Never has money been so important in human relations. Never has it so much affected the destiny of so many Americans and Europeans. Today money has become a civil religion that makes it the centerpiece of discourse in all cultures and subcultures. At European and American cafes, on the Champs Élysées, or on Sunset Boulevard, at concert halls, and even in parliaments, one hears and smells its verbal derivatives such as “moulah,” “dough,” “fric,” “Kohle,” “pognon.”  It is a language understood by all. In all segments of their lives Western citizens invariably talk about money and what money can buy. The great respite may come with the current financial crisis, which is finally undoing the liberal system with all its conventional wisdoms and lies. The ongoing economic depression may be the sign that the reign of money and the dictatorship of well-being are coming to an end.

Sounds familiar? No, it does not.  In ancient European traditions money and commerce were looked down upon and at times these two activities were in principle forbidden to Europeans. Merchants were often foreigners and considered second class citizens.

The famous English poet and novelist D. H. Lawrence — a “revolutionary nationalist” — talks about “money madness” in his collection of poems Pansies. His poem “Kill money” summarizes best this facet of 20th-century mores: Kill money/put money out of existence/It is a perverted instinct/A hidden thought /which rots the brain, the blood, the bones, the stones, the soul.

Similar views were held by the long forgotten American Southern agrarians in the 30’s, who viciously attacked American money madness and the belief in progress. They had dark premonitions about the future of America. As noted by John Crowe Ransom, “Along with the gospel of progress goes the gospel of service. Americans are still dreaming the materialistic dreams of their youth.” And further he writes: “The concept of Progress is the concept of man’s increasing command, and eventually a perfect command over the forces of nature: a concept which enhances too readily our conceit and brutalizes our life.”

Thousands of book titles and thousands of poems from antiquity all the way to early modernity bear witness to a tradition of deep revulsion Europeans had for money and merchants. Charles Dickens’ description of the character Fagin the Jew in his novel Oliver Twist may be soon cut out from the mandatory school curriculum. Fagin’s physical repulsiveness, his strange name, and most of all his Jewish identity do not square with modern ukases on ethnic and diversity training in American schools. The crook Fagin illustrates boundless human greed when he sings to himself and his young  captive boys: “In this life, one thing counts / In the bank, large amounts / I’m afraid these don’t grow on trees, / You’ve got to pick-a-pocket or two / You’ve got to pick-a-pocket or two, boys, / You’ve got to pick-a-pocket or two.”

Already Ezra Pound, a connoisseur of the English language and a visionary on the methods of usury, and his contemporary,  Norwegian Nobel prize winnerKnut Hamsun, have disappeared from library shelves. Their fault? They critically examined the crisis of financial capitalism, or what we call more euphemistically today “global recession” and the main movers and shakers behind it.

In medieval times, money and the merchant class were social outcasts solely needed to run the economy of a country. Yet today they have morphed into role models of the West represented by a slick and successful banker dressed in an Armani suit and sporting a broad smile on his face. What a change from traditional Europe in which an intelligent man was destined for priesthood, sainthood, or a military career!

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It is with the rising tide of modernity that the value system began to change. Even nowadays the word ‘merchant’ in the French and the German languages (marchand, Händler) has a slightly pejorative meaning, associated with a foreigner, prototypically a Jew. The early Catholic Church had an ambiguous attitude toward money — and toward Jews. Well known are St. Luke’s parables (16:19–31) that it “is easier for a camel to go thru the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven.”

But the Church chose a less pious way to power. In 1179, the Third Lateran Council forbade Jews from living in Christian communities and exiled them to ghettos — with full rights to practice usury and tax collecting. To a large extent the Church, while providing the best shelter for Jews against frequent bouts of popular anti-Jewish anger, also greatly amassed wealth — courtesy of Jewish tax collectors.

