Psychological Mechanisms of White Dispossession

I discuss three mechanisms basic to the psychology of White dispossession — runaway displays of White guilt and abasement, social learning, and being a member of a moral ingroup. Self-interest is often front and center, or at least in the background. For example, it’s pretty clear that many if not most Whites who make effusive declarations of allegiance to the multicultural reign of terror are acting out of self-interest. Such people are plugging into the contemporary structure of rewards and punishments created by our hostile elites. Even White heterosexual males have much to gain by making such displays; simply attending a job talk at a university, especially for an administrative position, makes it clear that explicit affirmations of allegiance to multiculturalism, White guilt, and acquiescence to White dispossession are de rigueur.

Runaway Displays of White Guilt and Abasement

So part of the psychology of displacement among Whites is simply self-interest. Anthony Hilton’s article (“Giving away the farm: Why?”)  adds the suggestion that there can be a runaway process resulting from competition among displayers to the point that their declarations become more and more grotesque and removed from rationality. Just as peahens select for more and more cumbersome, costly tail feathers in peacocks, we can expect that the bar for successful displays of White self-deprecation and guilt to be continuously raised.

One might suppose then, that the White Privilege Conference to be held in Seattle in April would be an ideal arena for such displays. Here are some quotes from some of the presentations that caught my eye. 

“The Color of Empire / The Cost to Our Humanity: Dismantling White Privilege and Class Supremacy Using Cellular Wisdom” … The session begins with mind and body grounding in processes, proceeds to examining the biological wisdom of the human cell  [???], moves to an analysis of race and class oppression / liberation dynamics in the U.S. (with particular attention to class supremacy and white privilege), and concludes with a range of applications of cellular wisdom to participants’ racial and economic justice work personally and professionally. …

The Cost of Internalized Oppression, No One Escapes … This institute will bring together 4 facilitators who are living experts on the concept of internalized oppression. We are Black, White, Jewish, Queer, Gay, Female and Male. Through conversation we realized we all have a common experience, we have internalized some form of oppression and this oppression has influenced our lives in a negative way. …  Participants will understand ways internalized oppression has played a part in their lives through the use of guided meditation, as well as individually-focused and interactive activities — ending with developing a network of people who are willing to support each other’s healing journey by use of social media.

Transforming Organizations: Internalizing Racial Equity …  As we commit ourselves to dismantling racism and white privilege, many of us are engaging in deep dialogue and education within our organizations. …  Participants will work on case studies to increase their skills for identifying white culture and thinking of ways to intervene. Using a new assessment tool, we will analyze current institutional policies, practices, and cultural norms to assess how white culture is manifesting. What are the ways, consciously and unconsciously, that we perpetuate racism and white culture in and through our organizations – and what are the replicable ways we resist and interrupt these dynamics? (See here.)

One of  the presenters is Heather Hackman who may well be Jewish and thus akin to the execrable Tim Wise as a diversity entrepreneur. (One of Hackman’s areas of expertise is “Jewish oppression” by which she presumably does not mean Jewish oppression, say, of Palestinians). But in any case, several members of her consulting firm are White. 

Hackman’s background is stark testimony to the role of universities in White dispossession:

She received her doctorate in Social Justice Education from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst in 2000, and for the next 12 years served as a tenured professor in the Department of Human Relations and Multicultural Education at St. Cloud State University where she taught courses in social justice and multicultural education, heterosexism and homophobia in the US, race and racism in the US, social justice education, and oppression and social change. In 2005 she began to consult nationally on issues of diversity, equity and social justice with an emphasis on issues of racism and whiteness, gender oppression, heterosexism / homophobia, and classism. In 2012 she resigned her faculty position in order to dedicate all her time to her consulting firm, Hackman Consulting Group.

There is clearly a vast anti-White infrastructure centered in the universities (college course credit is available for registrants of the White Privilege Conference) and spilling over into private enterprise. It is devoted to displays of White guilt that are quite profitable—profitable enough to allow her to resign her university faculty position.

The description on the consulting firm’s website makes it clear that there is a lot of competition in this area, so they advertise that, e.g., “We will provide the most cutting edge pedagogical tools, training materials, application models and conceptual frameworks drawn from the most current trends in the professional areas in which we work.” Having one leg up on the competition means devising ever more outlandish remedies for the evil of Whiteness. One member of the group, Susan Roffo, is “trained in Craniosacral Therapy and Global Somatics body work and co-facilitates with Dr. Hackman the “More Than Skin Deep: Challenging White Supremacy One Cell At A Time” workshops examining whiteness, trauma and healing in the service of ending racism.” 

