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Comments on Takuan Seiyo’s Screed

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It seems that lately most of my critics have been Jews associated with the paleoconservative right: Paul Gottfried, Robert Weissberg (see my reply after Weissberg’s comment), and Lawrence Auster. Takuan Seiyo’s critique rehashes familiar arguments in a particularly nasty way, speaking, for example, of my “malice and brain-dead stupidity.”

Such characterizations must be understood as nothing more or less than attempts to draw boundaries of acceptable political discourse in a way that is acceptable to Jewish interests. It’s exactly the sort of thing that Jewish neoconservatives did to vitiate the American conservative movement by excluding people like Pat Buchanan and Sam Francis.

But because Seiyo’s comments have led to much rejoicing among like-minded co-ethnics (see here and here), I feel obliged to respond, if only to restate some points that perhaps need repeating. In general, Seiyo agrees that many Jews have negative attitudes toward and have acted to subvert the peoples and culture of the West. But he frames Jewish behavior as motivated by nothing but the highest morality, or he claims that Jewish behavior is justified because of a long history of persecution. I reject both of these arguments.

Seiyo’s screed begins well enough:

In the fourteen years I spent at three universities in the 60s/70s I acquired a store of memories that resembles Kevin MacDonald’s, if at a greater distance from the radical Jewish milieu. I too perceived the radical politics, feelings of separateness and alienation, attitude of moral and intellectual superiority, hostility to Western cultural institutions, ethnic paranoia and bunker mentality, disdain for capitalism, generic tendency to impute and then combat perceived racism and fascism, disputatiousness and intellectual sophistry, negative attitudes toward Christianity, positive attitudes toward psychoanalysis and Marxism. I too had charismatic Jewish professors with a leftist view of European and American history.

I couldn’t have said it more succinctly. But then he states that he has never met “asingle Jew who was motivated by the ethno-biological red-of-tooth-and-claw impulses it has become Dr. MacDonald’s life mission to ascribe to the Jews as a whole.”

This is odd, first because I have always taken great pains to state that I am never making claims about all Jews. “Memories of Madison” deals with Jewish radicals in the 1960s, not all Jews. In The Culture of Critique, I make clear that I am not talking about all Jews on the very first page of that book:

The movements discussed in this volume … were advanced by relatively few individuals whose views may not have been known or understood by the majority of the Jewish community. The argument is that Jews dominated these intellectual movements, that a strong sense of Jewish identity was characteristic of the great majority of these individuals, and that these individuals were pursuing a Jewish agenda in establishing and participating in these movements.

Thus there is no implication that Judaism constitutes a unified movement or that all segments of the Jewish community participated in these movements. … The question of the overall effects of Jewish influence … is independent of the question of whether most or all Jews supported the movements to alter [non-Jewish] culture.

Secondly, what “ethno-biological red-of-tooth-and-claw impulses” are we talking about? Again, if one reads Chapter 1 of CofC, the theoretical basis is social identity theory — the universal tendency of ingroups to view outgroups negatively. But, yes, I interpret social identity theory as describing psychological mechanisms of between-group competition for all the reasons I describe in Chapter 1 of Separation and Its Discontents (see also here).

What Seiyo needs to do is to show that the movements I discuss in The Culture of Critique were not Jewish movements as I define the term or to show that these movements were not influential in lessening the ethnic hegemony of Whites and their culture. He does neither, and in fact seems to agree with me that Jews were a critical force in displacing Whites (see below).

My finding that Jewish intellectual movements are centered around charismatic figures is just that — an empirical finding. However, I do think it’s reasonable to point out that traditional Jewish groups were highly authoritarian, had rigid controls on behavior, and were centered around charismatic figures — a theme of Chapter 6 of  CofC. It is not the case that this is a human universal. It was not true, for example, of the Founding Fathers of the United States who very consciously saw themselves as heirs to a Germanic tendency for representative government and individual liberty, including free speech.  The intellectual background for the claim that this is a real cultural difference stems from the analysis of individualism (characteristic of Western culture) versus collectivism (characteristic of Jewish society). I have commented on this extensively (see here, here, and here). Seiyo should make clear exactly what is wrong with my analysis.

Seiyo makes much of the fact that the people and ideas that were discussed among Jewish radicals were in fact discussed by a whole lot of people, including “the entire continental European intelligentsia.” Right. The whole point of The Culture of Critique is that movements that were originated and dominated by Jewish intellectuals eventually became the culture of Western suicide. This implies that they also became the culture of non-Jews. That was the whole point of writing about my memories of Madison.

In CofC, I present a theory of how these movements spread their influence throughout society: These movements succeeded because they were able to dominate the prestigious academic and media institutions of the West. Once this domination was established, people were socialized within a culture dominated by these ideas. And people who wanted to establish themselves in the intellectual hierarchy perforce engaged in status competition within the universe of acceptable discourse established by these movements. People who dissented from these ideas were ostracized and vilified; they were unable to gain recognition or, quite often, employment. Psychoanalysis is a paradigm of this sort of movement. A major theme of CofC is that these movements did not function like scientific movements — a product of Western individualist culture — but much more like politburos and kangaroo courts. In that regard, they were much more like traditional Jewish culture as described, for example, by Israel Shahak and Norton Mezvinsky.

Seiyo writes:

MacDonald evokes the “ingroup bunker mentality” as “a fundamental characteristic of Jewish society.” So it was, and perhaps still is among many older Jews. But to fail to limn why it’s so for exogenous and millennia-long reasons, and how it parallels the same mentality in other middleman minorities, can only be seen as a telling omission. This is even more bizarre when Thomas Sowell has already done the intellectual heavy lifting, e.g. here.

If Seiyo had read A People That Shall Dwell Alone (Chapter 5) where I cite academic sources that long predate Sowell or my monograph Diaspora Peoples, he would be quite aware that I am not stating Jews are the only middleman minority group. The claim that the Jewish bunker mentality results from “exogenous and millennia-long reasons” is argumentative, but Seiyo fails to provide an argument. Seiyo simply accepts as received wisdom that Jews are prone to a bunker mentality because of a long history of persecution as a middleman minority.

My view is that a bunker mentality characterizes all highly cohesive groups, especially when they are under external pressure or perceived external pressure. This is an aspect of human evolved psychology. I deal with Jewish historical memory and how it contributes to the Jewish bunker mentality in several places — e.g., Chapter 7 of  A People That Shall Dwell Alone where I discuss Jewish socialization practices (see pp. 218ff).

In other words, memories of Jewish persecution are a critical part of Jewish socialization, and often these memories are embellished in order to exaggerate Jewish suffering. As I note there, “This evolved response to external threat is often manipulated by Jewish authorities attempting to inculcate a stronger sense of group identification.”  In Memories of Madison I pointed out that organizations like the ADL and the $PLC routinely exaggerate the threat to Jews in order to increase donations.

Seiyo acknowledges that I am correct in linking Jewish activism to the rise of multiculturalism and massive non-White immigration to America. But he doesn’t like my explanation:

The explanation of Jewish radicalism one is treated to — and I am still staying with ‘Madison’ — is that ‘Jews emerged from the ghetto with hostility toward the culture around them’ and ‘Jewish hostility toward the culture of non-Jews has been a constant threat [sic; here Seiyo added the word ‘threat’ to what I wrote, presumably to darken up the passage a bit] throughout Jewish history.’ Has this hostility arisen by immaculate conception?

First, the statement that Jews emerged from the ghetto with hostility is simply a summary of John Murray Cuddihy, and the statement about Jewish hostility as a general feature of Judaism is based on my reading of Jewish history.

Seiyo doesn’t really dispute this, but claims that such hostility is understandable given the long history of the persecution of Jews.

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I am certainly not denying that Jewish hostility is based on the reality of Jewish persecution (as altered by typical ingroup exaggerations and omissions). The point of my statement in that particular article was not to provide an analysis of Jewish hostility but simply to reiterate Cuddihy’s point that it has been a very potent motivating force for Jewish intellectuals and activists. In the article, I never address the question of whether the hostility is unwarranted — a topic that goes far beyond what could be covered in an article of that nature.

