Identity Politics and the Growing Cultural Rift in America

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Identity politics combined with cultural and ethnic differences are causing a divide between rural and urban America.

The demographic change in the American electorate has many political consequences for how campaigns are run. Growing partisanship coupled with ideological radicalization of the parties is a result not only of the browning of America, but also a geographic and cultural schism in society. This essay will revisit the 2016 presidential election, dissecting the underlying war of cultures with a particular focus on the elements of identity politics relevant to Hillary’s defeat.

2016 Revisited

The 2016 election saw the first nomination of a woman for a major political party in the United States, reaching a historical landmark for cat-lady liberals who waited all their lives to see this moment. Meanwhile, the Republican Party nominated arguably the most controversial candidate in modern history. The result was a brutal cage match showdown between the personification of boomer cat-lady feminism and the embodiment of old school alpha-male masculinity. Underneath the spectacle, a larger metapolitical culture war was fought behind the scenes during this election.

Many were shocked when Hillary’s assumed grand slam in November turned out to be a victory for the underdog. An analysis of the underlying battle between cultures proves, however, that Trump’s victory was never as outlandish as the media portrayed it to be. Read more

Ben Stiller and “Meet the Parents”

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Life does not seem good for poor Harvey Weinstein, as it is now reported that his once high-flying production company will likely file for bankruptcy after his sexual harassment scandal has clearly metastasized. As reported at the end of February, “Harvey Weinstein’s film and TV production company is to file for bankruptcy after the sexual harassment scandal that has engulfed the beleaguered firm scuppered a last-ditch $500m deal to save the business.”

I wrote about the Jewish-gentile undercurrent of this scandal in “Harvey Weinstein: On Jews and the Shiksa.”  On the heels of this came my unpacking of  Dustin Hoffmann’s numerous shiksa films, particularly The Graduate. Since so many Jewish men crave “the golden shiksa,” or blonde Gentile woman, and given that Jews most certainly do control Hollywood, it follows that the theme of many movies feature Jewish men chasing Christian women. Just think of When Harry Met Sally, a 1989 American romantic comedy film written by Nora Ephron, whose friend Richard Cohen said of her, “She was very Jewish, culturally and emotionally. She identified fully as a Jewish woman.” Directed by Rob Reiner, who played the “revolutionary Jew” son-in-law “Meatball” on “All in the Family,” When Harry Met Sally stars the very Jewish Billy Crystal as Harry, the love interest of the very goy shiksa Sally, played by Meg Ryan. Read more

Reply to Nathan Cofnas’s Review of “The Culture of Critique”

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Judging by Appearances

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How to Judge People by What They Look Like
Edward Dutton
Self-published, 2018
107 pages, $14.19 paperback, free in Kindle

Anthropologist Ed Dutton will be familiar to some readers for his work with Richard Lynn (including the book Race and Sport) and as an occasional contributor to The Occidental Quarterly. He has just published a short book on physiognomy, i.e., the relation between physical features and behavioral tendencies.

We often hear that it is not possible to judge others from appearance, but there is plenty of evidence that we all do so, and not only in the context of mate-seeking. Dutton draws our attention to the General Prologue to Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, where the poet carefully describes the physical appearance of each of the pilgrims, matching these with their personalities as revealed in their behavior and the stories they tell. The Reeve’s thinness of build is supposed to suit his irritability and quickness to anger. The Wife of Bath has a gap between her front teeth to suggest her sexual aggressiveness. There was a whole body of physiognomic teaching in Medieval Europe, where the subject was taught in universities until the sixteenth century. Unfortunately, much of medieval physiognomic lore had an astrological basis, limiting its scientific usefulness.

Might it not be time to reopen the question?

In 1966 psychologists at the University of Michigan conducted an experiment on 84 undergraduates who had never met. They had to sit in complete silence with each other for 15 minutes and rate each other on personality traits, simply by appearance. Each participant also sat a personality test. For three traits — Extraversion, Conscientiousness and Openness — the students‟ appearance-based judgements significantly positively correlated with the actual personality scores (Passini & Warren, 1966).

A later follow up study replicated the results for Extraversion and Conscientiousness using only mugshots. Read more

A Very Jewish Scandal: The Newmark Affair as Paradigm of Jewish Corruption

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Jewish scandals are like earthquakes: sooner or later, another is bound to strike. Sometimes they shake giant companies and reputations to the ground. Think of Robert Maxwell in the United Kingdom and Bernie Madoff in the United States. But there’s also a very big difference between Jewish scandals and earthquakes. Respectable academics are allowed to analyse and describe earthquakes in as much detail as they like. Everyone agrees that we need to understand earthquakes better and reduce the harm they do. Ideally, we’d like to prevent them altogether.

