Jews as a Hostile Elite

Philip Weiss on the Disintegration of WASP Society

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Philip Weiss, whom I once described as “a Jew without all the usual rationalizations and blind spots–at least most of them,” has a Mondoweiss column commenting on the collapse of WASP America (“WASP society is disintegrating“). It starts out with one of his WASP inlaws commenting on the decline his tribe. Weiss asked him if he “grieve[d] for its passing?”

No, he said. Things change. Orders change all the time. It’s the nature of society. And besides, we had a good run.

How broad-minded of him. “Oh, well. We lost fair and square. Life goes on.” I am sure he takes great pride in being known far and wide as tolerant, principled,  and fair-minded–a moral paragon; an upstanding member of his community with an excellent reputation for honesty and fair play; an example to one and all; a virtual saint. Just the sort of guy you would want in your hunter-gatherer band of non-relatives during the Ice Age.

The bloodless (so far) coup made possible by valuing principles more highly than power comes to its fruition. In this he reminds me of Justice Paul Stevens‘ “strong sense of principle–even to the extent of making decisions that could not possibly be seen as helping his ethnic group.”

Such people do not think of the power of their ethnic group as a vital necessity in a world still fraught with ethnic conflict–including, most relevantly, the conflict between the new elite and the people they rule over. They don’t think of their loss of power as a catastrophic blow that will make them vulnerable to  non-White ethnic coalitions with festering historical grudges against people like them. One of the characteristic flaws of WASPs, as noted by Eric Kaufmann, was to think that other peoples are “just like them,” so that the people who replace them will be just like them in the sense that they will uphold the same ideals. The republic will live on but with different faces–a utopian idea, to say the least. Read more

Stephen Walt on Anders Brevick, Immigration, and Western Culture

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If there’s one characteristic that defines the European nationalist parties, it is that they have eschewed racialist rhetoric in favor of cultural arguments. Geert Wilders, Marine LePen, et al. have claimed that Islam is incompatible with Western culture—that Muslims refuse to assimilate and have values that are incompatible with Western modernity, particularly on women and sexuality.

Without doubt this tactic has made nationalist parties more acceptable to mainstream voters and more difficult to attack by the left. It is not possible to tar these parties with the ultimate post-WWII pejorative—”Nazi—which is sure to come up if one breathes a word about ethnic interests of Whites.

Now Stephen Walt, of Israel Lobby fame, attempts to undercut cultural conservative arguments that he associates with Breivik—“the idea that he is defending some fixed and sacred notion of the ‘Christian West,’ which is supposedly under siege by an aggressive alien culture” (“Breivik’s Warped Worldview“). (He’d doubtless disapprove even more of Breivik’s Nordicist proclivities.)

In my review of The Israel Lobby, I made the following point about Western elites:

Confronted with the moral critique of America emanating from elite universities and the media, the old Protestant intellectual establishment quickly yielded the high ground. Many of them became avid cheerleaders of the new multicultural zeitgeist that rejected the America and even the Americanism of their ancestors, to the point that the new zeitgeist has become a consensus among elites of all stripes. They accepted their own demographic decline, and they gave up their pretensions as cultural leaders and trend setters. And they implicitly paved the way for their eventual  loss of political power to other groups, some of which have historically conditioned grudges against them—a dangerous situation to say the least. In doing so, they became the pallbearers for their own people.

Sadly, this applies to Stephen Walt. In the current main TOO article, Charles Dodgson does an excellent job of refuting Walt’s moral indictments of the West. Right now I am reviewing Ricardo Duchesne’s The Uniqueness of Western Civilization—a book that I strongly recommend for intellectuals like Walt. Duchesne, a sociologist at the University of New Brunswik, is fond of showing how the critics of the West typically presuppose ideas whose origins are uniquely Western. Read more

Roger Scruton on Beauty

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A reader, Alan, pointed out that I did not call attention to this passage from Scruton:

There is a liturgy of denunciation here that is repeated all across Europe by a ruling elite that trembles in the face of ordinary loyalties. But the fact is that national sentiment is, for most ordinary Europeans, the only motive that will justify sacrifice in the public cause. Insofar as people do not vote to line their own pockets, it is because they also vote to protect a shared identity from the predations of those who do not belong to it, and who are attempting to pillage an inheritance to which they are not entitled.

