Jews as a Hostile Elite

Solzhenitsyn’s “During the Civil War” — Chapter 16 of 200 Years Together

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Chapter 16 of 200 Years Together covers the pivotal period of the civil war (1918–1921)—pivotal because the Bolshevik victory was a disaster for the Russian people and for Europe generally. (The translation is available here; donations are of critical importance for finishing this important project.) Once again, Solzhenitsyn highlights the role of Jews as instruments of state terror, particularly their role in the Cheka and in the Red Army. The perception that this was a “Jewish terror” was widespread: “Why was the perception that Chekists and Jews were all but the same so widespread among both the Reds and the Whites alike and among the people in general?”

At least part of the reason is because of the Jews’ “ardent service on the highest posts in Cheka.” Jewish Chekists “at that time were supreme, by status and rank, representatives of Russian Jewry.” He quotes a Jewish observer (also quoted by Yuri Slezkine; see here, p. 85):  “we were astonished to find among the Jews what we never expected from them — cruelty, sadism, unbridled violence — everything that seemed so alien to a people so detached from physical activity; those who yesterday couldn’t handle a rifle, today were among the vicious cutthroats.” Slezkine quotes another Jewish observer: 

The formerly oppressed lover of liberty had turned into a tyrant of “unheard-of-despotic arbitrariness”…. The convinced and unconditional opponent of the death penalty not just for political crimes but for the most heinous offenses, who could not, as it were, watch a chicken being killed, has been transformed outwardly into a leather-clad person with a revolver and, in fact, lost all human likeness (pp. 183–184).

It is a cautionary tale on what kinds of behavior we can expect from current multi-cultural elites when Whites become a minority: Present-day platitudes about the future world of multicultural harmony and the moral imperative of Whites giving up power may be replaced very quickly by a quite different set of attitudes of revenge and hatred — the image of the kindly, tolerant Jewish professional quickly replaced by the image of a brutal perpetrator of torture and mass murder motivated by revenge against the old order. Images of hatred and estrangement from the White, Christian majority are commonplace among Jewish leaders — the Jews as a hostile elite theme of much of my writing (see, e.g., here andhere).

Indeed, Solzhenitsyn suggests that Jewish revenge against the Cossacks was a motive for “the genocide on the river Don, when hundreds of thousands of the flower of Don Cossacks were murdered …. What should we expect from the Cossack memories when we take into consideration all those unsettled accounts between a revolutionary Jew and a Don Cossack?”

Indeed, the Cossacks were strongly identified with state power during the 19thcentury, and for Jews they were hated because of their role in assaults on Jews (for example, during the Khmelnytsky Uprising in the 17th century) andpopularized in stories by Jewish writer Sholem Aleichem. As I noted elsewhere:

The Cossacks served the Czar as a military police force, and they used their power against Jewish communities during the conflicts between the government and the Jews. After the Revolution, the Cossacks were deported to Siberia for refusing to join the collective farms. During the 1930s, the person in charge of the deportations was an ethnic Jew, Lazar Kaganovich, nicknamed the “wolf of the Kremlin’ because of his penchant for violence. In his drive against the peasants, Kaganovich took “an almost perverse joy in being able to dictate to the Cossacks. He recalled too vividly what he and his family had experienced at the hands of these people…. Now they would all pay — men, women, children. It didn’t matter who. They became one and the same. That was the key to [Kaganovich’s] being. He would never forgive and he would never forget” (Stuart Kahan, The Wolf of the  Kremlin, 1987, 164). Similarly, Jews were placed in charge of security in the Ukraine, which had a long history of anti-Semitism (Albert Lindemann, Esau’s Tears, 1997, 443) and became a scene of mass murder in the 1930s. (See here, pp. xxiv–xxv.)

It was payback time for ethnic hostilities that long preceded the Bolshevik Revolution. While Jews were vastly overrepresented among the perpetrators of mass murder, Solzhenitsyn “can’t help noticing that almost all names [of the victims] were Slavic – it was the ‘chosen Russians’ who were shot. In Kiev, a key area because of its long history of tensions between Jews and Slavs, 75% of the staff of the Cheka were Jews, including 70% of the top officials.