The history of Jewish persecution is a central topic in Separation and Its Discontents. Seiyo takes the view of a typical Jewish apologist that all anti-Jewish actions throughout history have been the result of evil non-Jews persecuting passive Jewish victims. My view, in a nutshell, is that between-group competition has been fundamental to the most important examples of historical anti-Semitism.

In particular, Seiyo notes that I accurately portray the role of Jews as agents of mass murder in the USSR but that I fail to discuss why Jews would be so hostile that they would willingly engage in mass murder. Leaving aside the question of whether the behavior of the Czarist government could possibly justify the murder of 20 million Russians or the destruction of Russian national culture, it should be noted that “Stalin’s Willing Executioners” is a review of Yuri Slezkine’s book. I do indeed follow Slezkine by emphasizing Jewish economic and cultural domination: “Slezkine repeatedly shows how Jews dominated the economy, the universities, and the culture of Eastern Europe—indeed, his book is probably the best, most up-to-date account of Jewish economic and cultural preeminence in Europe (and America) that we have.”

In other words Seiyo’s beef is with Slezkine, not me. Slezkine fails to buy into the lachrymose theory of Jewish history (i.e., the view that Jewish history is simply a record of persecution of innocent Jews by evil non-Jews). Slezkine does so because he wants to paint Jews in general as brilliant, economically successful Mercurians. In fact, I take Slezkine to task for failing to mention the darker side of Jewish life in Czarist Russia, including the persecution of Jews:

But [Jewish economic and cultural domination] is far from the whole story. A prime force resulting in Jewish radicalism was the grinding poverty of most Jews in Eastern Europe. Jews had overshot their economic niche: The economy was unable to support the burgeoning Jewish population in the sorts of positions that Jews had traditionally filled, with the result that a large percentage of the Jewish population became mired in poverty (along with much higher percentages of the non-Jewish population). The result was a cauldron of ethnic hostility, with governmental restrictions on Jewish economic activity and representation in educational institutions, rampant anti-Jewish attitudes, and increasing Jewish desperation [citing this paper].

Seiyo emphasizes the persecution of Jews in Russia prior to 1917 as motivating Jewish hostility, but he seems unaware that Jews, including many Jewish historians, tend to have a very distorted view of their own history. Consider this passage, from Chapter 7 of Separation and Its Discontents:

[Albert] Lindemann (1991, 131) finds similar biases in the historiography on Russian Jews written by Jews … [Jewish historians] tended to view the situation as simply an example of irrational czarist brutality rather than spontaneous uprisings. ([Edward H.] Judge [1992] shows that the Kishinev pogrom of 1903 was a spontaneous response to Jewish economic domination, and he shows that the Russian government viewed such pogroms very negatively because they were perceived as a sign of revolutionary activity.) Lindemann notes that these historians also fail to present the problems and dilemmas facing the czarist authorities attempting to deal with the problems presented by Jews during this period. A crucial issue for the Czarist authorities was their belief that the Russian peasants would not be able to compete with the Jews in open economic competition, a belief that is certainly justified by the extraordinary upward mobility of Jewish populations in post-emancipation Europe. Indeed, Jewish economic domination of Russian peasants was apparent even to Jewish socialist radicals of the period. … Lindemann (p. 154ff) also notes that Jewish historians of events in late-19th- and early-20th-century Russia tended to exaggerate Jewish losses as well as unfairly depict the pogroms as the result of conspiracies by the authorities rather than as having any popular roots or economic causes related to competition and the Jewish population explosion.

Seiyo quotes Lawrence Auster as follows:

It is essential to distinguish between anti-Semitic attacks on Jews and legitimate, rational criticisms of Jews. [snip] To portray Jews as the source of all ills [snip] is anti-Semitism. For example, to say that Jews as Jews are “hostile” to our culture and have organized themselves in a campaign to destroy it, is anti-Semitism. What’s wrong with anti-Semitism is, first, that it’s false, and, second, that the flaw can’t be corrected. If Jews, who have been a part of European civilization since before the time of Christ, are the source of all evil in our civilization, there is nothing for them to do but die.

But of course, I am not saying that Jews are the source of all ills, and I am certainly not saying that all Jews are hostile to the people and the culture of the West. Along with John Murray Cuddihy (Mark Rudd agrees), I am merely saying that this was typical of the Jewish intellectuals and activists who have been so important in erecting the culture of Western suicide. (Seiyo himself seems to agree, since at the beginning of his essay he states that in his experience he has indeed noted “negative attitudes to Christianity” and “hostility toward Western cultural institutions” among Jews.)

Jews, and particularly the organized Jewish community, could change their behavior and attitudes, but at this point there is no evidence that they are doing so to any significant degree. Immigration is a good example. Despite the fact that a handful of Jews like Auster oppose massive non-White immigration into Western countries, there is no question that the organized Jewish community and the vast majority of Jews are very much in favor.

I also provide a great deal of evidence that hostility toward the people and culture of the outgroup is a general characteristic of Jewish culture. (In addition to my writing, see, for example, Peter Schafer’s Jesus in the Talmud.) And I see it as the expected result of the evolutionary psychology of between-group competition.

Seiyo claims that I am hypocritical in endorsing White ethnic consciousness while condemning “Jewish ethnic chauvinism in Israel.” I have replied extensively to this line of argument here. Briefly, my argument is that my advocacy of White ethnic consciousness certainly does not imply that I should support Jewish ethnic chauvinism, either in the US (where it has been a strong force against the interests of European-Americans) or in Israel (where, as  a result of the Israel Lobby, it has compromised the foreign policy of the United States). Does being a Jewish ethnic chauvinist logically commit one to favoring Palestinian ethnic chauvinism? Seiyo’s claim is a wild non-sequitur.

Seiyo, after admitting that he really hasn’t read much of my work, tries to save the day by citing other people who have criticized me — John Derbyshire and Lawrence Auster. I have replied to both Derbyshire and to Auster. As I said of Auster, his “role as a Jewish activist seems to be to advance the cause of Israel within what he calls the “traditionalist, politically incorrect Right.’” In adopting such a stance, he is not alone. Seiyo would seem to be another example.

Seiyo concludes his essay with a long-winded comment basically saying that I am right about the corrosive effect of Jews but that Jews have had the best of intentions in their opposition to the ethnic hegemony of Whites and the cultural institutions of the West: “One begins to worry less about the veracity of the MacDonald hypothesis and more because of the veracity of his facts.”

I rejected the altruistic motive theory of Jewish radicalism in Chapter 3 of Culture of Critique. As Benjamin Ginsberg notes, such humanistic motivations are “a bit fanciful,” especially given that Jews have participated in ““ruthless agencies of coercion and terror,” including especially a very prominent involvement in the Soviet secret police (as also noted by Slezkine). And as Slezkine shows, Jews became a dominant elite throughout Eastern and Central Europe, and they opposed the national cultures of all these countries — just as they have erected a culture of critique in the US. Are we really supposed to believe that the rise of Jews as a dominant, anti-nationalist elite in all these countries was motivated by nothing but the most noble moral impulses? Call me a cynic, but I can see a whole lot of much more mundane reasons for attaining elite status and suppressing the traditional culture and  nationalistic aspirations of the country.

Seiyo’s attempt to paint Jewish morality as universalist  and individualist is a wonderful example of ethnocentric blinders. “Is it good for the Jews” is much closer to the reality of Jewish written law and the actual behavior of Jews throughout history. Jewish ethics is based on the good of the group, not the individual. (See Chap. 6 of PTSDA.) As Salo Baron, dean of Jewish historians wrote, “Judaism stresses the general aims of the Jewish people. . . . to this day orthodox Jewish ethics has remained in its essence national rather than individual, and this accounts, incidentally, for the otherwise incomprehensible legal theorem of the common responsibility of allJews for the deeds of each.”

