Donald Trump, Judge Curiel, and (((Mean Tweets))): The Reality of Ethnic Identification in Multicultural America

Strong ethnic identifications for non-Whites remain controversial in multi-cultural America. On the cuckservative right, such identifications are half-heartedly condemned because they like to imagine that an ideal America should be blind to ethnicity as a way of justifying their non-opposition to massive non-White immigration (“after all, they’re just like us”) and their own lack of identification as Whites — even though this is a sure-fire recipe for White oblivion in the long run.

The intellectual gyrations on the left are even more laughable: They encourage non-Whites to have strong ethnic identifications and to organize to pursue their interests. In fact, such identifications are the key to success in a wide range of fields, certainly including academia, the law, and politics, and there are plenty of well-paying jobs running ethnic activist organizations. Being known as an ethnic activist and being a member of ethnic activist organizations are keys to advancement. For the MSM and the rest of the left, seeing things from an ethnic perspective is a positive virtue for non-Whites. So it’s not surprising  that, as Peter Brimelow notes, Sonia Sotomayor’s “wise Latina” comment was not sufficient to derail her appointment to the Supreme Court and indeed was applauded by the elite media. So making decisions based on ethnic identity is just fine.

But the entire establishment is speaking with one voice that strong ethnic identifications could not possibly be a factor in how a federal judge would rule in a case involving Donald Trump. Presenting herself as a “wise Latina” was just fine for Sotomayor, but now that Donald Trump has raised the issue, the very thought that a Latino judge might be influenced by his ethnicity and therefore have it in for Trump is just another example of Trump’s supposed “racism.” The fact is that  Judge Gonzalo Curiel is a member of the La Raza Lawyers of San Diego, and he appointed the Robbins Geller law firm, which donated $673,000 to Hillary Clinton, to represent plaintiffs. As this Daily Caller article makes clear, the La Raza Lawyers of San Diego is a Latino activist group that, for example, gives scholarships to illegal aliens and has ties to the National Council of La Raza.

Given Curiel’s ethnic involvement, it is reasonable to suppose that his ethnic heritage would incline him to do everything he can to harm Trump’s candidacy — that he is a typical ethnic minority who identifies with the Democratic Party and its rainbow coalition of aggrieved minorities. Trump, after all, has famously said things that Mexican activists don’t like. And given how politicized the Obama administration is on such things, it would be shocking if Curiel’s ethnic identification was not in his favor when he was appointed to the Federal judiciary.

Despite the continued racialization of American politics (which has reached its apogee this election year), the proper thing to do is to continue to pledge allegiance to the comforting fictions that allow Americans to think that their society hasn’t been fundamentally transformed by post-1965 immigration — including the fiction that all these immigrants will be good republican, democratic individualists just like us. So of course Republicans as well as Democrats feigned horror at Trump’s comments (e.g., “Senior Republicans criticize Trump’s remarks on Hispanic judge“). When individuals with these strong ethnic identifications — individuals whose entire careers are built around their ethnic identity — get into positions of power, we are supposed to believe that they suddenly transform themselves into models of ethnic fairness. When they ascend to positions of power, they are not at all influenced by their ethnic identifications. Somehow Sonia Sotomayor’s comment is brushed off as irrelevant.

It’s no surprise that the neocons have been particularly outraged — and transparently hypocritical. Jennifer Rubin, who is nothing if not ethnically committed, is typical:

My Twitter response: 

I say that because the neocons have been engaged in this charade for their entire careers: presenting themselves as principled conservatives while aggressively pursuing the interests of Israel. As the linked article documents, many have family ties to Israel and are on a first-name basis with Israeli leaders; there have been numerous allegations of spying on behalf of Israel, and many have formal ties to pro-Israel organizations. They also have a history of advocating for the same liberal/left social policies championed by the organized Jewish community, including displacement-level non-White immigration.

But of course, calling attention to Jewish identification and providing evidence that their identification influences their behavior is seen by many Jews and the organized Jewish community as egregious anti-Semitism.

Recently many neocons (and others) have been outraged by the “echo” meme whereby Jews are identified on social media like Twitter by putting their names in parentheses, like so: (((Jeffrey Goldberg))).  Now a lot of these Tweets are admittedly rather crude, although given that they tend to be anonymous, one never knows whether they are false flags, as we know to be true of so many “hate crimes.” As someone who has occasionally used this technique himself on Twitter, I see it as a good shorthand way to call attention to the Jewish identity of someone or something — always useful with a 140-character limit. Nothing wrong with that.

Some Tweeters have used the echo meme to identify Jews who claim to be White while writing extreme examples of White ethnomasochism (“we must do away with our white privilege and acknowledge our microaggressions.”) The execrable (((Tim Wise))) comes to mind. The implicit suggestion is that they don’t really identify as Whites at all and have nothing but hostility toward the people and culture of the West — all too common among activist Jews.