His account of the murders is particularly chilling:

An executioner (and sometimes “amateur” Chekists) escorted a completely naked victim into a shed and ordered the victim to fall facedown on the ground. Then he finished the victim with a shot in the back of the head. Executions were performed using revolvers (typically Colts). Usually because of the short distance, the skull of the executed person exploded into fragments…. The next victim was similarly escorted inside and laid down nearby…. When number of victims was exceeding … the capacity of the shed, new victims were laid down right upon the dead or were shot at the entrance of the shed…. Usually the victims went to their execution without resistance.

It’s not surprising therefore that the opposition to the Bolshevik regime often had strong anti-Jewish overtones. Examples from 1921 are the Kronstadt Uprising, where photos of prominent Jewish Bolsheviks were destroyed, and labor strikes, whose slogan was “Down with Communists and Jews!”

Solzhenitsyn wrestles with the question of whether the Jewish community as a whole supported the Bolsheviks: “Thus it looked as though not only Bolshevik Jews, but all of Jewry had decided to take the Red side in the Civil War. Could we claim that their choice was completely reactive? No. Could we claim that they didn’t have any other choice? Again, no.”

As evidence on Jewish attitudes toward the Bolsheviks he cites a writer who noted that as Kiev was about to surrender to the Bolsheviks, the Jews remained, while “it was an entirely Russian exodus, people were leaving on foot with knapsacks, across the bridges over the Dnepr river. … And all of those rich and very rich Jews – they didn’t leave, they chose to stay and wait for arrival of Bolsheviks. ‘The Jews decided not to share their fate with us. And with that they carved a new and possibly the deepest divide between us.’” Throughout Russia and in Poland during the Soviet invasion of 1920, Jewish communities greeted the Bolsheviks with celebration, while the Slavic population was terrified of its future.

The special role of Jews in the Soviet government was common knowledge, to the point that some Jews pleaded for Jews to fight Bolshevism because Jewish behavior was leading to intense anti-Jewish attitudes; however, this was not the view of the organized Jewish community:

And yes, there were Jews then who appealed to their compatriots looking back on the tragedy that had befallen both Russia and Russian Jewry. In their proclamation To the Jews of all countries!, this group wrote in 1923 that “overly zealous participation of Jewish Bolsheviks in the oppression and destruction of Russia … is blamed upon all of us … the Soviet rule is identified with Jewish rule, and fierce hatred of Bolsheviks turns into the equally fierce hatred of Jews…. [We] firmly believe that Bolshevism is the worst of all evils possible for the Jews and all other peoples of Russia, and that to fight tooth and nail against the rule of that international rabble over Russia is our sacred duty before humankind, culture, before our Motherland and the Jewish people.” Yet the Jewish community “reacted to these declarations with great indignation.”

Solzhenitsyn spends a great deal of time on the anti-Jewish pogroms of the period and the role of the White army and Symon Petiliura’s Ukrainian nationalist forces. In general, he denies that Jews sided with the Bolsheviks because of the pogroms. For example, the Jewish dominance of the Cheka in the Ukraine happened in 1918, before the pogroms of 1919.

Interestingly, he foregrounds his discussion by noting that wars and revolutions are nasty affairs, and, quoting a Jewish writer, they are “especially gruesome and dangerous for a minority, which in many ways is alien to the bulk of population.” This is especially so when there is a long history of mistrust and hostility toward the minority because of traditional economic relationships and Jewish hostility toward the culture of the outgroup.

During this period, Jews suffered far more than they did under the Czar, with estimates of Jewish dead ranging to 200,000. The main force was the Ukrainian separatist movement. Rather than seeing the hostility of the separatists toward Jews as irrational anti-Semitism, Solzhenitsyn shows that Jews did not support Ukrainian nationalism—a familiar theme in modern anti-Jewish attitudes, present also in Germany, were Jews were often seen as insufficiently enthusiastic about German nationalism. For example, the prominent 19th-century intellectual Heinrich von Treitschke strongly opposed what he perceived as “alien” Jewish cultural influence on German life, because of Jewish tendencies to mock and belittle German nationalistic aspirations (see here, p. 140). Similarly, Solzhnenitsyn describes “Jewish philistines … making fun of the Ukrainian language and shop-signs.” They were “afraid of Ukrainian nationalism, and believed in the Russian state and Russian culture.”