In fact, depictions of Jewish ethics as individualist and universalist are post-Enlightenment inventions aimed at presenting Judaism in a more acceptable light to Western intellectuals. (SeeSAID, Chapter 7.)  In resurrecting this fiction, Seiyo is in a long line of Jewish apologists who attempt to cast Jewish ethnic competition as nothing more than applied universalist morality in an attempt to appeal to Western intellectuals.

I agree with Seiyo that Jews have made contributions to civilization — although I can think of none that were unique and irreplaceable. In A People That Shall Dwell Alone I mention some of the consequences of high Jewish IQ, including a vastly disproportionate number of Nobel Prizes. In saying that I should weight Jewish contributions more highly, Seiyo is making the same argument as Derbyshire. But as I said in my response to Derbyshire:

For Derbyshire, evaluating Jews is like a business ledger: There are positives and negatives, and for him, the positives vastly outweigh the negatives. However, providing a balance ledger of credits and debits is not a purpose of The Culture of Critique. My purpose is to document Jewish intellectual and political movements — movements led by Jews and motivated by perceptions that these movements would advance Jewish interests. …

Seiyo must understand that inevitably I must value the continued survival of my people and culture above any Jewish contributions to civilization. However, I do agree with him that “If the Jewish community won’t wake up to criticism from friendly parties, it will eventually face criticism from the growing number of unfriendly parties.”

Finally, Seiyo makes the claim that Jewish advocacy of the dissolution of White ethnic hegemony and culture is actually bad for Jews. In this he may be right, but, as usual, his argument is not new and I have addressed it previously. Stephen Steinlight has been arguing the same for quite some time, and I have commented on his ideas in several places (e.g., here, here, and here). Jews like Steinlight, Seiyo, Auster, and several other Jews who are active in White advocacy or immigration restriction are certainly to be welcomed as allies.

[However,] the absence of a commitment to change the Jewish community or refusing to acknowledge the historical role of the organized Jewish community in producing our present malaise invites the skepticism that the Jews involved in pro-European-American movements are simply trying to make these movements safe for Jews in the event that such movements gain traction. It’s a fall-back plan and an escape hatch if things start to get sticky.

Moreover, when pro-European-American groups feel it judicious to be silent about the role of the organized Jewish community in our current malaise, this must be seen as an expression of Jewish power. Much of our task on behalf of European-American civilization and our people is the promotion of historical understanding. Many Jews will inevitably find an honest discussion of the history of European abdication threatening because of the prominent role of Jews revealed by any objective account of that history. However, silence on the role of Jews in our current malaise forces these groups to live in a sort of ahistorical present—avoiding a realistic discussion of the past and preventing any attempt to understand this past in an objective manner.

This forces these pro-European movements into a major departure from all other ethnic activist movements we are aware of, including Judaism: Ethnic identity and commitment are deeply interwoven with an understanding of history. Indeed, Jews’ understanding of their own history as victims of Europeans is an important wellspring of Jewish identity and Jewish activism against European-Americans. …

Even worse, it prevents these organizations from making explicit attempts to oppose the very real power that the organized Jewish community and other strongly identified Jews continue to exert in a wide range of areas in opposition to the interests of European-Americans. Again, the best role for Jews in these movements is to be vocal critics of the Jewish community and its role in the dispossession of European-Americans. But the unfortunate reality is that, just like mainstream politicians forced to never mention the power of the Israel Lobby, these pro-European-American groups end up ignoring the 800-lb gorilla in their midst — a wonderful comment on Jewish power in America.

In guarded optimism, we might look to the future and hope that some influential Jews will be able to look at this history without their ethnic blinders and come to see their own best interests lie with a renewed European America.

Seiyo is part way there. He understands that Jews have been a critical force in promoting Western suicide and he says he deplores this result. But he can’t quite take the last step and acknowledge that the rise of Jews to elite status in the West is fundamentally about ethnic competition and displacement of previously dominant elites — typically motivated at the psychological level by fear and loathing of the people and culture of the West. I rather doubt anyone can persuade him. C’est la vie. That’s what ethnocentric self-deception is all about.

Kevin MacDonald is a professor of psychology at California State University–Long Beach.  Email him.

When Diversity Doesn’t Count: Adam Liptak and Linda Greenhouse Astride The New York Times (and Yale Law School, and the Supreme Court, etc.)

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The most important newspaper in America is the New York Times.  The most important court in America is the U.S. Supreme Court.  And the most important law school in America is Yale Law School.

So whoever finds himself straddling these three towering institutions has power on the order of say, being the Senate Judiciary Committee, all by himself.

Today, that man is Adam Liptak, a Yale Law School graduate who got his start working as a clerk for the New York Times in the 1980s.  Liptak took the beat over from Linda Greenhouse, a Jewish woman who once marched in parade for abortion rights (while working as a Times reporter).  Greenhouse covered the Supreme Court for an astounding 29 years.

Liptak has all the indicators of also being a powerful Jew:  Like Greenhouse, he has a typically Jewish first and last name, was born in New York City or nearby, went to Yale Law School, is a lecturer at Yale Law School, and has an appearance that isn’t inconsistent with being Jewish. The name ‘Liptak’ appears in JewishGen, a website devoted to Jewish genealogy.

His Times biography mentions that he was an associate on First Amendment issues at Cahill Gordon, a leading international law firm.  What it doesn’t mention is that Cahill Gordon is the home of First Amendment lawyer Floyd Abrams, who is most certainly Jewish and with whom I would imagine Liptak worked, given Abrams’ own connection to the Times. (Between clerking and the Cahill Gordon, Liptak worked in the Times‘ general counsel’s office).

As a clerk at the Times, Liptak worked under Myron (M. A.) Farber, a Jewish reporter for the Times.

So, in the unlikely event Liptak isn’t Jewish, he has certainly lived a life marked by Jewish typicalities and runged with powerful Jews.

It so happens that I find Liptak’s legal coverage to be competent and interesting enough.  He’s even been accused by some bloggers of leaning right, something I doubt Linda Greenhouse was ever accused of.

Even Greenhouse’s coverage could not quite be faulted for lack of sophistication.  But, as the record shows, neither has shown sympathy for issues that speak to the dispossession of Whites in America, which would be an easy issue to cover while overseeing the Supreme Court.  Sonia Sotomayor and the Ricci case are just two examples of recent issues that could benefit from a fresh perspective — say, a White one.  Would Liptak include that in his coverage?  So far, he hasn’t.

What this apparently unbroken dynasty shows is that the Jewish web of power is self-perpetuating and self-reinforcing, and makes for a lock-out of White non-Jews at the upper echelons of American power.  The fact is that on the basis of their IQ, Jews are overrepresented among American elites. Though they are both certainly smart people, I see nothing so unusually remarkable about either Liptak or Greenhouse that ethnic connections aren’t a powerful alternate explanation for their choke-hold on the Supreme Court beat.

On one level, this matters to Whites because coverage is far less likely to address their issues.  But it also matters to Whites on a pure power level:  When the top spots are occupied by Jews, they’re not occupied by Whites.  The left, of course, has argued this for years:  Without the “example” of, say, president of the United States as a role model, Blacks everywhere are brought low.  I’m beginning to understand… and if that sounds contradictory, well, such are the difficulties of a multiracial society.

The Times, of course, is no doubt an advocate of “diversity”, by which they mean keeping Whites out and Jayson Blair in.  But this notion of “diversity” doesn’t apply to its own animating ethnic group, Jews.

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What’s most confounding about all this is that Jews themselves, probably like any group in power, doesn’t see itself as having a lock on power.  Quite the opposite:  it sees itself as too recent a victim to worry about its own dominance.

But Whites should recognize this lock on power, understanding how it affects them, and work to change it.

Christopher Donovan (email him) is the pen name of an attorney and former journalist. .