In any case, the echo meme has now emerged as the latest front on the never-ending war against anti-Jewish attitudes. Many of those so identified are fighting back by fooling around with parentheses around their own names, including Mr. Goldberg:

Of course the ADL is in high dudgeon about it and has formed a group to combat the practice. As is typical of Jewish activism, the group is made up of elite individuals, including the deans of journalism at Columbia and Northwestern universities. Always the top-down theory of cultural influence.

For Jews, certainly including the organized Jewish community, any suggestion that Jewish identification influences the actions of Jews in the public arena, whether regarding Israel, Hollywood, or in academic writing, is anathema. We are simply not supposed to notice. The official ideology is that Jews are completely assimilated to American culture, and anyone who argues otherwise is a vicious anti-Semite. So Abe Foxman can agree that there are a lot of Jews in Hollywood, but maintain that these people “just happen to be Jews,” and this fact is completely irrelevant to the content of Hollywood productions (despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary [here, pp. l-lvi]).

Given all this angst about ethnic identification, this section from a previous article seems relevant:

Movements such as the Israel Lobby have typically presented themselves not as furthering Jewish interests but as furthering the interests of the society as a whole. Neocons such as Richard Perle typically phrase their policy recommendations as aimed at benefiting the US. He does this despite evidence that he has a strong Jewish identity and despite the fact that he has typical Jewish concerns, such as anti-Semitism, the Holocaust, and the welfare of Israel. Perle poses as an American patriot despite credible charges of spying for Israel, writing reports for Israeli think tanks and op-eds for the Jerusalem Post, and all the while having close personal relationships with Israeli leaders.

This was also true of all the movements I described in The Culture of Critique: The Jewish commitments and motivations of the main players were never a subject of discussion, and the movements themselves were presented as scientifically sound and morally superior to the traditional culture of the West. As a result, non-Jews are invited to see these Jewish activists as disinterested social scientists, or, in the case of the neocons, as patriotic fellow Americans — as “just like themselves.” We are invited to view these Jewish activists as part of our ingroup, with all that that entails psychologically.

In my ideal world, Jonah Goldberg’s op-eds and Paul Wolfowitz’s advice to presidents and defense secretaries should be accompanied by a disclaimer: “You should be cautious in following my advice or even believing what I say about Israel. Deception and manipulation are very common tactics in ethnic conflict, so that my pose as an American patriot should be taken with a grain of salt. And even if I am entirely sincere in what I say, the fact is that I have a deep psychological and ethnic commitment to Israel and Judaism. Psychologists have shown that this sort of deep commitment is likely to bias my perceptions of any policy that could possibly affect Israel even though I am not aware of it.”

As I noted in The Culture of Critique, “many of the Jews involved in the movements reviewed here may sincerely believe that these movements are really divorced from specifically Jewish interests or are in the best interests of other groups as well as Jews. … But, as [evolutionary theorist Robert] Trivers (1985) notes, the best deceivers are those who are self-deceived.”

The other  possibility is that activist Jews are entirely aware that they are pursuing their ethnic interests but simply want to silence anyone who notices that. Whatever. If so, this is nothing more  than power politics that takes advantage of the still-effective (and quite reasonable) fear of being called an “anti-Semite.”

The important point is that the veneer of impartiality must be maintained, and the organized Jewish community will act aggressively to maintain it.

Once again Trump has put his finger on a critical issue facing America as we head into a future where, if things  go as planned by our hostile elites, White Americans will soon be a minority surrounded by strongly identified ethnic actors, often with historical grudges against Whites. A glimpse of this future can be seen at the Trump rally in San Jose where protesters waved Mexican flags and assaulted Trump supports while the Latino, La Raza-connected police chief ordered his forces to stand down (which I rather doubt would have happened if Trump supporters were attacking protesters).

On the one hand, any hint that Whites are developing explicit White identities and a sense of White interests will continue to be anathema to these elites as we head into the Whites-as-minority future. On the  other hand, the fiction that ethnic identity becomes irrelevant as soon as one enters the public arena in politics or the judiciary will be maintained at all costs. A Supreme Court justice like Elena Kagan, who owes her entire career to ethnic networking, must be seen as utterly impartial when she makes decisions on issues, like immigration, known to be important to the organized Jewish community.

One of the liberals at Salon writes that the Trump-Curiel case “raises questions as to how a president Trump would go about nominating judges – if Curiel’s heritage is a determining factor here, would Trump forgo the nomination of any judges with Hispanic backgrounds because of the chance they might be disgraceful Trump ‘haters?’”

Well, I suspect that Trump would not nominate someone with the sort of the ethnic ties that Curiel has. And he would be quite right in avoiding such individuals because the default assumption has to be that in fact they would be biased.

And perhaps we can even hope that Trump, understanding the reality of ethnic conflict and racialization that has now engulfed American politics as a direct result of the immigration policies championed by our hostile elites, would appoint a White person with ties to organizations with an explicit and unapologetic sense of White interests. It’s only fair.

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