Motivation is indeed worth pondering. The EU has no motivational power for Europeans because its an artificial construct with no historic cultural, ethnic or linguistic ties. Read more

Review of John Glad’s “Jewish Eugenics”

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Jewish Eugenics, by John Glad. Washington, DC: Wooden Shore Publishers, 2011; 464pp. (Downloadable at either www.whatwemaybe or www.woodenshore.org. These sites also have Glad’s Future Human Evolution.)

John Glad begins Jewish Eugenics by noting that “much of what might be termed  ‘accepted eugenics narrative’ is in crass discordance with the historical facts” (p. 8). In other words, we are about to enter one of those academic minefields where “truth” is rigorously cleansed to make sure it is compatible with ethnic interests. Indeed, “writing books about Jews used to be a far easier undertaking than it is today, with Jewish anxieties over ‘anti-Semitism’ having been so elevated as to render dispassionate scholarly discourse nearly impossible” (p. 8).

I am not so sure that dispassionate scholarship is impossible, but it is surely the case that findings that diverge from the self-image desired by any ethnic group will surely be vigorously contested by academic activists or, more probably, consigned to oblivion. Dr. Glad assures me that in his case, it is the latter, writing of his frustration at the silence that has greeted his work. Welcome to the club.

As a university professor, Glad is quite attuned to the politics of having a good career. Critics of eugenics, like the notorious Ashley Montagu (a disciple of Franz Boas), get fat honoraria for delivering superficial, factually challenged lectures sponsored by numerous academic departments and programs. (Glad characterizes a lecture by Montagu as “an impressive demonstration of indoctrination” [p. 91].) On the other hand, those who defend eugenics “are subjected to academic shunning” (p. 91), their books are not used in classes and not purchased by academic libraries. They get no invitations to attend conferences or deliver lectures. Read more

Helmuth Nyborg on the Genetic Decline of Western Civilization: Denmark as a Case Study

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Prof. Helmuth Nyborg

The Danish psychologist Helmuth Nyborg has an academic paper soon to be published in Personality and Individual Differences (“The decay of Western Civilization: Double Relaxed Natural Selection“). Nyborg is well-known for his work showing a sex difference in IQ favoring males, a paper which resulted in an investigation of his work and a reprimand from his university. (Nyborg describes the “witch hunt” he endured  here.)

Nyborg’s latest paper charts past trends and projects IQ changes in Denmark as a result of two trends: relaxation of natural selection among the traditional Danes, and an influx of low-IQ immigrants. These two trends together amount to what he terms a “double relaxation of natural selection” (DRNS).

Relying on Richard Lynn’s work Dysgenics: Genetic Deterioration in Modern Populations, the relaxation of internal selection is thought to have begun around 1850 as the fertility of the lower classes exceeded the upper classes because of improvements in hygiene and reduction in diseases. He cites Lynn’s estimate that England lost 6.9 IQ points over 90 years (1920-2010) and estimates that Denmark’s average IQ dropped around 10 points since 1850 due to internal relaxation of natural selection. Read more

Tim Wise Hates White People

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Readers of TOO are familiar with Tim Wise (see Mark Green: My Smackdown with Anti-White Crusader Tim Wise; see also here and here.) The general theme is that Wise presents himself as a White crusader against White privilege and injustice when in fact he is Jewish. His attitude toward the White majority is typical of Jews and, as with the vast majority of American Jews, he has directed all his energies against White “racism” in America and against apartheid South Africa while pretty much avoiding the issue of Jewish ethnocentrism and apartheid in Israel.

Wise’s comments on the election are a must read for every White person in America (“An Open Letter to the White Right, On the Occasion of Your Recent, Successful Temper Tantrum“).

