Jews and the Left

“During 1917”: Chapter 14 of Solzhenitsyn’s “200 Years Together”

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Chapter 14 of Solzhenitsyn’s 200 Years Together (available here) recounts the events of 1917, a pivotal year in Russia. The main impression conveyed throughout the chapter is the sheer energy of the Jews—what I have elsewhere (pp. 24–26) labeled the psychological intensity of Jewish activism.

1917 in Russia was a year of rapid change, uncertainty and chaos—exactly the situation where even a relatively small but well-organized, energetic and highly motivated force may have a very large impact. As an analogy, consider how relatively easy it would have been to influence the structure of the U.S. government in the unsettled period after the Revolutionary War than it is today.

Jews developed a huge range of organizations of all types. Politically, they ranged from the center to the far left.

From the very first days after the February Revolution, central newspapers published enormous number of announcements about private meetings, assemblies and sessions of various Jewish parties, initially mostly the Bund [a socialist-labor party with a strong Jewish identity], and later of Poale Zion, Zionists, Socialist Zionists, Territorialist Zionists, and the Socialist Jewish Workers’ Party (SJWP). Already by March 7 we read about an oncoming assembly of the All-Russian Jewish Congress.

The various Zionist groups were the most popular among Jews; these groups tended to support socialist candidates in the Russian milieu. As an aside, one can’t help but notice the irony in the fact that Jacob Schiff, who had bankrolled Jewish revolutionary groups in Russia (see here, p. 36), announced that he had decided to join the Zionists “because of fear of Jewish assimilation as a result of Jewish civil equality in Russia. He believes that Palestine could become the center to spread ideals of Jewish culture all over the world.”

Would that he had directed all his financial support to Zionist causes rather than at attempts to topple the Czar. Wasn’t it obvious that Jewish civil equality would make assimilation and intermarriage more likely? Read more

The House I Live In

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Anyone who wants to know how we got to the point of all this Diversity nonsense and multicultural madness, and where it came from, should watch this short film called The House I Live In. Starring Frank Sinatra, it came out in 1945, and was created “to oppose anti-Semitism and racial prejudice.” It was awarded both a Golden Globe and an Academy Award in 1946.

The plot’s pretty simple. Sinatra, playing himself, heads outside for a cigarette break in the middle of a recording session, where he happens upon a gang of about a dozen young boys chasing and cornering another kid, getting ready to pummel him. Sinatra intervenes, asking what the trouble is. The ruffians explain that they want to beat the kid up because they don’t like his religion. One tells Sinatra “he’s a dirty -” but Frank cuts him off before he can finish the sentence. Read more

Judith Coplon–and why the Venona Project was stopped

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A generation of adults has now arisen which never experienced the dreadful certainty felt by those just a few years ahead of them (especially if they grew up in Europe): that ultimately Communism would win the Cold War.

Consequently they do not perhaps fully comprehend the iniquity of some of the actors in this drama. Such a one was Judith Coplon (Socolov) who died on February 26th.

Coplon was revealed by the Venona Project to be spying for the Russians. Because the authorities wanted to keep secret the fact they were able to read Russian cable traffic, her two convictions were able to be overturned on grounds of flawed procedure. She was never punished. The facts are well recounted here. Read more

More on Jonathan Haidt’s Tribal Moral Communities

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The video of Jonathan Haidt’s talk on tribal moral communities (see here), has some interesting additions to the NYTimes report. He says that when scholarly articles that contravene the sacred values of the tribe are submitted to academic journals, reviewers and editors suddenly become super rigorous. More controls are needed, and more subjects. It’s not a representative sample, and the statistical techniques are inadequate.

This use of scientific rigor against theories that are disliked for deeper reasons is a theme of Chapter 2 of The Culture of Critique where it was also noted that standards were quite lax when it came to data that fit the leftist zeitgeist. Read more

Social Psychologists: Becoming Self-Conscious of Their Liberalism

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Social psychologists are the ones doing all the research on ethnocentrism, xenophobia, and discrimination, and they are notoriously liberal. An address to their main professional society by Jonathan Haidt may at least make them a bit more self-conscious about it (NYTimes, “Social Psychologists Detect Bias Within“). Like pretty much all the faculty in the social sciences and humanities, they identify as liberal—around 80% of them liberals. And out of 1000 psychologists attending the lecture, only three had the temerity to publicly identify themselves as conservative. This .3% compares to 40% of Americans who self-identify as conservative.

It goes with saying that some in the audience may have decided that raising their hand in public would be an act of professional suicide. The intellectual left loves blacklists and social ostracism. Indeed, a student is quoted as saying that “Given what I’ve read of the literature, I am certain any research I conducted in political psychology would provide contrary findings and, therefore, go unpublished. Although I think I could make a substantial contribution to the knowledge base, and would be excited to do so, I will not.” Read more

Navigating Hollywood: Conservatives and Christians Need Not Apply

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From time to time I get letters from students who say they are on page with ideas like mine and want to pursue  a career in the academic world. I always tell them they have to be a secret agent, not only as a grad student but at least until they get tenure. And if you come out of the closet after you get tenure, don’t expect to get any grants or be invited to any of those cool faculty parties.

It’s pretty much the same in the movie industry, and for much the same reasons: A powerful and pervasive bias toward the left. In both areas and particularly in Hollywood, there is a strong Jewish influence that means that overt displays of Christianity are a ticket to oblivion.

This came out recently in an article in the Hollywood Reporter (“Conservative Actors Reveal Life of Secrecy, Lost Jobs Amidst ‘Intolerant Left’“).

Morgan Brittany, an actress perhaps best known for her work in Dallas, the prime time soap opera of the 1980s, says that “I’d go out on location with the Dallas crew. .. Everybody in the van was bashing (President Reagan). I never said anything because I thought I’d lose my job. And I probably would have lost my job.” Read more

Is walking to Canossa the right direction?

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“I can assure you, we will never go to Canossa!” exclaimed chancellor Bismarck, referring to Emperor Henry IV’s walk to Cannossa in 1077 to do penitence in front of Pope Gregory VII. When the leaders of the European nationalist parties from Flanders, Austria, Germany and Sweden went to Jerusalem in the beginning of december 2010, it was if they were going on a pilgrimage to do penitence. After years of being accused of being Neo-Nazis, Mr. De Winter and Mr. Strache were paying lip service to Israel: “If Jerusalem falls, Amsterdam and New York will be next.” Are they doing the right thing? Read more