The opposition to Ukrainian nationalism had a Jewish face. When the Soviet government moved against the Ukrainian nationalists,

There was no shortage of Jewish names among the top Bolsheviks … in such centers as Odessa and Ekaterinoslav. That was sufficient to fuel talks about “Bolshevik Jews” and “Jewish Bolsheviks” among the troops loyal to the [Ukrainian parliament]. Verbal cursing about “traitorous Jews” became almost commonplace.

When a nationalist government led by Petliura came to power, his newspaper wrote, “The birth of the Ukrainian State was not expected by the Jews. The Jews did not anticipate it despite having an extraordinary ability of getting the wind of any news. They … emphasize their knowledge of Russian language and ignore the fact of Ukrainian statehood … Jewry again has joined the side of our enemy.”

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Solzhenitsyn juxtaposes Jews being blamed for Bolshevik military successes in the Ukraine with accounts of pillaging and pogroms directed against Jews — the implication being that Jews were being repaid in kind.  Nevertheless, the pogroms were not official policy. Even commanders who were sympathetic to the Jews, such as Nestor Mahkno, were unable to control the anti-Jewish actions of their troops. A result was that Jewish parties quickly began to radicalize toward the Left, thus inevitably turning their sympathies to Bolshevism.

Pogroms occurred despite the best intentions of the leaders of the White army, such as General Anton I. Denikin. The misbehavior of the troops cannot be completely explained by resentment about the Jewish role in Bolshevism or traditional anti-Jewish attitudes. There was also the raping and pillaging that has always been part of the culture of undisciplined armies. Solzhenitsyn provides several sources corroborating this perspective. For example:

A top White general, A. von Lampe, claims that rumors about Jewishpogroms by the Whites are “tendentiously exaggerated”, that these pillaging “requisitions” were unavoidable actions of an army without quartermaster services or regular supplies from the rear areas. He says that Jews were not targeted deliberately but that all citizens suffered and that Jews “suffered more” because they were “numerous and rich.” “I am absolutely confident that in the operational theaters of the White armies there were no Jewishpogroms, i.e., no organized extermination and pillaging of Jews. There were robberies and even murders … which were purposefully overblown and misrepresented as anti-Jewish pogroms by the special press…. Because of these accidents, the Second Kuban Infantry Brigade and the Ossetian Cavalry Regiment were disbanded…. All peoples, be they Christian or Jewish, suffered in disorderly areas.” [The exception was that] there were executions (on tip offs by locals) of those unfortunate commissars andChekists who did not manage to escape and there were quite a few Jews among them.

One way that Jews aided the Bolsheviks was financially. Jews contributed little to the White cause, “yet whenever the Bolsheviks showed up and demanded money and valuables, the population obediently handed over millions of rubles and whole stores of goods.” The Whites even rejected some Jewish support because of “the prominent involvement of other Jews on the Red side.” While the White army was originally free of anti-Jewish attitudes, “the situation dramatically changed by 1919” when Jews were seen as the main base of support for Bolshevism, exaggerated by the intense local anti-Jewish attitudes in areas like the Ukraine with a long history of hostility between Jews and Slavs, now exacerbated by the prominence of Jewish support for the Bolsheviks. “The Whites perceived Russia as occupied by Jewish commissars — and they marched to liberate her.”

The fate of the White cause also was sealed because of failure to obtain Jewish support in the West. Solzhenitsyn states unequivocally that “the White Movement was in desperate need of the support by the Western public opinion, which in turn largely depended on the fate of Russian Jewry.” Churchill appealed to Denikin to stop the pogroms, but he also quotes a historian who notes that Churchill feared the reactions of “powerful Jewish circles within the elite.” Jewish elites throughout the West threw their support to the Bolsheviks, aided by idealistic perceptions of “grandiose plans” for a New World under communism.