The hatred is palpable. We at TOO have continually harped on the theme that Whites are beset by a hostile elite and that when we become a minority we will be physically endangered—just as the ethnic Russians and Ukrainians saw their elites eradicated and millions of their people murdered by the hostile elite that ruled the USSR (see also Solzhenitsyn’s 200 Years Together). It is very dangerous for any ethnic group to give up political power and control. Voluntarily giving up power to ethnic groups that hold historical grudges is insane.  Read more

Solzhenitsyn’s “The February Revolution”: Chapter 13 of 200 Years Together

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Chapter 13 of 200 Years Together recounts the period of the February Revolution of 1917—the revolution that toppled the czar and led to a period of instability followed in October by the Bolshevik Revolution. (See here; donations are of critical importance for finishing this important project.) Solzhenitsyn is critical of the radical slogans of the period—e.g., “All Russian life must be rebuilt from the roots.” Solzhenitsyn responds as a cultural conservative, aware of the danger of uprooting ancient institutions because they do not conform to an ideal as decreed by an intellectual elite: “A thousand-year life! — why, all of a sudden from “the roots”?

There was a consensus that Jews must have the same legal status as any other citizen. Quotas in education were repealed, as were restrictions on land ownership. For example, Jews were allowed to serve as military officers and as full-fledged attorneys. Those with a reputation of having anti-Jewish views were targeted for prosecution or dismissal. For example, the chief investigator of the Menahem Beilis ritual murder trial was dismissed because he had allowed testimony of an expert witness for the prosecution, not only for the defense.

Given Solzhenitsyn’s views on the restrictions on Jews discussed in Chapter 5, his quoting Jewish sources describing the old regime is presumably meant to suggest Jewish hypersensitivity and over-dramatization of their plight under the Czar; for example, a Jewish commentator:  “Like hard labor camp prisoners on their way to camp, all Jews were chained together as despised aliens…. The drops of blood of our fathers and mothers, the drops of blood of our sisters and brothers fell on our souls, there igniting the inextinguishable revolutionary fire.”

The revolution did indeed improve life for the Jews. But “as for the rest of the country, falling, with all its peoples, into an abyss — that was the unpredictable way of the history.”

Solzhenitsyn notes that the American Jewish financier Jacob Schiff had long had a prominent role in opposition to the Russian government.

[After the February Revolution, Schiff wrote,] “I was always the enemy of Russian absolutism, which mercilessly persecuted my co-religionists. Now let me congratulate … the Russian people for this great act which they committed so perfectly.” Schiff was quick to provide credit and financing for the new Russian government. “Later in emigration, the exiled Russian right-wing press published investigative reports attempting to show that Schiff actively financed the Revolution itself. Perhaps Schiff shared the short-sighted Western hope that the liberal revolution in Russia would strengthen Russia in the war. Still, the known and public acts of Schiff, who had always been hostile to the Russian absolutism, had even more effect than any possible secret assistance to such a revolution.”

The role of Schiff in financing the revolution is acknowledged by mainstream historians:

In fact, American Jewish capitalists like Jacob Schiff did finance Russian radical movements directed at overthrowing the Czar and may well have had considerable impact (Goldstein 1990, 26–27; Szajkowski 1967). The leaders of Western Jewish communities were highly committed to the overthrow of the czar. For example, in 1907 Lucien Wolf wrote to Louis Marshall of the AJCommittee that “the only thing to be done on the whole Russo-Jewish question is to carry on persistent and implacable war against the Russian Government” (in Szajowski 1967, 8). “Western Jewish leaders actively participated in general actions in favor of the liberal and revolutionary movements in Russia both during the revolution and after its downfall” (Szajkowski 1967, 9). (Separation and Its Discontents, Ch. 2, p. 37.)

