• MISSION STATEMENT
  • TERMS
  • PRIVACY
The Occidental Observer
  • HOME
  • BLOG
  • SUBSCRIBE TOQ
  • CONTACT USPlease send all letters to the editor, manuscripts, promotional materials, and subscription questions to Editors@TheOccidentalObserver.net.
  • DONATE
  • Search
  • Menu Menu

What is the Psychology of the Murderess?

December 19, 2024/12 Comments/in Featured Articles/by Edward Dutton

There has been yet another devastating school shooting in America; this time at the Abundant Life Christian School in Madison, Wisconsin. They seem to occur with such numbing regularity that in 2018 South Park captured the response with cutting accuracy in the episode “Dead Kids.” Shootings keep taking place at South Park Elementary, nobody cares any more, and when one mother does, it is assumed she has Pre-Menstrual Tension. However, there is a key difference when it comes to the Madison shooting, in which three people, including the shooter, were killed. The perpetrator was a natal female: 15 year-old Natalie “Samantha” Rupnow.

School shooters are overwhelmingly male, as are murderers and suicides. In the US, according to Bureau of Justice, the male-female murderer rate is 9:1, the suicide rate is 3:1 and the mass murderer rate is 20:1. For a female to behave like this is astonishingly unlikely. This begs a crucial question: What makes a murderess? How is a female murderer psychologically different from a male murderer, in particular when it involves killing in an extremely violent fashion?

According to the available research, such as the review “Risk of Homicide and Major Mental Disorders,” male murderers tend to have Psychopathic Personality Disorder. This is characterised, among other traits, by lack of empathy, a Narcissistic sense of entitlement and grandeur, and a high level of aggressiveness and impulsivity. Such killers will feel an overwhelmingly sense of rage against a society or an individual, which they believe has been impertinent enough to fail to recognize their importance. These feelings overwhelm them to such an extent — the negative feelings will be so potent — that they will kill. Further, their self-importance will be such that they’d rather kill themselves than allow others to have power of them. These traits will stay in populations because when they come together with other traits — such as optimal intelligence, social skill or even with forms of depression — they can result in extremely high social status; demonstrated by Felix Post in his British Journal of Psychiatry study “Creativity and Psychopathology.” David Buss explains in The Evolution of Desire that females are evolved to find status highly sexually attractive. This is because if a male has the genes which permit him to survive and flourish then so will the offspring and, also, because such men will have resources which they can invest in the mother and child, aiding survival.

The murderess is psychologically very different, as noted in the Walden University PhD thesis “Examining Psychosocial Characteristics of Female Serial Murderers.” They display evidence of Borderline Personality Disorder, its close relative Post-Traumatic Stress, and what is known as Munchausen Syndrome by Proxy. Fascinatingly, Natalie Rupnow appears to make sense, in terms of these conditions, to an extraordinary degree.

As I have explained in my book Woke Eugenics, Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD) is characterised by highly unstable and extreme moods, poor emotional regulation, a fundamental fear of abandonment and of being alone, pronounced feelings of shame, intense and unstable relationships (including sexual risk-taking, perhaps due to a feeling that “love” may not come again) and unstable goals and even sense of identity, due to being plagued by intense negative feelings (such as shame, anxiety, self-loathing and self-doubt), and a weak sense of self. They may swing from overtly loving to psychopathic; from grandiose to victim; from histrionic to schizoid and avoidant.

In that sufferers from BPD cannot regulate their emotions, they cannot regulate their self-esteem; so they may swing between grandiose Narcissism (believing one is perfect, superior and being entitled) and self-loathing in an attempt to suppress their fears and feelings of abject worthlessness. For the same reason, their identity and goals can radically change in accordance with these swings in self-esteem and in mood.

Due to their fear of abandonment, such people will tend to idealise those with whom they have relationships. This is a way of suppressing their anxiety about potential problems in the relationship that may cause it to end. It evidences their relatively immature way of seeing the world and their desire for someone to fill the void of emptiness and meaninglessness which they often feel. In other words, they cannot cope with their extreme negative feelings, so they create a fantasy world which produces positive feelings; this perfect person being their rescuer. However, due to their instability, they can easily de-idealise them, regard them as evil and in consequence become psychopathic and degenerate into paranoid psychosis, similar to paranoid schizophrenia, in which everyone wants to destroy you. Hence, paranoid schizophrenia crosses over with BPD.

In females in particular, BPD correlates with autism (poor social skills, anxiety, imbibing too much information, a need for order), possibly because autistics are more likely to be abused. BPD symptoms also manifest as a result of Post-Traumatic Stress and though BPD is about 50% genetic, the key environmental component appears to be abuse: an unstable childhood in which parents are unpredictable, love is capricious, and the world is impossibly frightening.

Now, in her manifesto, War Against Humanity, what do we discover about Rupnow? She describes her parents as “scum” who “didn’t love her” and made her feel she was the “wrong child.” They have both been divorced multiple times, something which implies high psychopathic traits and high levels of mental instability, both of which cross-over with BPD and both of which have a significant genetic component. They are also substance abusers, further implying anti-social traits. In other words, they have created precisely the kind of unstable childhood which would cause BPD.

Her manifesto also reveals evidence of autistic traits, most obviously that she is obsessed with school serial killers, has researched everything about them, has concluded that they are morally good, and identifies with them, even noting that her birthday is the same as the date of one of their killing sprees. Those with BPD are plagued by self-doubt due to a world where they haven’t found the stability to see who they are in relation to others. They search for a sense of identity and then create a very pronounced (though unstable) one when they seem to find it. This is what Rupnow has done.

There is also a degree to which she sees herself as a victim; a component of “Vulnerable Narcissism,” in which you are the world’s most misunderstood victim but you are brilliant and you look for a man upon whom you can be a parasite. Munchausen Syndrome relates to this: you pretend to be ill so that others will look after you and give you attention. Munchausen Syndrome by Proxy involves projecting the “illness” onto your child; something which also provides you with care and attention. Female murderers can kill via this motivation, persuading themselves that it’s morally good that the person must die. Rupnow argues, in essence, most people are vermin so it is “better for evolution” that she kill some of them.

Rupnow, then, clearly conforms to the available studies on female murderers. We should be no more shocked that Rupnow has committed murder than we should be that there has been yet another school shooting in the US. The question now is: How can we identify females like this and keep them away from society? One marker is that 80% of females with BPD have self-harmed, and will have scars from cutting or burning accordingly.

https://www.theoccidentalobserver.net/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/TOO-Full-Logo-660x156-1.png 0 0 Edward Dutton https://www.theoccidentalobserver.net/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/TOO-Full-Logo-660x156-1.png Edward Dutton2024-12-19 07:55:242024-12-19 07:55:24What is the Psychology of the Murderess?

Tucker interviews Jeffrey Sachs: Israel, the Israel Lobby, and their role in removing Assad

December 18, 2024/1 Comment/in General/by Kevin MacDonald

Jeffrey Sachs is a top-tier academic in the field of international development, but he knows a lot about international politics and, despite being Jewish, he is very blunt about the role of Israel in the Middle East going back to the 1990s and the “Clean Break” policy—a joint collaboration between Israeli foreign policy hawks and American neocons published by an Israeli thinktank. The following is from my paper (soon to be a chapter in the revised edition of The Culture of Critique) “Neoconservatism as a Jewish Movement.” Note the references to Syria. Israel’s desire to crush Syria has now come to fruition:

[U.S.-based neocon Richard] Perle was the “Study Group Leader” of a 1996 report titled “A Clean Break: A New Strategy for Securing the Realm” published by the Institute for Advanced Strategic and Political Studies (IASPS), an Israeli think tank. The membership of the study group illustrates the overlap between Israeli think tanks close to the Israeli government, American policy makers and government officials, and pro-Israel activists working in the United States. Other members of this group who accepted positions in the George W. Bush administration or in pro-Israel activist organizations in the United States include Douglas Feith (Deputy Undersecretary of Defense for Policy), David Wurmser (member of IASPS, a protégé of Perle at AEI, and senior adviser in the State Department), Meyrav Wurmser (head of the Hudson Institute, a neocon think tank), James Colbert (JINSA), and Jonathan Torop (WINEP).

Despite Joshua Muravchik’s apologetic claims,[1] the “Clean Break” report was clearly intended as advice for another of Perle’s personal friends,[2] Benjamin Netanyahu, who was then the new prime minister of Israel; there is no indication that it was an effort to further U.S. interests in the region. The purpose was to “forge a peace process and strategy based on an entirely new intellectual foundation, one that restores strategic initiative and provides the nation the room to engage every possible energy on rebuilding Zionism.” Indeed, the report advises the United States to avoid pressure on the Israelis to give land for peace, a strategy “which required funneling American money to repressive and aggressive regimes, was risky, expensive, and very costly for both the United States and Israel, and placed the United States in roles it should neither have nor want.” The authors of the report speak as Jews and Israelis, not as U.S. citizens: “Our claim to the land—to which we have clung for hope for 2,000 years—is legitimate and noble.” Much of the focus is on removing the threat of Syria, and it is in this context that the report notes, “This effort can focus on removing Saddam Hussein from power in Iraq—an important Israeli strategic objective in its own right—as a means of foiling Syria’s regional ambitions.”[3] The ultimate result of this has been the 2003–2011 war in Iraq and ultimately the Syrian civil war that began in 2011 and is ongoing as I write, bringing devastation to the country. Hundreds of thousands of Iraqis were killed and over 4400 U.S. and almost 32000 wounded.[4] The Syrian civil war has become part of the ongoing conflict between Russia and its allies against the West, with Iran and Russia siding with Assad, while Israel and the United States, along with other Western countries, have supported the rebels—essentially the same forces arrayed against each other in the Ukraine war.

Sachs also brings up Timber-Sycamore, a CIA weapons project that supported rebels against the Assad regime beginning in 2012 or 2013.  In this context, Sachs emphasizes that the U.S. media, and particularly The New York Times never contextualizes their articles on the region. Although they had an article on Timber-Sycamore in 2017, the roles of the U.S. and Israel in Assad’s removal are ignored. Assad is simply a bad guy, like Saddam and Gaddafi, and he got what’s coming to him. Sachs notes that the neocon-Israeli axis wanted to destroy seven countries because they supported the Palestinians: Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, Iran, Libya, Somalia and Sudan. So far they have gotten all except Iran, and Iran has clearly been in their plans for many years.

There will be enormous pressure on the Trump administration to go to war with Iran, presumably aided by Miriam Adelson’s $100 million campaign donation to Trump. One can only hope that clearer heads will prevail, although Trump’s rabidly pro-Israel appointments to Middle East positions are deeply concerning. Presumably Tucker has some influence on Trump given their close association during the election campaign, and he wouldn’t have done this interview if he didn’t believe that going into all these Middle East wars was a mistake and that Israel is at the root of all the wars in the region. It would be terrific if someone with this mindset had power in U.S. foreign policy in the next administration.

 A couple other things struck me: American foreign policy is run by the CIA which is unaccountable to Congress and has gotten away with numerous covert operations (e.g., Syria and Ukraine’s Maidan regime-change) without the American public having any idea of what they have done. Tucker and Sachs note that Trump’s promise to declassify documents offers some hope that what the CIA has done would become public knowledge.