The father of the Enlightenment, the 18th-century French philosopher Voltaire, is often quoted as a first spokesman of tolerance and human rights in Western civilization. But it is often forgotten that Voltaire was also an unabashed anti-Semite. Voltaire’s critical remarks about Jews and their love for money were recently expunged from his books, or simply not translated. But some still thrive such as “always superstitious and greedy for the good of others, always barbarous, crawling when in misfortune and insolent in prosperity, that is what the Jews were in the eyes of the Greeks and Romans..”  (Essais sur les mœurs) 

The ancient European ruling class certainly had its share of corruption and greed. But in principle, until the Enlightenment, the social roles of money and merchants were subjugated to the role of the prince and power politics. Until then, the entire value system had been based on spiritual transcendence and not on economic growth — at least in its appearance. In ancient Greece, King Midas who was a kind man, could not resist the temptation of turning everything into gold with his magic fingers, until he ruined his family, turned water into undrinkable metal, and his face assumed the shape of a donkey. King Croesus went berserk after amassing so much wealth that he could not devote his time and his thoughts to the impending war with the Persians.

In the ancient European tradition, revulsion against money pervades the sagas and the old popular legends, teaching everybody that piety prospers over prosperity. Material wealth brings disaster.

Today, by contrast, official advocacy of frugality and modesty is perceived as a sign of the early stage of lunacy. If a well-educated and well-cultivated man comes along and starts preaching modesty or rejects honoraria for his work, he is considered a failure, a person who does not respect his own worth. How on earth can some well-read and well-bred person offer his services for free?  How on earth can a well-educated man refuse using his mental resources to generate the almighty dollar? The answer is not difficult to discover. In capitalism everything has its price, but nothing has value.

The modern liberal capitalist system is a deeply inhuman system, based on fraudulent teaching that everybody is equal in economic competition. In reality though, it rewards only those whose skills and talents happen to be marketable. Those rare Whites who decide to retain some vestiges of old European traditions are squarely pronounced incompetent.  Liberal capitalism both in America and in Europe has turned all humans into perishable commodities.

Nobody summarized this better than the Italian philosopher Julius Evola,another revolutionary nationalist who wrote: “Facing the classical dilemma ‘your money or your life,’ the bourgeois will answer: ‘Take my life but leave me my money.’”

Greed, passionate greed eclipses all elements of human decency. Until relatively recently avarice was laughed at and its chief protagonists were considered immoral people, so well represented in Molière’s comedy L’Avare. Today the greedier the better: The money maker is the ultimate role model.

Both East and West participate in this ethic of greed. The richest people in post-communist Eastern Europe are former communist hacks who converted themselves in a twinkle of an eye from disciples of Marx into acolytes of Milton Friedman and Friedrich Hayek. Finance capitalism provides the perception of limitless possibility of how to get rich out of the blue. This is a typical Bernie Madoff syndrome, namely that affluence can be created by sheer speculation. The entire banking system in Eastern Europe has been sold to foreigners over the last 10 years.

Modern capitalism and a penchant for finance owe much to Judaism.  Werner Sombart, a German disciple of Max Weber, who can in no way be called an anti-Semite wrote in The Jews and Modern Capitalism that “money was their sole companion when they were thrust naked into the street, and their sole protector when the hand of the oppressor was heavy upon them. So they learned to love it, seeing that by its aid alone they could subdue the mighty ones of the earth. Money became the means whereby they — and through them all mankind — might wield power without themselves being strong.”

Money changes social mores too. Young White couples put off having children until they achieve their economic dreams, while Mexicans and Blacks begin having children as impoverished teenagers, and Muslims place a high value on fertility. This is one of the main causes of our malaise, as White societies with declining fertility are inundated by highly fertile non-White populations with value systems that prize fertility over the accumulation of the accouterments of economic success.

And in this economic recession these Whites are not interested in a pay raise but rather in how to keep their job — security at all cost, even if it means working for lower wages. Neither are young job market entrants interested in saving money. Instead they live on credit in their petty little niche with their petty little pleasures and without incurring any risks.

What a difference from early American pioneers described by Jack London, who braved the vagaries of weather and who totally ignored the meaning of “hedge funds”! The attractions of money and the necessity of making money mean that everybody in our postmodern world becomes prey to the system.

It is a fundamental mistake among many so called right wingers and racialists to assume that capitalism is the only answer to communism. Both systems are in fact similar because they preach the same religion of progress and the unfolding of earthly paradise — albeit in different gears.  But this time liberal capitalism has nobody to hide behind in order to conceal its vulgar depravity. The likely hypothesis is that the crumbling capitalist system will fall apart as a result of its own victory. One dies always from those who give him birth.