Solzhenitsyn is scathing in his condemnation of the Western powers: “And yet, the behavior of the former Entente of Western nations during the entire Civil War is striking by its greed and blind indifference toward the White Movement — the successor of their wartime ally, Imperial Russia.” This inaction and indifference led to an incalculable tragedy for Russia.

Both the general sympathy of Russian Jews toward the Bolsheviks and the developed attitude of the White forces toward Jews eclipsed and erased the most important benefit of a possible White victory — the sane evolution of the Russian state.

And because of its long term reverberations in the history of the 20th century, the result was a disaster for all European peoples. The prominent role of Jews in the Soviet government dovetailed not only with the warm welcome by Jews for the Soviet invasion of Poland of 1921, but also with Jewish involvement in revolutionary movements in Hungary and Germany. The result was a deepening of anti-Jewish attitudes, especially in Eastern and Central Europe. A historian comments, “the intensity and tenacity of anti-Semitic prejudice in both the east and the center of Europe was significantly influenced by Jewish participation in the revolutionary movement.” “The fact that the leaders of the suppressed Communist revolts were Jews was one of the most important reasons for the resurrection of political anti-Semitism in contemporary Germany.”

And in Hungary, “While Jews played a ‘quite conspicuous’ role in the Russian and German communist revolutions, their role in Hungary became central…. Out of 49 People’s Commissars there, 31 were Jews.” “Granted, the prime-minister was a gentile, Sandor Garbai, but [Mátyás] Rákosi later joked that Garbai was elected because someone had to sign execution orders on Sabbath days.” As was typical wherever communists gained power, the traditional culture was eradicated: “Statues of Hungarian kings and heroes were knocked off their pedestals, the national anthem outlawed, and wearing the national colors criminalized.”

The Jewish role in Bolshevism and in the abortive revolutions in Hungary and Germany cast a long shadow on later events:

For long after the Revolution, conservatives throughout Europe and the United States believed that Jews were responsible for Communism and for the Bolshevik Revolution. The Jewish role in leftist political movements was a common source of anti-Jewish attitudes among a great many intellectuals and political figures. In Germany, the identification of Jews and Bolshevism was widespread in the middle classes and was a critical part of the National Socialist view of the world. As historian Ernst Nolte has noted, for middle-class Germans, “the experience of the Bolshevik revolution in Germany was so immediate, so close to home, and so disquieting, and statistics seemed to prove the overwhelming participation of Jewish ringleaders so irrefutably,” that even many liberals believed in Jewish responsibility (Ernst Nolte, Three Faces of Fascism [1965, 331]). Jewish involvement in the horrors of Communism was also an important sentiment in Hitler’s desire to destroy the USSR and in the anti-Jewish actions of the German National Socialist government. Jews and Jewish organizations were also important forces in inducing the Western democracies to side with Stalin rather than Hitler in World War II.

The victory over National Socialism set the stage for the tremendous increase in Jewish power in the post-World War II Western world, in the end more than compensating for the decline of Jews in the Soviet Union. As [Yuri] Slezkine shows, the children of Jewish immigrants assumed an elite position in the United States, just as they had in the Soviet Union and throughout Eastern Europe and Germany prior to World War II. This new-found power facilitated the establishment of Israel, the transformation of the United States and other Western nations in the direction of multiracial, multicultural societies via large-scale non-white immigration, and the consequent decline in European demographic and cultural preeminence. The critical Jewish role in Communism has been sanitized, while Jewish victimization by the Nazis has achieved the status of a moral touchstone and is a prime weapon in the push for massive non-European immigration, multiculturalism, and advancing other Jewish causes.