Update: Netanyahu visits IDF soldiers in Syria as rebel leaders call for Israelis to exit

First Part of the Transcript:

Tucker [00:00:00] Well, first of all, thank you. So many things have happened in the last two weeks. I keep thinking, where’s Jeff Sachs? I want to go. I wonder what this means. So the most dramatic and from my perspective, unexpected thing that happened was all of a sudden the government in Syria changed. There was regime change in Syria. Who did that? Why? And what does it mean?

Jeffrey Sachs [00:00:20] Well, it’s part of a 30 year effort. This is Netanyahu’s war to remake the Middle East. It’s been a disaster. It continues to be a disaster. But as Netanyahu himself said, after Assad left, we have remade the Middle East. And so it has to be understood as something that didn’t just happen in a week, but has been an ongoing war throughout the Middle East. And maybe the right way to understand what’s happened with Syria is to think back to a really remarkable occasion when Wesley Clark, the general who headed Naito. Yes. Went to the Pentagon just after 911. And famously he was shown a piece of paper that said, we’re going to have seven wars in five years. And he was completely dumbfounded, said, What does this have to do with anything? And he was told that the neocons and the Israelis are going to remake the Middle East. And the seven countries on the list are very telling. They would Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, Iran and then in Africa, Libya, Somalia and Sudan and seven countries. We’ve been at war in six of them now. And I mean, we the United States on behalf of Israel, including in Syria. And so what happened in Syria last week was the culmination of a long term effort by Israel to reshape the Middle East in its image. That started with Netanyahu and his American advisers in 1996 in something called Clean Break, which was a political document that the Americans and Netanyahu made when Netanyahu became prime minister. After 911, it went into full gear with the Iraq war as being the first of those wars.

Jeffrey Sachs on how Joe Biden has been the most destructive president in American history, and how Donald Trump can repair the damage.

(0:00) The Regime Change in Syria
(8:48) What Is Greater Israel?
(21:45) Were Americans Involved in the Overthrowing of Assad?
(34:26) War With… pic.twitter.com/STxrm5haXD

— Tucker Carlson (@TuckerCarlson) December 16, 2024

(0:00) The Regime Change in Syria (8:48)

What Is Greater Israel? (21:45)

Were Americans Involved in the Overthrowing of Assad? (34:26) ‘

War With China by 2027 (40:22)

Biden’s Attempt to Sabotage Trump (46:10)

The Attempted Coup of South Korea (51:20)

Jeffrey Sachs’ Warning to Trump of Potential Nuclear War (55:18)

Will We See the Declassification of the 9/11 Documents? (1:07:11)

Will Trump Pardon Snowden and Assange? (1:16:43)

The Most Important Appointment of Trump’s Cabinet (1:26:29)

Biden’s Attempt to Kill Putin (1:35:58)

Can Trump Bring Peace? (1:45:44) /

Is War With Iran Inevitable? (1:51:21)

Why Corporate Media Hates Jeffrey Sachs

https://www.theoccidentalobserver.net/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/TOO-Full-Logo-660x156-1.png 0 0 Kevin MacDonald https://www.theoccidentalobserver.net/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/TOO-Full-Logo-660x156-1.png Kevin MacDonald2024-12-18 08:24:142024-12-18 11:16:08Tucker interviews Jeffrey Sachs: Israel, the Israel Lobby, and their role in removing Assad

The Reason for the Season: Following the Followers But Failing the Faith

December 18, 2024/19 Comments/in Christianity, Featured Articles/by Tobias Langdon

Secretary to an anti-Pope. I’m not among the very few people on earth who can claim to be one. But I am among the few who can claim to have corresponded with one. It was by email around the turn of the century, after I came across the website for a tiny schismatic Catholic sect in Montana. As I’ve said before at the Occidental Observer, I’m fascinated by islands, both real ones and metaphorical ones. An anti-Pope, or rival to the generally accepted Pope, is like an island of self-assertion in a sea of hostility, ridicule and indifference.

Core to Christianity

The anti-Pope for the sect in question was Lucian Pulvermacher (1918–2009), who was elected as Pope Pius XIII by the True Catholic Church in 1998. I can’t remember the name of his secretary, but I can remember that I was impressed by that secretary. He genuinely seemed to possess something that is supposedly central to Christianity but seems rarely practised by Christians. What is it? Humility. Christ urged it on His followers, but my experience is that they often turn a deaf ear to that and much else urged upon them by their Lord. The anti-Pope’s humble secretary gave me a good example of Christians ignoring Christ when he told me that he used to get mocking emails from staff at the Vatican. They found him and his master supremely ridiculous. After all, they were working for a continent-spanning colossus at Rome, where all roads lead, and he was working for a tiny schismatic sect in Kalispell, Mt. And yet he had the spirit of the Christ-child and they didn’t.

The Virgin of the Lilies (1899) by William-Adolphe Bouguereau (image from Wikipedia)

The Christ-child is, of course, the reason for the season of Christmas. He was born of a virgin after a miraculous conception by the Holy Ghost. According to true Christians, that is, but I’m not one of them. Like Hell, the Resurrection and Transubstantiation, the Virgin Birth of Christ is one of the scandals that prevent me from becoming a Christian. Skandalon, σκάνδαλον, is a New Testament word and literally means “stumbling-block.” I stumble and fall when I try to believe that Christ was born of a virgin and rose from the dead. And yet I once believed in something far more supernaturally extravagant than those two doctrines in Christianity. That is, I once believed in the Psychic Unity of Mankind, namely, that all races, from Swedes to Somalis, from Tibetans to Tongans, have the same fundamental psychology and cognitive potential. According to leftists, it’s nurture, not nature, that explains why, for centuries, tiny numbers of Jews have effortlessly outperformed vast numbers of Blacks in cognitively demanding fields like science, mathematics and chess.

A risible superstition

The same leftists will usually reject the Virgin Birth of Christ with scorn. And yet accepting the Virgin Birth of Christ demands belief only in the miraculous conception of a single child in Palestine two thousand years ago. Accepting the Psychic Unity of Mankind demands belief in the miraculous conception of billions of children for thousands of years in places as wildly different in climate and geography as the icy, oxygen-starved plateau of Tibet and the sea-clasped, sun-kissed island of Tonga. In other words, those who believe that all races are cognitively equal must believe that the human brain was miraculously exempt from the evolutionary forces that have shaped all other aspects of human physiology, from skin-color to blood-chemistry to lung-function to bone-structure.

The brain isn’t exempt from evolution, of course, and the Psychic Unity of Mankind is a risible superstition. But my brain was once one of the millions that housed that risible superstition, while rejecting the Virgin Birth of Christ and being thoroughly hostile to Christianity. Fortunately, my brain was also capable in time of recognizing the contradictions and absurdities of leftism. And of becoming much less hostile to true Christianity. I sometimes feel as though my small feet are treading in the giant prints of C.S. Lewis, who wrote this in his spiritual autobiography Surprised by Joy (1955):

Then I read Chesterton’s Everlasting Man and for the first time saw the whole Christian outline of history set out in a form that seemed to me to make sense. Somehow I contrived not to be too badly shaken. You will remember that I already thought Chesterton the most sensible man alive “apart from his Christianity”. Now, I veritably believe, I thought — I didn’t of course say; words would have revealed the nonsense — that Christianity itself was very sensible “apart from its Christianity”. (Surprised by Joy, chapter XIV)

I feel about Lewis what Lewis felt about Chesterton: that he is a very wise and insightful writer “apart from his Christianity.” But what if his wisdom and insight had brought him to Christianity and been nourished and strengthened by his Christianity? I ask the same question about the more forbidding figure of Hilaire Belloc (1870–1953), the great Catholic writer who published these powerful words in 1938:

[T]here is (as the greatest of the ancient Greeks discovered) a certain indissoluble Trinity of Truth, Beauty and Goodness. You cannot deny or attack one of these three without at the same time denying or attacking both the others. Therefore with the advance of this new and terrible enemy against the Faith and all that civilization which the Faith produces, there is coming not only a contempt for beauty but a hatred of it; and immediately upon the heels of this there appears a contempt and hatred for virtue. (The Great Heresies, chapter 6, “The Modern Phase”)

Belloc was right. Christianity in the true sense welcomes, nurtures and creates Truth, Beauty and Goodness. Leftism — and Christianity when corrupted by leftism — hates all of those things. Among the beauties nurtured by Christianity is the poetry of John Betjeman (1906–84). He didn’t create anything to rival the music of Bach or the architecture of the Gothic masters, but he did — and does — move the heart with verses like these:

And is it true? And is it true,
This most tremendous tale of all,
Seen in a stained-glass window’s hue,
A Baby in an ox’s stall?
The Maker of the stars and sea
Become a Child on earth for me?
And is it true? For if it is,
No loving fingers tying strings
Around those tissued fripperies,
The sweet and silly Christmas things,
Bath salts and inexpensive scent
And hideous tie so kindly meant,
No love that in a family dwells,
No carolling in frosty air,
Nor all the steeple-shaking bells
Can with this single Truth compare —
That God was man in Palestine
And lives today in Bread and Wine. (“Christmas,” 1954)

Betjeman believed but had doubts. I have doubts and can’t believe. The doctrines are too much for me. I can’t believe in the Virgin Birth and I can’t believe that the flesh and blood of Christ are literally, but undetectably, the bread and wine taken by Christians at Eucharist. But again I can see that the Christian belief in transubstantiation is much less irrational and superstitious than the leftist belief in transgenderism. Christians believe that Christ becomes bread and wine because God so wills it. Leftists believe that men become women because the men in question so will it. The men might have beards and balls and ten-inch todgers, but they’re fully female all the same. Only heretical haters deny this great and glorious truth.

“A slender elf-woman”

Okay, leftists don’t call the deniers “heretics” or “witches” or “blasphemers.” But it’s clear that religious psychology is at work in leftism, which is an ugly parody of Christianity rather as transgenderism is an ugly parody of transubstantiation. Tolkien put it like this: “The Shadow … can only mock, it cannot make: not real new things of its own.” Tolkien is another great Christian writer whom I revere but can’t follow into Christianity. The Virgin Mary appears in Tolkien’s masterpiece, The Lord of the Rings (1954–5), but under another name: Galadriel. She’s the awe-inspiring Elven lady who nevertheless has the humility to resist the golden temptation of supreme power:

She lifted up her hand and from the ring that she wore there issued a great light that illuminated her alone and left all else dark. She stood before Frodo seeming now tall beyond measurement, and beautiful beyond enduring, terrible and worshipful. Then she let her hand fall, and the light faded, and suddenly she laughed again, and lo! she was shrunken: a slender elf-woman, clad in simple white, whose gentle voice was soft and sad.