A Fresh Look at a Disgraceful Episode: James Scott’s The Attack on the Liberty

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Forty-two years ago today the USS Liberty, a U.S. spy ship sailing in international waters north of the Sinai Peninsula, sustained a series of aerial and torpedo attacks by Israeli defense forces. Thirty-four U.S. servicemen died and 171 crew members were injured in the relentless assault.

The details of the extensive damage, suffering, and horrific destruction, including the valiant efforts to save the severely injured crew and to keep the ship afloat, are disclosed in James Scott’s riveting new book, The Attack on the Liberty: The Untold Story of Israel’s Deadly 1967 Assault on a U.S. Spy Ship.

The author’s sobering account of the human suffering and carnage during the deadly air and sea attacks draws the reader into a surreal story of heroism, tragedy, despair, and ultimately dishonor by the military branch which warned the surviving crew members not to discuss the details of the attacks to anyone.  (See also this Seattle Times article on Scott’s book.)

Leaving Malta on a New Mission

The 455-foot reconnaissance ship had monitored early developments in the six-day war betweenIsrael and neighboring Arab states near the coast of Egypt. On the fourth day of the war, theUSS Liberty sustained heavy damage after a barrage of fire from Israeli jets. The jets strafed the ship from bow to stern with rocket missiles, cannon shells and machine gun rounds. Cannon fire left bowling-ball size holes in the upper deck of the ship. Israeli torpedo boats fired on theLiberty. A direct torpedo hit killed 26 and severely crippled the ship causing it to list badly.

USS Liberty after attack, with 40-foot wide torpedo hole below the waterline

Crew members worked round the clock, many with twisted pieces of shrapnel lodged in their bodies that resulted in punctured internal organs and severe internal bleeding, in a valiant effort to restore the ship’s communications system after the radio antennae and transmitters were taken out by Israeli missile and rocket fire.

(Last month electronics technician Terry Halbardier received a Silver Star for connecting a cable between an antenna and a radio transmitter during the air assault on the Liberty. Halbardier’s body, left leg, and both arms were hit with shrapnel but the 23-year-old shipmate prevailed despite his wounds and his efforts allowed a radioman to send a Mayday distress call to the U.S. Sixth Fleet. His vital role in restoring the ship’s radio transmitter is believed to have ultimately saved the ship from further attacks.)

Electronics Technician Terry Halbardier received a Silver Star for his heroism in the USS Liberty attack.

Investigators found some 821 rocket and cannon holes that knocked out all of the ship’s 45 antennae. Napalm canisters plastered burning petroleum jelly over parts of the upper deck and created surface temperatures of nearly 3,000 degrees.

Scott notes that the bombing raids, “had shattered portholes, ripped open metal doors, and destroyed the forward machine gun tubs, where sailors had died desperately trying to save the ship. Charred and blistered paint covered much of the port side from the combination of napalm and the 110 gallons of gasoline that had furiously burned on deck.”

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Many of the injured were severely ripped up by flying shrapnel, including razor-sharp metal shards that had penetrated internal organs and in some caused non-stop bleeding. The doctor onboard worked round the clock to treat the injured despite little surgical experience. Sponges were used to soak up the blood where internal hemorrhaging created large deposits and shutdown vital organs among the gravely wounded. Arm to arm blood transfusions were administered in some cases.

Rescue crews from a tug boat sailed as close as a thousand yards behind the ship as theLiberty made its way across the Mediterranean. “The majority of the damage,” Scott notes, “was below the waterline and in the ship’s most sensitive spot, the NSA’s top-secret hub. Seawater flowed freely through flooded compartments as the Liberty steamed west, washing classified papers and bodies into the Mediterranean.” One diver retrieved a body that had been in the water three days, first in the flooded compartments following the torpedo strike and then floating out to sea. The diver noted that a piece of shrapnel struck the back of the sailor’s head and “[t]he exit wound caused the face to explode. Peering through his mask, [the diver] saw what looked like the man’s brains and skin hanging down in the water.”

Debunking Myths

Scott dissects several lingering myths that overshadow the Liberty incident.

Israeli pilots and naval personnel misidentified the USS Liberty.

The notion that the Liberty was fired on erroneously and mistaken for the Egyptian ship El Quseir, a vessel half as big as the Liberty, has been thoroughly discredited. Naval investigators, admirals, former Johnson administration officials, and National Security Agency and State Department officials reject the claim that Israel fired on the Liberty in error.

The Israeli attacks on a U.S. naval ship were accidental.

The actions of the Israeli forces and extent of the destruction indicate that Israeli perpetrators were neither randomly “trigger happy” nor unaware that the targeted ship was an American ship. The author’s father John Scott, a Liberty survivor, was on deck watch on the morning of the attacks and witnessed a reconnaissance plane which “made 3 runs fore and 2 aft in a figure eight pattern…and headed back towards Tel Aviv.”

The apology by the Israeli government and eventual settlement to the families of theLiberty’s dead crewmembers adequately resolved Israel’s culpability in the attacks.

Reparations were paid to the families of the dead and wounded Liberty sailors in two installments (one for $3.3 million and another in March 1969 for $3.5 million). Israelsettled on $6 million to cover damages to the ship, a figure lower than the settlement U.S.officials requested.

The naval inquiry into the attacks absolved Israel’s actions.

Scott quotes Rear Admiral Thomas Brooks, a former director of naval intelligence, who “described the treatment of the Liberty’s crew as a ‘national disgrace.’ The Navy was ordered to hush this up, say nothing, allow the sailors to say nothing….The Navy rolled over and played dead.”

President Johnson ordered Attorney General Nicholas Katzenbach to press the Israelis for reparations “to the injured and the families of the men killed and make sure the payments were generous.” Katzenbach, when asked by the book’s author if “he had ever demanded to know why Israel attacked….’No,’ he said. ‘What good would it do? What would it tell you?’”

Why Did They Do it? Israel’s Motivations for Attacking the USS Liberty

The big unanswered question is what motivated the Israelis to attack a defenseless U.S. ship in international waters. Scott presents a convincing case that the attacks were deliberate and intentional, but offers little insight into the question of the day: Why?

According to Scott, “William Dale, the embassy’s second in command, suspected that the Israelis feared that the intelligence collected by the Libertymight fall into Arab hands. The Department often sent telegrams with intelligence information to multiple embassies. A pro-Arab American diplomat stationed inDamascus, Beirut, or Cairo might pass along information to his contacts, a dangerous wartime proposition for Israel.”

Scott also quotes former NSA director Bobby Ray Inman as saying that former NSA Deputy Director Louis Tordella believed that Israel did not want a repeat of the 1956 Suez Crisis when Eisenhower pressured the Jewish state into withdrawing from territories it had captured. Inman stated that “[Tordella’s] view was that [the Israelis] didn’t want to run a risk that we would detect exactly what they were going to do and try to bring it to a halt with a lot of pressure before they achieved their objectives. … They knew exactly what the ship was and what it was doing and therefore it was, in his [Tordella’s] view, a deliberate act to try to protect the plans until they finished what they were going to do [in the Six-Day War].”

According to a 2006 declassified internal history report, the CIA position  had changed over the years and, given the mounting evidence, it discounted the idea that the attack was a mistake. Former CIA Director Richard Helms cast doubt on the notion that the attack was the result of Israeli blunders. “I don’t think there can be any doubt that the Israelis knew exactly what they were doing,” Helms said, “Why they wanted to attack the Liberty, whose bright idea this was, I can’t possibly know. But any statement to the effect that they didn’t know that it was an American ship and so forth is nonsense.”

Admiral John S. McCain, Sr., Sen. John McCain’s father, barred investigators from traveling to Israel during the naval investigation. Yet the Navy’s full report—released eight days after the incident—concluded that the attack was a case of mistaken identity. The full report was kept from the public record for a full decade until it was declassified and then it omitted “all the evidence that contradictedIsrael’s explanations.”

