. 303).
But there is good news. He does not foresee a serious “clash of civilizations” à la Huntington. Nor does he foresee a collapse of the institutional “killer apps” of WC since so much of the world is adopting them. A quick reading might suggest that he could care less about the people who created those “apps”. However, one can read between the lines, especially on the last page: “Maybe the real threat is posed not by the rise of China, Islam or CO2 emissions, but by our own loss of faith in the civilization we inherited from our ancestors” [p. 325, emphasis added]. He derides our historical ignorance including the fading familiarity with the “foundational texts of Western civilization” (his own short list includes Darwin’s Origin of Species and, in first place, Shakespeare’s complete works).
Fine. Ferguson has certainly rather deftly avoided electrocuting himself on the third rails of political correctness, although there are several items for which lesser authors would be called “white supremacists”. He has written a very entertaining and informative book that does not fall into the currently fashionable nonsense of attributing the success of the West to the profits of colonialism and slavery. Major drawbacks are the lack of attention to the ethnic basis of Western Civilization and to the role of Jewish intellectual predominance (which he acknowledges) in rationalizing the massive invasion of Third World peoples who now pose its greatest imminent threat. Indeed, his lack of attention to the ethnic basis of Western Civilization shows the extent to which he has internalized the current intellectual zeitgeist and its poisonous implications for the culture he finds so compelling. Nevertheless, it could be usefully promoted by activist groups, such as Youth for Western Civilization, The Political Cesspool, Stormfront, or American Renaissance, who are trying to defend Western Civilization against the worst excesses of the current onslaught by the multicultural left and to celebrate the people who created it.
Facing the Future as a Minority
Excellent review, thanks. Niall Ferguson seems to go about as far as a well known public intellectual can these days and still maintain a Harvard post. I think his allusions to the genetic basis for England being the seat of the Industrial Revolution are helpful. Everything we can do to spread the idea that genes matter to civilization is good. The truth is, a lot of people are noticing the prolific procreation in the lower parts of society and people do worry about it.
In addition, Ferguson gives a general defense of WC which is rare these days. Of course, his wife is an African woman (more attractive and Western looking than most), but she has written eloquently about the horror of being a woman in modern-day Muslim countries. She has stated publicly that modern Christian culture is far superior and safer for her and other women.
Ferguson’s ‘apps’ seem painfully weak in trying to explain the uniqueness and implicit superiority of WC – simply due to the fact they were and are present, in varying degrees, in other civilizations, as Mr. Hilton so ably points out.
All of Fergusen’s ‘apps’ seem to be merely the superficial effects of what Charles Murray discovered to be the ultimate root cause of in his Human Accomplishment masterpiece: unique European individualism became the mother of scientific enquiry, and coupled with the ascendency of Thomism and the RC Church, gave birth to the scientific method, and lo, our modern world.
And we all know Murray didn’t chicken out like Nial when it comes to race and IQ.
Scholars of the future will still be poring over Murray’s tomes while Ferguson’s will have wrapped fish, lined birdcages, and quietly forgotten.
Matthias, it’s also unique white or European cognitive structure, which so many ignore or do not realize exists. The cognitive structure of E. Asians for example is heavily skewed toward visuospatial ability, with their verbal / analytical reasoning abilities falling short of whites (which a lot of researchers “forget” to mention or state isn’t significant). Verbal reasoning isn’t only language skills, which is what so many believe. Jewish cognitive abilities are skewed toward verbal reasoning, but their visuospatial talents average below those of other whites. European whites as mentioned by other posters on this sites, are the only group that shows an even line up between verbal and visuospatial abilities on the whole. This must play a large part in white creativity and inventiveness along with other traits uniquely ingrained into whites. I have little doubt E. Asians geneticists and jewish geneticists are working on adjustments to their peoples’ genomes to better their cognitive weak spots, while at the same time the jews will short circuit any attempts by white researchers attempting to do the same whenever possible.
Does anyone out there believe that there are powerful and/or influential whites working behind the scenes on plans to try and get our people out of this collective mess? A bit off the beam, but I have to ask.
Also, ignore Rehmat. No matter what his site presents and no matter what he posts here, he’s likely just another troll. He and his appearance challenged friends no doubt convinced that they are flawlessly clever. When someone is able to post constantly, day in, day out, they aren’t for real, lol.
This is terrible to post….
But I made it to the Ayaan Hirsi thing, then went to the wikipedia page to see if it was true and read “He has no hobbies, he just works”
Clarification….He does have hobbies…you know…having affairs!
Sorry! I hate men like him. I hope he had a vesectomy.
Women are social status climbers. Ayaan Hirsi was just smart enough to know that to climb the social status ladder becoming ‘right-wing’ was the Easiest Way for her to Do It (right-wingers are always looking for the non-white who loves and understand them.) It’s not because she actually LOVES western civilization.
I have noticed in other quarters there is an effort by our enemies to extoll the unsung virtues of our Civilization. Just another cunning ruse to placate anger and observation at the dismantling of the people and traditions that was Europe. The distraction and balm of flattery, while the wrecking team continue with their destruction of our traditions and racial order.
Our enemies have lead western music and arts into a dead end deliberately to kill it off. Architecture reflects a decadent desire for sensationalism without meaning. Nothing our enemies promote is connected to the past because they want to eradicate the historical structures that support the European peoples as a separate identity. The market might promote our culture (video games etc ) but certainly not the Zionist Overlords, leftist elites and their Toadies like Ferguson. Ferguson’s confused.
When Ferguson thinks of the west, he’s only interested in the laws and science, but as Anthony Hilton says, he refuses to consider that it’s the European races that built it. He would be thrown to oblivion for saying such things and he know it.
Maybe toadies like Ferguson should ask them selves, WHO built all the fantastic buildings in Moorish Spain? Were are the Muslim worlds equivalents? As far as his woman goes, it just another TV stunt, designed to promote brand Ferguson.
How right you are, A-S. Ferguson is a dissimulation peddler who knows who he is working for, knows who owns the stadium he is playing in, and what the unwritten rules of the new kosher overlords are. He is most likely in the ‘intellectual’ game for fame & fortune, but is nothing but a race-mixing degenerate, who is hastening the demise of his own people for a bag of shekels.
So are you claiming that the Muslim world is/was the equivalent of Western Civilization?
If Ferguson doesn’t see as this articles author quotes: “Nor does he foresee a collapse of the institutional “killer apps” of WC since so much of the world is adopting them.” Then I consider him quite blind. If we look at what is going on at the moment and in the last 10 years the west is having a crisis of meaning and confidence. Primarily due to the Jewish Liberal socialist philosophy that is spinning our cities and youth out of control. To maintain the ko, they cooked up ‘Climate Change’ so the left wing don’t evaporate or turn on the apartheid state. The swamping of most Western countries with 3rd world immigration and crime. The bankrupt and worthless currency only propped up by Zionist bankers until the flag falls.