“I pass the test,” she said. “I will diminish, and go into the West and remain Galadriel.” (The Fellowship of the Ring, 1954, Book II, chapter 7)

That is Tolkien’s portrayal of the Virgin Mary, who bore God but did not aspire to godhead herself. The Star of Bethlehem appears in Lord of the Rings too. I think so anyway. I think it’s the hope-lifter and heart-raiser seen by the humble hobbit Sam from the ash-choked death-land of the Dark Lord Sauron:

Far above the Ephel Dúath in the West the night-sky was still dim and pale. There, peeping among the cloud-wrack above a dark tor high up in the mountains, Sam saw a white star twinkle for a while. The beauty of it smote his heart, as he looked up out of the forsaken land, and hope returned to him. For like a shaft, clear and cold, the thought pierced him that in the end the Shadow was only a small and passing thing: there was light and high beauty for ever beyond its reach. (The Return of the King, 1955, Book VI, chapter 3)

But where is the Christ-child in Tolkien’s masterpiece? Nowhere and everywhere, I would say. Tolkien could not have created the Truth, Beauty and Goodness of his trilogy without believing in the Christ-child and the Virgin Birth. But beliefs can do good, can inspire great art and literature, without being true. And I think one thing is more certain about Christianity than the Virgin Birth or the Resurrection. In its highest, best, and most inspiring forms, Christianity is a White religion, indissolubly bound to the pale-skinned folk of Europe and her diaspora. Whites created Christianity and Christianity created Whites by influencing their evolution. Belloc put it like this, perhaps with deeper meaning than he intended: “Europe is the Faith and the Faith is Europe.” That’s why the enemies of Whites, like Jews and leftists, are also the enemies of Christ. And why there’s a war on Christmas. In this war, we should side with Belloc, Tolkien, Lewis and Betjeman. And they all followed the Christ-child, Maker of the stars and sea.

True Christianity is beautifully White: Madonna of the Magnificat (c. 1483) by Sandro Botticelli (image from Wikipedia)

https://www.theoccidentalobserver.net/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/TOO-Full-Logo-660x156-1.png 0 0 Tobias Langdon https://www.theoccidentalobserver.net/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/TOO-Full-Logo-660x156-1.png Tobias Langdon2024-12-18 07:05:492024-12-18 07:05:49The Reason for the Season: Following the Followers But Failing the Faith

Alan MacLoed on Mint Press: From ‘Terrorist’ to ‘Freedom Fighter’: How the West Rebranded Al-Qaeda’s Jolani as Syria’s ‘Woke’ New Leader

December 17, 2024/2 Comments/in General/by Kevin MacDonald

From ‘Terrorist’ to ‘Freedom Fighter’: How the West Rebranded Al-Qaeda’s Jolani as Syria’s ‘Woke’ New Leader

Corporate media is heralding the fall of Bashar al-Assad and the emergence of Abu Mohammed al-Jolani as the new leader of Syria, despite his deep ties to both al-Qaeda and ISIS.

 

“How Syria’s ‘diversity-friendly’ jihadists plan on building a state,” runs the headline from an article in Britain’s Daily Telegraph that suggests that Jolani will construct a new Syria, respectful of minority rights. The same newspaper also labeled him a “moderate Jihadist.” The Washington Post described him as a pragmatic and charismatic leader, while CNN portrayed him as a “blazer-wearing revolutionary.”

Meanwhile, an in-depth portrait from Rolling Stone describes him as a “ruthlessly pragmatic, astute politician who has renounced ‘global jihad’” and intends to “unite Syria.” His “strategic acumen is apparent,” writes Rolling Stone, between paragraphs praising Jolani for leading a successful movement against a dictator.

CNN even scored an exclusive, sit-down interview with Jolani, even as his movement was storming Damascus. When asked by host Jomana Karadsheh about his past actions, he responded by saying, “I believe that everyone in life goes through phases and experiences…As you grow, you learn, and you continue to learn until the very last day of your life,” as if he were discussing embarrassing teenage mistakes, not establishing and leading the Al-Nusra Front, Al-Qaeda’s franchise in Syria.

This is a far cry from the first time CNN covered Jolani. In 2013, the network labeled him one of “the world’s 10 most dangerous terrorists,” known for abducting, torturing and slaughtering racial and religious minorities.

Still on the U.S. terrorist list today, the FBI is offering a $10 million reward for information about his whereabouts. Washington and other Western governments consider Jolani’s new organization, Hayʼat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), as one and the same as Al-Qaeda/Al-Nusra.

This poses a serious public relations dilemma for Western nations, who supported the HTS-led overthrow of President Bashar al-Assad. And thus, Politico and others report there is a “huge scramble” in Washington to remove HTS and Jolani from the terrorist list as quickly as possible.

The Making of a Radical

Jolani has sought to distance himself from his past and present himself as a moderating force that can attempt to unite an intensely divided Syria. While he has, in recent years, displayed a willingness to compromise with other forces and factions, it is far from clear whether the tens of thousands of soldiers he commands – units made up primarily of former fighters from al-Qaeda/al-Nusra and ISIS – will be in a charitable mood once they cement their power.

“Syria is being purified,” he told a crowd in Damascus on Sunday. “This victory is born from the people who have languished in prison, and the fighters broke their chains,” he added.

Jolani – whose real name is Ahmed Hussein al-Shar’a – was born in 1982 in Saudi Arabia to parents who fled the Golan Heights area of Syria after the 1967 Israeli invasion. In 2003, he went to Iraq to fight against American forces. After three years of war, he was captured by the U.S. military and spent over five years in prison, including a stint at the notorious Abu Ghraib torture center.

While in Iraq, Jolani fought with ISIS and was even a deputy to its founder. Immediately upon release in 2011, ISIS sent him to Syria with a rumored $1 billion to found the Syrian wing of al-Qaeda and participate in the armed protest movement against Assad that arose out of the Arab Spring.

Realizing the extremely poor reputation al-Qaeda had in the region and across the world, Jolani attempted to rebrand his forces, officially shuttering the al-Nusra Front in January 2017 and, on the same day, founding HTS. He claimed that HTS preaches a very different ideology and that it will respect Syrian diversity. Not everyone is convinced of this, least of all the British government, who immediately proscribed HTS, describing it as merely an alias of Al-Qaeda.

“Al-Qaeda/ISIS man didn’t ‘reinvent himself.’ He had the whole propaganda and intelligence apparatus of the ‘West,’ including the BBC, doing it for him,” remarked co-founder of The Electronic Intifada, Ali Abunimah.

How the US and Israel Quietly Revived Al-Qaeda Allies in Syria’s Idlib Offensive
The recent fall of Aleppo to Hayat Tahrir al-Sham highlights a troubling truth: Washington and Tel Aviv’s shadowy support for extremist groups continues., Al-Qaeda Syria connections, Bashar al-Assad sanctions relief, Hayat Tahrir al-Sham rebranding, HTS Aleppo offensive, Iran Syria alliance, Israel Hezbollah strategy, Syria regime change efforts, Timber Sycamore program, U.S.
The New Government: Likes Israel, Hates Hezbollah

The name “al-Jolani” translates to “From the Golan Heights.” And yet, the leader appears distinctly unconcerned with the Israeli invasion of his homeland. The IDF has taken much of southern Syria, including the strategic Mount Hermon, overlooking Damascus. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has stated that this is part of a permanent operation. “The Golan Heights…will forever be an inseparable part of the State of Israel,” he proclaimed.

Jolani has already said that he has no intention of confronting Israel. “Syria is not ready for war and does not intend to go into another war. The source of concern was the Iranian militias, and Hezbollah, and the danger has passed,” he said – a strange thing to say while Israel is carrying out the largest Air Force operation in its history, pounding military targets all over Syria. Other HTS spokespersons have also categorically refused to comment on Israel’s attack on the country, even when pressed by incredulous Western journalists.

Jolani’s comments, singling out two Shia forces rather than Israel as enemies of the state, will have many concerned that this could signal a return to the process of Shia slaughter ISIS waged over much of Syria and Iraq. In 2016, the U.S. House of Representatives voted 383-0 to classify this process as a genocide.

Fortunately, the new government will likely be a coalition of disparate and moderating forces. However, these groups seem to share a common thread: they all appear to be pro-Israel. A commander of the secular Free Syrian Army, for example, recently gave an interview to The Times of Israel, where he looked forward to a new era of “friendship” and “harmony” with its neighbor to the south. “We will go for full peace with Israel… Since the outbreak of the Syrian civil war, we have never made any critical comments against Israel, unlike Hezbollah, who stated they aim to liberate Jerusalem and the Golan Heights,” he said.

The commander added that “Israel will plant a rose in the Syrian garden” and asked for the country’s financial support in forming a new government.

Other anti-Assad forces have gone even further, with one individual stating that Israel “Isn’t hostile to those who are not hostile toward it. We don’t hate you, we love you very much…we were quite happy when you attacked Hezbollah, really happy, and we’re glad that you won.”

Statements like these might surprise a casual observer. But the reality is that Israel has been funding, training and arming much of the Syrian opposition since its inception. This includes Al-Qaeda, whose wounded fighters are treated by Israel.

And while radical Islamist forces appeared to be enemies with everyone, the one group they fastidiously avoided any confrontation with was Israel. Indeed, in 2016, ISIS fighters accidentally fired upon an Israeli position in the Golan Heights, thinking they were Syrian government forces, then quickly issued an apology for doing so.

From the Golan Heights, the year-long Israeli campaign against Hezbollah and Syrian Army positions also seriously weakened both forces, aiding the opposition in their victory.

Al-Qaeda and the U.S.: A Complicated Relationship

While both journalists and politicians in the U.S. are scrambling to change their opinions on Jolani and HTS, the reality is that, for much of its existence, Washington has enjoyed a very close relationship with al-Qaeda. The organization was born in Afghanistan in the 1980s, thanks in no small part to the CIA. Between 1979 and 1992, the CIA spent billions of dollars funding, arming, and training Afghan Mujahideen militiamen (like Osama bin Laden) in an attempt to bleed the Soviet occupation dry. It was from the ranks of the Mujahideen that bin Laden built his organization.

During the 1990s, bin Laden’s relationship with the U.S. soured, and it eventually became a principal target for al-Qaeda, culminating in the infamous September 11, 2001, attacks on New York City and Washington, D.C.

The Bush administration would use these attacks as a pretext to invade both Afghanistan and Iraq, claiming that America could never be safe if al-Qaeda were not thoroughly destroyed. Bin Laden became perhaps the most notorious individual in the world, and American society was turned upside down in a self-described effort to rout Islamic extremism.

And yet, by the 2010s, even as the U.S. was ostensibly at war with al-Qaeda in Iraq and Afghanistan, it was secretly working with it in Syria on a plan to overthrow Assad. The CIA spent around $1 billion per year training and arming a wide network of rebel groups to this end. As National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan told Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in a leaked 2012 email, “AQ [al-Qaeda] is on our side in Syria.”

Thus, while many casual observers may be shocked to see the media and political class embrace the leader of al-Qaeda in Syria as a modern, progressive champion, the reality is that the U.S. relationship with the group is merely reverting to a position it has previously held. Consequently, it appears that the War on Terror will come to an end with the “terrorists” being redesignated as “moderate rebels” and “freedom fighters.”

After Lebanon Ceasefire, Israel Revives Old Playbook: Backing Militants in Syria
With a fragile truce in Lebanon, Israel is once again arming extremists in Syria, leveraging proxy groups to counter Iran and destabilize the region., Aleppo offensive strategic goals, Druze self-administration Syria, Forsan al-Julan Israeli funding, Hayat Tahrir al-Sham Israel ties, Israel Hezbollah tensions, Israel Syria conflict, Israeli support for Syrian Rebels, Syria Iran proxy war, Syrian opposition Israeli aid, U.S.