The Jewish involvement in Bolshevism has therefore had an enormous effect on recent European and American history. It is certainly true that Jews would have attained elite status in the United States with or without their prominence in the Soviet Union. However, without the Soviet Union as a shining beacon of a land freed of official anti-Semitism where Jews had attained elite status in a stunningly short period, the history of the United States would have been very different. The persistence of Jewish radicalism influenced the general political sensibility of the Jewish community and had a destabilizing effect on American society, ranging from the paranoia of the McCarthy era, to the triumph of the 1960s countercultural revolution, to the conflicts over immigration and multiculturalism that are so much a part of the contemporary political landscape. (See here, pp. 95–96 and references therein; see also here, pp. xxx–xxxii)

Solzhenitsyn’s treatment once again hits all the right notes. While staying squarely within mainstream scholarship, he succeeds in laying bare the ethnic conflict that is at the heart of the fraught relationship of Jews and Europeans.

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

Elena Kagan and the new (unprincipled) elite

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Harvard Law professor Noah Feldman had a bit of Jewish triumphalism published recently in the NY Times (“The Triumphant Decline of the WASP“).  Now that the WASPs have gone down to zero seats on the Supreme Court and there’s a Black president, it’s time to congratulate the WASPs for holding onto their principles even though their principles caused their demise: WASPs as the first and only proposition ethnic group.

Satisfaction with our national progress [by having 3 Jews on the Supreme Court and no WASPs] should not make us forget its authors: the very Protestant elite that founded and long dominated our nation’s institutions of higher education and government, including the Supreme Court. Unlike almost every other dominant ethnic, racial or religious group in world history, white Protestants have ceded their socioeconomic power by hewing voluntarily to the values of merit and inclusion, values now shared broadly by Americans of different backgrounds. The decline of the Protestant elite is actually its greatest triumph.

I would go beyond Feldman by saying that no other elite has ever voluntarily allowed itself to be eclipsed because of steadfast adherence to principle. Feldman is doubtless quite happy because he realizes that the new elite (including himself) will not allow itself to be eclipsed by such madness–suicide by principle.

Indeed, Kagan’s arrival on the Supreme Court is a sort of official coming out party for the new elite. It’s been there for quite some time, but the Kagan nomination is an in-your-face-demonstration of the power of Jewish ethnic networking at the highest levels of government. And the first thing one notices is that the new elite has no compunctions about nominating someone for the Supreme Court even though she has no real qualifications.  So much for the principles of merit and inclusion: Inclusion does not apply to WASPs now that they have been deposed. And the principle of merit can now be safely discarded in favor of ethnic networking.  As I noted previously,

This is a favorite aspect of contemporary Jewish self-conception — the idea that Jews replaced WASPs because they are smarter and work harder. But this leads to the ultimate irony: Kagan is remarkably unqualified to be a Supreme Court Justice in terms of the usual standards: judicial experience, academic publications, or even courtroom experience. Rather, all the evidence is that Kagan owes her impending confirmation to her Jewish ethnic connections (see also here).

The same goes for Jewish over-representation in elite academic institutions–far higher than can be explained by higher Jewish IQ. Does anyone seriously think that Jewish domination of Hollywood and the so much of the other mainstream media  (see, e.g., Edmund Connelly’s current TOO article) is about merit rather than ethnic networking and solidarity? And then there’s the addiction of the new elite to affirmative action for non-Whites.

Whatever else one can say about the new elite, it certainly does not believe in merit. The only common denominator is that Whites of European extraction are being systematically excluded and displaced to the point that they are now underrepresented in all the important areas of the elite compared to their percentage of the population. The new elite distinguishes itself mainly by its hostility to the traditional people and culture of those they displaced. It is an elite that cannot say its name. Indeed the ADL was all over Pat Buchanan for merely mentioning that Kagan is Jewish and that, upon her confirmation, Jews would be one-third of the Supreme Court.

This lack of principle at the foundation of the new elite extends to every area of the culture: The financial elite that produced the greatest economic recession since the Great Depression by participating in and massively profiting from wholesale fraud in the mortgage market; the academic elite that systematically excludes ideas related to the legitimacy and reasonableness of White ethnic interests; the media elite that routinely provides invidious depictions of Whites and especially Whites with a sense of White identity and ethnic interests; the political elite that fails to perform the most basic function of government: protecting the people and culture from invasion and displacement; the organized Jewish community with its influence spread throughout the government, routinely supporting an expansive ethnonationalism in Israel while condemning any hint of ethnonationalism in White Americans.