The 9/11 inside job as a ruse for middle east/asia wars because the west IS failing. Rotten from the inside, the promoters of this leftwing rot done so as to foist Multiculta on the European peoples to deliberately destroy unity. They now have to engage in foreign wars to distract our people from the perpetrators of this mess.
Ferguson’s just another “State Historian” taking his 30 shekels.
In fact I’m surprised to see him extolled on our site. Considering he would consider us the detritus of society .
We need an event that will cause White people to become racially aware and proud of our heritage. The OJ trial polarized people but we need something that will have a more powerful and longer lasting and clearer effect.
The royal wedding evoked White history. We need something like that can be sustained and is unavoidable.
Any benefit obtained through the media is ephemeral. The only lasting solution is restoration of the Church. When healthy, the Church defines her only reality independent from the enemy-controlled media.
Ferguson’s claims can be refuted simply by looking at South Africa. Blacks just took over a Western country and are rapidly running it into the ground. Its not the institutions its the people behind them.
By claiming WC’s greatness is owed to its institutions instead of its people, Ferguson endorses environment over heredity like any two-bit Frankfurt School Boas-wannabe hack.
Yup. When I had young’uns I would read the countless “parenting” books, which make you believe that the tiniest thing that’s “wrong” with your kids is entirely your own doing. Yah, right. Then how come the next door neighbour’s children got the same rearing and treatment and “turned out” totally different? I can’t believe I swallowed this whole – until I saw an article by a psychologist saying that parents’ behaviour is not quite as important as they like to think and we don’t need to knock ourselves out trying to be perfect. Feh. Of course, lots of evil people will then use this as an excuse to mistreat their children in every way.
Between Ferguson being a “professor” at Harvard and the revelation that he had to marry out, I am surprised that anyone still takes him seriously.
His list is starkly ‘left brain’ male. Has he neglected the Dao? Knows he nothing of the Kogi?
My point above is neatly illustrated in the text by the reference to ‘successful’ N America. If success is to reduce a viable, sustainable indigene, to a rump Casino proprietor – then success it was. And who can deny such success is now global.
I think Anthony Hilton misunderstands Gregory Clark. Clark is not saying that Britain became the first industrial power by having a monopoly on (or producing more of ) geniuses like Leonardo da Vinci, Galileo, or Pasteur.
Is he? Anyone can adopt an app just like anyone can take an oath of allegiance
Could anyone confirm Ferguson’s claim that “The homicide rate in 13th-century England was 100 per 100,000, compared to, say, the 69 per 100,000 of today’s S. Africa or Columbia’s 53.” I just find it strange that he would claim that England had a higher murder rate than today’s South Africa just as England was entering it’s Merrie Olde Englande phase.
13th Century England being pre-firearms, I doubt there is much to this claim of an extreme murder rate.
I found a few references to it online.
1278 England: 15 per 100’000
Late Middle Ages: 20 per 100’000
1600: 10 per 100’000
Present: 1 per 100’000
http://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&q=cache:3NZHnMZpmdkJ:www2.warwick.ac.uk/fac/arts/history/postgraduate/taughtma/mamodules/violenceearlymodern/topics/interpersonal/long-term-historical-trends-of-violent-crime.pdf+The+homicide+rate+in+13th-century+England&hl=en&gl=uk&pid=bl&srcid=ADGEESi4UjFyHzCjgWSlYN5Bc6hJOCEPnAj6Wr6kkDXHER5BhDFlckypn8LG1HikfVzglKez9lQH81MVk2bKSBi70ipLK9sIGPJj-BQOP9e5z1dXnFz8Gxw3V3FmpgbXX_iCErf6S-y4&sig=AHIEtbSdrnC4z5pb_5aatWJIqWNtcgUSmA
Ferguson got that statistic from Gregory Clark. Clark’s argument is that the English economy took off because the population had become less violent and feckless over many generation.
Ferguson was the official biographer of the Rothschilds — he wouldn’t dare hit out at the Nazgul, ur, Pharisaists…
The World’s Banker: The History of the House of Rothschild [Hardcover] … 1309 pages!
http://www.amazon.com/Worlds-Banker-History-House-Rothschild/dp/0297815393/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1307101074&sr=8-3
This pseudo-historian with a grossly over-sized ego should be ignored.
Product Description:
Ferguson = Rothschild Sycophant!!
The Rothschilds are criminally implicated in the fomenting (for profit) of the mass murder of millions, through a series of wars and bloody revolutions. That is how they should be referred to, and precisely how they should be pursued, persistently and unmercifully, until ropes at last creak with their corpulent weight.
Niall Ferguson is dishing up the usual liberal platitudes to explain the rise and fall of civilizations: free market, enterpreneurship, individual feedom, blablabla I have experienced it before in university- it is all political propaganda but no rational analysis wathsoever. I can dismiss Ferguson’s ‘apps’ in a few strokes:
1. Competition: the most successfull European overseas businesses, which paved the way for European colonial enterprises, were state-run monopolists, which succeeded eachother (Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, English, etc).
2. Science is totally overrated: Djengiz Khan easily overran Russia on horseback, while Hitler’s sofisticated panzers got stuck in the Russian mud and snow. Most inventions are done outside the institutions by the way.
3. Property rights: nice for small-scale societies, but not a necessary asset. Slave-states can function just fine and even can survive for millenia, which is proven by ancient Egypt and China.
4. Medicine? I would recommend disease. It was disease which decimated the native Americans and literally made space for white colonization of the America’s. This is by the way not the only case in history.
5. Consumer society: it can make citizens happy, but not make civilizations win. The Mongols were herdsmen when they conquered Asia, the Greek under Alexander were peasant farmers. They overran the consumer societies of their time.
6. Work ethic: hard working makes you tired, but not rich or successful. Besides, work ethic is not a necessary condition for a high yield – one also can force people to work hard. After the Inca’s had built their stone cities in the Andes heights, they were kicked off by Pizarro’s soldiers (no working ethic involved, just cloak and dagger).
That seems a rather cavalier dismissal. On number one, doesn’t the role of private corporations in the British and American econmomy throughout the 19th and 20th century give you pause?
On Number two … Is that a serious statement? Science is really overrated in our modern world and the rise of the West? Airpower and atomic weapons don’t mean much?
On three, don’t you see he is explaining why the West buried the competition? The masses have a standard of living far beyond that of Egypt and China. Do you really mean that point?
Point four – so you really think White people only won in North America due to smallpox and such? You are buying the multicultural Leftist line.
On point five, everyone concedes the great productive ability of the US has been key to it’s dominance. Goods for consumers fuel this. The industrial revolution gave the West enormous advantages.
