Jews as a Hostile Elite

Perceptions of Jewish History Drive the War of the Hostile Elite Against the Trump Presidency

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I begin with a thumbnail sketch of Jewish perceptions of their own history as a prologue to thinking about why a long-term goal of the organized Jewish community has been to make alliances with other groups with grievances against the traditional American nation. Jewish perceptions of their own history reflect traditional Jewish fear and loathing of outgroups with power, particularly given their perceptions of their “lachrymose history” among Europeans as nothing but a vale of tears.

This lachrymose view has major implications for understanding contemporary Jewish political behavior in the Diaspora. It proposes that, beginning with an unfortunate theological belief (that Jews killed God), Jews have been passive, innocent victims of marauding non-Jews. The lesson that Jews learned from the Middle Ages carries down to today: [According to Norman Podhoretz,” the Jews

“emerged from the Middle Ages knowing for a certainty that — individual exceptions duly noted — the worst enemy they had in the world was Christianity: the churches in which it was embodied — whether Roman Catholic or Russian Orthodox or Protestant — and the people who prayed in and were shaped by them. It was a knowledge that Jewish experience in the ages to come would do very little, if indeed anything at all, to help future generations to forget” (Review of Norman Podhoretz’s Why Are Jews Liberals?, p. 29).

These perceptions are fundamental to Jewish education and to Jewish identity. Jews therefore—far more than non-Jewish Europeans—have an overwhelming sense of their own history. From far left to the neoconservative right, Jews socialized in the Jewish community imbibe a history of what they see as vicious persecution of blameless Jews in the West going back even prior to Christianity—to the Roman destruction of the Second Temple in 70 A.D.

Within this worldview, the Middle Ages were a period of completely unjustified expulsions from many areas on Western Europe, motivated not at all by Jewish behavior but by vicious, fundamentally anti-Semitic Christian theology. The Enlightenment resulted in “Jewish emancipation” in the sense that the paradigm had shifted from a corporate Christendom with its anti-Jewish theology to an individualist model of society where each citizen was to be stripped of group allegiances.

Jews were welcomed into these newly reconstructed Western societies, but the tensions remained. Jews were now accused of remaining Jews in societies of individualists—of remaining a “state within a state,” failing to shed their ethnic identities, and continuing to engage in ethnic networking, not only in business and professional relationships, but also establishing organizations in the West dedicated to helping Jews in foreign lands, at times against the perceived interests of the nations they were residing in. Read more

An Academic Book on Jewish Subversion of Christmas

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Editor’s note: Originally posted in 2012, this article gets at the Jewish ethnic angle behind the “War on Christmas.”

A new book, Joshua Eli Plaut’s A Kosher Christmas: ’Tis the Season to Be Jewish, documents what we have known all along: The Jews did indeed subvert Christmas.  This book deserves a full review, but Ethan Schwartz’s summary and comment (“Twas the night after Christmas“) deserve scrutiny. First the summary:

Jews have been the vanguard of an effort to “transform Christmastime into a holiday season belonging to all Americans,” without religious exclusivity.  The most important Jewish mechanisms of secularization are comedy and parody, for laughter undermines religious awe.  Take, for example, Hanukkah Harry from “Saturday Night Live”, who heroically steps in for a bedridden Santa by delivering presents from a cart pulled by donkeys named Moishe, Hershel, and Shlomo.  Remarkably, Hanukkah Harry has emerged as a real Santa-alternative for many American Jews.  Plaut sees such things not as attempts at assimilation but as an intentional subversion of Christmas traditions.  “Through these parodies,” he writes, “Jews could envision not having to be captivated by the allure of ubiquitous Christmas symbols.”  And it isn’t just Jews: for Americans in general, Jewish parody helps ensure that Christmas “not be taken too seriously” and that the celebrations of other traditions “be accorded equal respect and opportunity.”

There seem to be two messages here. One is the message of subversion utilizing ridicule among other methods. The other is that Jews are seen as high-mindedly making Christmas  “into a holiday season belonging to all Americans.” The end result is that Christmas is not “taken too seriously” and the Christian religious aspect central to the traditional holiday is de-emphasized.