This lack of principle will certainly extend to Elena Kagan once she accedes to the  Supreme Court. Her academic publishing record, meager as it is, indicates someone who does not believe in principles such as free speech:

Kagan [will]  be quite willing to fashion her legal arguments to attain her liberal/left policy goals, and that is exactly what her other writings show. Her 1993 article “Regulation of Hate Speech and Pornography After R.A.V,” (60 University of Chicago Law Review 873; available on Lexis/Nexis) indicates someone who is entirely on board with seeking ways to circumscribe free speech in the interests of multicultural virtue: “I take it as a given that we live in a society marred by racial and gender inequality, that certain forms of speech perpetuate and promote this inequality, and that the uncoerced disappearance of such speech would be cause for great elation.” She acknowledges that the Supreme Court is unlikely to alter its stance that speech based on viewpoint is protected by the First Amendment, but she sees that as subject to change with a different majority: The Supreme Court “will not in the foreseeable future” adopt the view that “all governmental efforts to regulate such speech … accord with the Constitution.” But in her view there is nothing to prevent it from doing so. Clearly, she does not see the protection of viewpoint-based speech as a principle worth preserving or set in stone. Rather, she believes that a new majority could rule that “all government efforts to regulate such speech” would be constitutional. All government efforts.

I suspect  that the new elite will continue to pay lip service to the founding documents, the rule of law, and high principles like merit. But in reality these documents will be interpreted in ways that benefit the new elite and allow it to consolidate and maintain its power. I believe that with one more vote after Kagan’s confirmation, the First Amendment will be a historical curiousity.

And the principle of merit will mainly come down to promotional hype  in the media (when not obviously a matter of affirmative action).  Feldman represents Kagan as an exemplar of the shift to an American meritocracy — despite her remarkably undistinguished record. (A Google ssearch for “Elena Kagan” and “Harriet Miers” yields dozens of articles on the very real question of her qualifications.)  Senator Jeff Sessions correctly called Kagan the least experienced nominee “at least in the last 50 years.” He also noted that his main concern about her is his fear that she lacks a firm sense of the  rule of law–in other words, that she does not see law as defending the principles that were so sacrosanct to her WASP antecedents: “Will she as a judge subordinate herself to the constitution and keep her political views at bay?”

That is the question precisely. And all the evidence is that Kagan, like the rest of the new elite, will reject principle in favor of interest. We already see that honest, empirically grounded analyses of the Jewish role in the new elite and how this new elite serves Jewish ethnic interests will continue to be proscribed. As in the USSR, the topic will be officially off limits. (Solzhenitsyn makes this point in 200 Years Together.)

Finally, I agree with Feldman that the WASP elite was extraordinarily principled–uniquely so. This is not the entire story, however, since the WASPs did mount an ethnic defense culminating in the 1924 immigration law. It failed, in my opinion mainly because of the rise of Jews as a hostile elite who attained their position by seizing the moral high ground and making alliances with and promoting the more principled (suicidal) component of the WASP elite. (WASPs like Madison Grant, Lothrop Stoddard, and A. Lawrence Lowell were not part of the the WASP suicide mission; they could see the writing on the wall and I think they understood who the enemy was.)  As Israel Zangwill said in opposing the 1924 immigration restriction law, “You must make a fight against this bill; tell them they are destroying American ideals. Most fortifications are of cardboard, and if you press against them, they give way” (see here, p. 266).

Jewish intellectuals understood that WASP dedication to principles and ideals was their soft spot. We can expect that the new elite will not be similarly inclined to adhere to principles at the expense of self-interest. The result will be a catastrophic loss to the people who founded and built America.