On six, again, he showing why a few White Westerners could overcome herds of whip-driven slaves in lands all across the globe.
Private corporations always work better when they have a monopoly at home and force of arms abroad. Marx was wrong- not those who own the means of production, but those who have the means of destruction set the course of history.
About science: Mao Zedong said that the atomic bomb was a paper tiger, because it could kill maybe one million but Chinese are hundred of millions. Quantity has a quality of its own, as Stalin put it correctly. Whites are not overwhelmed by superior science but by colored who just outf*ck us.
A higher standard of living is nice, but not a winning asset in world domination. On the contrary, it makes people dull and bemused. Competition does not necessarily make a society great or succesful. Unity and central government on the other hand are very helpful. there was a lot of business competition in 19th century China, but the nation was in decline.
Point four: America was not a big emptiness when Columbus arrived. We whites displaced the Indians. Disease, starvation and deportation to the least fertile places helps to reserve the best for your own kind. Sometimes the left does have a point, but the future always belongs to the winners.
Industrial output can be achieved by many ways. The Soviet Union had larger production of arms than anyone else in the 1930s despite not having a consumer society.
Whites (and others) were never alone. One always need local collaborators. Sometimes the collaborators outnumber the actual intruders. Or as a friend of mine put it: non-Jewish leftist outnumber leftist Jews by ten to one.
Niall Ferguson is not a White Nationalist – lol – was somene expecting him to be one? He focuses on institutions and not the ethnic basis of civilizations, but this doesn’t mean there is no value in his work.
He has specifically said that Great Britain and Germany should have avoided the first world war. This might have avoided the second world war as well. He has been accused of saying that Great Britain and Germany should have worked together to avoid war. This in itself is valuable.
And Greggory Clark’s work is important because it shows that genetics DO matter in shaping a civilization and Ferguson promotes Clark’s work. So, this is about as far as you can except someone who wants to maintain his Harvard post and remain a bigtime public figure to go.
But there is value in nudging the conversation in the direction of genes and behavior when it comes to history, even if indirectly. This is why Clark’s work is actually the more valuable.
I don’t know why there has been a desire to romanticize life in the Middle Ages or the Dark Ages before it, but it’s been done by the Romantics on the Right, many on the Left, and by Karl Marx. But all the objective evidence is that life in 850 AD wasn’t all that great. Cows were smaller, consumer goods were less prevalent, trade broke down and even the physical size of people shrank.
This is dense stuff, but, the last 100 years of the Roman Empire were straight downhill. Starting with the Roman defeat at Adrianople in 378 AD, and culminating when the last Roman Emperor in the west was deposed in 476 AD.
The Roman’s lost control of their road network, this didn’t happen all at once, it was gradual over the hundred years. Commerce slowed. Common manufactured things like roof tiles, amphora (olive oil & wine containers), and coins are no more. The military cannot be paid because the roads are blocked by the barbarian invaders.
Tom, I agree, I think the evidence is Rome did, in fact, fall. Apparently there was an attempt by some intellectuals to claim Rome didn’t really fall, but instead “transformed” into whatever came later. But this seems to defy all the evidence.
And just think of what the fall of Rome cost us! Imagine if we hadn’t lost 1,000 years of progress? Surely we would be living much longer, healthier, wealthier lives. It has to be the single greatest tragedy of the last 2,000 years.
And I am betting a big part of it was the quality of the people suffering – through mass immigration and through the middle and upper classes failing to reproduce enough (compared to the former slave classes).
Yeah, there was a decline in population. It can be attributed to a breakdown in sanitation, caused by no clean water. The barbarians had cut the aqueducts supplying the water to Rome. They were not rebuilt. Consequently you have filth & diseases in a city & metro area of at least one million.
There was a nutrition problem too, because the barbarians had taken control of the Roman breadbasket in North Africa. So along with filth & disease you also have poor nutrition. The population shrinks.
The Roman Catholic church at the time was encouraging celibate monks, priests, nuns & hermits this had to have had an effect on the population.
I don’t think there was any particular class-sex-reproduction angle, it was a general decline in population caused by the fall of a civilization.
This is an excellent article. One demurral, though. The author correctly states that pre-Reformation northern Europe had already developed an economically-indispensable work ethic. That was also the case, however, in the north- and central-Italian city states, Venice, Milan, Florence, etc., the pacemakers of the “European Miracle.” But race could have played a part in this as well, as the populations were to a large extent of Celtic derivation.
Yes there must of been something positive going on in Northern and Central Italy as well. Perhaps the same process – the middle classes having more children than the poor. There was too much innovation and creativity in Italy for something interesting not to be happening. I would be surprised if there wasn’t a genetic dimension.
I’ve always enjoyed those 18th century paintings of happy Italians playing among the ruins of the Roman Empire.
eugen,
Good points made. Though I would argue that they were/are of more Germanic than Celtic heritage. Although there was a Celtic presence in the North and Central parts of Italy, they were mostly gone by the time of the Germanic invasions and settlements, from what I understand at least.
Lawrence of Appalachia,
The genetic evidence clearly shows that both Northern Italians and Central Italians are more related to Southern Europeans like Southern Italians and Greeks than to actual Germans.
It is true that, like other Southern Europeans, admixture analysis shows that the second largest component of Northern and Central Italian ancestry is Northern European-like.
But the fact remains that, again like other Southern Europeans, the largest component of their ancestry is Southern European-like.
For this reason it doesn’t make any sense to call Northern or Central Italians “Germanic”, though for historical reasons it may make sense to think that the Northern European-like minority component of their ancestry came mostly from Germanics.
It is interesting that with all Italians, genetic analysis indicates the largest share of their ancestry goes back to Southern Europeans (probably a combination of the original Italians and Greeks), the second largest goes back to Northern Europeans (probably a combination of Germanic slaves/invaders and Celtic tribes which were Latinized by the Romans), and the smallest component of their ancestry goes back to Middle Easterners and North Africans (probably an effect of the Neolithic/Eneolithic diffusion combined with the minority of Roman slaves who came from the Near East or North Africa).
Reginald,
I agree with almost all that you have said. But just to clarify, I never meant to imply that Northern or Central Italians could be considered ‘Germanic’. It goes almost without saying that the majority of Italians, regardless of what region of the country they hail from, are going to be genetically closer to each other than with anyone else.
Perhaps at one time, like during the times of the Gothic, Langobard, and Frankish Kingdoms, one could argue that (by and large) Northern and Central Italians could be described as Latin-speaking Germanics, but certainly not now.
But I would argue about how Italians should be classified from a cultural standpoint. Unlike Spaniards, Portuguese, Greeks, etc. the whole of Italy should not, IMO, be classified as ‘Southern European’. At the very least, the North cannot be classified as such. The Center appears to be a cross between Western and Southern influences, and the North is a mix of Western and Central European culture. Which of the two influences, in both cases, is more dominant is up for debate.