Tom Sunic (http://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).

I’ve just finished researching and writing a long essay on a two decade-old phenomenon in which the film image of African American males has improved dramatically. It now rivals that of white males, who outnumber blacks by about seven to one. (We might also mention that it was white males who ruled and largely built the nation we know as America.) Like others, I do not believe this process has “just happened.” Rather, I believe it is the result of a determined effort of elites to displace whites—especially males—from positions of status and power, if not to eliminate them altogether.

J.B. Cash, who is associated with the website Caste Football, describes this process about as well as anyone:

There are various names for the ideology of the elite. Some call it “political correctness.” Others call it “Cultural Marxism.” But the labels don’t matter as long as one understands what is going on: the ruling elites are waging a cultural and racial war against Western values, Western civilization, and particularly Western man, i.e., the white man. In the name of the feel-good mantras of diversity and multiculturalism, all the values of traditional white civilization have been declared bad and everything opposed to them declared good. Every idea, attitude, and institution that protects the white race and promotes its continued existence is being destroyed, as a precondition for the physical destruction of the race itself. No arena of life is spared this agenda’s icy grip. Every movie, television show, news story, book, and sermon must advance it, under the watchful eye of an army of censors and snitches demanding unyielding fidelity to the agenda. No argument or evidence is allowed to challenge it.

(For those so interested, William Lind’s Who Stole Our Culture adds further useful discussion.)

As my main area of academic research is film and its influence on society, I am naturally interested in the changing portrayals of various ethnic, racial, and gender groups in American society. Toward this end, my recent research involved the image of the noble black man, or, as Richard Brookhiser dubs him, the Numinous Negro.

Brookhiser tells us that the word ‘numinous’ is a Roman term for “the presiding divinity . . . of a place.” It also means “spiritually elevated.” According to Brookhiser, the Numinous Negro presides over America, “and contact with him elevates us spiritually.” The most obvious example comes in the person of Morgan Freeman in films such as The Shawshank Redemption, Deep Impact (U.S. president) and Bruce Almighty, where he plays, well, God. Though Brookhiser adds that “the Numinous Negro need not be a man — Toni Morrison and Oprah are Numinous Negroes (Ms. Morrison is a seer; Oprah is a sage)” — the vast majority of recent films featuring the Numinous Negro star male characters. I’ve already written about Denzel Washington, another excellent example of the genus.

Morgan Freeman Expressing his Numinosity as God in Bruce Almighty

Previously, I had done more work on the films of Washington than those of Morgan Freeman, so my latest essay saw me delving into the filmography of Mr. Freeman. Though I’ve emphasized how positive the Hollywood version of the Numinous Negro has become, even I was surprised by how extensive Freeman’s oeuvre is in that respect.

My general understanding was that Freeman’s public emergence as a Numinous Negro came in 1989 as the aw-shucks chauffeur in Driving Miss Daisy and was cemented by his role as the redeemed prisoner in The Shawshank Redemption (1994). Of course, film critics point out the irony that the tall Tennessean’s first big role in film was as the cruel pimp Fast Black in Street Smart (1987), for which he was nominated Best Supporting Actor. This exception aside, the point remains that Freeman’s characters have marched in lockstep with the multicultural ideology that increasingly elevates blacks in the American imagination.

I could easily go on to describe how by 1998, when Freeman played the role of kindly U.S. President in Deep Impact, his film persona was fixed as the intelligent moral center of each of his films. Steve Sailer, the film critic for The American Conservative and VDARE’s special Sunday columnist, aptly dubs Freeman America’s “Spiritual Presence-in-Chief.” Just go to the Wikipedia page on Freeman’s filmography to confirm this.  

For example, a year after The Shawshank Redemption, he played brilliant police mentor to Brad Pitt’s rash character in Seven, followed by his role as savant Dr. Alex Cross, a forensic psychologist, in Kiss the Girls. Having written tomes on the psychology of (presumably white) serial killers, he is unusually expert in following ambiguous clues. Freeman reprised his role as Dr. Cross in Along Came a Spider (2001), where once again Cross is an agent of deliverance to a young white woman.