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Jews as a hostile elite–again

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Peter Brimelow ends his recent article (“Redneckophobia”? Why Obama Is Attacking Arizona“) by noting : “Our political class may live in a fantasy world, but the motive for its immigration enthusiasm is all too real: a relentless hatred of the historic American nation.”The immediate object of his ire is one Klejda Gjermani, described by Brimelow as “an Albanian expatriate of Jewish descent” who stepped off the boat and pretty much immediately realized she suffered from redneckophobia.  She works for Commentary, so I am sure she feels quite at home there.Bookmark and Share

Writing in Takimag, Paul Gottfried (The Death of the WASP) also raises the issue of Jews as a hostile elite, claiming that although I am generally an “over-the-top critic of Jewish power” (specifics would be nice),  on this particular issue I have “hardly scratched the surface”:

Even that over-the-top critic of Jewish power, Kevin MacDonald, has hardly scratched the surface in delineating the nastiness with which the children and grandchildren of Eastern European Jewish immigrants clawed their way to the top of the academic-media industry, on the backs of those they often despised. And all the while they appealed with brilliant success to a guilty WASP conscience.

I’ll really try to work on this problem, maybe check my Thesaurus for some good synonyms for “despised.” Memo to self: Must stop being polite.

It really wouldn’t matter much that Jews have become an elite except for this relentless hatred and loathing.   After all, all societies have elites. What is toxic is that such a substantial portion of our elite–especially that part of the elite that is ensconced in the media, the financial, and the academic world– hates (loathes, despises)  the traditional people and culture they rule over.

We should never forget what happened when Jews were a hostile elite in the USSR. The loathing and contempt for the traditional people and culture of Russia was a major factor in the avid Jewish participation in the greatest crimes of the 20th century:

A very traditional part of Jewish culture was to despise the Russians and their culture. (Even the Jewish literati despised all of traditional Russian culture, apart from Pushkin and a few literary icons.) Indeed, one wonders what would motivate the Jewish commissars to revenge apart from motives related to their Jewish identity. Traditional hostility toward non-Jews and their culture forms a central theme in the writings of Israel Shahak and many mainstream Jewish historians, including Slezkine,  and I have presented summaries of this material elsewhere…. hatred toward the peoples and cultures of non-Jews and the image of enslaved ancestors as victims of anti-Semitism have been the Jewish norm throughout history—much commented on, from Tacitus to the present.  (review of Yuri Slezkine’s The Jewish Century)

In other words, this is a problem that is endemic to Diaspora Judaism. Hostility and loathing toward the people and culture they live among is a very long and tragic theme of Jewish history and a potent source of historical anti-Semitism.

And speaking of “redneckophobia,” the above passage continues:

It is easy to imagine which sectors of American society would have been deemed overly backward and religious and therefore worthy of mass murder by the American counterparts of the Jewish elite in the Soviet Union—the ones who journeyed to Ellis Island instead of Moscow. The descendants of these overly backward and religious people now loom large among the “red state” voters who have been so important in recent national elections. Jewish animosity toward the Christian culture that is so deeply ingrained in much of America is legendary.

Gottfried notes that the Jews who deposed the WASP elite “appealed with brilliant success to a guilty WASP conscience.” Why the WASPs are so guilt-prone is an important question, but it’s ironic that Shelby Steele recently appealed to White guilt to explain why the West can’t muster the moral courage to condemm Israel’s enemies (WSJ, “Israel and the surrender of the West“). Leaving aside the monstrosity of what he says about Israel, this is the gist of the argument:

One reason for [Israel being seen as the bad guy] is that the entire Western world has suffered from a deficit of moral authority for decades now. Today we in the West are reluctant to use our full military might in war lest we seem imperialistic; we hesitate to enforce our borders lest we seem racist; we are reluctant to ask for assimilation from new immigrants lest we seem xenophobic; and we are pained to give Western Civilization primacy in our educational curricula lest we seem supremacist. Today the West lives on the defensive, the very legitimacy of our modern societies requiring constant dissociation from the sins of the Western past—racism, economic exploitation, imperialism and so on.