Although traditional Jews reacted with caution to the revolution, the secular Jews who created the dynamic energy of the Jewish community were “eager to build ‘the happy new world.’” Jews quickly achieved important offices in the new regime. Nevertheless, Solzhenitsyn blames the Russians themselves for what happened:

No, the February Revolution was not something the Jews did to the Russians, but rather it was done by the Russians themselves, which I believe I amply demonstrated in The Red Wheel. We committed this downfall ourselves:  our anointed Tsar, the court circles, the hapless high-ranking generals, obtuse administrators, and their enemies — the elite intelligentsia, the Octobrist Party, the Zemstvo, the Kadets, the Revolutionary Democrats, socialists and revolutionaries, and along with them, a bandit element of army reservists, distressingly confined to the Petersburg’s barracks. And this is precisely why we perished. True, there were already many Jews among the intelligentsia by that time, yet that is not basis enough to call it a Jewish revolution.

Solzhenitsyn sees the February Revolution as a Russian ethnic revolution, but one that in the long run most benefited the Jews, whereas the Russians “got nothing but harm and destruction.”  With the revolution, the Jewish community had attained everything it wanted, so that “the October Revolution was altogether unnecessary for them, except for a small slice of young cutthroat Jews who, with their Russian internationalist brothers, accumulated an explosive charge of hate for the Russian governing class and burst forth to ‘deepen’ the Revolution.” Solzhenitsyn acknowledges that in his earlier work he had exaggerated the role of the Russians and minimized the Jewish role—not wanting the Russians to deceive themselves on what happened by blaming others. He makes the important point that “the ideology [of the February Revolution] was permeated and dominated by intransigent hostility to the historical Russian state.” Such an ideology did not characterize “ordinary Russians” but it did characterize Jews and the Russian intelligentsia. The character of the revolution was therefore determined not by popular attitudes but by the attitudes of an intellectual elite and by ethnic outsiders—the forerunner of the hostile elite that came to power with the Bolsheviks.

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Solzhenitsyn places particular importance on the ethnic composition of theExecutive Committee of Workers’ and Soldiers’ Deputies — a powerful committee that became an important focus of power outside the Kerensky government. “It was precisely this Executive Committee, and not the judiciary, not the timber industrialists, not the bankers, which fast-tracked the country to her doom.”  Not counting soldiers placed on the committee to give it a Russian face, of the 30 people “who actually wielded power, more than half were Jewish socialists. There were also Russians, Caucasians, Latvians and Poles. Less than a quarter were Russians.”

Solzhenitsyn claims to resist the temptation “to look for a guilty party” in this, but the implication is clear: Russia had fallen into the hands of foreigners. Worse, they were foreigners with a grudge against the entire fabric of traditional Russian society — holding views quite at odds with the vast majority of Russians. The grudge was not only against the government of Czar, but against all social strata and all manifestations of traditional Russian culture.

In any crime, there is a perpetrator and a victim. One can always blame the victim for not resisting sufficiently, for not understanding the gravity of the situation, or for having illusions about the consequences of the crime. But clearly, the moral onus is on the perpetrator—the individual or groups that commit the crime. Solzhenitsyn is being very clear where the onus of guilt for the direction of the February Revolution lies, especially given his views that the restrictions on Jews were nowhere near as oppressive or unreasonable as claimed by Jewish activists. Thus there was no legitimate motive to rebuild all of the thousand-year Russian life “from the roots.” Given the totality of Solzhenitsyn’s view, the blame lies with the Jews and other foreigners who together made up the great majority of the most revolutionary elements that propelled the country into the abyss.

One can certainly blame the Russians for losing this battle, as Solzhenitsyn hints. But in the end, what mattered is that losing the battle unleashed a torrent of murderous hostility not only against the previous elites but against millions of ordinary Russians.

It is a lesson that Whites throughout the West would do well to ponder. Alliances among non-White ethnic groups, led by Jews as an element of the elite, are already a reality of politics of America, centered around the Democratic Party; similar phenomena exist in other Western countries. As was the case in the February Revolution, the motive for multiculturalism is fear and loathing of the traditional peoples and cultures of the West. Although a sudden anti-White revolution on the model of the February Revolution is unlikely in the near term, the long term trends are clear. The ultimate folly for any ethnic group is to give up political power.

Kevin MacDonald is editor of The Occidental Observer and a professor of psychology at California State University–Long Beach. Email him.