MintPress News·Robert Inlakesh·Dec 3

Who Gets to Define “Terrorist”?

Of course, many have argued that the U.S. Terrorist List is entirely arbitrary to begin with and is merely a barometer of who is in Washington’s good books at any given time. In 2020, the Trump administration removed Sudan from its state sponsors of terror list in exchange for the country normalizing relations with Israel, proving how transactional the list was.

A few months later, it removed the East Turkestan Islamic Movement (a Uyghur militia currently active in Syria) from its list because of its hardening attitude towards China, seeing ETIM as a useful pawn to play against Beijing.

Washington also continues to keep Cuba on its terror list despite there being no evidence of the island supporting terror groups.

And the U.S. refused to remove Nelson Mandela from its list of the world’s most notorious terrorists until 2008 – 14 years after he became President of South Africa. In comparison, Jolani’s redesignation might take fewer than fourteen days.

A giant rebranding operation is taking place. Both corporate media and the U.S. government have attempted to transform the founder and head of an al-Qaeda affiliate organization into a woke, progressive actor. It remains to be seen how exactly Jolani will govern and whether he can maintain support from a wide range of Syrian groups. Given what we have seen in the past week, however, he can be confident of enjoying strong support from the Western press.

Alan MacLeod is Senior Staff Writer for MintPress News. After completing his PhD in 2017 he published two books: Bad News From Venezuela: Twenty Years of Fake News and Misreporting and Propaganda in the Information Age: Still Manufacturing Consent, as well as a number of academic articles. He has also contributed to FAIR.org, The Guardian, Salon, The Grayzone, Jacobin Magazine, and Common Dreams.

 

https://www.theoccidentalobserver.net/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/TOO-Full-Logo-660x156-1.png 0 0 Kevin MacDonald https://www.theoccidentalobserver.net/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/TOO-Full-Logo-660x156-1.png Kevin MacDonald2024-12-17 08:52:352024-12-17 09:23:12Alan MacLoed on Mint Press: From ‘Terrorist’ to ‘Freedom Fighter’: How the West Rebranded Al-Qaeda’s Jolani as Syria’s ‘Woke’ New Leader

Review of Critical Daze: The No College Club – Book 2

December 16, 2024/1 Comment/in Featured Articles/by Kevin MacDonald

You can preorder Spencer J. Quinn’s Critical Daze here.

Spencer J. Quinn
Critical Daze: The No College Club – Book 2
San Francisco: Counter-Currents 2024

Critical Daze follows on Spencer J. Quinn’s No College Club, reviewed at TOO by F. Roger Devlin. As Devlin notes, there is probably no area in greater need of pro-White messaging than fiction aimed at young adults (aged 12–18). And, although it is aimed at this age group, I found it to be a riveting page-turner in which I became immersed in the characters both good and bad. Throughout I was curious how it would all play out, and was quite satisfied by the ending.

There are three main characters—pictured above on the cover, two of whom are transformed in the story. At the outset, the protagonist Will is a tall, decidedly overweight 18-year-old high school student with the nickname Willrus (Will + walrus). He is something of a social reject, into comic books and video games, and he is an unmotivated, undistinguished student.

Will’s best friend is JD, described as unusually short in stature and with the ambition of becoming a videographer. Like Will, JD is a social reject but he is more aware of the changes wrought in recent decades as a result of reading Will’s father’s collection of comic books of the 1980s, peopled with square-jawed White males and pretty White women—quite a descent from contemporary examples promoting racial diversity, homosexuality, and leftist political messaging.

Will joins the Critical Theory Club because, as happens so often to teenagers, he has a romantic interest in one of its members, his “tall, smart, and pretty” classmate Connie who presents herself as half-Indian (feather variety). The Critical Theory Club naturally focuses on the leftist anti-White mantras that Will had long been inundated with from television, movies, comic books, and the internet—to the point that he was rather bored with hearing them again. But Will had no reason to question them. After all, these mantras have become part of the furniture of American life. Revealingly, Connie becomes an enthusiastically applauded star at the meeting simply because of her claim that she is a person of color.

The speaker for the meeting is one Nadine Alterman, a self-described
“white person” studying for a Ph.D. in Critical Studies at the nearby state university. She tells the assembled (mostly female, virtually all White) students that White supremacy and racism are everywhere and that the “colorblindness” so loved by conservatives is nothing more than a “subterfuge” and a subtle form of racism.

Later at a meeting in her office with Will, she rejects the objectivity of academic tests because she claims that such tests “dehumanize people of color” by not taking into account the racist environment Blacks must live in—a ridiculous (but depressingly common) argument to say the least. And when Will innocently asks why Asians do so well, Alterman rejects his “Enlightenment rationalism,” apparently because it makes people prone to making what she regards as evil inferences. Enlightenment rationalism, after all, “is steeped in a European tradition that historically has been violent to people of color and produces a race-based hierarchy of knowledge.”

As Will continues to ask difficult questions, the meeting ends with a thinly veiled threat: stop asking such questions or your life will be ruined, just like the No College Club that is being “sued out of existence”—the first mention of the club that will figure prominently in the second half of the book. It’s no surprise that she is horrified that some very bad people have the temerity to believe that it’s possible to be racist against Whites! Will leaves the meeting quite confused and wondering how she could talk to him like that since she was “white—like him.”

Alterman is of course a common Jewish name, although the J-word never appears in the book and Alterman claims to be “white”. But in any case, it’s not surprising that an important element of the plot is that much later, in a conversation with Connie, she lets out that she hates Christians and White people, and in the conference with Will she refers to the Tulsa race riot as a “pogrom,” a common term for the anti-Jewish riots in nineteenth-century Eastern Europe.

Another hint that Jewishness is a major—if submerged—theme is that of the eight judges for the critical theory scholarship essay competition (which Connie enters), two are Black, one is named Johnston and presumably White, and, besides Alterman, the other four are named Cohen, Silver, Rothstein, and Cantor respectively. (All of the judges except one of the two Black judges are female). Much later in the book, having been enlightened about the fraud of critical theory and its basis in promoting power over Whites, Will asks himself how so many “white” people can subject themselves to what amounts to hatred against Whites. He never figures this little puzzle out.

I suspect that Quinn is raising the Jewish issue subtly in case some readers already have their J-dar activated but without needlessly putting off those (perhaps readers with a strong Christian background) who would be repelled by the very thought that Jews, the eternal victims, could possibly have such hateful thoughts.

Chapter 3 introduces Andrew, Will’s father who is hyper-politically correct and has an “awkward” relationship with his son. He gushes about a Chinese student of his wife and he worries that Will is racist because he had overheard JD commenting that, unlike the 1980s, in today’s comics “every other hero is black. And if he’s an old hero, they replace him with a black.” And he remains aggressively anti-White even after he is fired from his librarian job because an “overweight,” “dreadlocked,” “heavily perfumed” Black woman complained that he didn’t promote her, even though she was clearly unqualified.

So JD seems a bit skeptical of the political correctness around him, and he is quite perceptive about people’s character. He sees Connie as a “faker,” a manipulator and a leech—with an alcohol problem to boot. JD sees Connie as trying to get Will to do most of the work for their joint critical theory scholarship essay project.

Try to imagine that a person who identifies as a person of color is not a perfect person in a novel directed toward young people. Impossible! But I guess it requires suspension of disbelief.

Nevertheless, Will remains attracted to Connie and willing to cooperate on the project despite the fact that Connie already has a boyfriend and shows little sign of reciprocating in the romance department—apart from some flirting when she wants to get Will to do what she wants. Will is a super nice guy and therefore a bit gullible and open to being exploited. One can easily imagine that a low-status person like Will would be easily manipulated by an attractive high-status girl who gives off even a hint of sexual interest.

Will’s mother, Melissa, seems less naturally inclined to be politically correct but goes along with it, even displaying platitudes like “Hate has no home here” in her living room. Her main motive seems to be fear of the consequences if one gets out of line on race. She is quite aware that truth is irrelevant when it comes to accusations of political incorrectness, telling Will to watch what he says “because it doesn’t matter if you are innocent”—while looking to make sure no neighbors are watching. For Melissa, the informal mechanisms of thought control are quite enough to keep her in line.

You can buy Spencer J. Quinn’s young adult novel The No College Club here.

It’s the same with JD’s mom. It’s all about fear. JD: “My mom is a public school teacher, Will. She’d lose her career and her pension if she were caught being racist. She is terrified of black people.”

The turning point of the story is when JD and Will visit JD’s uncle Gus, a 90-year-old retired college professor who is quite versed in the origins of critical theory in the 1950s. On their journey it’s apparent that Will is having doubts about critical theory from his own reading as well as JD’s cogent criticisms. For example, he notes that critical theory is massively funded while pro-White organizations like the No College Club are getting sued out of existence and prevented from getting donations via credit cards. Not exactly “white privilege.”

So they were not blank slates when they encountered Uncle Gus, but the visit turns out to be a crossing of the Rubicon for their racial thinking. Gus’s analysis is spot on—not surprising since he has publications like Wilmot Robertson’s The Dispossessed Majority and Instauration in his collection. (Perhaps Will eventually will come to understand the significance of the Jewish names among the critical theory judges when he absorbs Robertson’s work.)

Uncle Gus states baldly that critical theory is a “cult” that actually comes down to “tribalism,” and he notes that they are “clannish”—another not-so-subtle hint that we are dealing fundamentally with a Jewish movement. It’s a tribalism dedicated to destroying whatever is blocking their total power, whether it’s over kings, tsars, or nations—a tribalism that abandoned the Marxist vision of a proletarian revolution because the working class was not acting according to theory because it didn’t rise up against the capitalist class (and many of them even voted for Hitler). This tribal cult, sounding very much like the Frankfurt School, therefore switched strategies and began blaming everything on White people. They attempted to control how people think by “pathologizing everything that was natural and healthy”—”everything that made Western culture great”). The White working class was now part of the problem because they were far too dedicated to religion, patriotism, and healthy family life.

This tribe is impervious to criticism. It “forgets when they do evil things that kill millions.” But if there’s a backlash, “ya never hear the end of it.” Critical theory was never an attempt to find the truth. It’s all about the tribe’s self-interest, controlling how people think, and obtaining total power. And now that they have power—now that they have become a hugely influential component of Western elites because of their position in the media, academic, and political arenas—they silence all criticism. In fact, they ruined Uncle Gus who lost his professorship because he opposed the “anti-white-ism” of this very powerful group. So believable.

But back to Will. As has happened to so many of us, after being aware of the history and the lies behind his oppressive, politically correct environment, Will starts losing friends and becomes even more of a social outcast. It starts with trusting, gullible Will naively telling Connie that critical theory is really all about power, resulting in an argument overheard by many of his schoolmates, including Connie’s screams that Will is a “racist” and a “Nazi.”

After this outburst, his only friend—the only fellow student who would talk to him or return his texts—was JD, and they continued to discuss Uncle Gus’s treasure trove, including JD informing a skeptical Will about the biological reality of IQ and how biological differences between the races result in the obvious racial differences in academic performance on display in their high school. Here Quinn does a masterful job of providing a research-based introduction to the IQ issue comprehensible to young readers unfamiliar with the issue.