His claim that the murder rate in 13th century England was 100 per 100,000 seems a bit high considering there were no firearms to and England was very sparsely populated at the time. If the statistic is correct it just goes to say that the Bow and Arrow control laws of the time simply didn’t work.
I first seen Niall in his war of the worlds series and that was before I was aware of real Jewish influence. But thinking back on his dealing with the Bolsheviks, I don’t recall him mentioning Jews or the massive part played by Jews in the Russian revolution. Niall obviously knows about this but put his career before the truth. So I just ignore him. The fact that he’s had three tv shows shown on British tv tells me he’s a darling of the media and anyone that the media likes isn’t someone I’d trust.
how can anyone credit a claim that in 13th C. England the homicide rate was 100 per 100,000? It is absurd on its face. j
I’m sorry but I cannot take someone who actually marries an African female seriously. Men who do this are a waste of space. This man is a fraud.
@ Foda, 8:37 pm.
{” Because Ferguson married an African female,he is a fraud”}
He didn’t marry her,she was his mistress for a while.They have already separated again.If you want to compare his handsome Scottish wife,mother of his three children whom he left, with that Somali woman, who looks like a black crow to me, go to the Wikipedia article on Niall Ferguson and click on note nr. 60 for a Mail-on-line article with pictures.In the pictures of Ferguson in both the Wikipedia and the Mail-on-line articles he has a suspicious looking nose for a Scotchman.You wonder: has Ferguson Jewish blood? That would explain certain things.
His not mentioning of the ethnological basis of Western civilization and its “killer apps” (what a term!),his pro-Jewish attitude and his relationship with an African woman doesn’t make him an ideal WN.He doesn’t even point in that direction as Jason asserts.We need better material than that.
I’m only lukewarm to Ferguson as an economist. Hoppe, whom i prefer, makes the point about IQ being necessary (but not sufficient) to explain the Industrial Revolution here:
http://is.gd/o107s3
Yes, having free markets and low taxes alone will not save your economy if it is full of low quality people. This is probably why the reforms in Latin America haven’t done much good.
Well I guess Niall Ferguson’s failure to explicitly call for the removal of all Jews from Europe and America makes his work of zero value to some.
But I would say Ferguson’s work points to the superiority of the West, which is itself of value. He also endorses Greggory Clark’s views – and if you look at what Clark says, he supports the role of ethnicity and biology in human behavior. If thinking in terms of genetics can be mainstreamed, this will be of great value to our cause in the long term.
We are not interested in endorsing every last thing Ferguson believes in, only in noting some of the changes in tone that may be useful to our side.
Who will know better WC better than a Jew! Ayaan Hirsi Ali is a very stupid example. The writer could have given 100,000 women from around the world who comes to United States to end-up as prostitutes.
China, India, Persia and Syria had civilized societies when most of the West was passing through its Dark Age. Prince Charles admitted in 2003 in one of his speech that the west borrowed most of its ‘civil values’ from Arabs through Muslim Spain.
“What if the alternative to war, terrorism and ‘clash of civilizations’ .. Is a secret buried in the past (Islamic Civilization),” Michael Hamilton Morgan.
Samuel Huntington’s “The Clash of Civilizations” (he borrowed the title of his book from anti-Islam Jewish Orientalist, Dr. Bernard Lewis, whose doctrine has become US foreign policy, says Wall Street Journal in an editorial). In the book Huntington wrote: “In the 1990s Muslims have been far more involved in intergroup violence than the people of any other civilization”. If so, the author ignored the fact that in most of those cases, it were foreign countries such as the US, Russia, Britain and Israel were directly or indirectly involved. Furthermore, for the last 100 years, no Muslim country has invaded a non-Muslim country while several non-Muslim countries have invaded and occupied many Muslim lands.
Former US diplomat, Michael Hamilton Morgan, in his book “Lost History: the Enduring Legacy of Muslim Scientists, Thinkers and Artists” (2007) has debunked most of the anti-Islam Zionist propaganda.
http://rehmat1.wordpress.com/2010/04/25/rediscovering-islamic-civilization/
What about the nationalization of American and European oil companies by Middle Eastern nations? Was that not an act of war? The wandering tribes of Saudi Arabia were little more than glorified robbers who have now been set up as trillionaires by White men from the West.
Rehmat,
I thought I (politely) and others (not so politely) set you straight: keep up the research about Jews…but go pound sand with your anti-White Muslim fantasy-land “history.” I have no problem with Muslims but I do have a problem with anti-White Muslims like you.
Just what exactly are you trying to accomplish? Do you really think you’re going to proselytize White Nationalists on a pro-White website to hate Whites and love Muslims? You’ve demonstrated time and time again that you entertain childish fantasies about Arabic and Muslim history.
Stick to the one thing that you seem to have a modicum of competence in doing: writing about Jewish exploitation.
Nobody wants to hear your drivel about the splendor of Muslim tolerance and high culture. And what in God’s name are you doing squatting in a White country anyway? Shouldn’t you be basking in the glory of your brown homeland? Oh right– I forgot. You tacitly admit the superiority of White civilization and culture by choosing to live in a White nation. From that White nation, typing away on a White-invented computer and enjoying White-invented niceties like air conditioning, you will drone on and on about how Whites are so evil and oppressed the poor Muslims. Hypocrisy, thy name is Rehmat.
@ Rehmat, 9:39 pm.
{“…The West borrowed most of its ‘civil values’ from Arabs…”}
I hope among those ‘civil values’ we socalled “borrowed from Arabs” are not:
1) Public beheadings of criminals.
2) Chopping off of the hands of thieves.
3) Stoning of adulterous women (but not of men)
4) Whipping of drinkers of wine.
5) Killing of “apostates”.
6) Incitement to men to beat their wives.
7) Forbidding of pictorial art.
etc. etc. etc.
Rehmat, if you happen to observe that we Europeans have “lost” those ‘civil values’ we once learned from our Muslim Masters,please don’t try to impose them again by crossing the strait of Gibraltar with a Muslim army.
Promise?
Actually, it was Rasham El-Sadeh Carrier who invented air conditioning, Shiek Muhommed Al Gore who invented the internet, and Akbar Saleh Cabeza Toalla Henry Ford who mastered the production of the automobile. We owe you much Rehmat.
Once we start to economically extract oil from the trillions of barrels in the oil sands here in North America, you people can have fun with your camels again, because we will ignore you, and all the cars and buildings we built we fall apart once you can no longer pay us to maintain them once the desert winds lift up the sand and blast them into uselessness.
Hint: Don’t build glass walled buildings in the middle of a desert that blows high speed sand onto the windows – it roughs up the surface and you can’t see out of it after a short time!
