Policing the Media: National Review Fires John Derbyshire

Peter Brimelow has a wonderful article at VDARE.com, mentioning John Derbyshire’s firing from National Review and noting that

in the last few years, an astonishingly long list of MSM journalists have been eliminated because they challenge, or are thought to be about to challenge, the MSM’s Leftwing consensus—for example, Lou Dobbs, Glenn Beck, Pat Buchanan. Even Rush Limbaugh has come under attack.   (“Help VDARE.com Save Immigration Patriots From Living In “A State Of Constant Fear”!“)

Brimelow might have added  Rick Sanchez, Helen Thomas, and now M. J. Rosenberg. Yes, Alan Dershowitz and the rest of the organized Jewish community (including the ADL, the Simon Wiesenthal Center, and “major Jewish leaders”) are rejoicing that Media Matters “separated itself” from Rosenberg, who was fond of calling the Israel Lobby “Israel Firsters.”

One can only imagine the pressure put on Media Matters, their contacts in the White House, and on Jewish donors like Penny Pritzker who are the backbone of funding for both the Democrats and Media Matters. For Media Matters, what goes around comes around: They have been influential in getting rid of people like Glenn Beck removed from Fox News by pressuring advertizers, but they cannot withstand the financial fallout of a campaign by Dershowitz to get rid of one of their own staffers for political reasons.

But the big recent story is Derbyshire, an articulate race realist. His critics on the left and among mainstream conservatives are horrified at what Derbyshire wrote, but routinely fail to rebut his ideas. Would even the most benighted liberals want their kids to violate Derbyshire’s rules on “statistical common sense”? I thought of Derbyshire when I read “Report shows widening gap between Ethiopian pupils and other Israelis.” We can expect to find similar stories in the U.S., on the children of Ethiopian immigrants, along with stories on how the schools are failing them.

I’d love to post Derbyshire’s race-realist stuff at TOO, but he’s not likely to want to publish here because we deal with Jewish issues. Race realism doesn’t imply realism when it comes to Jewish issues. I guess being a philosemite does not necessarily protect one from the forces of evil. Indeed, even being Jewish is no protection. As Alex Kurtagic notes, Robert Weissberg was quickly removed as a National Review contributor when it was found out that he had recently given a talk at the AmRen convention.

Richard Spencer has a great article on the Derbyshire firing at AltRight:

Owing to the decline of the “Gate Keeper” media, at no point in the past half-century has implicit racism been more intense. And at at no point have explicit racists, like Derb, been more furiously denounced.

The new wave of conservatives, represented by [Andrew] Breitbart and [Glenn] Beck, have peddled implicit racism; they’ve made a great deal of money off implicit racism. But the trick only works if they shun and condemn anything approaching actual White Nationalism. (Race-Baiting and Its Discontents)

Spencer points out that what he calls “movement conservatives” routinely show misbehaving Blacks (e.g., facts about Trayvon’s thuggish nature) and Blacks victimizing Whites (here’s the viral video of the recent attack by marauding Blacks  on an Irish tourist who violated a one of Derbyshire’s rules by venturing into a Black area of Baltimore where he was beaten up, robbed, and stripped him naked while a crowd of onlookers laughed). But then these same conservatives condemn Derbyshire for saying things like Whites should be afraid of large concentrations of Black people.

Spencer points out that it’s the difference between “implicit racism” and “explicit racism.” Implicit racism is the logical corollary of implicit Whiteness. Like everyone else in the media, these conservatives want an audience, and they know exactly what brings in White viewers. As with the Trayvon Martin affair, conservatives realize that their overwhelmingly White audience are fed up with the “Whites victimizing Blacks’ mantra.” So, as I noted in my previous article, conservatives like Sean Hannity show a video of Florida Black teenagers who left school to protest the Martin shooting by rampaging through a local drugstore. It plugs into into all the stereotypes and is eagerly devoured by his overwhelmingly White audience. But it’s all okay, because Hannity has a couple Black IWSB’s (Derb-speak for “Intelligent, Well-Socialized Blacks)  who condemn their fellow Blacks; so it couldn’t possibly be “racist”: Obviously not all Blacks are like that.