People who take their religion seriously do not allow their religion to be ridiculed. One need only think of the Muslim reactions to cartoons ridiculing Mohammed. The fact that Jews have been able to ridicule Christianity without any serious negative consequences is an important marker of Jewish power and an equally strong indication of the decline of Christian religious belief. I suspect that the organized Jewish community would react in outrage if non-Jews ridiculed religious Judaism. Indeed, any criticism of Jews as Jews is off limits in the mainstream media. (A topical short list of verboten topics: the loyalties of neocon Jews and their role in promoting the war in Iraq, the Jewish aspect of the Ivy League admissions scandal, how Jewish control of Hollywood influences media content.) Read more

Jews and Jewish organizations lead the gun control campaign

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Given the Parkland shootings, I thought it appropriate to rerun this article, originally posted on January 1, 2013. See also Andrew Joyce’s article, “Jews and gun control: A reprise.” 

In Cooper Sterling’s TOO article (“Guns, profiling and White males“), he notes

The Left’s irrational obsession with gun control goes beyond the latest mass shooting. It is endemic among the cosmopolitan literati, who loathe Middle America, to dwell on the risks associated with firearms while disregarding or minimizing the benefits of firearm ownership. …

Anyone monitoring the national scene since Newtown is witnessing an emotional antipathy toward the last trace of political leverage among an identifiable demographic: an overwhelmingly White male gun culture. What the MSM and gun control advocates ultimately detest is the gun culture in America, which is too White, too male, and too conservative. …

The tradition of gun ownership is as old as the Republic. It reflects the pre-1965 demographic of America as an overwhelmingly White—and more civilized—nation. As a native Midwesterner, guns were rampant in our neighborhoods where few homes didn’t have some sort of firearm. We came of age hunting with our fathers, uncles and cousins, acquiring rifles and shotguns in our mid-teens.

An article from The Forward notes that the Jewish community has taken the lead in gun control and that part of it is hostility toward the  gun culture of White America that is especially apparent in rural White America. Jews “instinctively recoil” from this culture (“After Newtown Jews lead renewed push on guns“).

Jewish organizations pride themselves on gun control stances that date back to the early days of the debate, following the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. and of President Kennedy. Most played a supportive role in passing legislation then limiting access to weapons, and have since reaffirmed their commitment to reducing the availability of guns.
One reason for broad Jewish support of gun control, Mariaschin said, has to do with the community’s sense of security, “which perhaps leads us to feel that the possession of assault weapons is completely unneeded.”
Rabbi Eric Yoffie, former head of the Reform movement, listed in a recent Haaretz article several reasons for Jews siding with supporters of gun control: the community’s affiliation with the Democratic Party; the fact that Jews are urban people and detached from the culture of hunting or gun ownership, and suspicion toward the NRA, which is “associated in the minds of many Jews with extremist positions that frighten Jews and from which they instinctively recoil.” Read more

Agobard of Lyon and The Origins of the Hostile Elite

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As part of the introduction to my forthcoming volume of essays, Talmud and Taboo, I’ve included an overview of key developments in the historical relationship between Jews and Europeans. During the course of this overview I emphasize the historical suppression of European responses to Jewish group behavior, an important and perennial aspect of Jewish-European interactions. This suppression/taboo, as a thing in itself, tends to be less explored and understood when compared to the attention devoted to more obvious manifestations of Jewish influence (e.g. assertive action in influencing immigration control), but consideration of it is crucial to a complete understanding of Jews as a hostile elite. A working theoretical definition of what is meant by “Jews as a hostile elite” is of course also necessary, and is taken here as the implication not only that Jews have historically been opposed/hostile to the interests of the European masses, but also that Jews have had direct access to political power, or significant levels of influence over European elites in possession of it. While writing the introduction to Talmud and Taboo I was primarily concerned with the origins of the Jewish acquisition of this power or influence in Europe, the mode of its expression, and its evolution over the course of centuries. Due to restrictions of space in the introduction to Talmud and Taboo, I want to take the opportunity here to expand on one such example.

To date, our best understanding of modern Jewish political strategies in the context of the “taboo” can be found in Chapter 6 of Kevin MacDonald’s Separation and Its Discontent: Toward an Evolutionary Theory of Anti-Semitism, titled “Jewish Strategies for Combatting Anti-Semitism.” One section deals with “Political Strategies for Minimizing Anti-Semitism.” MacDonald notes that Jews have been flexible strategizers in the political arena, buttressed by an IQ substantially above the Caucasian mean, and argues that the foundations for Jewish influence are wealth, education, and social status.[1] Today, Jews apply this influence in order to stifle negative discussion of their group, and at times to stifle any discussion of Jews at all. MacDonald points out that this is normally done via extensive communal support for “self-defense committees,” which are a feature of every Diaspora population. These committees invariably lobby governments, utilize and influence legal systems, produce pro-Jewish and pro-multicultural propaganda, and fund pro-Jewish candidates or initiatives. Another of their vital functions has been to monitor and expose “anti-Semites,” and to use legal systems in order to exact individual punishments, thereby making an example of individuals and thereby imposing a deterrent atmosphere on the rest of the population. Read more