The levels of childish ignorance and prejudice being displayed (vis-a-vis Islam) by some of these commenters is disgraceful, and they would be far better expressed elsewhere … preferably far away, in a remote corner of broken-down Manhattan.
I doubt any of them have spent any time actually travelling or living in a Muslim country. They have gleaned all they think they know about Islam from CNN (Cabala News Network), the Jew York Times, and Washington Post, etc. Consequently, they know nothing at all about the great cultural diversity found across the Muslim world.
Two quick examples of Art Galleries in Iran:
http://www.sharifigallery.com/
http://www.persianpaintings.com/
Pakistani Fashion Model:
http://www.fashioncentral.pk/people-parties/celebrity-interviews/story-737-fia-exclusive-interview-with-fashion-central/
Recent (latest) Pakistani designs for women’s fashion:
http://she9.blogspot.com/2009/11/pakistani-latest-cultural-designs.html
http://she9.blogspot.com/2010/09/she-9-magazine-she9-e-magazine-august.html [For this 2nd link, scroll down and then click on small graphic of magazine cover to view pictorial contents in full screen. Male readers will have their hormones doubly stimulated; first by the many ravishing beauties modeling the clothes, and second, by the romantic & dignified way in which they are presented].
Some idiot wrote above: [Islam] Forbidding of pictorial art. etc. etc. etc.. As I said at the outset, we are seeing a petulant display of childish/boyish ignorance by those TOO visitors who have no experience of the vast array that is Islamic culture, yet nevertheless feel they are qualified to loudly comment on both Muslim attitudes and Islam generally.
In contrast, the following passes for ‘Art’ in the so-called ‘Western World’:
http://new-art.blogspot.com/2005/12/obscene-art-1-cutting-off-penis.html
The commenters I am referring to habitually act as if they have already suffered the same fate as the bloodied ‘male’ (now eunuch) in that Western ‘art’ photograph.
Franklin Ryckaert – Nyth, paranoid Zionazi, you’re wrong as usual.
- Muslims learned beheading from Jewish Bible but they practice on all criminals including the Jewish ones, who are exempted from such justice.
- Lucky for US Jews, otherwise most of them would be seen with chopped hands after stealing $10.4 trillion from US taxpayers through Wall Street bailout.
The justice has made Muslim societies much safer morally than the western societies where Jews live.
Rehmat, When will the Muslim thieves who nationalized the oil assets that White Western men built give us our money back? They owe us literally trillions in oil wealth that we discovered and developed. We had contracts with the illiterate herdsmen we found, but they violated them and nationalized our companies.
“Rehmat, When will the Muslim thieves who nationalized the oil assets that White Western men built give us our money back? They owe us literally trillions in oil wealth that we discovered and developed. We had contracts with the illiterate herdsmen we found, but they violated them and nationalized our companies.” Jason Speaks
Do you even read the ridiculous drivel you sometimes post before you hit the “Post Comment” button, Squeaky?
Read back through what you posted here – move your lips if you have to – and ask yourself the following question:
“Is the person who wrote what I’m reading capable of formulating a reasoned defence of the West’s blatant theft, (through the judicious use of “bangles, beads and flattery”, [given as "gifts" to the "leaders" of the ignorant and superstitious nomadic desert peoples fortunate enough to be living on the surface of an Arabian sea of oil]), of the Middle East’s natural resources?
Or is he not?
I’ve already voted.
How about you?
Yes, I am asserting that White men from the West have been ripped off to the tune of trillions by Arabs. White men created the value of oil in the modern world through their science and technology, as well as creating huge markets for its use. They did not literally create the resource, but it is the White Western man’s economy that made it valuable.
And it was our technology and engineering that found the oil and figured out how to extract it and then refine it. You don’t think the Arabs did any of that do you? And I’m sure you realize the Arabs had no economy that provided a market for the oil.
So we went to the Middle East and dealt with whatever authorities we could find in those lands. The contracts that were signed provided more wealth than those Arabs had ever known. However, as socialism and Leftism swept the world, they felt empowered to “nationalize” (i.e. steal) the assets that had been developed by White men. And they did not steal it for the “good of the masses” but only for the good of the ruling families.
Later, these same Arabs entered into cartel arrangements with other socialist dictatorships to hike the price of oil and use it as a weapon against the West. They have done so ever since.
Of course, Mexico and Venezuela and others have done the same thing. Leftwing dictators “nationalize” the wealth created by Western White men.
The nationalization of ‘Western’ oil company assets by Third World nations was begun in Libya when Occidental Petroleum Corporation assets were nationalized.
Headquartered in hyper liberal Los Angeles, the company was founded in 1920, and in 1957, Dr. Armand Hammer was elected president of the company.
In its early years it was unprofitable and struggled. Its bleak prospects attracted the attention of Armand Hammer, a ‘successful’ international businessman who hoped to use the ailing company as a tax shelter. Hammer had formed ties with the new Soviet government and had thus made his fortune trading American wheat for Russian furs in the 1920s.
Armand Hammer (a Jewish immigrant from the Pale of Settlement) also founded the Communist Party of America.
In 1961 Occidental won an oil concession from Libya following a major oil discovery there: the deal that propelled the growth of “Oxy” into a major international oil company. Libya nationalized its oil production in the 1970s, with the blessings of Hammer, yet Occidental continued to operate in Libya (via their Siwa partner) and were only stopped by trade & economic sanctions imposed upon Libya by Washington DC in 1986, following the bombing of a Jumbo Jet over Lockerbie, Scotland.
In late 1972, Libya’s newly formed National Oil Corporation (NOC) had agreed a 50-percent participation with the Italian joint company, ENI-AGIP, and in early 1973 talks began with the Occidental Petroleum Corporation and with the Oasis group. Occidental, accounting for about 15 percent of total production, was one of the major independent producers. In July 1973, it agreed to NOC’s purchase of 51 percent of its assets. The Oasis group, another major producer, was one-third owned by the Continental Oil Company, one-third by Marathon Petroleum, and one- sixth each by Amerada Petroleum Company and Shell. The Oasis group agreed to Libyan 51-percent participation in August 1973. On September 1, 1973, Libya unilaterally announced that it was taking over 51 percent of the remaining oil companies, except for a few small operators.
Another round of nationalization was made possible in 1986, when United States President Ronald Reagan announced on January 7 his intention to require American companies to divest from their operations in Libya. It was unclear at that time, however, whether the five companies involved (USA majors) would sell their shares to NOC (probably at a substantial loss), or merely transfer them to European subsidiaries not affected by the president’s sanctions. There were no sound economic reasons for initiating this divestment. It was most likely initiated by mad ideologues sitting in their ivory towers in Lower Manhattan. They had other ‘ideas’ using their usual disastrous recipe (for Westerners) of “creative destruction”.
