What Ron Unz Gets Wrong (and Right) About the Weak Claim Paradox

1508 Words

Earlier this month, The Occidental Observer published an essay of mine entitled “The Lesser of Two Evils,” which attempted to split the difference between the two main ways White identitarians today view Nazism. The main proponents of each side were Joel Davis and Keith Woods. As I wrote at the time:

Davis, an Australian nationalist, finds that rehabilitating Adolf Hitler and National Socialism is crucial for today’s White Nationalism, while Woods, who is from Ireland, feels that the various stripes of White Nationalism do not need either to thrive. It was a fascinating and civil metapolitical exchange, and it greatly benefited the Right. In effect, the men differ on how to counter the prevailing Jewish narrative which claims that A) Hitler and the Nazis were a uniquely odious evil, and B) anyone who professes beliefs even remotely close to Hitler’s is potentially genocidal and should be suppressed.

As a compromise I suggested presenting a pro-White counter-narrative which situates the Nazis as preferrable to (and less evil than) the Bolsheviks, thus insulating today’s Whites from the Nazi stigma. Since by 1939 the Soviets had killed far more people than the Nazis had, and since the Allies sided with the Soviets despite this, the Allies were clearly not on the moral side of the conflict. Thus, anyone today willing to smear someone as a Nazi but not as a Bolshevik must be held as morally suspect—just as the western Allies were morally suspect for siding with the greater of two evils during the war. Further, such a person becomes vulnerable to the Bolshevik counter smear.

This, in a nutshell, is my Weak Claim Paradox. The further in time we get from a transformative event, such as the Second World War, the weaker our claims must be in order to reverse the effects of that event. Both Davis and Woods make strong claims: Nazi good or Nazi bad. Of course, there is truth on each side, and both men deserve credit for being honest and brave enough to make such claims. But neither approach will be terribly effective in reversing the effects of the Second World War since Davis’ approach will meet too much resistance from the prevailing narrative, and Woods’ approach cedes too much ground to it. Nearly a century after the fact, only weak claims are dynamic enough to begin to turn back the slow tide of history.

Today’s White identitarians should defend themselves by claiming that while the Nazis were extremists who did evil things during the war, they were reacting to greater extremists, the Bolsheviks, who did worse things during peacetime and during wartime. This tack puts the prevailing narrative on the defensive and appeals to the moral core of those not yet invested in this debate—all while not directly contradicting the prevailing narrative, which most people by now have internalized.

Shortly after being published, my essay was picked up by the Unz Review where it received over 220 comments, one of the first being from Ron Unz himself. He found fault with my analysis on historical grounds, stating:

Well, the Soviets waited a week or two to invade Poland, and claimed they were doing so to help the Poles.

But the more important failing in your analysis is that within a few months the British and French were planning a major attack against the USSR, hoping to overthrow Stalin’s regime.

As one British elected official remarked, “One has the impression that France is at war with Russia and merely on very unfriendly terms with Germany.”

The only reason you’re not aware of that fact is because virtually all Western historians have spent the last 75 years concealing it from their populations:

https://www.unz.com/runz/american-pravda-how-hitler-saved-the-allies/

According to Unz, my understanding of the facts was incomplete. In what has unfortunately become a side note of history, the English and French in early 1940 did seem to have serious plans to bomb Soviet oil fields in Baku, thus undermining my claim that the Allies had willingly sided with the greater of two evils during the Second World War. Seemingly, they were as anti-Soviet as they were anti-Nazi. I then read the linked essay and found it to be typical Unz: thoughtful, measured, informative, and fearless.

All great stuff, but is it the silver dagger Unz says it is?

From a historical standpoint, I don’t know. As Unz himself states:

The French and British high commands had prepared their enormous bomber offensive, Operation Pike, in hopes of destroying Russia’s oil resources, and their unmarked reconnaissance flights had already overflown Baku, photographing the locations of the intended targets. The Allies were convinced that the best strategy for defeating Germany was to eliminate its sources of oil and other vital raw materials, and with Russia being Hitler’s leading supplier, they decided that destroying the Soviet oil fields seemed a logical strategy.

So it seems that the French and British may have seen the Nazis as the greater evil because they contemplated bombing the Soviet Union not so much for its own sake but as a means to defeat Germany. This is not to say that the British and French lacked anti-Bolshevik feelings. Judging from their deeds and this snippet of information, however, one could reasonably conclude that they did have greater animus against the Nazis.

Now, whether or not this is in fact true, I don’t know. Nor do I wish to engage in debate with a historian who claims that it isn’t. I simply have not read enough history to opine further. I think Unz’s mistake was to give me just a little too much credit in this regard. I never intended to offer a definitive historical analysis in my essay. Instead, I was offering an alternative interpretation of history which would allow White identitarians to punch back more effectively against the prevailing anti-White cultural narrative—which relies heavily on demonizing Nazis but not Bolsheviks. Whether or not this interpretation is 100 percent correct is less important than whether or not the counter-narrative it engenders is effective. Thus, while Unz and the majority of the essay’s commenters were concerned with historical truth (and good for them), I was more concerned about tactics in the present-day culture wars.

So does this open the door for dishonesty? Does this amount to an abuse of history? Rather than answering these questions yes or no, I think the more appropriate response would be to ask whether the prevailing anti-Nazi narrative also amounts to dishonesty and abuse. If so, then we must ask which narrative is more dishonest and abusive. Actually, let’s do that now. Which narrative, dear reader, do you think is more dishonest and abusive?

Prevailing Narrative: The Nazis declared war against humanity and murdered 6 million Jews because of evil.

Counter Narrative: The Nazis at their worst were not as murderous or destructive as the Bolsheviks at their worst.

A cursory meta-analysis of some of Ron Unz’s writing at the Unz Review reveals that factors other than strict historical accuracy do contribute to a particular narrative’s effectiveness. Case in point would be how he has admirably written thousands of words casting doubt on the prevailing narrative surrounding the Jewish Holocaust. According to Unz, this narrative is at the very least questionable—yet, as we all know, it remains highly effective.

It is very possible that an interpretation of history can be incomplete (intentionally or not) and still make for an effective narrative. Therefore, digging through history for episodes that refute the pithy seamlessness of a narrative is beside the point—as long the there aren’t too many of such episodes. And in the case of the weak lesser-of-two-evils claim, I don’t think there are. This is not to say there is nothing in history that undermines this claim—Operation Pike might very well be one that does. This is also not to say that there is no truth behind the prevailing narrative. Of course, there is. But if one side can get beyond 50 percent of the truth, it does not deserve to be oppressed by the other side, which by necessity possesses less. And I believe the weak lesser-of-two-evils claim takes us above 50 percent.

I think Mr. Unz understands this because at the end of his essay “How Hitler Saved the Allies” he writes the following:

It might not be entirely correct to claim that the story of World War II was that Franklin Roosevelt sought to escape his domestic difficulties by orchestrating a major European war against the prosperous, peace-loving Nazi Germany of Adolf Hitler. But I do think that picture is probably somewhat closer to the actual historical reality than the inverted image more commonly found in our textbooks.

This is the weak claim that I have been making all along. The Nazis were indeed the lesser of two evils. And if pro-White leaders and influencers like Joel Davis and Keith Woods can not only agree upon this weak claim, but lead with it, I believe they will find greater success in turning back the tide of history.