Then come the presentations for the critical theory contest. Quite surprisingly, Connie begs Will to give the presentation despite their previous argument about critical theory—a development that only makes sense because Connie got embarrassingly drunk at a party with heavily tattooed, nose-ringed college students. Because she would be in no shape to give the presentation, the ever-manipulative Connie gets Will to give the presentation by flirting with him. So, despite JD’s warnings, Will, the ever-gullible nice guy, agrees to read Connie’s contest entry to the assembled leftists, including the “diverse” group of judges who decided that Connie is a winner of the contest even before the presentations.

But then, perhaps because she is still a bit drunk, Connie claims that she hates critical theory and that her mainly plagiarized, cliché-ridden essay only won because “they just want some pretty Indian girl to be the face of the future.”

In other words, she is gaming the system even at the tender age of a high school student. This is a girl that could definitely go places! And the Nadine Altermans of the world are more than willing to make that happen. After all, Alterman later proclaims that critical race theory is the only thing standing between America and Nazism: “We can’t let our youth be radicalized into fascism. This what happened in Nazi Germany and we can’t let it happen here. Critical race theory is the key pedagogical bulwark against the repeat of history. We must never forget that.”

Will, perhaps thinking that it would be okay with Connie to say what he really thinks given that her expressed attitudes are in sync with his, discards her vapid essay and lets it rip, stating, among other truths, that “what they really want it to destroy the identity and culture of the white majority.” Exactly.

Needless to say, the result of his temerity is a complete blow up at the competition and, soon thereafter, banishment from his home and disavowals from Connie. And of course there was a media firestorm, including another hint of Jewish angst on TV: “‘This young man is no better than Hitler youth!’ warned an incensed woman with a thick New York accent. … ‘He violates all the tenets of the Civil Rights Movement and what it means to be an American.’”

This claim about what it means to be an American is another favorite move by Jewish activists, framing what they don’t like in terms of violating deeply held ideals that appeal to wide swaths of the population. As holocaust activist Deborah Lipstadt said recently in “explaining” anti-Semitism: “Jews become stand-ins for “anti-democracy, anti-capitalism, [and] anti-Western values,” values the great majority of Westerners endorse. To criticize Jewish power is to put oneself outside the moral universe accepted — whether because of fear, ambition, or lack of information — by the great majority of Westerners.

I see it a bit differently. As always, conflicts of interest are at the root of serious outbreaks of anti-Semitism, but Jewish activists frame their interests as a moral crusade in an effort to persuade the gullible and uninformed — and to provide talking points for the ambitious and a sense of moral superiority to be fearful. Here the conflict is between the legitimate interests of the White majority as exemplified by the No College Club and perceived Jewish interests in lessening the power of the White majority—indeed, as Will phrased it, “to destroy the identity and culture of the white majority.”.

At this point we are about halfway through the book. Since the No College Club figures prominently in the title, it’s not surprising that it is a central theme in the second half of the book. I will say only that the ending is quite is satisfying.

Finally, one more theme should be explored. Throughout the book, women are portrayed as generally more accepting of critical theory. Women are the great majority of the Critical Theory Club and of those in the media going off on Will after he got real about race in a very public forum. The portrayal of Will’s mother Melissa gets at the greater fear that women in general have over being ostracized and subjected to social opprobrium. Not all women in the book are like this—there are several heroic women in the No College Club.

But the general portrayal of women is quite accurate. Women in general are higher on the personality system underlying fear and they tend to be more conformist partly as a result. Being high on fear leads to conformity because in the contemporary West there is much to fear if one fails to conform to the attitudes of the mainstream moral community—loss of job, loss of friends and family, and general ostracism. It’s much safer to remain within the confines of the moral community.

As emphasized throughout my Individualism and the Western Liberal Tradition, moral communities are the social glue of Western societies whereas kinship relationships are the social glue of the other culture areas of the world. Moral communities based on a reputation as capable, honest, trustworthy, and fair are a fundamental aspect of Western individualism and have been a big reason for the historical trajectory that led to Western dominance of the planet—a dominant position that may well end as the European peoples who created it are energetically replaced by people who hate them as the result of the activism of the clannish, tribal people referred to here. In the environments that Western peoples evolved in, major departures from the moral strictures of the community would result in ostracism. Whereas in the contemporary West, people like Will can survive such ostracism by finding a new niche of like-minded friends, in prehistoric Europe ostracism would have certainly resulted in death.

So in conclusion, a major plus is that the reader instinctively feels sorry for the White people victimized by the current regime or cowering in fear of what will happen to them if they get out of line. Empathy for the pantheon of the supposed victims of White racism is constantly preached from all the moral high ground in the West—the media, academia, K-12 educators, politicians, and religious authorities. Indeed, it is virtually mandated, as for example, in requirements that prospective faculty at many universities must write statements not only on their support for diversity, equity and inclusion, but also on what they have personally done to advance these goals. Only activists need apply.

But presenting sympathetic characters who suffer greatly from the regime of political correctness and anti-White hate is nonexistent in the mainstream culture of the West. I even felt sorry for Will’s father because his life is being destroyed because he did the right thing in not promoting an incompetent Black woman while still saluting the flag of political correctness and coming down hard on Will for crimethink.

This is a book that should have wide appeal well beyond its target audience of young adults. Even at well over 200 pages, it’s a quick, entertaining read because you want to find out what happens to the characters, so even people who are entirely on board with the ideas of the dissident right will enjoy it. And it’s a book that could quite possibly red pill many White people, especially if they haven’t thought deeply about the issues raised or if they have not personally been subjected to an environment of fear for expressing forbidden thoughts. People who are aware of the reality of the very sad state of affairs depicted in the book should think of people who would benefit from getting it as a Christmas present.

https://www.theoccidentalobserver.net/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/TOO-Full-Logo-660x156-1.png 0 0 Kevin MacDonald https://www.theoccidentalobserver.net/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/TOO-Full-Logo-660x156-1.png Kevin MacDonald2024-12-16 13:00:412024-12-16 13:00:41Review of Critical Daze: The No College Club – Book 2

Press TV (Iran): CIA-funded “Task Force” at forefront of US “Regime Change” Plot in Syria

December 16, 2024/3 Comments/in General/by Kevin MacDonald
CIA-funded “Task Force” at forefront of US “Regime Change” Plot in Syria – VT Foreign Policy

CIA-funded “Task Force” at forefront of US “Regime Change” Plot in Syria

By Ivan Kesic – originally published on Iranian PRESS TV

All links to previous Gospa News investigations have been added in the aftermath

“Syria is free,” wrote the Syrian Emergency Task Force (SETF) in a post on X, formerly Twitter, shortly after a cluster of militant groups swarmed Damascus on Sunday and overthrew Bashar al-Assad’s government.

“Mission Accomplished. The Syrian Emergency Task Force is proud to announce that the Assad regime, Russia, and Iran have been officially defeated in Syria by the Syrian people on their own and without any outside support from the international community,” the statement read.

In response, an X user took a swipe at the SETF, saying that an al-Qaeda leader with strong ties to the Daesh terrorist group and Western intelligence agencies “is the exact freedom I was hoping for.”

SETF has long been at the forefront of the American “regime change” project in Syria, funded by the US Agency for International Development (USAID), a proxy organization of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), the foreign spy agency of the US military-industrial complex.

Operating under the guise of “bringing an end to atrocities against Syrian civilians,” this maligned agency has actively pursued Washington’s “regime change” agenda in Syria through crippling sanctions and psychological operations to sway public opinion in the Arab country against its elected government.

Only a day after Assad was ousted from Damascus, SETF Executive Director Mouaz Moustafa met with US National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan to discuss the accomplishment of the American “mission.”

Moustafa reportedly also called for greater support from the US government as a reward.

SETF and American dollars

Leaked documents reveal that SETF has received millions of dollars over the years to aggressively further the agenda of the US and its allies in Syria, with funding channeled through USAID.

“Check out SETF’s $153,535 grant from USAID, a CIA cutout. It not only earmarks the delivery of aid to Rukhban camp but also covers ‘conducting key informant interviews,’” wrote American journalist Max Blumenthal in a post on X, sharing an image of one such receipt.

SETF’s grant from USAID

“SETF has been at the forefront of lobbying for the US to wage war on Syria, taking John McCain on his notorious trip in 2013 before he called to bomb Damascus. It played a seminal role in the Caesar sanctions, which have plunged Syrian civilians into poverty, and remain at the center of all regime change activities,” Blumenthal added.

His remarks came in response to Celine Kasem, a SETF employee and one of its lead propagandists against the Assad government, whose activities have been exposed repeatedly in recent years.

David Miller, producer of the Press TV show Palestine Declassified, had in February this year highlighted the manipulative tactics employed by Kasem and her SETF colleagues in Syria.

“@SyrianETF’s board includes a member from the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, an organization that acts as a direct foreign agent of the Zionist entity in the US,” Miller wrote.

“After I won my tribunal, Celine attempted to sabotage my legal fundraiser by inciting British Sunnis into sectarian hysteria over the failed NATO and Zionist regime change campaign in Syria,” he added.

According to Miller, such tactics form part of a “US strategy to undermine support for material resistance to Zionism,” linking SETF’s anti-Syrian government campaign to the Zionist occupation.

In March this year, SETF commemorated the 13th anniversary of the so-called “Syrian Revolution” — a militant campaign against the Damascus government — at a gathering of prominent US Republican Republican leaders, many of whom are vocal lobbyists for the Israeli regime.

SETF Executive Director Mouaz Moustafa speaking at at a gathering of prominent US Republican politicians in March this year

Among the attendees was Stephen Rapp, a key figure in lobbying the International Criminal Court (ICC) against granting Palestine jurisdiction to press war crime charges against Israel.

Since Sunday, following the fall of Assad’s government and the militant takeover of Damascus, SETF agents have been celebrating, crediting it to the Syrian people—the same people who have suffered under crippling US sanctions imposed under the ‘Caesar Act,’ which SETF itself lobbied for.

SETF and the American ‘regime change’ plot

In his book The Management of Savagery, Blumenthal explains that SETF emerged as a pro-insurgency, warmongering lobbying group, funded by the US State Department and a collection of private donors.

For years, the group served as the US Congress’ direct link to the so-called Free Syrian Army (FSA) and other rebel factions. Its director, Mouaz Moustafa, is a Washington, DC-based activist of Syrian origin.

Before lobbying for a military attack on his home country, Moustafa had been a consultant to the Libyan National Transitional Council during the lead-up to the invasion by the US-led NATO military alliance.

In May 2013, Moustafa approached Senator John McCain, a notorious warmonger in the US Congress, and persuaded him to visit Syria and meet with anti-government militants.

SETF’s director Mouaz Moustafa (right) with John McCain and two Syrian militants

Mordechai Moti Kahana, an Israeli millionaire who coordinated efforts between these militants and the Israeli military through his NGO Amaliah, openly boasted of financing “the opposition group that took Senator John McCain to visit war-torn Syria.”

The SETF’s role in linking top US officials with militants was confirmed by McCain himself in his memoir The Restless Wave.

“I went to Turkey at the end of the month after convincing the State Department to let me enter northern Syria for a few hours. The Washington-based Syrian Emergency Task Force had arranged for me to meet with members of FSA units. I went with General Salim Idris, the head of the FSA’s Supreme Military Council,” he recalled in his book.