These nationalizations did ensure a fairer distribution of sales proceeds, but they initially changed little else. Western management and engineers continued to be employed by these new entities. What did bring about seismic change however was the advent of the two Clinton Administrations, staffed to the gunnels with ideological women wearing padded shoulders, short hair-cuts, sensible shoes, aggressive frowns, and all talking with a silly New Yawk or Chikaago accent.
It was the mid to late 1990s (the Billery era) that saw the great global push (initiated from Washington and Manhattan) for all the Western employees to be replaced by native (or Indian, or Filipino) workers.
Idiots, hysterics, and transvestites who visit TOO to blame the nationalizing countries for the employment debacle (or loss of assets) we in the West are suffering from now, are wasting everyone else’s time and energy, and can safely be ignored.
Anglo Saxon, you started off find but then had to veer off into hateful insults. You are very, very sensitive to any criticism of Arabs aren’t you?
You focus on Armand Hammer (who was a crook) but he was only one player among many. The vast majority of people who built the oil industry in the Middle East were honorable White men from America, England and France. They were engineers, geologists, financiers, roughnecks and many others. Why are you insulting these White men in favor of Arabs?
Most of the nationalizations had nothing to do with Armand Hammer. The Saudi Arabian deals were stolen from American companies based in Texas, California and New Jersey for the most part. The same thing was done in Venezuela. They were done by socialist dictators of one variety or another.
Why are you taking the side of thieving Arabs over industrious White men?
This review is thoughtful and nicely written. However, I wonder if it is at all good to take Mr. Ferguson’s work too seriously.
After all, Mr. Ferguson’s economic view is much in line with those of Milton Friedman, Thomas Friedman and Larry Summers (internationalists/capitalists all), even though the evidence is absolutely overwhelming that such an economic order is grossly unstable and outright destructive.
Also, Mr. Ferguson, being born into extremely fortunate financial and social circumstances (and, no, I do not begrudge him that), has a soft spot for the good old British Empire, the maintenance and brutality of which overwhelmingly benefited, of course, a narrow elite.
Lastly, any historian who would seriously say that Hitler’s “tyranny” and Stalin’s tyranny were very much alike, or anyone who would state that the economic system of National Socialist Germany was “remarkably similar” to that of Stalin’s Soviet Union, is either ignorant or shamelessly dishonest.
Post Script:
Ayaan Hirsi Ali is an amazing, intelligent and brave woman. It is gut-wrenching to think of all that she has been through, and it is absolutely remarkable that she has been able to accomplish all that she has. I am not being falsely modest when I write that she has more courage in the tip of a finger than I have in my entire body. However, that she would turn around and rather self-righteously criticize the Germanic country/culture/system that essentially saved her life (in the process, becoming the darling of the Heritage Foundation and other Jewish/Christian-Zionist dominated groups) seems a little, well… grotesque. Is that too harsh?
Ayaan Hirsi Ali, like Canadian lesbian Irshad Manji, is an amazing woman, because she lives in the western image of women freedom “woman’s body is her possesion and she can sell it as she find it more profitable”. However, there is still a moral minority who despise such immoral behavour. Henry Makow PhD, a Jewish Canadian academic once wrote that woman in Muslim culture represents motherhood, wife and the glue which keeps the family together. The western woman, on the other hand, is a sex objective available to the highest bidder.
A 2009 study, titled The Paradox of Declining Female Happiness, conducted by professors Betsey Stevenson and Justin Wolfers (University of Pennsylvania) for the Social Science Reserch Network (SSRN) – concludes that though American women are better off economically since 1970s – socially they feel more miserable than before….. The women who have been to a women shelter (there are 300 of those in Canada as compared to none for the men) – will tell you how callously they are treated by the hags employed there. Distressed women are pressured to end their marriages and are offered help and resources to do so. Feminists are not interested in the welfare of women. They rely on domestic violence for their cushy jobs and to emasculate men – by portrying them as abusers….”
http://rehmat1.wordpress.com/2009/10/17/study-american-women-are-not-happy/
Well said Rehmat – I wish we could get back to the honored place of women as mothers, wives, aunts, daughters, and sisters holding the family together and making life wonderful in the west. Instead, due to the propaganda of jewish feminists, they want to try and compete against the men who would sustain them and their families.
Rhemat said: “The western woman, on the other hand, is a sex objective available to the highest bidder.”
While I have been offended by the way the Fashion Nazis, (guess who they are), have forced our female children to dress as much as anyone, I take offense at the mutterings of a backwards, religiously-deluded third-world ignoramus with sexual predator issues like you baldly claiming that all western women are whores – “available to the highest bidder”.
It’s this kind of extremely offensive horse crap I could happily knock your lights out for saying, Rehmat, if you were standing in front of me now.
Not because what you say is remotely true and I’m too insecure to accept the truth of your statement, BUT because it is so blatantly UNTRUE of most of the “Western” woman I have been fortunate enough to know well. And because our women need defending always considering the eternal assault they suffer from the predatory Jews in charge of everything and regressive, repressive, ignorant and predatory Muslims like you.
You are a hate-filled bigot in all of the worst meanings of the phrase.
Tell me – are you also one of the those disgusting third world male sexual predators who has arrived on our shores thinking that because White women dress differently than you would like that they are fair game for your sexual aggression and your perverted opinions of their morality?
You sure look like one from where I’m standing.
“Well said Rehmat.” Scooter
You read what I wrote about Rehmat, Scooper…?
What’s YOUR excuse for hating/fearing modern white western women?
How about I call you when I need my Mercedes repaired and until then you shut up about Western women – a subject you obviously know very little about?
Yeah I don’t think it’s fair to say Ayaan Hirsi Ali is a “whore” just selling herself. She underwent some horrific stuff in her home country and had to struggle to get free. Now that she is in the West, she at least praises it and recognizes it’s value, unlike most immigrants.
Mr. Decco:
Perhaps Rehmat would like to put this in his hookah pipe and smoke it (preferably in Mecca):
“100 percent of the rapes in Oslo, Norway over the past five years were committed by Muslim immigrants.”
Surely that is an Islamic contribution we can do without.
http://www.amren.com/mtnews/archives/2011/05/shocking_all_ra.php
I don’t know how many of you folks have read The Pity of War, the book that made Ferguson a star, but I recommend it wholeheartedly. It contains, of course, the occasional head-scratcher—the biggest of which is his incomprehensible assessment of the Versailles peace treaty as being perhaps too humane (I kid you not)—but overall it explodes many, many more World War I myths than it creates and blows out of the water the vicious lie of German evil and British good.