Scott also seems well aware of the dynamics of ethnic politics and the influence that organized Jewish interests played in the awkward tip-toe responses on the part of the Johnson administration. Scott describes Johnson’s sensitivities to organized Jewish political activists within the Democratic Party as an overriding concern, which seemed to drive the conduct of the administration’s handling of the aftermath of the attacks on the Liberty.

In particular, Scott points out how pro-Israel Johnson was, surrounding himself with Jewish advisors, increasing aid to Israel, etc. However, despite all this concern for Jewish interests, the Jewish community did not support Johnson’s war:

Despite Johnson’s lavish support of Israel, many American Jews refused to back the Vietnam War, a source of frustration inside the administration as antiwar rallies increased and the president’s popularity plummeted. Jews had become so prominent in the antiwar movement that it sparked a protest button: “You don’t have to be Jewish to be against the war in Vietnam.” Johnson, who viewed Vietnam and Israel as small countries threatened by Soviet-backed adversaries, struggled to understand that disconnect.

In the end, the infuriating aspect of Scott’s research on how the Johnson administration handled the USS Liberty incident is that he shows that political considerations and sensitivities to Jewish ethnopolitical interests—an unpopular war in Vietnam, growing disenchantment with the administration’s foreign policies, the domestic influence of Jewish anti-war activists, and Israel’s victory in the six-day war—triumphed over the lives of U.S. servicemen.

What is truly pathetic is that quite a few top people in the Johnson administration (including Johnson himself) were privately enraged over the Israeli attacks and the cavalier response on the part of Israeli officials. Israel issued a brief apology for the attacks but failed to investigate or bring to justice the officials who ordered the attacks. To this day, no one conclusively knows how far up the Israeli chain-of-command the orders to attack the Liberty originated.

That someone in Israel’s military structure did so and continues unaccountable for this deadly, unprovoked massacre is a disgrace to the heroic efforts of the Liberty’s crew who deserve a full accounting—from the U.S. and Israeli governments—of this sordid ordeal.

The Attack on the Liberty: The Untold Story of Israel’s Deadly 1967 Assault on a U.S. Spy Ship, by James Scott; Simon and Schuster, 2009; 374 pp., $27.

Kevin Lamb (email him), a freelance writer, is a former library assistant for Newsweek, managing editor of Human Events, and assistant editor of the Evans-Novak Political Report. He is the managing editor of The Social Contract.

Obama as a Modern Pharaoh

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Those of us who are critical of the power of the Israel Lobby have been intrigued by the fact that the Obama administration seems to be standing up to the Israelis — and, by implication, to the Israel Lobby. After all, during the election campaign Obama did all the right things to show his support of the Israel Lobby and calm the fears of some Jewish activists that he would not be sufficiently pro-Israel, including which Philip Weiss termed a “truckling” speech at the AIPAC convention.

Obama was rewarded for his apparent fealty. Around 80% of Jews voted for Obama, and Jews contributed more than 50% of the Democratic Party’s money during the campaign. His choice of Rahm Emanuel (who served with the Israeli Defense Force during the 1991 Gulf War) as Chief of Staff and the presence of seasoned pro-Israel activists like Dennis Ross in the State Department also made it seem that Obama’s policy toward Israel would not be a major departure.

Nevertheless, the Obama administration has appointed George Mitchell (who has a reputation as relatively evenhanded) as Middle East envoy and made conciliatory statements toward the Muslim world. More importantly, the administration has called for a two-state solution and pressed Israel to put a meaningful freeze on settlement expansion—including what Steven Walt terms the “fig leaf of ‘natural growth’”. (The New York Times reports that if all the currently approved West Bank housing units were actually built, it would almost double the total.)

One could be excused for being skeptical about these developments. Walt interprets the Obama administration’s behavior as entirely in keeping with the thrust of the ideas presented in The Israel Lobby. He interprets the stance of the Obama administration as a hopeful sign that the United States is at last pursuing a policy that is in the interests of both the US and Israel. But he warns that thus far, it’s all rhetoric.

Indeed, other presidents—most notably Jimmy Carter and George H. W. Bush—have put pressure on Israel, only to be thwarted because of the power of the Israel Lobby in Congress. There have already been murmurs of dissent in Congress about Obama’s statements among both Democrats and Republicans—the latter doubtless sensing a political opening.

It must concentrate the minds of the Obama administration to realize that Carter and Bush were one-term presidents who were heavily criticized by the Israel Lobby. Jimmy Carter was widely viewed as hostile to Israel during the 1980 election, and his policy toward Israel was the main impetus to the migration of neoconservatives to the Republican Party. Many believe that George H. W. Bush’s loss in 1992 stemmed from his attempt to rein in the settlements. (George W. Bush apparently got the message and decided not to alienate the Lobby on the settlement issue. This resulted, among other things, in his administration becoming bogged down in a needless and costly war in Iraq.)

One wonders if many American Jews feel they would have been better off with John McCain and his neocon foreign policy advisors—especially considering that McCain’s treasonous attitudes on immigration and the rest of his domestic agenda were compatible with Jewish attitudes.

The reaction to the Obama administration’s rhetoric by Jewish fanatics in Israel has been predictably over the top. National Religious Party’s leader, Science Minister Daniel Herschkowitz, compared Obama to an archetypal anti-Semite from the past: “The American demand to prevent natural growth is unreasonable, and brings to mind Pharaoh who said: Every son that is born ye shall cast into the river.”

Israeli activists are launching protests, and posters of “Barak Hussein Obama” (middle name included) in Arabic headgear with the statement “Anti-Semitic Jew Hater” are being distributed throughout Israel.

Poster of President Obama Wearing a Kaffiyeh

Philip Weiss notes that one of the protests was organized by “none other than Nadia Matar, who when we last saw her was raising [tax deductible] money in a New York synagogue and calling for Mahmoud Abbas to be assassinated.” The following statement by an activist gets at the depth of emotion involved:

I’m here to tell Obama that Eretz Yisrael belongs to the Jewish people. What right does anybody have to tell us to stop building in the land that was given to us by God? I’m not going to stand by and let Obama, or anybody else, tell me where I can live and where I can’t live.

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This is actually quite mild compared to the comments (most of them scatological) by young Israelis in this video by Max Blumenthal. Blumenthal defends his video here, noting the “climate of extremism that exploded into the open when the country attacked Gaza.” His video shows that “vitriolic levels of racism are able to flow through the streets of Jerusalem like sewage, why the grandsons of Holocaust survivors feel compelled to offer the Shoah as justification to behave like fascist street thugs, and how the sons and daughters of successful Jewish American families casually merged Zionist cant with crude white supremacism.” It’s an excellent example showing that attitudes that are normal in Jews are absolutely forbidden to Europeans.

J Street and the Israeli left (and commentators such as Steven Walt) believe that freezing the settlements and agreeing to a viable Palestinian state are good for Israel. I have expressed doubts about this in my review of The Israel Lobby—the main point being that Israel has the power, especially with the cooperation of the US, to achieve its goal of seizing substantially all of the West Bank and relegating the Palestinians to a completely degraded status to the point that most will emigrate.

Of course, these aggressive, expansionist policies make Israel into an international pariah. But the Israel Lobby has a long and successful track record in rationalizing Israeli behavior, at least in the United States.

The more important point is that it really doesn’t matter if it’s good for Israel. The present government is the most right-wing in Israeli history, and many of its supporters are the types of fanatics putting up posters stating that Obama is an “Anti-Semitic Jew hater.”

The extremists have had a powerful say in Israeli politics, at least since the 1967 war. They are now more entrenched than ever. There is simply no way that these people are going to make major territorial concessions without a fight.

Any attempt to rein in the settlements or make a meaningful withdrawal from the West Bank and East Jerusalem or allow a viable Palestinian state would produce a civil war among Israelis. But it’s also quite clear that there is no political will in Israel for supporting such policies. The Labor Party functions mainly to collaborate with the right in order to give it a fig leaf of respectability (see also here). (Predictably, Labor leader Ehud Barak was sent to the US to present the Israeli position on the settlements.) According to my calculation, theethno–religious–nationalist–pro-settlement right holds 92 of 120 seats in the Knesset.