Pattern recognition is forbidden

But respectable academics are not allowed to analyse and describe Jewish scandals in any serious detail. The scandals can’t even be given their correct racial label. To respectable opinion, Maxwell and Madoff were mega-fraudsters who just happened to be Jewish. Nothing more can be said. No racial, cultural and psychological patterns can be recognized, no preventative measures proposed. And so Jewish scandals will continue to strike. The latest in the United Kingdom centres on a Jewish activist called Jeremy Newmark, who has resigned as chair of the Jewish Labour Movement (JLM) after being accused of “theft and embezzlement” during his earlier time at the Jewish Leadership Council (JLC):

Jeremy Newmark, ex-JLC, ex-JLM

An internal audit into the conduct of Jeremy Newmark while he was chief executive of the Jewish Leadership Council reported that he deceived the organisation out of tens of thousands of pounds and misled charities about the cost of projects he worked on. The [Jewish Chronicle] has obtained a devastating report into the alleged actions of Mr Newmark — who is currently chair [now resigned] of the Jewish Labour Movement and narrowly failed to win the Finchley and Golders Green seat for Labour at last year’s general election — between 2006 and 2013.

In order to avoid a scandal, the JLC’s trustees decided to keep Mr Newmark’s alleged behaviour secret and not inform the police. The trustees — including former chairman Sir Mick Davis, who is now chief executive of the Conservative Party, and property tycoon Leo Noé — accepted Mr Newmark’s resignation on the grounds of ill health after his seven-year long stint at the helm of the charity.

When presented at the time with the evidence of the internal investigation, Mr Newmark is understood to have acknowledged that the picture it painted “did not look good”. But the JLM chair, who was elected as a local councillor in Hertsmere last year, has consistently denied any wrongdoing and insisted he left the JLC because he was suffering from diabetes. He had been diagnosed with the condition six months before his departure.

… Defending the actions the JLC took at the time, Sir Mick this week said the organisation’s trustees had acted immediately after they became aware of the issues. He added that in the wake of Mr Newmark’s resignation, no further action was taken out of regard for his health and family. Details of the 2013 investigation have remained undisclosed for the past five years.

… The trustees involved in making the decision included Stephen Pack, then president of the United Synagogue; Vivian Wineman, then president of the Board of [Jewish] Deputies; Mr Noé; Gerald Ronson, chair of the Community Security Trust; and Sir Trevor Chinn, also a JLC vice-president. …

Mr Pack defended the actions of the JLC trustees, saying: “The judgment that was taken at the time, particularly by the president [Sir Mick], was that any monies that were alleged to have gone were put back, so a charity wasn’t disadvantaged. And that it was in the best interests of the community that Mr Newmark should step down and go. It was not necessary to publicly humiliate him.”

He said the concept of lashon hara meant it would be wrong to sully Mr Newmark’s reputation. “I don’t think it’s the position of somebody who purports to be an Orthodox Jew to take that sort of action.” … (Revealed: how Jeremy Newmark deceived the Jewish Leadership Council out of thousands of pounds, The Jewish Chronicle, 8th February 2018 / 23rd Sh’vat 5778)

This Jewish scandal has been neither named as such nor given the attention it deserves by the mainstream media. And it certainly hasn’t been analysed for specifically Jewish patterns of harmful culture and behaviour. No respectable researcher would dream of conducting such an analysis and concluding that the Jewish community has a very bad influence on British politics. But this is the Occidental Observer, certified by the SPLC and ADL as extremist and unrespectable, so I will now undertake exactly that analysis and reach exactly that conclusion. Read more

Terminated by PayPal. Also a New Mailbox

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Well, it finally happened. I never understood why it took so long, but PayPal has finally bounced TOO as part of the campaign against the Alt Right and truth-telling generally, presumably pressured by the usual suspects. The PayPal buttons have been taken off the donations page, and recurring donations will not go through.

We are trying to figure out what to do next (suggestions appreciated), but in the meantime your continued support is very important. Right now the only way to donate is to send a check or money order to our new mailbox:

The Occidental Observer
1750 Delta Waters Rd Suite 102, #374
Medford, OR 97504

 

Donors who had a recurring donation via check distribution companies need to change the address, as the old mailbox in California will no longer be working.

Thanks for all the support we have received. This will definitely not shut us down.

Reflections on “Darkest Hour”

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Darkest Hour centers around the conflict of whether Winston Churchill, at the low point of the war from his perspective in May of 1940, should negotiate/capitulate to Hitler, or fight on against all odds.  We all know the basic contours of this history.  While the expected dramatic liberties are taken, the essential thrust of the debate within the Churchill cabinet presented in the film is more or less historically accurate, and thus is food for thought.

We know that Neville Chamberlain was the “appeaser,” but perhaps less known is that he and Foreign Secretary Halifax were in the process of putting out peace feelers shortly before the Dunkirk evacuation, and that Churchill himself almost resigned himself to that path—at least, according to the film.  Indeed, as portrayed in the film, Churchill did make some ambiguous statements indicating he might be willing to “consider” some terms for peace with Germany.  But ultimately he thought that could only be done from a position of strength; i.e., a military victory.  This interesting conflict, the inner conflict with which Churchill grappled, is the focus of the film.

The event which averted that eventuality, if we are to take the film’s version of events, is Churchill’s speech to Parliament (“We shall fight them in the air…”)  which rallied the support of those who were skeptical of his hawkish attitude towards Germany, many of whom were in his own Conservative party.  In fact, the reception of this now famous speech was more lukewarm in Parliament and was not broadcast on the radio as portrayed in the film (Churchill recorded it after the fact, hence the version of this audio we hear today was not recorded live during the speech). Read more