Just like the peacock’s tail, the more outrageous the better. Hiring Hackman’s company is a sure-fire way to keep away lawsuits about diversity issues: “Surely you can’t sue us. We had all our personnel undergo Craniosacral Therapy and Global Somatics body work to eradicate the evil that is deep inside Whites—so deep it has to be eradicated from both body and mind. What more could we possibly do?”

Parenthetically, one might note that it’s the same with neoconservatism, where a very large infrastructure makes displays of obeisance to Israel a good career move for media figures, not to mention politicians, and government workers who can expect a soft landing in neocon think tanks and pro-Israel advocacy organizations if the political winds change. Last year’s Republican presidential primary debates featured a demeaning competition for who could be the most pro-Israel (and most pro-diversity), resulting in comments at least as grotesque as anything at the White  Privilege Conference. Newt Gingrich, his fortitude bolstered with the $10,000,000 he received from Sheldon Adelson, won the pro-Israel competition when he declared that the Palestinians were an “invented people.” Hard to top that one.

Watching FoxNews Channel recently it struck me that Sean Hannity (dressed in a blue and white tie) is competing to be the most pro-Israel talking head on TV, stating in a discussion of Obama’s visit to Israel that he “has screwed over Israel again and again,” heatedly interrupting his guests who were simply attempting to provide some context to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and generally seeming more pro-Israel than the  Abe Foxman. 

A basic mechanism for anti-White displays is therefore self-interest, resulting in ever more grotesque displays of anti-White hatred. And although the emphasis here is on the infrastructure of rewards to be had by such displays, there is also a correspondingly powerful infrastructure that punishes racially conscious Whites with job loss and social ostracism. Avoiding such punishments is obviously self-interested behavior as well.

Social Learning Mechanisms

Another mechanism making anti-White attitudes palatable among Whites derives from research on social learning in psychology. Models are far more effective if they have prestige and high status, and this tendency fits well with an evolutionary perspective in which seeking high social status is a universal feature of the human mind.

A critical component of the success of the culture of critique is that it achieved control of the most prestigious and influential institutions of the West, and it became a consensus among the elites, Jewish and non-Jewish alike. Once this happened, it is not surprising that this culture became widely accepted among people of very different levels of education and among people of different social classes.

Most people are quite insecure about their intellectual ability. But they know that the professors at Harvard [like the notorious Stephen Jay Gould], and the editorial page of the New York Times and the Washington Post and even conservative commentators like Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity are all on page when it comes to racial and ethnic issues. This is a formidable array, to the point that you almost have to be a crank to dissent from this consensus.

I think one of the greatest triumphs of the left has been to get people to believe that people who assert White identity and interests or who make unflattering portrayals of organized Jewish movements are morally degenerate, stupid, and perhaps psychiatrically disturbed. Obviously, all of these adjectives designate low status.

This is particularly a problem for college-educated whites. … Such people have a strong need to feel that their ideas are respectable and part of the mainstream … The respectable mainstream gives them absolutely nothing with which to validate themselves except perhaps the idea that the world will be a better place when people like them no longer have power. (“The problem of intellectually insecure Whites”)

Whites realize that even being a college graduate doesn’t make them knowledgable enough on issues like race and the consequences of immigration to challenge the elite media and academic world, so they wear their allegiance to political correctness as a badge of their intelligence and moral rectitude. 

The anti-White revolution has been a top-down revolution in which the first step was to seize the high ground of the society, particularly the elite media and academic world. (Brenton Sanderson does a brilliant job of showing the top-down nature of the demise of the White Australia policy — to the point that political and media elites kept the transformational changes wrought by the new policies out of the public eye. Policy was made by government bureaucrats rather than via the legislative process in the context of public debate. The academic world very quickly got on board, especially when there were tangible rewards like grant money and book contracts for going along with the multicultural revolution. )

Framing Issues in Moral Terms

A third mechanism has been to frame anti-White messages in moral terms. Not only are anti-White messages prestigious, they are also badges of moral rectitude. Displacement-level non-White immigration has become a moral imperative. To dissent from such policies is to place oneself outside the moral universe of the contemporary West.

Moral indictments of the West have been central to Jewish intellectual and political movements discussed in The Culture of Critique that have been dominant among intellectual and political elites in the West.  Moral indictments are a prominent theme in the writings of political radicals and those opposing biological perspectives on individual and group differences in IQ. A sense of moral superiority was also prevalent in the psychoanalytic movement, and the Frankfurt School developed a moral perspective in which social science was to be judged by moral criteria rather than truth. Moral indictments are implicit whenever one hears labels like White supremacist, Nazi, hater, bigot, racist, etc. applied to those who advocate for the legitimacy of White identity and interests.