 “I don’t know what I had expected, but crossing the border into a war turned out to be a pretty unremarkable experience. General Idris, Brose, two Syrian Emergency Task Force staffers, and I loaded into SUVs and drove less than a mile to a border crossing, where the guards were expecting us”.

“They raised the gates, and we crossed into Syria, becoming, for the time being, the highest-ranking US official to visit Syria since the war began. Another short drive took us to the building where FSA commanders from around the country had gathered to meet us.”

After the meetings and the promised joint celebration in Damascus, McCain’s PR office released a photo showing the senator posing beside a smiling Moustafa and two grim-looking armed rebels.

Several days later, Lebanese media identified these two men as Abu Ibrahim and Mohammad Nour, both implicated in the kidnapping of eleven Shia pilgrims a year earlier.

https://www.theoccidentalobserver.net/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/TOO-Full-Logo-660x156-1.png 0 0 Kevin MacDonald https://www.theoccidentalobserver.net/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/TOO-Full-Logo-660x156-1.png Kevin MacDonald2024-12-16 12:51:092024-12-16 12:51:09Press TV (Iran): CIA-funded “Task Force” at forefront of US “Regime Change” Plot in Syria

Jews and the The First New Deal, 1933-1934, Part 1

December 16, 2024/4 Comments/in Featured Articles/by Frederick Talmadge

During the occasional tumult that accompanied adjustment to a new order beginning with Franklin Roosevelt’s election in 1933, not a few opponents of his administration over the following years charged that his New Deal recovery program of the 1930s was a “Jew Deal” (or the related charge that it was a way for Jews to force communism on America).[1] This three-part series will address the accuracy of this charge by looking at the activities of Jews vis-à-vis the New Deal.

The New Deal, FDR’s somewhat revolutionary, somewhat reformist program to pull America out of the Great Depression and institute progressive change, dealt with a vast firmament of issues that affected the nation and brought changes to the state and its relationship to American society. It is much too complex a phenomenon to discuss in its entirety or to examine any part of it in great detail, so I have chosen some major features and programs from it to the exclusion of more minor ones, a strategy that makes no great sacrifices. I will not discuss Jewish involvement in affairs outside of the New Deal, most notably non-monetary international issues including World War II, Hitler’s Germany, or the Holocaust.

I will also limit myself to the New Deal through 1936, here organized into two periods, what scholars identify as the First and Second New Deals. The First New Deal covers 1933–1934 and the Second New Deal covers the period between 1935–1936.[2] After 1936, the New Deal underwent an eclipse as Roosevelt passed fewer bills against powerful business headwinds that began in late 1935 after a legislative flurry that summer. In 1937, Roosevelt experienced a political setback with his failed “court-packing plan” and later that year a major recession hit the country, while conservative opponents of the New Deal won the midterms of 1938.[3] Following 1938, the administration’s attention was rapidly moving to Europe. Therefore, the most significant period for the New Deal was overwhelmingly in Roosevelt’s first term.

In part one, I will talk briefly about Franklin D. Roosevelt and his relationship to the Jews, the Democratic Party, and the 1932 election, along with a look at two First New Deal agencies, with some accompanying sideline discussions including the nature of managerial and corporate changes. It will take an extended look at Jerome Frank, Bernard Baruch, and Gerard Swope. Part two will examine the relationship between Jews, banking and money during the New Deal with an extended look at Henry Morgenthau Jr. (with some info on others as well, including Jimmy Warburg, Louis Brandeis and Felix Frankfurter). Part three will look at the Second New Deal period (1935–36) including agencies and programs, a profile of the Jews who entered public service (with a focus on lawyers), the question of socialism and labor, more information on Brandeis and Frankfurter, and conclusions regarding the reputed “Jew Deal.”

THE MANAGERIAL SYSTEM AND THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY BY 1932

Roosevelt’s triumph in 1932 saw the Democratic left come to power with the full force of its epoch-creating liberal managerial ideas — central planning, the public good over private interest (and the blurring of these distinctions), forms of collectivism over individualism, the rights of labor, from an “age of production … to an age of redistribution,”[4] etc. In meeting the exigencies of the Great Depression, in the view of many conservatives, the left dealt brusquely with the once revered monuments of the country enshrined in the Constitution,[5] such as the American mythos of laissez-faire and small government, the sanctity of private property rights and the natural rights of man.[6]

This new great river flowed from many tributaries and White male gentiles were overwhelmingly the font for these intellectual currents. For instance, there had been anticipatory ideas about the expansion of governmental administration in the nineteenth-century progressive political theories of the administrative pioneers Woodrow Wilson and Frank Goodnow.[7] The progressive intellectuals John Dewey, Charles Beard and Thorstein Veblen sought reconstructive change through their contributions to the new schools within psychology, history, and economics, and had called for new institutional arrangements in the construction of a democratic order.[8] They would count as their disciples many future New Dealers, like Frances Perkins and Rexford Tugwell. The progressive and sociological jurisprudence of men like Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., Louis Brandeis, and Roscoe Pound would become important for the New Deal and the liberal democratic state with their pronouncements that the study and adjudication of the law ought to incorporate social and pragmatic considerations that could be used to elevate the societal good.[9]

There had been a precedent before FDR’s state expansion that served as a forerunner to New Deal innovations. Upon entering World War I in 1917, President Wilson’s administration oversaw the greatest effort at state-run collectivism the nation had ever witnessed, involving the creation of numerous emergency government agencies.[10] As Sam Francis says about this, “The increase in the size of the state consisted not only in larger budgets and more personnel but also in the proliferation of its functions in regulating the economy, supervising and engineering social institutions, and preparing for and conducting the total mobilization of natural, human, social, economic, psychological, and technological resources for mass warfare [i.e., World War I, briefly discussed below],” although the wartime agencies were rolled back after the emergency was over. “These new functions were highly technical in nature and required the application of the physical and social sciences, the techniques of administration, and the skills of mass communication to the goal of what McNeill has called ‘human engineering’,” that this was first pioneered beginning in the late nineteenth century across the West.[11]

The wartime measures under Wilson and the New Deal under Roosevelt meant that this private-public fusion of the economy and state took place under the stewardship of the Democratic Party. For generations, the party had had almost as many partisan perspectives as national regions eager to move it in one direction or another during its bid to become nationally competitive again since the end of the Jacksonian era. By 1932, what Joseph Huthmacher called the “urban industrial Newer American” population (i.e., urban immigrants), was the “backbone of the New Deal voting coalition.”[12] Once elected in 1932 with a mandate to end the Depression, FDR had the responsibility of confecting a workable amalgamation of ideas for the New Deal’s agenda during the managerial state’s birth. To rule over a heterogenous democracy required being less dogmatic and more practical. Accordingly, Roosevelt himself has been characterized by scholars across his career as either having no real ideological commitments and as being a “pragmatic opportunist.”[13]

During the 1932 presidential campaign, he wafted from one end of the Democratic political spectrum to another. He both endorsed the need for administrative planning in one speech and in another pleased the conservative Democrats with calls for balanced budgets. Overall, Paul Moreno says that FDR “followed Wilson in conducting an ambivalent, often apparently conservative campaign to win the nomination and election, and then becoming more thoroughly progressive to win re-election.”[14] That spectrum was no less important during the days of the new administration. Conservatives with “Bourbon” democratic leanings, trust-busting and inflationist agrarian radicals, urban Jeffersonian opponents of the behemoth Gilded Age industrial corporations, and Hamiltonian large government progressive planners all jostled for Roosevelt’s attention.

Schlesinger uses three categories for the Party by 1932. The conservative Democrats, believers in laissez-faire economics, sound money (i.e., the gold standard), low-tariffs, a balanced budget, and states’ rights, were represented by figures like Al Smith and Maryland governor Albert Ritchie, and in FDR’s presidential administration by budget director Lewis Douglas and southern congressman Cordell Hull. The legacy of the older progressive tradition, having its roots in the agrarian “Populist” movement (associated with William Jennings Bryan) had divided into a western and southern camp of populists (e.g., Robert La Follette, Huey Long) and an eastern-intellectual camp (Louis Brandeis). Finally, the newer progressivism of the left Democrat administrative government planners — the authors of the administrative state — was a recruited Columbia University professoriate that represented the core of the first “Brain Trust” of Raymond Moley, Rexford Tugwell, and Adolf Berle, who, “accepting the drive of modern technology toward [corporate] bigness, [sought] to reorganize the chaotic business order into a system of national integration”; that is, unlike many of the older progressives who wanted to apply anti-trust laws to restore a nineteenth-century economic order, they accepted the inevitability of large corporate business entities but looked for balance through an expanded centralized regulatory state.[15]

This pluralism would be tested under the constraint of shifting circumstance and expediency. For Roosevelt, the more leftist experiments were in keeping with his progressive record as governor (1929–1932), when he advocated planning schemes including recommending moving populations out of the city into the countryside to correct imbalances.[16] FDR had been a Democratic Party booster during the Republican business decade of the 1920s; he had often been vocal about his convictions that his party was the party of progress.[17] As president during the Great Depression, he sanctioned many new functions of government.

This Brain Trust circle would change over the years. The Columbia circle of Tugwell-Berle-Moley, originally recommended by Jewish advisor Sam Rosenman, another Brain Truster who first proposed assembling a group of academic advisors,[18] did not remain a team after the election.  Economist Raymond Moley would still be an insider. He moved to the State Department,[19] as would fellow economist Rexford Tugwell, who was sent to the Department of Agriculture to help oversee the planning schemes in the Agricultural Adjustment Administration where he would attempt to boost farm prices. Harvard Law School professor Felix Frankfurter was influential from the opening of the administration and would exert influence from behind the scenes using his protégés, a similar strategy to that of Bernard Baruch as we’ll see.[20]

Frankfurter had been important since FDR’s inauguration, acting as a “one-man recruiting agency,” both recommending personnel when asked by New Deal leaders and recommending them on his own initiative, thus exerting his influence towards building the modern state.[21] In the middle of 1935, Frankfurter was at the White House more than at any other time and became part of FDR’s inner circle, despite having a teaching career. During this period, the press claimed Frankfurter was the principal advisor, pushing out Moley.[22] Over the years, Frankfurter and Brandeis also “stood out among [FDR’s] closest advisors on governmental policies.”[23]

In FDR and the Jews Breitman and Lichtman note that Roosevelt, first as governor and later as president, chose his advisers and staff according to “experience, brains, and liberal values.”[24] Roosevelt’s most “trusted advisor among the professional politicians” had been the lawyer and politician Edward J. Flynn.[25] Others include Louis Howe, Roosevelt’s long-time political operative who laid the groundwork for his election and without whom, “FDR might have faded from history at the age of 30.”[26] Another, James Farley, was commonly referred to as a political kingmaker, as he was responsible for Roosevelt’s rise to the presidency. The previously-mentioned aide Sam Rosenman was “the major figure in the executive chamber” in Albany when Roosevelt was New York governor;[27] he worked for Roosevelt’s presidential campaign of 1932 and would be a close adviser of FDR for the rest of his life.[28] Rosenman was responsible for using the phrase “New Deal” for a 1932 Roosevelt speech. The phrase was borrowed from the progressive, technocratic authoritarian writer Stuart Chase in an article for the New Republic.[29] Like others profiled here, Rosenman was a strongly identified Jew: “By the mid-1930s, Rosenman had emerged as a leading spokesman for the New York Jewish community.”[30] 

FUNDING FOR FDR’S 1932 PRESIDENTIAL CAMPAIGN

The Democrats were assigned to oblivion after the collapse of progressivism and the left in 1919, leading to the Republican business-oriented rule of the 1920s.[31] After the 1928 presidential election that put Republican Herbert Hoover in office, the Democratic Party’s woes were complicated by the financial position of the National Committee, and two men, DNC chairman John Raskob (a Catholic like Al Smith who backed Smith in his loss to Hoover in the 1928 presidential election) and Bernard Baruch were benefactor millionaires who were determined to keep the party afloat despite its string of presidential losses since 1920. However, in doing so, they expected influence in the party. However, Schlesinger notes that Raskob, who was past head of Du Pont, found politics “difficult and unattractive” but that Baruch was “infinitely more skilled in political operations.”