Within Ferguson’s oeuvre, that book also introduced “counterfactual,” or hypothetical, history as his preferred modus operandi. Some may recall that one of his counterfactual theses—that had either Germany won or a stalemate peace been arrived at (as would almost certainly have happened without [1] the Communist revolution of Rosa Luxemburg, Karl Liebknecht, et al. and [2] the arrival of Black Jack Pershing and the Doughboys, who did infinitely more harm than good), there would have been no Hitler and no Holocaust™—got him into very hot water with leading members of the Tribe, particularly Marty Peretz, who went after Ferguson in a big way. In a C-SPAN broadcast of what was supposed to be a polite debate/discussion of The Pity of War’s theses, Peretz, occupying the chair, attacked Ferguson as little better than an anti-Semite for (these are my words, not Peretz’s) even suggesting that a world might theoretically exist in which the very basis of contemporary Jewish identity and power—Hitler and Nazi Germany—had never happened. Naturally, the other debater, being a New Republic employee and hence a stooge for Peretz, dutifully echoed his master’s sentiments.
Ferguson’s disbelief at the line of argument being taken against him could be read in his face. I can’t help thinking that on that very day or shortly before or after, he saw the handwriting on the wall, and what it said was “Kiss Jewish ass, you Scots bastard, or get squashed like a bug.”
I certainly understand how he must have felt—few of us would willingly sacrifice career, social position, and perhaps even the security of their family over a matter like this—and I wish I could say that I don’t blame him for signing on the dotted line. But I do, I do.
Postscript 1. Mr. Hilton’s review was a pleasure to read, as many others have already said. Yet I wish that he had at least giggled (or better still, howled in derision) after citing the ridiculous judgment that “European governments were actively supporting science—in spite of Christian clerical objections.” Good Lord, do the Scots still hate the religion of their slaughtered Highland ancestors so much that they have forgotten, to take one tiny instance, that Galileo hoofed it to Rome because he was quite as eager to meet Foscarini and the other Vatican astronomers, most of them Jesuits and all of them priests, as they were to meet him! Furthermore, how many times does it need to be stated that the Chinese printing press was essentially a minor-league domestic affair? It was nothing even remotely comparable to Gutenberg’s invention of the mechanized printing press. The revolution in learning that mechanized printing brought into being could never conceivably be associated with the Chinese artifact, which was used to make impressive works of the printer’s art but otherwise had zero societal impact.
Postscript 2. The first paragraph of Scooter’s last post made me laugh out loud. Funniest thing I’ve read in a month.
Thanks for the summation Pierre,
I had heard Ferguson made quite a few pro-German points and that he had said openly the world would have been much better if Germany and Britain had never fought – or something to that affect. Obviously, he has to walk a tightrope of he looses his position. I suspect that he has more influence by selling lots of books to a mass audience than if he allowed himself to be branded a “hater” and thrown out of Harvard.
You’re welcome, Cobalt. The first sentence of your second paragraph more or less accurately synopsizes the book’s view of the Great War. Note, however, that the offer of the Harvard chair came fully six years after publication of The Pity of War and only after the aggrieved palate of the Tribal Establishment had been mollified by the Rothschild volumes.
One might also wryly note the relative amounts of space that the largely friendly fabricators of The Pretend Encyclopedia article about Ferguson devote to The Pity of War and The House of Rothschild. Speak well of Germans, any Germans, and you damn well better have a watertight explanation at the ready!
I would like to point out that video games, in moderation, are a healthy exercise for the brain.
@ Rehmat, 8;49 am.
So the message is – as always with you – “We need Islam!”
When do you begin to understand:
WE DO NOT WANT ISLAM.
Understood?
There is an argument that Niall Ferguson is so desperately trying to squeeze out the ethnic truth of Western civilization through the Kosher iron bars of political correctness; he would love to come out and say it, but, but…
I don’t buy it. He is another faux-cheerleader masquerading on the fringes of race-realism, but the evidence is overwhelmingly in favour of the opposite:
He is pro-multiculturalism; (actions speak louder than words).
Not to mention his Ascent of Money was made in to a Channel 4 documentary in the UK where he is so close to the Rothschilds he was granted an interview in one of their opulent residences, of course; no hard questions were posed, and much key information was left out of the documentary.
To ignore the prevalence of Jewish surnames in global money lending, pretty much shows where his loyalties are.
If academics are going to change anything, martyrs are unavoidably required. When someone is sacked for offending politically correct, free-speech censors, this is such an obvious cause and effect, that the truth will be implicitly known to anyone who investigates it.
There is a saying I like: “The likelihood of someone being right, is directly proportional to the intensity of those trying to prove him wrong.”
We currently do not live under the tyranny of the proposed New World Order Judeo-Marxist regime, the new Cheka is not yet mobilised, we do not yet have to hide typewriters under floorboards to speak the truth openly.
Time is against us, we must be brave in our words & deeds.
Israel as “western civilization.” Okay, but Israel is a Tier II country for trafficking in women. There are many similar measures where Israel falls short. Israel isn’t really what I’d call “first world” or “western,” unless I’m including countries like Belarus, Turkey, Ukraine, etc.
Svigor [June 3, 2011 - 1:21 pm] …
Israel isn’t even a country. Its official title, as you should know already is the State of Israel.
In legalese, that prefix means everything. In essence, the ‘State’ of Israel implies it is an appendage of the United States, which in fact it is. But, ordinary Americans, and their Representatives are not supposed to know that!
Via what other legal mechanism do you think so much money could get transfered from the USA to Israel annually?
Israel is NOT a western civilization, and it is rubbish to pretend she is. Oh, yes, if this were the 17th century it might be argued that she is. But, we gave up theocracies long ago and suppressing the rights of some citizens for the benefit of others. Israel is very simply, “sui generis” and an apartheid state.
“how can anyone credit a claim that in 13th C. England the homicide rate was 100 per 100,000? It is absurd on its face.”
I don’t find that strange at all.
- everyone carried a weapon back then
- everyone drank a lot
- life was generally cheaper
- lack of medical treatment
If you take the 69 per 100,000 figure for black south africa and then take away ambulances, antibiotics, doctors and hospitals then the rate might be 300-400 because of all the woundings that turned fatal.
Ferguson is a neo-con and an apologist for the City of London’s white shoe boys where he has strong connections – (he’s an “economic historian” geddit?).
OO, rather like the bankers, has the tendency to place too many bad bets. This is yet another one. Ok, I know he’s white and if I don’t like it I should go and live in Africa blah blah blah …
“OO, rather like the bankers, has the tendency to place too many bad bets.”
This widespread human tendency, albeit lamentable, is as old as the hills and evidently as hard to eliminate. Dr. Johnson epigrammatized it 250 years ago as “the triumph of hope over experience.”