In The Sum of All Fears, Freeman played Director of Central Intelligence to Ben Affleck’s young white Jack Ryan character (is anyone noticing a pattern here?) A year later, in 2003, Freeman appeared as God in Bruce Almighty (the 2007 sequel was Evan Almighty).

The following year saw Freeman team up with Clint Eastwood in the drama Million Dollar Baby, where Freeman won Best Supporting Actor for his performance as former prize fighter Eddie “Scrap-Iron” Dupris, a washed up, blind-in-one-eye boxer who manages to get by with a job as janitor at a local gym.

While Freeman’s main persona in Hollywood films is that of the wise and kindly mentor, generally to the young white star, in Batman Begins (2005) he is also elevated to the pinnacle of technological sophistication. Playing Lucius Fox, he is a scientist in biochemistry and mechanical engineering, supplying Bruce Wayne with the fabulous equipment he needs as a flying crime fighter. (He reprises the role in the 2008 sequel The Dark Knight.)

(Steve Sailer unravels the opening Hollywood conceit in Batman Begins, referring to the opening murder of Bruce’s parents: “As an old Chicagoan, I can assure you that one aspect of Batman Begins is standard-issue Hollywood hokum: the murderous mugger is blond. Blond bad guys are a lot more common in movies and television than in real life.”)

I could go on, but this is a mere website column, not a book. After all, by 1995 Freeman was starring in about two films a year, increasing to an average of three by 2005. In any case, my attention during my research turned in the other direction, to what Freeman had been doing in the decades prior to his Hollywood stardom. My discovery there was a surprise.

Freeman did not simply emerge fully formed as a great actor in the late 1980s. Rather, he honed his skills as a main character on the children’s educational program, The Electric Company, which was a product of The Children’s Television Workshop and ran on the Public Broadcasting Service. Clearly, this was a concerted effort at social engineering, following as it did the earlier success of Sesame Street. Funds came from the usual cast of liberal suspects, such as the Ford Foundation, the Carnegie Corporation of New York, The Corporation For Public Broadcasting, and the Office of Education, U.S. Department of Health, Education, and Welfare. Both Sesame Street and The Electric Company were the very models for what was to become multiculturalism in America, introducing the tolerant cast of mixed races and genders that later became the official norm throughout the country, as NASA did with space shuttle astronauts, etc. etc.

Freeman’s roles included Easy Reader, a “smooth hipster who loved to read at every opportunity and every printed thing he saw.” (Ironically, in the 1989 Academy Award-winning film Driving Miss Daisy, Freeman’s character was originally illiterate.) He also did Mel Mounds, a hip disc jockey who introduced songs, where his signature phrase was “Sounds righteous, delightious, and out-of-sighteous! Heavy, heavy!” Vincent the Vegetable Vampire was another of his roles.

Morgan Freeman: Before the Numinosity — The Vegetable Vampire

So for most of the Seventies, millions of American children were made to feel comfortable watching a dark African American with an afro sing ditties and spell words. Then, over a decade later, when he had aged and his hair grayed somewhat, he becomes America’s “Presence-in-Chief.” Interesting.

Morgan Freeman: Before the Numinosity — The ‘Fro Years

I may be reading too much into this, but the whole process reminds me of what author Jeff Gates discusses in his new book Guilt by Association: How Deception and Self-Deceit Took America to War. (I reviewed it here.) On matters far more serious than spelling, Gates outlines a strategy where a target audience is prepared for accepting future beliefs. This “preparing the minds” allows a displacement of facts with beliefs. The result is that the audience can be manipulated by inducing self-deceit, and pop culture plays a large role.

While I don’t believe that back in 1971 someone consciously set out to prepare Morgan Freeman to be, say, Dr. Alex Cross the brilliant psychologist, it would still be true that his appearances on The Electric Company succeeded in “laying the mental threads” of the image of a helpful and non-threatening black man.