Over evolutionary time, individuals who placed themselves outside the moral boundaries of the society faced evolutionary death. My view is that moral universalism and guilt are exacerbated in individualist societies and are thus an exaggerated ethnic trait of Europeans where ingroups have historically been defined far more in terms of moral rectitude and reputation and less in terms of genetic relatedness (See here, p. 23ff). Evolutionary psychologists have noted that feelings of shame and guilt evolved as signals of atonement to the group—as if to say “I am deeply remorseful for offending the group consensus; please let me back into your good graces. I promise to mend my ways.” Such displays of remorse and contrition are commonplace among those who make politically incorrect comments on Jews, Blacks, gays or other minorities—often with a mandatory trip to a Holocaust museum.

(Parenthetically, another mechanism motivating moral behavior is empathy/nurturance, but will not be discussed here. Women are more prone to empathy and nurturance, and thus more likely to be motivated to help those seen to be in need — Third World economic refugees come to mind. Empathy/nurturnance is a trait important for well-functioning families and kinship groups in our evolutionary past. In the modern world it may lead to pathological altruism  as people high on the trait are more prone to vote for political parties seen as compassionate; see here.)

Like a criminal about to be sentenced by a judge, sincere-appearing displays of remorse are good strategies for appeasing the multicultural powers that be and establishing one’s moral credentials. The pathetic Christian Lander (of Stuff White People Like fame) is a classic example of White moral abasement (presumably motivated by worrying that it would be very impolitic to express any pride in being one of the people he writes about):

I get it: as a straight white male, I’m the worst thing on Earth. … Like, I’m aware of all the horrible crimes that my demographic has done in the world. … And there’s a bunch of white people who are desperate — desperate — to say, ‘You know what? My skin’s white, but I’m not one of the white people who’s destroying the world.’ See here”)

Yet another runaway display of White guilt. That’s why defending the West in moral terms is critical (see here and here). White people will never sign on to a movement that they see as immoral.

Another version: A liberal journalist  critiquing massive immigration into the UK:

There has been a huge gap between our ruling elite’s views and those of ordinary people on the street. [Again, as throughout the West, Britain’s disastrous immigration policy has been top-down, not reflecting popular opinion among native White Brits.] This was brought home to me when dining at an Oxford college and the eminent person next to me, a very senior civil servant, said: ‘When I was at the Treasury, I argued for the most open door possible to immigration [because] I saw it as my job to maximise global welfare not national welfare.’ I was even more surprised when the notion was endorsed by another guest, one of the most powerful ” television executives in the country. He, too, felt global welfare was paramount and that he had a greater obligation to someone in Burundi than to someone in Birmingham. … [The political class] failed to control the inflow more overtly in the interests of existing citizens.

Such high-mindedness is an attempt to fit into a moral community as defined by their peers among the elites of British society. Standing up for the interests of the native British would have made him a moral pariah, with likely effects on his career prospects. 

An evolutionist can only marvel at the completely unhinged altruism on display here, assuming the speakers  are native White Brits. Such an example is so extreme it is perhaps best classified with the examples of grotesque anti-White displays noted at the beginning. Such altruism is nothing but a recipe for evolutionary extinction.

*   *   *

So in summary, there appear to be three basic mechanisms tending to make White displacement psychologically palatable to Whites:

  • self-interest resulting in competition among Whites to engage in ever more ridiculous displays of self-abasement and love of diversity and multiculturalism; such displays benefit individuals because of the very elaborate infrastructure that rewards such behavior;
  • social learning facilitated by the prestige associated with dominating the intellectual high ground of the society, thus giving Whites the comfort of having the same attitudes as elite institutions like the New York Times and FoxNews, and informing others that one is intelligent and well-read;
  • feelings of moral rectitude resulting from subscribing to the moral dictates of the society as defined by media and academic elites. Since these elites unanimously regard the traditional people and culture of the West as uniquely immoral, dissenting from these views results in shame and guilt, whereas going with the flow results in very positive feelings that one is a member in good standing of the mainstream society.

All of these processes  discussed here depend on elite control. Without elite control, there is no infrastructure that makes displays of guilt and abasement profitable. Social learning only becomes a weapon against Whites after the forces opposed to Whites control the elite media and the academic world; the same can be said for the creation of moral ingroups.

Like all elites, our new hostile elite has methods of protecting itself from displacement. Most critically, the formerly dominant WASP elites were commonly discussed and criticized, often by themselves (famously, E. Digby Baltzell) and certainly by those that eventually displaced them—the point, after all, of The Culture of Critique. On the other hand, the Jewish component which is central to the new hostile elite has effectively managed to eradicate any discussion of Jewish power, influence and motives from the above-ground media (e.g., here).

Ending this state of affairs must be a high priority for those desiring a renaissance of the West.

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