As throughout Jewish history, it is the most committed members who determine the direction of the entire group. This is doubtless true of most groups, but it is especially the case with Jews where there is a long history of fanaticism. In the present case, the most fanatical members of the Jewish community are firmly in support of territorial expansion in the West Bank. They are a solid majority in Israeli politics.

I am reminded of Christiane Amanpour’s depiction of Jewish fanatics in her excellent TV documentary, God’s Jewish  Warriors (now back online[!]). One of the early scenes shows a large force of Israeli soldiers forcibly removing settlers from a Hebron neighborhood. Imagine what it would be like to remove anything approaching the nearly 500,000 settlers (as of 2006) now living in the West Bank, East Jerusalem, and the Golan Heights.

These West Bank settlers and Jewish activists are massively ethnocentric, and they do not accept Western values like democracy and free speech. They live in a completely Jewish world where their every thought and perception is colored by their Jewish identity. Theirs is an apartheid world separated by high concrete walls from their Palestinian neighbors, where even tiny settlements are necessarily protected by the Israeli army.

At a time when Americans are constantly being encouraged by Jewish organizations like the ADL to be ever more tolerant of all kinds of diversity, these people are anything but tolerant. Calls for expropriation and expulsion of the Palestinians are commonplace among them. Many believe that God gave Jews all of the West Bank and Jerusalem.

Such people may not be representative of the Jewish community, at least in America. But their numbers are large, and they have created “facts on the ground” that make any kind of reasonable settlement impossible.

In the foreseeable future, it is quite clear that no Israeli government will fail to promote their interests. And the problem will only exacerbate as time goes on because the fanatics are the ones having the children. Already, the calls for “natural growth” of the settlements are rationalized because of the high fertility of the settler population.

As Walt points out, there are indeed signs in America that the less fanatic Jews, such as J Street, may have some influence in blunting the force of the Israel Lobby or possibly even turning it against the settlement movement. However, in keeping with the general finding that the most extreme Jews tend to win the day within the Jewish community, I predict that in the end Jews will be forced to choose between supporting their extremist brethren, or become marginalized or even ostracized from the Jewish community. The great majority of activist Jews in the US will support Israel even if it continues to stand firmly behind the settlement movement.

And when push comes to shove, Jews will go along with the activists who lead the organized Jewish community. One can talk about U.S. interests or Israeli interests all one wants, but this is a fight to the finish.

I’m not sure that Obama realizes what he’s getting into.

Kevin MacDonald is a professor of psychology at California State University–Long Beach.  Email him.

Star Trek and the Multi-Racial Future

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The new Star Trek movie, directed by J.J. Abrams, raises interesting questions about the future of multiculturalism.  The film sends two strong messages:

1)    Diversity is normal.  As in the original television series, the cast of characters is a menagerie of distinct races and cultures: Kirk, a White man from rural Iowa; Scotty, a Scotsman with a heavy Scottish accent; Chekhov, a Russian with a heavy Russian accent; Sulu, an Asian; Uhura, a African-American; and Spock, a super-smart, green-blooded Vulcan.  The producers of Star Trek assume that in the year 2248 (239 years in the future), people will still exhibit distinct racial, cultural, and linguistic traits. Non-Whites are depicted as no less competent and no less likely to hold positions of authority than White people, and diverse workforces on spaceships are highly functional.

2)    Interracial relationships are normal.  All of the sexual/romantic relationships depicted in the film are interracial except for one (Kirk’s father and mother).  Kirk, apparently, is sexually attracted only to non-Whites and non-humans.  Interracial relationships are depicted not only as common, but as unquestionably right.  Spock, who has a Vulcan father and a human mother, reacts emotionally to nothing except criticism of his mixed parentage.  In a poignant moment in the movie, Spock’s father teaches him that one’s choice of a mate should be based more on “love” than on “logic” — or genetic similarity, we can assume.  Spock himself has a black romantic partner in the movie.

The Multi-Racial World of Star Trek

I wonder how many viewers perceive the incompatibility of these two messages. Star Trek’s fictional world is set 10 generations in the future. It’s a world where technology has eliminated geographical barriers, where people live and work in well-functioning, diverse environments, where interracial relationships are normal, and where any social controls against exogamy are considered morally wrong. In such a world, the races and cultures would have had plenty of time to blend together.

The producers of Star Trek are essentially suggesting that the races and cultures of the world today should not only celebrate diversity, but practice exogamy to a very high degree — at least to the degree, presumably, that groups of White people have practiced exogamy with other White groups in the United States.

In considering the suggestion, imagine if a colonial American playwright, writing in 1770 (239 years in the past), made a prediction that the descendants of the distinct groups of Swedish, German, and English White people then living in America would, in 2009, continue to constitute three distinct groups with preserved genetic and linguistic traits.  Having the benefit of hindsight, we would think this playwright was a fool.

So what should we think of Alex Kurtzman and Roberto Orci, the writers of the new Star Trek movie, and J.J. Abrams, the director?

Isn’t it obvious that in the long term, you can have diversity or free-wheeling exogamy, but you can’t have both?  If you want genetic and cultural distinctiveness, you will have to tolerate social controls against exogamy and a “good fences make good neighbors” attitude to cultural interaction.  If you want to remove all barriers to exogamy, on the other hand, you should expect a genetically blended society of people who won’t know their historical roots without conducting extensive genealogical research.

I think this is obvious now, but it wasn’t obvious to me just a few years ago, before I started reading publications like The Occidental Observer.  I remember hearing an interview of an Iraqi man who had been imprisoned by U.S. forces during the Iraq War.  He said (I paraphrase), “I have a message for the American people: Iraqis are happy to interact with Americans in diplomatic settings, in trade, at academic and scientific conferences, and the like. But I want to make one thing clear: You can never have our women!”

At the time, I thought perhaps he was joking, or if he was not, then he was probably an intolerant religious fundamentalist who had not learned the benefits of diversity and thus hated America and clung to backward views about women. If “his” women wanted to move to America and marry Americans, I thought, they should be allowed to pursue their happiness.

Now, however, I think this man’s attitude (or the gender-neutral essence of it) may be the only hope earth has for the conservation of diversity into the twenty-third century.  It’s a standoffish position, certainly, but not a “hateful” one.  It allows for intercultural friendships, just not miscegenation.  And while this attitude may not seem as “positive” and conflict-free as the no-barriers stance exemplified in the Star Trek movie, isn’t it better to risk hurt feelings in the short term in exchange for protecting against cultural loss in the long term?

Of course, any attempt to re-legitimate social controls against exogamy would undermine decades of efforts to pathologize these social controls, especially those practiced by Whites. Perhaps it is interesting that the ethnicities of the movie’s creators — Abrams and Kurtzman are Jewish, while Orci is Latino — are ethnicities that are relatively insulated from the integrationist zeitgeist. There is no popular criticism of Rahm Emmanuel’s decision to volunteer at an Israeli Defense Force base during the Persian Gulf War, for example, or Sonia Sotomayor’s decision to join La Raza. Meanwhile, Louis Farrakhan is considered dangerous, all forms of explicit White collectivism are considered evil, and Barack Obama’s mixed parentage is celebrated.

If the two messages of the Star Trek movie dominate American culture over the next ten generations, perhaps the only distinctive groups left standing will be those that are able to control culture in order to exempt themselves from the universal moral norm of miscegenation and continue to maintain social controls against exogamy among their own group members. Whites, of course, being considered the historically “dominant” group against which other groups define themselves, will be least able to obtain such exemptions, and thus, perhaps, the least likely to be around to command the Starship Enterprise.

Jonathan Pyle (email him) is a lawyer in Philadelphia.