What I am talking about, then, is sophisticated propaganda. One of my favorite accounts of the effects of propaganda come from Jacques Ellul’s ground-breaking 1965 work, Propaganda: The Formation of Men’s Attitudes, where he states that

once the individual has been filled with and reshaped by propaganda, the smallest dose now suffices. It is enough to ‘refresh,’ to give a ‘booster shot,’ to repaint, and the individual behaves in striking fashion — like certain drunks who become intoxicated on one glass of wine. The individual no longer offers any resistance to propaganda; moreover, he has ceased to believe in it consciously. He no longer attaches importance to what it says, to its proclaimed objectives, but he acts according to the proper stimuli. The individual is arrested and crystallized with regard to his thinking.

An obvious example, used by Gates and many others, is the propagation of the media image of a threatening Arab. Using our Electric Company illustration, we see that even that “educational” show featured a stereotype of the evil Arab. As media scholar Jack Shaheen tells us in his study The TV Arab, there was a character known as the evil Spell Binder, “a short, grubby-looking villain who resembles those turbanned Arabs in the escapist Arabian Nights’ films of the fifties and sixties.” (He also notes that most other children’s shows had negative images of Arabs, too—Popeye, Bugs Bunny, Scooby-Doo, Speed Racer, Tennessee Tuxedo, Jonny Quest . . .)

Shaheen is wise to point to the selective framing of Arabs and the repetition of that framing. “You cannot deny the reality—there are people who really want to kill Americans. But those are basically the only images we see.” Naturally, such repetition has a goal, one captured in an old Arabic saying: “Al tikrar biallem il hmar. By repetition even the donkey learns.”

The donkey in this case is presumably the American people, who, as we all know, are pliable to sustained manipulation.

The real world consequences of Hollywood’s image of Morgan Freeman is obvious: We have our first black president. Given the long history of depicting black presidents as “calm, earnest, utterly decent and way, way cooler than white presidents,” who is surprised at this outcome?

Freeman continues apace in his work. Rumor has it that he has long wanted to do a film based on Nelson Mandela. Now that dream has come true, as Freeman again works with Clint Eastwood, who will direct the Mandela bio-pic titled The Human Factor. Tough guy Clintwood used to stand for the average white man, but lately he’s gone multicultural on us, especially with his latest, Gran Torino, in which he mentors a Hmong youth. Thus, I suspect that watching Freeman as hero Nelson Mandela will not exactly make my day.

Edmund Connelly is a freelance writer, academic, and expert on the cinema arts. He has previously written for The Occidental Quarterly.

We start to wonder about our identity at the moment when we are about to lose it. Our grandparents never asked questions about the meaning of identity; they never worried about who they were. They took for granted their affiliation to their religion, to their tribe, and to their race. It is with the rising tide of multiculturalism, followed by the waning of the traditional nation-state that identity becomes a problem.

The term “identity” has become fashionable because it can mean everything and nothing at the same time. It is no accident that it is much in vogue today because, as noted in a recent publication of the Institut für Staatspolitik, “it has a resonance more scientific than ‘national consciousness’ or ‘national soul.'”

After the tragic experience Europeans had with their brands of nationalisms during World War II and its minor extension during the recent Yugoslav war,  the European political class prefers to use neutral terms such as ” national identity.” The old expression “national consciousness,” which in the German language has a particularly strong resonance (i.e., Volksbewusstsein) or in the French language conscience nationale, smacks of fascist vocabulary and must be prudently avoided.

By contrast, the expression “national identity” sounds neutral. It can be used by all— even by those who reject their national identity or who discard the notion of racial pride. Even the icons of the left often give lip service to national pride by posing with patriotic symbols.

Barack Obama, American Patriot

It is true that when a White European or White American speaks of  the “national conscience” of his ingroup, the mainstream media will automatically point to the rising spectre of racism.  In the postmodern world, the barren term “identity” provides a certificate for decent civic consciousness, excluding any suspicion of xenophobia or the rejection of the Other.

Most White Europeans and White Americans resort to “functional” identities with no ties to their racial or cultural identity. Psychological research shows that Whites have fairly strong identities as Whites at the unconscious level — what Kevin MacDonald terms “implicit Whiteness.” But at the explicit, conscious level they identify themselves as Americans, or Christians, or classical music fans.