Derbyshire’s sin was that, even though he acknowledged that some Blacks don’t fit the stereotypes, he explicitly talked about the statistical patterns. Blacks are different.

Spencer describes Glenn Beck as a “Grand Master of the race-baiting game” because he came to prominence accusing President Obama of  “a deep seated hatred of White people or the White culture.”  Beck also engaged in what may be termed “implicit anti-Semitism” in his attacks on George Soros. He made it very clear that Soros was a Jew who was the puppet master pulling the strings of the left and engineering a financial collapse which would impoverish all but a few.

Even though Beck has stated that Soros’s Jewishness was not relevant to his actions, the image of Soros the Jewish master manipulator is sure to remain in the minds of Beck’s followers and it’s hard to imagine that Beck did not intend this. It’s a short step from blaming Soros to blaming Jews in general, especially when it is well-known that the organized Jewish community and a decisive majority of American Jews are on board with his leftist agenda in the US. (Glenn Beck on George Soros)

Beck was eventually forced out, a victim of Media Matters and Color of Change, both groups funded by the Jewish left, including Soros.

Despite the decline of the mainstream media, it’s pretty clear from the recent spate of firings that they still have quite a bit of clout. The powers that be must realize that they are sitting on a powder keg. However, appealing to implicit Whiteness, implicit race realism, and implicit anti-Semitism translates to good ratings, so we will continue to see this sort of programming directed at White audiences—programming that feeds into their very legitimate fears, frustrations, and anxieties , not only about the current state of affairs but also about their future in a society where Whites are no longer the majority.

The reason for the increasing shrillness is the fundamental change in the media environment which is no longer restricted to a few easily controlled outlets. Media competition is more intense than ever, so there is ever more temptation to appeal to implicit attitudes that appeal to the very real concerns of Whites–followed by explicit statements affirming the basic norms of political correctness; or perhaps using implicit strategies like having some IWSB’s around who will condemn bad behavior by Blacks; then there’s Beck’s strategy of depicting Soros as a Jewish leftist villain who runs the world while at the same time expressing his love for Israel.

I suggest that the situation is ultimately unstable. As the appeals to implicit White attitudes continue to get more and more graphic and more and more commonplace as a result of competition among the mainstream conservative media, the explicit disavowals of attitudes disapproved by the New York Times (and my academic colleagues) sound more and more hollow. The entire exercise becomes transparently threadbare and an obvious sham. The needle keeps getting pushed. And at some point it will be clear to everyone that the Republican Party or its successor is the party not only of implicit Whiteness, but also implicit race realism and perhaps even implicit anti-Semitism. And at that point, it’s a short step to where it all becomes explicit.

Fundamental change will come when there is an economic safety net for people who cross the line and get fired, whether because they pushed a little too far out of honesty (Derbyshire?), the desire to become rich and famous (Beck?) or simply because they behaved impulsively (probably Sanchez). We are already seeing something of a safety net. Fox Business hired Lou Dobbs (although he doesn’t seem to be talking about immigration); and Peter Brimelow wants to hire Derbyshire, so that may yet end happily. Maybe Mondoweiss will hire MJ Rosenberg. For his part, Beck’s new network, GBTV, seems to be a roaring success, having taken in $40 million this year; his wider empire is expected to take in $80 million in 2012. Don’t feel sorry for Glenn Beck.

Now if only someone with his head screwed on right could have that kind of success that Beck has had after being bounced from the mainstream conservative movement.  But his success shows that the plethora of new media alternatives opens up enormous possibilities. Life doesn’t necessarily end when Fox News or National Review says you are no longer welcome. At least some of us are quite willing to do all we can to actually ignite the powder keg. When it blows, it’s going to be a very large explosion indeed.