In March 1931, Schlesinger lists three men as having donated the largest amount to Roosevelt’s presidential campaign, including Henry Morgenthau Sr. whose famous son would become the United States Secretary of the Treasury during most of the FDR administration.[32] Morgenthau, Jr.  would play a lead role in financing the New Deal. Herbert Lehman, who was a major Jewish Democrat in New York State and who was Roosevelt’s lieutenant governor and would follow Roosevelt as governor, instituting a “little New Deal” there, donated a smaller amount.[33]

During the campaign in the election year of 1932, Schlesinger also identifies numerous gentiles giving to Roosevelt’s campaign, including Raskob, industrialist William Hartman Woodin, newspaper publisher William Randolph Hearst, investor Joseph Kennedy, and Boston politician James Michael Curley, yet Bernard Baruch stood out as the largest donor.[34] In his decision to support Roosevelt for president, Baruch was influenced by Morgenthau Sr., who told Baruch in 1932 “That’s my candidate!”[35] During the nominating convention Al Smith refused to relinquish his votes to Roosevelt, deliberately stonewalling a unanimous nomination, which was ended only with the personal intervention of three Jews who pressured him over lunch: (the ubiquitous) Baruch, Herbert Bayard Swope, and Felix Frankfurter.”[36]

Breitman and Lichtman note that “Although Republicans collected a larger share of business dollars during FDR’s presidential campaigns, Jewish businessmen primarily supported Democrats,”[37] and that “shortly after his nomination, FDR selected Henry Morgenthau Sr. as vice chairman of his Executive Finance Committee. Six other New York Jews also served on the committee: Bernard Baruch, Herbert Bayard Swope, Jesse I. Straus, Sidney Weinberg, Walter Weinstein, and Laurence A. Steinhardt.”[38] Their job was to raise over a million dollars at a time when a million dollars was worth about 23 million in 2024 dollars.[39] When we talk about the National Recovery Administration (NRA), we’ll encounter Herbert Bayard Swope’s brother Gerard Swope, whose planning scheme had the backing of a critical portion of Wall St. interests to help FDR’s win the presidential election.[40]

Furthermore, Sidney Weinberg, who was a partner at Goldman Sachs, raised more money for Roosevelt’s 1932 campaign than anyone else on the Democratic National Campaign Finance Committee. From Wikipedia: “Since many on Wall Street had opposed Roosevelt in the 1932 presidential election, Weinberg stood out as a prime candidate for the new president’s liaison to Wall Street. Indeed, in 1933, Roosevelt assigned Weinberg the task of organizing a group of corporate executives — called the Business Advisory and Planning Council — to serve as a bridge between the government and the private sector during the economic upheaval of the New Deal. Weinberg handpicked executives with whom he wanted to develop business relationships, and deliberately invited no other investment bankers to join the Council, putting himself in the perfect position to network. Roosevelt admired Weinberg’s work greatly, nicknaming him “The Politician” and offering him numerous federal appointments, all of which Weinberg refused.”[41] 

ROOSEVELT AND THE JEWS

Roosevelt won by a landslide in 1932 carrying almost every state, beginning the New Deal Coalition where Jews played an important role.[42] The Jews certainly felt victorious from the Roosevelt triumph if historian Arthur Hertzberg’s statement that “the Jews loved Franklin Delano Roosevelt with singular and unparalleled passion” is an indication.[43] Roosevelt received 70 to 80% of the Jewish vote in 1932,[44] a figure that would grow to 90% in the 1936 election.[45]  Dinnerstein notes that many Jews were motivated to vote for Roosevelt because of similarities between Judaism and the values and aims of the New Deal, including the intellectuality of its policies along with the desire to help the marginal, and that Jewish upbringing prepared them for these roles.[46] “Jewish values.”

Roosevelt had more Jews around him than any previous president[47], which was consistent with his appointments as governor.[48] Dinnerstein mentions that “Roosevelt worked comfortably with Jews.”[49] Around 15% of his appointments were Jews, who “held middle-level positions in the economic agencies and departments of government.”[50] A source from 1942 wrote that, although “the number of Jews in [the entire] government didn’t exceed their percentage in the population [4 percent], “it is also my observation that men who are Jews occupy very influential positions.”[51] Hertzberg’s opinion is that Roosevelt was not influenced by Jews any more than anyone else. Roosevelt was known for being extremely guarded about what he was thinking underneath an oftentimes agreeable exterior,[52] and that he played advisors off against each other.[53] Many Jews, nonetheless, believed that Roosevelt had a “special love” for them — their protector and “benevolent king”[54] in a world in which Hitler had just come to power, and where Roosevelt was the only world leader who wasn’t hostile to Jewish interests[55] — a role Roosevelt loved to play.[56] He had been the first major presidential candidate in American history to condemn anti-Jewish attitudes.[57] This was indeed a breakthrough for the Jews, as a 1938 poll taken showed a substantial number of Americans felt Hitler’s anti-Semitism was the Jews’ fault. American Jewish leaders even believed it a possibility that given a choice between European Jews and Nazism, the American public might not choose the Jews.[58]

Roosevelt of course came from American royalty, a class that generally not only paid attention to breeding and caste but was one which existed in the heyday of racial thinking.[59] Roosevelt himself claimed his “membership in the ‘Aryan races’,”[60] and during a 1912 speech in Troy, New York, he claimed that civilized progress and the struggle for freedom was associated with them.[61] So, what was the source of this apparent “special love” for Jews? Roosevelt’s father James had had business dealings with Jews. Breitman and Lichtman report that he “counseled his son about the immorality of anti-Semitism and his contempt for it.” His mother Sara, despite having an “acute sense of class,” made friends with Jews and contributed to Jewish causes.[62] As a result, his father, like his son, maintained amicable business relationships with Jews during his adult life.[63]

Baltzell is important in providing the concept of the “affirming aristocrat,” an establishment figure who rejected the exclusive class caste system they were born into in favor of supporting the integration of minorities into society and into the elite.[64] With his election, Franklin Roosevelt was the man who led Jews, both the Jews who originated in Germany and the descendants of the Eastern European Jews, into the functional elite. Also, the Roosevelts, a Dutch colonial “Knickerbocker” family from New York, eschewed the Upper Ten Society in their rejection of “ostentation and frivolity.”[65] It’s then no wonder Roosevelt was called a “traitor to his class.”[66]

It’s worth noting the role of Caesarism within the managerial state, with the political Caesar who, according to Max Weber, “often grows out of democracy.” Such a leader bases “his power on his personal competence and charismatic appeal, uses the mass population to undermine the institutions, traditions, and power of an existing elite, and elevates a section of his mass following to the position of a new elite.”[67] To this, we can add the following by Kevin MacDonald, that Jewish “elites are unlikely to identify with the interests of the society as a whole, and they are relatively eager to agree on arrangements that are personally beneficial, even if they negatively impact other groups of the society.”[68] Thus, it’s worth exploring to what extent Roosevelt played a key role in bringing about a miracle for the Jews in America by exploiting a civilizational crisis, defying his genteel bourgeois roots, and gaining votes from and rewarding this “elevated section”.

While the German Jews had been here since the mid-nineteenth century, the immigrants from Eastern Europe had mainly come during the post-1880 immigration flood. They were encouraged to immigrate to meet the needs of rapid industrialization by the nouveau riche captains of postbellum industry, but this immediately led to exclusionary behavior that began in the 1880s — which was manifested in the appearance of the patrician summer resorts, country clubs (the first in Brookline, MA in 1882), and the sudden preoccupation with one’s roots, in such organizations as the Sons of the Revolution, founded in 1883.[69] After this, the newcomers from Eastern Europe would be battling the patricians to make room in the establishment, and in a stunning reversal of fortune, by the end of the 1960s, those old-line patricians would be made déclassé. This transition would take place less than a century after the post-1880 immigration wave.


[1] Brad Snyder, Democratic Justice: Felix Frankfurter, the Supreme Court, and the Making of the Liberal Establishment (W.W. Norton and Company, 2022), 237. Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., The Politics of Upheaval (Boston Houghton Mifflin Company Boston, 1960), 27. Leonard Dinnerstein, “Jews and the New Deal,” American Jewish History 72, no. 4 (June, 1983): 461, https://www.jstor.org/stable/23882507. Myron Scholnick, The New Deal and Anti-Semitism in America (Garland Publishing, 1990), 62;73.

[2] “New Deal,” Wikipedia, last modified October 25, 2024, accessed October 27, 2024, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Deal#Summary_of_First_and_Second_New_Deal_programs.

[3] William Dudley, The Great Depression, Opposing Viewpoints (Greenhaven Press, 1994), 205. See also, “Recession of 1937-1938,” Wikipedia, last modified June 6, 2024, accessed October 27, 2024, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Recession_of_1937-1938.

[4] Paul D. Moreno, The American State from the Civil War to the New Deal (Cambridge University Press, 2013), 225.

[5] E. Digby Baltzell, The Protestant Establishment: Aristocracy and Caste in America (Random House, 1964), 165.

[6] Ronald J. Pestritto, American Transformed (Encounter Books, 2021), 71. See also William Leuchtenburg quote in Sam Francis, Leviathan & Its Enemies (Washington Summit Publishers, 2016), 222.

[7] Pestritto, 200-219.

[8] Baltzell, 162. See also Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr., The Crisis of the Old Order (Houghton Mifflin Company Boston, 1957), chapter 17.

[9] Stephen M. Feldman, American Legal Thought from Premodernism to Postmodernism (Oxford University Press, 2000), 108-109. See also Moreno, 54-58.

[10] Hugh Rockoff, “U.S. Economy in World War I,” Economic History Association, accessed October 27, 2024, https://eh.net/encyclopedia/u-s-economy-in-world-war-i/. See section titled ‘The Government’s Role in Mobilization’.

[11] Francis, 44.

[12] J. Joseph Huthmacher, “Senator Robert F. Wagner and the Rise of Urban Liberalism,” American Jewish Historical Quarterly 58, no. 3 (March, 1969): 343. https://www.jstor.org/stable/23876008.