Harvey Weinstein: Revenge and Domination as Jewish Motives

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Edmund Connelly’s article on Harvey Weinstein and the shiksa phenomenon discusses revenge as a motive. From this perspective, what Jews like Weinstein are doing is the result of hatred toward the goyim because of their perceptions of the long history of anti-Semitism. Of course much of this narrative is false and exaggerated, but the point is that this “lachrymose” version of Jewish history is entirely mainstream among Jews and a cornerstone of Jewish education and Jewish self-conception.

Revenge is important — even critical — in understanding the main currents of Jewish behavior. However, several of the passages from Portnoy‘s Complaint seem to be much more about dominance and sexual competition than revenge. This suggests that another way to look at shiksa lust is from the perspective of evolutionary psychology which suggests that a central motive is domination over the women of the outgroup. In the competition for dominance among males, females are the ultimate prize. Recall that a constant theme of human history is that women are the spoils of war. Conquering males seize the women of their defeated foes — the Mongol harems throughout Asia come to mind, as well as the behavior of our Indo-European forebears. Read more

Harold Meyerson hates White America

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It is a cause of some celebration that Harold Meyerson has been dropped as a columnist from The Washington Post. Of course, it wasn’t because of his animosity toward White America — the reason given is that he wasn’t attracting readers. But perhaps the predominantly White WAPO readership tired of him because of a sense that people like Meyerson definitely do not have their interests at heart. Here’s a 2013 column that quotes some of Meyerson’s more egregious anti-White comments. Obviously, it’s a marker of Jewish power that a Jewish person can be so positive about the eclipse of White, Christian America in a very public venue and without any fear that there will be a backlash against him. 

Pat Buchanan asks “Does the South Belong in the  Union?” Like Buchanan, I have noticed a lot of liberal angst that the Supreme Court removed the requirement that any change in voting requirements be approved by the Justice Department. Buchanan points his pen at Harold Myerson, the White-hating columnist of The Washington Post.

Consider Wednesday’s offering by Washington Post columnist Harold Meyerson. The South, he writes, is the home of “so-called right-to-work laws” and hostility to the union shop, undergirded by “the virulent racism of the white Southern establishment,” a place where a “right-wing antipathy toward workers’ rights” is pandemic. …

Were a conservative to use the term “black” as a slur the way Meyerson spits out the word “white,” he would be finished at the Post. Meyerson’s summation:

“If the federal government wants to build a fence that keeps the United States safe from the danger of lower wages and poverty and their attendant ills — and the all-round fruitcakery of the right-wing white South — it should build that fence from Norfolk to Dallas. There is nothing wrong with a fence as long as you put it in the right place.”

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Merry Christmas . . . NOT! Part 1

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Editor’s Note: In honor of the Christmas season, we are posting some past articles from TOO because they seem just as relevant today. This is the first of a two-part article by Edmund Connelly originally posted on December 21, 2008.

VDARE.com is again running their wonderful War on Christmas series, begun in 1999. Various contributors there document how an overwhelmingly Christian America which for centuries celebrated Christmas as both a religious and cultural holiday has in recent years moved vigorously first to quash religious observance of Christmas in the public square and is now mopping up the remaining secular symbols.

While much has been written and reported about this assault, few want to situate the attack on Christmas within a larger set of conflicts between Jews and White Christians. But to understand the hostility toward Christmas in America, one must do just that, as Jewish Townhall.com columnist Burt Prelutsky bluntly did in his 2004 column “The Jewish grinch who stole Christmas.”

The blame for the brisk departure of Christmas observations in so many parts of American life now, Prelutsky argued, can be blamed on “my fellow Jews. When it comes to pushing the multicultural, anti-Christian agenda, you find Jewish judges, Jewish journalists, and the American Civil Liberties Union, at the forefront. . . . But the dirty little secret in America is that anti-Semitism is no longer a problem in society — it’s been replaced by a rampant anti-Christianity. “

One could spend a year, from one Christmas to the next, reading about the Gentile-Jewish basis of the War on Christmas. Some accounts are scholarly, while others are more popular. Some overtly point to the religious split as the source of the hostility, while others cautiously skirt around the issue. Read more