Indeed, for many Whites in the postmodern world, identity is expressed by the choice of different life styles and adherence to exotic mores. These new postmodern trendy identities replace the old identities derived from our racialand cultural heritage.

For example, an ever growing  number of Whites, while gleefully expressing their French, American, English or German roots, extol bizarre supranational and transnational identities. They gladly embrace exotic Afro or Asian escapism,  or the rap music of urban America. They detect their new identity not in the primeval White vicinity of their own village, but places as far away from their actual lives as possible.

Alain De Benoist observes that in postmodern society, individuals often seek alternative identities by identifying with trade marks, logos, or exotic imagery.  If a new fashion dictates that new identity must be  sought in Jewish Kabbala or in the mimicry of the life style of a Negro tribe from Timbuktu,  it will be gladly embraced.

Madonna proudly sporting her identity as a Kabbalist

Quite possibly modern European Americans or Europeans at large cannot become racially conscious without first facing serious physical threat by someone else’s well defined identity.  Witness the break-up of Yugoslavia, when many Croats discovered an intense form of national identity thanks to the onslaught of Yugoslav communist tanks.   

Victimology: A negative identity

In a multiethnic and multicultural society, the identity of different ethnic groups is incompatible with liberal individualism. On the one hand liberalism preaches thefree market with happy consumers as the ultimate identity for all; yet on the other, the very dynamics of liberalism cannot dispense with the conflicting racial and ethnic identities in its own multicultural body politic.

In fact, as ironic as this may sound. multiculturalism (which is the fraudulent euphemism for multiracialism),  presents the biggest  threat to the liberal systemThis is because it provokes the sentiments of victimology among its differentethnic and racial constituents.  Modern multicultural society, as the former Yugoslavia has shown and as modern US is showing daily, is a fragile systemprone to racial and ethnic tension.  Pierre André Taguieff a French left-leaning writer and politically  correct dissident, notes, that “particularly interethnic rivalry can be radicalized by the slightest spark (a minor event ) and merge into a conflict resembling a civil war.”

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Since the end of the Cold War, the political class claims its identity by constant resurrection of  the fascist straw man and the forever looming anti-Semite. Even if that anti-Semite bogeyman is not around, he must be reinvented  in order toprovide credibility to the liberal system. Over and over again.

At the beginning of the third millennium, one can hear on all wavelengths endless horror stories about the evil Hitler — a man who is surely destined to live foreverin infamy.  It appears that liberal democracy cannot function at all without using the negative Other.

The Jewish Holocaust has become a critical component of identity for the Western world in need of new quasi-religious symbolism — the culture of the Holocaust.  In 2005, the President of the Federal Republic of Germany, Horst Köhler, tearfully declared in the Israeli Knesset that the responsibility for Shoah is part of  German identity.” (“Die Verantwortung für die Schoa ist Teil der deutschen Identität.) Similarly, the former Chancellor of Germany Gerhard Schröder declared that  “the remembrance of the Shoah  belongs to our identity.”

Think about that. If taken literally, it would mean that one could not think of oneself as a German without also thinking about the role of Germans in the Holocaust. To be a German is to have the mark of Cain branded on one’s forehead.

This culture of the Holocaust is staunchly maintained by the judicial system in Europe. The perception of either real or surreal anti-Semitic identity triggers judicial wrath. Any academic who questions the modern Jewish narrative can easily land into the claws of the Criminal Code — the dreaded German StGB, Section 130, or the French “Loi Fabius- Gayssot.”

There is an obvious double standard here. It is widely permissible to  exercise one’s  own identity by cracking jokes against “fat Krauts”  or  “stinking Frogs.” or “hypocrite  Wasps.” One can go even go so far as to utter a mild joke against proverbial “camel riders.”  But a minor joke about Jewry is unthinkable in the media and political circles of America and Europe. One can criticize the Other by invoking free speech, provided that the Other is not a Jew.

Ersatz-substitute identities

In their desperate search of a non-racial identity, White Europeans resort to ersatz identities. For instance, they espouse the Palestinian or Tibetan identity or the identity of some distant Third World tribe  as if it was their own identity. They will spot some lost Indian tribe in the Amazon forest and then, with all  vicarious passion, strive to protect and preserve it.