[13] Moreno says this works because progressive liberalism is based on pragmatism anyhow (i.e., based on rational, scientific decision-making and is supposedly or ideally post-ideological). In Moreno, 220. Baltzell says that the ideas of John Dewey, who “socialized William James’s [Pragmatist] ideas,” were perfect for the “experimental, rather than dogmatic, political reformers who filtered into the Democratic Party under the leadership of Woodrow Wilson and Franklin Roosevelt.” In Baltzell, 167.
This pragmatic approach was found within individual departments. Agricultural expert M.L. Wilson insisted in 1932 that a variety of approaches be included in the Ag. Bill (and not just his own domestic allotment program) and that the secretary should decide on an ad hoc basis which to use. The resulting bill (Ezekiel, Wallace, Lee, and Frank) was probably the most inventive bill in U.S. history. In Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr., The Coming of the New Deal (Boston Houghton Mifflin Company Boston, 1959), 38-39.

[14] Moreno, 220.

[15] Schlesinger, TCOTND, 18-20 and TCOTOO, 416-20. For general info on the planners’ philosophy, see TCOTOO, 190-198. Moley, Tugwell, and Berle were gentiles. Berle was a Bostonian former student of Frankfurter who had supported Brandeis against the Brahmin establishment in 1916. In Arthur Hertzberg, The Jews in America: four centuries of an uneasy encounter: a history (Simon and Schuster, 1989), 221.

[16] Moreno, 222.

[17] Schlesinger, TCOTOO, 103.

[18] Ibid., 398-399.

[19] Ibid., 473.

[20] Ibid., 451-452.

[21] Snyder, 224. See also Leonard Dinnerstein, Antisemitism in America (Oxford University Press, 1994), 108.

[22] Snyder, 251-252.

[23] Dinnerstein, 108.

[24] Richard Breitman and Allan Lichtman, FDR and the Jews (Harvard University Press, 2013), 34.

[25] Schlesinger, 278.

[26] Breitman and Lichtman, 13.

[27] Dinnerstein, J&TND, 471. Dinnerstein in his article also mentions that, among his advisors, Rosenman was the closest to Roosevelt over the longest period. Dinnerstein, 470-1.

[28] Breitman and Lichtman, 32.

[29] Schlesinger, TCOTOO, 403. Chase was influenced by anti-capitalist economist Thorstein Veblen, and The New Republic was started in 1914 by Herbert Croly, Walter Weyl (Jewish), and Walter Lippmann (Jewish).

[30] “Samuel Rosenman,” Wikipedia, last modified October 17, 2024, accessed October 27, 2024, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samuel_Rosenman.

[31] Schlesinger, 43-45.

[32] Ibid., 280.

[33] Ibid., 273-274. The “little New Deal” is mentioned in Daniel Ernst, Tocqueville’s Nightmare (Oxford University Press, 2014), 80.

[34] Schlesinger, 421.

[35] Ibid., 288.

[36] Leonard Baker, Brandeis and Frankfurter (Harper & Row, 1984), 277.

[37] Jews had supported Hoover as well, with Sutton listing Jews as contributing more than half the funds to the RNC among contributors giving more than $25,000 in 1928, including the Guggenheims, Eugene Meyer, Otto Kahn, and Mortimer Schiff. In Sutton, 315. Jews had contributed heavily to many prior campaigns, including Wilson in 1912: “Cooper remarks that his “big contributors” included the likes of “Henry Morgenthau, Jacob Schiff, and Samuel Untermyer, as well as a newcomer to their ranks, Bernard Baruch.” In Thomas Dalton, “The Jewish Hand in the World Wars, Part 1,” CODOH, July, 2013, https://codoh.com/library/document/the-jewish-hand-in-the-world-wars-part-1/.

[38] Breitman and Lichtman, 39.

[39] “Seven Jews on Finance Committee of Democrats,” Jewish Daily Bulletin, September 18, 1932, 2, http://pdfs.jta.org/1932/1932-09-18_2357.pdf. Also, “A political ally of New York Governor Franklin D. Roosevelt, in March 1931, Jesse Straus funded a poll of the delegates to the 1928 Democratic Convention to assess Roosevelt’s chances in the race for the 1932 Democratic presidential nomination.” In “Jessie I. Strauss,” Wikipedia, last modified October 24, 2024, accessed October 27, 2024, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jesse_I._Straus.

[40] The election claim is according to scholar Anthony Sutton.

[41] “Sidney Weinberg,” Wikipedia, last modified August 26, 2024, accessed October 27, 2024, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sidney_Weinberg.

[42] “New Deal Coalition,” Wikipedia, last modified October 25, 2024, last modified, accessed October 27, 2024, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Deal_coalition.

[43] Hertzberg, 282.

[44] Breitman and Lichtman, 43.

[45] Hertzberg, 285. Many of the socialist readers of the Communist Morgen Freiheit gave Roosevelt their vote over Earl Browder.

[46] Dinnerstein article, 462-463.

[47] Hertzberg, 282.

[48] Breitman and Lichtman, 65.

[49] Dinnerstein, 108.

[50] Breitman and Lichtman, 65.

[51] W.M. Kiplinger, “The Facts about Jews in Washington,” Reader’s Digest, September 1942, 2.

[52] Breitman and Lichtman, 9.

[53] Hertzberg, 282.

[54] Ibid., 284.

[55] Dinnerstein, 104.

[56] Hertzberg, 286.

[57] Breitman and Lichtman, 42.

[58] Hertzberg, 289.

[59] Kevin B. MacDonald, “Eric Kaufmann’s The Rise and Fall of Anglo-America,” The Occidental Quarterly 15, no. 4 (Winter 2015—2016): 22, http://www.kevinmacdonald.net/Kaufmann-final.pdf.

[60] Breitman and Lichtman, 8.

[61] Ibid., 13.

[62] Ibid., 8. In the same section Breitman and Lichtman also say that FDR’s parents inculcated compassion for the less fortunate. In Ibid., 9. Also, sociologist E. Digby Baltzell notes that class can trump ethno-religious identity. In Baltzell, 63. At least this can be said about White Europeans.

[63] Breitman and Lichtman, 8-9.

[64] Baltzell, 28. For speculation on Roosevelt’s reputed Jewish ancestry: Thomas Dalton, “The Jewish Hand in the World Wars, Part 2,” July 1, 2013, https://codoh.com/library/document/the-jewish-hand-in-the-world-wars-part-2/en/.

[65] Michael McGerr, A Fierce Discontent: The Rise and Fall of the Progressive Movement in America, 1870-1920 (Oxford University Press, 2005), 36.

[66] Consider the book title of: H.W. Brands, Traitor to His Class: The Privileged Life and Radical Presidency of Franklin Delano Roosevelt (Knopf Doubleday, 2008), https://books.google.com/books?id=bmKMa_y3hh0C.

[67] Francis, 55. Francis also says that managerial elements encourage the extension of the franchise to groups that the bourgeois elite cannot discipline. In Ibid., 56.

[68] Kevin B. MacDonald, A People That Shall Dwell Alone (Writer’s Club Press, 2002), 173. This statement is made within the context of a discussion about the relationship between the Jews and gentile elites.

[69] Baltzell, 113. See also Howard Sachar, A History of the Jews in the Modern World (Vintage Books, 2006), 384-385, and Dinnerstein, 41.

https://www.theoccidentalobserver.net/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/TOO-Full-Logo-660x156-1.png 0 0 Frederick Talmadge https://www.theoccidentalobserver.net/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/TOO-Full-Logo-660x156-1.png Frederick Talmadge2024-12-16 07:54:272024-12-16 07:54:27Jews and the The First New Deal, 1933-1934, Part 1
Page 5 of 10«‹34567›»
Subscribeto RSS Feed

Kevin MacDonald on Mark Collett’s show reviewing Culture of Critique

James Edwards at the Counter-Currents Conference, Atlanta, 2022

Watch TOO Video Picks

video archives

DONATE

DONATE TO TOO

Follow us on Facebook

Keep Up To Date By Email

Subscribe to get our latest posts in your inbox twice a week.

Name

Email


Topics

Authors

Monthly Archives

RECENT TRANSLATIONS

All | Czech | Finnish | French | German | Greek | Italian | Polish | Portuguese | Russian | Spanish | Swedish

Blogroll

  • A2Z Publications
  • American Freedom Party
  • American Mercury
  • American Renaissance
  • Arktos Publishing
  • Candour Magazine
  • Center for Immigration Studies
  • Chronicles
  • Council of European Canadians
  • Counter-Currents
  • Curiales—Dutch nationalist-conservative website
  • Denmark's Freedom Council
  • Diversity Chronicle
  • Folktrove: Digital Library of the Third Way
  • Human Biodiversity Bibliography
  • Instauration Online
  • Institute for Historical Review
  • Mondoweiss
  • National Justice Party
  • Occidental Dissent
  • Pat Buchanan
  • Paul Craig Roberts
  • PRIVACY POLICY
  • Project Nova Europea
  • Radix Journal
  • RAMZPAUL
  • Red Ice
  • Richard Lynn
  • Rivers of Blood
  • Sobran's
  • The European Union Times
  • The Occidental Quarterly Online
  • The Political Cesspool
  • The Right Stuff
  • The Unz Review
  • Third Position Directory
  • VDare
  • Washington Summit Publishers
  • William McKinley Institute
  • XYZ: Australian Nationalist Site
NEW: Individualism and the Western Liberal Tradition

Also available at Barnes & Noble

Culture of Critique

Also available at Barnes & Noble

Separation and Its Discontents
A People That Shall Dwell Alone
© 2025 The Occidental Observer - powered by Enfold WordPress Theme
  • X
  • Dribbble
Scroll to top

By continuing to browse the site, you are legally agreeing to our use of cookies and general site statistics plugins.

CloseLearn more

Cookie and Privacy Settings



How we use cookies

We may request cookies to be set on your device. We use cookies to let us know when you visit our websites, how you interact with us, to enrich your user experience, and to customize your relationship with our website.

Click on the different category headings to find out more. You can also change some of your preferences. Note that blocking some types of cookies may impact your experience on our websites and the services we are able to offer.

Essential Website Cookies

These cookies are strictly necessary to provide you with services available through our website and to use some of its features.

Because these cookies are strictly necessary to deliver the website, refusing them will have impact how our site functions. You always can block or delete cookies by changing your browser settings and force blocking all cookies on this website. But this will always prompt you to accept/refuse cookies when revisiting our site.

We fully respect if you want to refuse cookies but to avoid asking you again and again kindly allow us to store a cookie for that. You are free to opt out any time or opt in for other cookies to get a better experience. If you refuse cookies we will remove all set cookies in our domain.

We provide you with a list of stored cookies on your computer in our domain so you can check what we stored. Due to security reasons we are not able to show or modify cookies from other domains. You can check these in your browser security settings.

Other external services

We also use different external services like Google Webfonts, Google Maps, and external Video providers. Since these providers may collect personal data like your IP address we allow you to block them here. Please be aware that this might heavily reduce the functionality and appearance of our site. Changes will take effect once you reload the page.

Google Webfont Settings:

Google Map Settings:

Google reCaptcha Settings:

Vimeo and Youtube video embeds:

Privacy Policy

You can read about our cookies and privacy settings in detail on our Privacy Policy Page.

Privacy Policy
Accept settingsHide notification only