While the tendency’s presence is thus something we ought to understand and be quick to forgive, noting its presence and citing instances of it are among the most valuable things that commenters on this site can do. Hope’s least desirable form, wishful thinking, has been a prime factor in getting this and other Western nations into the pickle they are in. It is a sleeping pill administered to a patient—the West—whose recovery requires a stimulant.
Jason Speaks – your current WC is only 500 year old while Muslim Civilization spread to the West in 711 CE when Arabs from North Africa conquered Spain with the help of Christian and Jewish Serf (slaves). Theat civilization lasted till 1492 CE and produced European intellectuals from Pope to scientists.
“The Renaissance of Europe did not take place in the 15th century. Rather it began when Europe learned from the culture of the Arabs. The cradle of European awakening is not Italy. It is the Muslim Spain.” (Robert Briffault, The Making Of Mankind). Even the Arab-hating Jewish Orientalist, Dr. Bernard Lewis, had painfully admitted that Muslim Spain provided the ‘Golden Age’ for its Jewish citizen.
The westerners are the most ignorant people when it comes to world history due to Church’s hatemongering which is now adopted by the Zionist mafia.
https://rehmat1.wordpress.com/2011/05/23/israel-us-behind-muslim-coptic-riots-in-egypt/
Even by Rehmat’s usual standards, the above comment contains an ugly but impressive array of prevarications and outright lies. To address perhaps the least scurrilous, citing the bigoted, Cross-hating Bernard Lewis as an authority on Mahometan genius and glory is so absurd as to be beneath contempt. Fifty bucks says that no one can name a single historical incident where Lewis defended the Christian perspective in preference to the Mahometan.
I think the Moslem contribution has been over-stated.
When Constantinople fell to the Moslems in 1453, the Moslems were smart enough to know the value of the ancient Roman and Greek texts they captured. The Moslems sold or traded the texts or copies of them to the Europeans for good money.
This also occured with surviving ancient texts in Egypt, North Africa and Spain.
What I find interesting, is that ancient texts survived in such odd places as Fulda, in Thuringia, in east central Germany.
Given the state of my wallet, that will have to be fifty virtual bucks. Otherwise the bet stands.
I’ll stand for you Pierre. We need your exceptional contributions to the site, and consider me to be a loyal knight crusading with you against Mohammed’s propagandist.
I’m happy to fight on the same side with you, Scooter.
Like the proverbial broken clock, Rehmat is right twice a day. Otherwise it’s nothing but one bum steer after another, with the only real question being, is he just wrong this time, or is he wrong and profoundly insulting?
Rehmat: you are dead wrong. It wasn’t until the J and Muzzie EXPULSIONS that Mother Europe entered her Renaissance. Mecca calls, f*ck off.
The period marked by the evictions—1300 to 1650—also marks the period of the Renaissance which broke over Europe as the Jews departed. Starting at first in the trading cities of northern Italy in about 1300, there began a great rebirth of culture and learning which at first was based almost entirely on the writings of the ancient Greeks and Romans. Very quickly this renascent culture spread over Europe and when the age had ended, in about 1650, Europe was by comparison with her former status, enlightened and civilized. Quite obviously all this could not have taken place had it not been for a great upsurge of commercial activity which occurred simultaneously with, and as an adjunct of, the Renaissance. Not until the nations of Europe had wrested commercial control from the jewish ghetto did this rebirth of western civilization occur.
“… The 14th century was the golden age of their history in Spain. In 1391 the preaching of a priest of Seville, Fernando Martenez, led to the first general massacre of the Jews who were envied for their prosperity and hated because they were the king’s tax collectors.”
Encyclopedia Britannica: [page 57, vol. 13 - 1947]
“…(The eviction of jews from Spain) deprived Portugal of its middle class and its most scientific traders and financiers.”
[Encyclopedia Britannica, page 279, vol. 18 - 1947.]
“The great mass of the Jewish people were thus to be found once more in the East, in the Polish and Turkish empires . . The few communities suffered to remain in western Europe were meanwhile subjected at last to all the restrictions which earlier ages had usually allowed to remain as an ideal; so that in a sense, the Jewish dark ages may be said to begin with the Renaissance.”
Encyclopedia Britannica: [page 57-58, vol. 13 - 1947.]
Possible subtitle?
“The 10 bazillionth academic tome denying the centrality of race.” Achieved, as usual, by endless circular reasoning to show it is really all about “institutions.” Yes, just think how different the world of today would be if, say, Pygmies had happened to adopt institutions like ours.
“the Somali woman, Ayaan Hirsi Ali, with whom he now lives” …
How convenient. Additional and just about perfect PC insurance.
I can see that the book could be mined for important pro-WC information, but how sad that we would need the help of yet another such off-planet effort.
Ferguson has a flawed understanding of money. To the extent that he is tolerant of the institutions of fractional-reserve banking and central banking, he is no friend of freedom. Better this:
http://www.scribd.com/doc/7483974/The-Ethics-of-Money-Production
Niall Ferguson is the official propagandist/biographer of the Rothschild family. He is pure filth.
Niall Ferguson is also a rabid neo-con Judeophiliac.
Why is this p.o.s. being promoted on TOO?
I don’t think he was “promoted”, it was a book review that was highly qualified and dealt with his support of Western Civilization and Ferguson’s allusions to the role of genetics in a very subtle way. In this day and age, that is worth something.
I always found Ayaan Ali an interesting person. She is doing good for herself given that she was an immigrant from Somalia with no real qualifications of some sort though she speaks good English. A staunch supporter of Isrrael an an immigrant herself. Looks like she had allies all the way. Obviously the Arab revolution is going to box her real bad as she propagated an Arab world where these type of things could never happen. But then again she was not the only one to never imagine that happening.
Anyways I find the back and forth here between Rehmat and some here also interesting. But it all focuses on what is the legacy of Western Culture. But why should anyone care? Its not really relevant as people have a right to defend their culture and traditions. Whether you like that culture or not is not really relevant. It also seems to me that the arguments tend to be an all out one. Either Western civilization is good or bad, either its advanced or decadent. That sort of a thing. Maybe its both, like any other culture or civilization. It has its good legacy and its bad. So what?
Presenting arguments like Western Civilization is “superior” to an Islamic one and so on only forces you to have to defend everything it left behind. Plus its not a Christian thing to do anyways. In the end its about ethnicity and not necessarily religion. Its about defending a culture and a tradition and not attacking other cultures and traditions. These kind of an attack forces others to counter attack. Nothing gets solved this way. It alos can turn people off as most of these arguments tend to be too black and white with over generalization.
European civilization depends who is defining it. Here is European White Muslim scholar, politician, author and freedom-fighter, Alija Ali Izetbegovic – who was proud to be a Muslim and European.
http://rehmat1.wordpress.com/2011/06/08/alija-ali-izetbegovic-a-timely-tribute/