The Sotomayor Nomination: More Glimpses of Jewish Activism — and a Warning to Republicans

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The campaign by some Jews with access to the media to get Elena Kagan nominated for the soon-to-be vacant Supreme Court position failed —but will probably be resurrected the next time around. VDARE.com’s Patrick Cleburne has also noted the Jewish angle to the pro-Kagan campaign — suggesting that the article by Jeffrey Rosen questioning Sotomayor’s intellectual qualifications was really an attempt to promote Kagan by default. In a follow-up article, Rosen stressed the need for the next Supreme Court nominee to be “not merely impressive but absolutely stellar.”

You can see where this is going: Kagan = brilliant — despite her less than lackluster record of academic scholarship en route to the most prestigious position in legal academia.

Writing in the LA Times, David Greenberg does his part, describing Elena Kagan as “manifestly brilliant,” and also agreeing with Cleburne that criticisms of Sotomayor were motivated by the desire to promote people like Kagan.

Of course, Jews need not fear that Sotomayor would disappoint them in her voting. Representatives of Jewish groups were actively involved in consulting about the nomination. And even though they may have preferred Kagan, they doubtless had no objections to Sotomayor.

Gary McCoy Cartoon

Indeed, Sotomayor has long been courted by Jewish groups. Part of the full court press style of Jewish activism is that any person who is influential or who may at some point in the future become influential will be socialized to be sensitive to Jewish issues. And they will be scrutinized in the process, so that when the time comes, Jews can be confident that people of influence will be on board with their concerns.

In 1986 Sotomayor was invited to participate in Project Interchange, an undertaking of the American Jewish Committee aimed at providing “current and emerging United States and international leaders with an enhanced understanding of, and perspective on, Israel and the pursuit of Middle East peace through introductory educational seminars in Israel” (links in original). The people invited on these junkets are quite diverse — including members of the US military, editors of student newspapers in American universities, presidents and chancellors of American universities, French Muslim civic leaders, Pentacostal Latino clergy, and Indian-Americans.

The only thing they have in common is that at some point they may be able to influence policy toward issues important to the organized Jewish community, even if that time is a long way in the future.

Project Interchange isn’t the only such organization. The Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs has long promoted ties between the US and Israeli military establishments. JINSA pays for trips to Israel for retired U.S. generals and admirals who then write op-ed pieces and sign letters and advertisements championing the Likudnik line. JINSA also has programs for sending US law enforcement personnel to Israel and for providing speakers at US military academies.

Since her 1986 visit to Israel, Sotomayor visited Israel again in 1996 and participated in a recent U.S.-Israel forum on immigration. She is also close friends with Project Interchange founder Debbie Berger and her husband, Paul.

Such courting of future leaders is doubtless an important aspect of Jewish activism. Whenever someone is mentioned for high office, Jewish newspapers report on his or her Jewish connections. In effect, there is a vetting process based on issues of importance to the Jewish community. And a critical part of that process is first hand, face-to-face relationships with Jews who are well-known and trusted by the wider Jewish community.  In effect, Debbie and Paul Berger are vouching for Sonia Sotomayor.

The JTA article “Life story, trips to Israel tie Sotomayor to Jews” is also of interest because it sheds light on how Jews think of themselves and their role in ethnic politics in America.

The story of her life — the daughter of a Puerto Rican single mother from the Bronx, N.Y., whose ambitions knew no bounds — resounded with a community that has made the story of immigrant triumph over struggle a template of Jewish American success.

“It was impossible not to moved by her personal story,” said Mark Pelavin, the associate director of the Reform movement’s Religious Action Center. “To see her mother sitting there and think about what this says about her and her country — the combination of someone who grew up in a housing project, who has been on the bench for a long time, but who has been a prosecutor as well, that combination is very powerful.”

“It was thrilling,” said Sammie Moshenberg, the Washington director of the National Council of Jewish Women.

These comments are quite similar to what Jews say when asked about why they support African Americans. As noted by historian Hasia Diner, Jews “believe that Jewish concern for black people was ‘natural,’ growing out of parallel experiences of suffering and oppression.”

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There is an element of self-deception in this. The Jewish rise from immigrant poverty to elite status has virtually nothing in common with the rise of people like Sotomayor who are the beneficiaries of the post-1960s affirmative action culture of America. Whatever Jewish self conceptions of their role in American ethnic politics, the only consistent thread has been to oppose the interests of the White, European-derived majority. In addition to favoring massive non-White immigration and promoting programs that pathologize White identity and interests, making alliances with other minority groups has been a critically important part of that effort.

The main Jewish organizations taking a leadership role in building alliances with non-White groups are the American Jewish Committee, the Jewish Community Council of Greater Washington, and the Foundation for Ethnic Understanding. For example, the FFEU was cofounded by Rabbi Marc Schneier, president of the North American Boards of Rabbis; Russell Simmons of hip hop fame is the Chairman of the Board of Directors. The FFEU is closely tied to the World Jewish Congress, which cosponsors the Foundation’s Washington, DC office and several of its programs.

These Jewish organizations have sought close relationships with Latino organizations such as the National Council of La Raza and the League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC). For example, one project of the FFEU is to organize an annual meeting of the NAACP, the National Council of La Raza, the World Jewish Congress, and the National Asian Pacific American Legal Consortium.

Quite clearly the various non-European ethnic groups are developing close ties, and Jewish organizations are taking the lead in this effort. As Paul Gottfried said about minority groups opposing dominant cultures (and I agreed), it’s not that Jews are unique in playing this game. They are just better at it than others.

I point out this rich tapestry of Jewish ethnic activism to give some idea of what those who advocate for White identity and interests are up against. Like the Obama presidency, the nomination of Sonia Sotomayor is exactly the sort of thing favored by the activist Jewish community because it is yet another marker in the march toward the dispossession of Whites in America.

Finally, it’s interesting that the standard line from some party strategists is that Republicans need to be very cautious in their opposition to Sotomayor because Latinos are an emerging political force. Of course, this is the same advice that these strategists give on immigration: Don’t do anything to anger the Latinos.

But of course, the reality is that Latinos are never going to be attracted to a Republican Party that is in any sense conservative, much less oriented to the interests of Whites in a way that is comparable to how the Democratic Party is oriented to the interests of non-Whites. Polls in California show that Latinos favor high levels of government services and are willing to raise taxes to get them. California is now in a historic budget crisis in which government services to its ever-expanding population of poor and uneducated — fueled massively by legal and illegal immigration — simply cannot be sustained without huge increases in taxes. But massive tax increases will drive out businesses and White taxpayers in droves — indeed they have already done so.

White people might well be willing to pay higher taxes if the beneficiaries were people like themselves. But most Whites are not going to vote for higher taxes when the main beneficiaries are Latinos and other non-White poor — a straightforward result of our evolutionary psychology, as Frank Salter (see also here) and J. Philippe Rushton have shown. Instead, Whites voted overwhelmingly for a ballot proposition that would have denied services to illegal immigrants — only to be thwarted by the courts and other political elites.

Like all the great social trends, the Third Worldization of America begins in California.

A far better strategy for Republicans is to realize that their only long term hope is to become a party that explicitly (or at least implicitly) favors White people and their interests. A critical part of that process is to acknowledge that ethnic identity politics is not just for people like Sotomayor (who is a member of La Raza), Obama, and the Democratic Party.

Nate Beeler Cartoon

Sotomayor is quite blunt about the role of ethnic identity in influencing judicial temperament, famously stating “I would hope that a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male who hasn’t lived that life.” This is from someone who owes pretty much her whole career to her ethnic identity and the willingness of American elites to ease her path into Princeton, Yale Law, the Circuit Court of Appeals, and now the Supreme Court of the United States.

We have to adopt the same explicit sense of White identity and interests. The Republicans seem bent on committing suicide rather than abandoning their principled hostility to ethnic identity politics for Whites. But, as Peter Brimelow notes, if that is the policy of the Republican Party, another party must and will be formed that do exactly that.

Kevin MacDonald is a professor of psychology at California State University–Long Beach.  Email him.