But when it comes to defining and preserving their own racial identity — let alone preserve their race, they remain silent. To say aloud “I am proud of being a White European” smacks of racism.

Such substitute or foreign-inspired ersatz identity is particularly strong when it is couched in the narrative of victimology. Europeans are keen at erecting monuments to exotic tribes that they never heard of until the day before yesterday— especially ones that may have been victimized by Europeans. Days of atonement keep accumulating on the calendar. Every White European or American politician is obliged to pay moral and financial tributes to peoples whose identity has nothing in common with his own.

While Western media and opinion makers assure us that history is creeping toward an end, we are witnessing a staggering demand for the revival of non-European micro-identities, often couched in self-centred victimhoods. And each of those non-European victimhoods requires an expanding number of its domestic dead and foreign culprits. Culprits are always White Europeans, who are forced to practice the ritual of remorse.

The old sense of the tragic, which until recently was the fundamental pillar of the old Greco-Roman historical memory in Europe, cedes its place to Levantine-inspired jeremiads for victimhoods of Asian and African tribes. Slowly but surely, the European sense of the tragic is supplemented by a fixation on non-European identities.

What a scandal if a White European or American statesman fails to display remorse for the past suffering of some non-European people! What counts is the endless enumeration of non-European victims of the European past.

In this postmodern “battle of memories,” victimhoods cannot be equal. Some must take precedence over others, and it’s quite obvious that the Jewish Holocaust is the apex of victimhood in the postmodern West.

But there is a grave danger for all. Given the victimological atmosphere thatprevails today in the multiracial West, each non-European tribe, race, or community is led to believe that its own victimology is unique. This is a dangerous phenomenon because each victimology competes with other victimologies for pride of place.

The story of the 20th century is that the greatest mass murders in history — the mass murders of communism — were made possible by the Marxist ideology of victimization and they were rationalized in the name of tolerance and so-called human rights. The communist ideology of victimization resulted in the dehumanization of dissident intellectuals and political opponents, and even whole groups of people — with monstrous consequences.

The spirit of victimhood must search for its negative identity by negating  and abolishing the Other, who is henceforth no longer perceived as human, but depicted as a monster. The spirit of victimology does not serve to prevent the conflict. It renders the conflict inevitable.

The diverse identities in the multicultural West are a severe problem. On the one hand, modern liberal Western societies require that each non-European ethnic group receives an appropriate identity and its right to historical grievance; yet on the other, liberal societies are unable to function well in an environment beset by ethnic Balkanization.

In particular, the contest of diverse victimologies makes the functioning of the liberal system extremely precarious. In essence, each victimological spirit in multiracial society is confrontational and discriminatory. It creates a climate that promotes divisiveness in the society. The only way such societies can function is with high levels of social control. This prospect is doubtlessly viewed quite positively by postmodern intellectuals. But it will lead to alienation and disengagement for the great majority — especially for Whites who cannot claim victimhood and who are forced to witness the disintegration of their once homogeneous communities.

American and European societies are facing a schizoid situation. On the onehand, they are being overwhelmed by the rhetoric of negative identities derived from guilt  feelings — the various anti-colonial victimologies and the endless palaver about past European fascist crimes. Yet on the other hand, one can barely hear a word about gigantic crimes committed by Communists and their liberal allies during and after WWII — crimes committed to avenge the Marxist victimology of the class struggle.

Whites in Europe and America have to overcome the sense of territorial rootedness and intra-ethnic infighting. European racial and cultural identity stretches from Argentina to Sweden and to Russia and to many other places on the globe.

Even more importantly, White people must explicitly accept a White identity. This explicit White  identity does not imply that Whites are superior to other peoples or that other peoples are not also unique and have a right to maintain their uniqueness. It merely states that we are a unique people with a unique culture and that both our people and our culture are worth preserving.

White identity can best be preserved in the transcendental sphere of its own uniqueness. But White uniqueness need not and should not come at the price ofdenying the uniqueness of other peoples and other races.

Tom Sunic (http://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).