Who is an anti-Semite?

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Someday the word “anti-Semite” will be studied as an example of distorted political discourse — as a signifier attached to somebody who advocates the reign of demonology. How does one dare critically talk about the extraordinary influence the Jews in the West without running the risk of social opprobrium?

We certainly cannot expect that Jewish intellectuals will think critically about Jewish influence. As a French author Hervé Ryssen writes, “internationally-known Jewish authors, haunted by the either real or surreal specter of anti-Semitism, consider it a sickness, which enables them to avoid any form of introspection.”

While it is a commonplace for White Europeans and Americans to critically talk in private about Arabs, Mexicans, Africans or, for that matter, deride their fellow White citizens, a critical comment about the influence of Jews, even if founded on empirical facts, is viewed as an insult to Jews. If a serious European and American scholar or a politician ventures into this minefield, his gesture is interpreted as a sign of somebody who writes his obituary.

Such a schizophrenic climate of self-censorship in the West will sooner or later lead to dramatic consequences for both Jews and non-Jews. The lack of healthy dialogue can last for decades, but feigned conviviality between opposing groups cannot last forever.  Mendacity carries the germ of civil war.

While many authors in the West sport staggering erudition in unabashedly challenging modern myths, the most sensitive point of reference of the twentieth century — Jewish influence — is carefully avoided. If the subject of Jews is ever brought up in a European or American public forum, it is in a laudatory fashion — a clear indication of the morbid desire of White ruling elites to curry favor with the Jews.

In the same vein, many intelligent White American and European racialists frequently decorate themselves with their “token Jews” in hopes of achieving some legitimacy in the mainstream media and seeking some camouflage in their opposition to non-European immigration or to various other myths of multicultural ideology. These individuals will likely be the first to declare themselves anti-Semites if the wind changes and critiques of Jewish influence become part of a new Zeitgeist.

The lack of open discussion about Jewish influence corroborates the thesis that Jews play a crucial role in opinion making in Western societies.  True power shows itself by not being open to discussion. Hypothetically speaking, if Jews, by some miracle, were to play a marginal role in Europe or America — as they publicly claim they do, then logically, they would not object to being the subjects of critical discussion, or for that matter derision — just as it is legitimate to discuss the power of other groups. But Americans are far more likely to read books about the nefarious power of Christian conservatives or “white racism” than they are to hear about the far greater power of the organized Jewish community.

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A common trait among many liberal Whites is intellectual servility — to look up to Jews as paragons of intelligence and moral rectitude. In the beginning of the 21st century there is no worse insult than qualifying a White politician or a White academic as an “anti-Semite.”

This intellectual servility of the Western political and academic class toward Jewry provides legitimacy to Jews in their endless search for a real or surreal anti-Jewish straw man. Organizations like the ADL trumpet even the most minor and deranged bit of anti-Semitism as heralding the next Holocaust.

The strange compound noun ‘anti-Semitism’ only gives Jews an additional alibi to project themselves as victims of prejudice. If anti-Semitism were non-existent it would have to be invented. The buzzword ‘anti-Semitism’ bestows upon the Jews a role of the moral and intellectual super-ego for White Europeans and Americans and by proxy for the entire world.

The frightened attitude of American and European intellectuals, who often extol the concept of “intellectual freedom,” is best seen in their schizoid attitude toward Jews. This was noted a long time ago by Wilmot Robertson, in his The Dispossessed Majority: “the pro-Semite has …made himself a mirror image of the anti-Semite.”  The danger of this fatal embrace lies not with Jews, but with Whites. An American anti-Semite must appear in the eyes of Jews as a very bizarre species. On the one hand, he hates this alien Jew; yet on the other, he lugs behind himself the Levantine mindset of hatred toward outgroups that is not of European cultural origin.

A prominent Jewish-French politician and author, Jacques Attali, in his much acclaimed book Les Juifs, le monde et l’argent, writes: “As Russian Jews invented socialism, and as Austrian Jews invented psychoanalysis, American Jews in the forefront, participated in the birth of American capitalism and in the Americanization of the entire world.” Because he is Jewish, Attali can make such comments without incurring the wrath of the Jewish activist organizations. If a White racialist author made a similar comment, he or she would be immediately shouted down as an “anti-Semite.”

That is why when a Jewish author talks openly and critically about Judaism — especially the strong Jewish role in social and political affairs in the postmodern West, his prose will elicit awe and respect. His words may be sometimes met with apprehension and irritation by his fellow Jews, as witnessed by Norman Finkelstein or to some extent Noam Chomsky, but his words will nevertheless find their place in the ears and eyes of mainstream audience.

The Necessity of ‘Kulturvolk’

A Jewish author, preferably of liberal or leftist pedigree, who tackles this greatest taboo of all times, will have a safe passage to media success. Such is the case with the liberal Jewish-Russian-American scholar, Yuri Slezkine, whose research does not reveal anything new regarding the Jewish role in the  ex-Soviet Union and elsewhere. Yet Slezkine has the privilege of saying what is forbidden to the goyim.

Slezkine notes that America, unlike Europe, with its relatively strong tribal allegiances, knew only “vestigial establishment tribalism.” From its inception, America was far more propitious for Jews than Europe; it became a laboratory of ideas for diverse multicultural and academic experiments — be they of infra-, intra-European, or extra-European nature. ”What Jewish intellectuals could not attain in Europe, or later in the Soviet Union, was at hand in America where Jewish power, economic status and cultural influence have increased dramatically since 1960.”

It should not come as a surprise that similar views about Jews were elaborated much earlier by many German scholars affiliated with the Institut zum Studium der Judenfrage in National Socialist Germany, but who for obvious reasons are squarely denounced as proverbial Nazis and anti-Semites. The Institute, whose director was Eberhard Taubert , had a large number of scholars whose goal was the detailed anthropological, political and psychological research of the Jewish question. Taubert, after WWII, was not purged but worked for a while for US intelligence.  In passing, it is worth noting that unlike the English and the French language, the rich German language does not have a single vulgar or slang word for the word “the Jew” (“Jude”).

Many Jewish scholars are aware of the schizoid White European mentality.  As Shmuel Trigano noted, while setting itself up as “new Israel,” the West recognized in Judaism a factual, if not a juridical jurisdiction over itself. And this boils down to saying that the West has become Jewish to the extent that for centuries it kept forbidding to Jews their own identity. It follows from this that the strange verbal construct “Judeo-Christianity” is an elusive oxymoron; it imprisons the West, which by its own act of submission accepts a different mindset — which is not its own.

One could argue that the West is subconsciously anti-Semitic to the extent that it has always yearned — be it in a theological or ideological fashion — to become Jewish. The thesis can be put forward that the West will cease to be obsessed with Jews and anti-Semitism once it leaves this neurosis, once it returns to its own local European traditions, and by stopping to be what it is not and allowing the “Other” to continue what he is.

What has been missing in the West, and particularly in America over the last 50 years is a strong sense of cultural identity. The German word Kulturvolk, stands for a rooted cultural and national community (and not just the adherence to White race), and it is a prerequisite for a sound White identity. In contrast to Germans, Russians, French, etc., the weak cultural identity among White elites in America was a major flaw among American nationalists, racialists and conservatives who, while being aware of Jewish influence, were unable to muster up cultural energy to counter it. However, with rapid racial changes in America there are signs that the common cultural identity among Whites in America is on the rise.

The feigned fraternity between the postmodern Euro-American “shabbos goyim” and American Jews is veiled in mendacity and mutual make-belief mimicry which can be spotted in the Western political establishment and the media at all times. It is too grotesque to last forever. Admittedly, it only gives rise to proverbial Jewish hubris which will continue to grow as long as it receives servile fodder from self-censored European academics and politicians.

Tom Sunic (www.tomsunic.info; http://doctorsunic.netfirms.com/) is an author, former political science professor in the USA, translator and former Croat diplomat. He is the author of Homo americanus: Child of the Postmodern Age ( 2007).