When the Israeli commandos boarded that last boat in the flotilla and, after being attacked with metal rods, killed nine of their attackers, they were acting in a world without the moral authority to give them the benefit of the doubt.

So the conclusion is that the Jews who deposed the WASP elite by appealing to their guilt proneness to the point that the new Jewish hostile elite has carte blanche to displace them by importing a new people (opposition would be “racist”) now find themselves with a West unable to defend the moral legitimacy of whatever Israel does. I suppose there is a certain justice in this, but the loss for the traditional people of America is incalculable. And given what happened in the USSR, White people should be very afraid of what the future may hold.

Review of Podhoretz, Part I

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I have a rather longish review of Norman Podhoretz’s Why are Jews Liberals? posted at AlternativeRight.com. I thought I would post a summary here to encourage commentary. Part I is “Remaking the Right: Liberals, Jews, Conservatives” and deals with how Jews see their history in Europe — the lachrymose view of European history in which Jews have been the victims of irrational hostility ever since the origins of Christianity. The take home point is:  “It’s a very short jump from blaming the culture created and sustained by Europeans to the idea that Europeans as a people or group of peoples are the problem. Ultimately, this implicit sense that Europeans themselves are the problem is the crux of the issue.”

This then feeds into the Jews as a hostile elite theme that is so apparent today. What’s really scary is that the Jewish Republican branch of the hostile elite represents itself as conservative. A conservative elite hostile to the traditional people and culture of the US. Orwell would love it.

The other theme is how neocon Jews like Podhoretz displaced true conservatives from the Republican Party in the interests of aiding Israel. However, they have not shed any of their hostility toward Europeans and their culture. Indeed, they have been complicit in the movement for massive non-White immigration. As I note, “With conservatives like these, who needs liberals? ”

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My Smackdown with Anti-White Crusader Tim Wise

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A TOO contributor recently brought to my attention to one of those hard Left, Jewish fanatics who wrap themselves in activist virtue as they roam the countryside in search of monsters to destroy.

The crusader’s name is Tim Wise. Tim Wise hates racists; but from what I discovered, only one kind of racist. The White kind.

To investigate, I decided to contact Timothy Jacob Wise and explore his sympathies and uncover his inconsistencies, which turned out to be extensive. First, here’s a bit about “Anti-White Privilege” activist Timothy Jacob Wise fromhis website:

Tim Wise is among the most prominent anti-racist writers and activists in the U.S., and has been called, “One of the most brilliant, articulate and courageous critics of white privilege in the nation,” by best-selling author and professor Michael Eric Dyson, of Georgetown University. Wise has spoken in 48 states, and on over 400 college campuses, including Harvard, Stanford, and the Law Schools at Yale and Columbia, and has spoken to community groups around the nation.

Tim Wise has written at least four books on racism and “white privilege” and has perhaps appeared on as many talk shows as Joan Rivers. And he’s every bit as charming.

Wise claims to be an “anti-Zionist Jew” but he avoids the subject of Jewishness, of Israel and Palestine. And he definitely avoids the ethical shortcomings inherent in Zionism. One of Wise’s books is titled, White Like Me. Yes, Wise detests “white privilege” as well as “haters” like David Duke, and even televangelists like Pat Robertson. Wise’s list of hate objects constitutes a rather familiar pattern. Indeed, from what I could uncover, among Wise’s scores of articles on race, there was virtually nothing on America’s unconditional commitment to the Jewish people of Israel and their infamous assortment of racial extremists. I wanted to explore this.

I decided to contact Mr. Wise and initiate a conversation about his deep concerns over “white privilege”. Below is our unexpurgated correspondence. Mr. Wise finally stopped talking to me. To find out why, read on. The email messages remain as in the original, with minor editing and added links.

[Mark Green to Tim Wise, February 22, 2010]:

Dear Tim,

I’m bothered by racism in all its expressions. But history creates challenges for those of us who wish to counter injustice as well as advance equal treatment for everyone under the rule of law. Allow me to ask you then: are you Jewish? (Please forgive me for being so bold). 

This is an important question however. There is no Caucasian group in the US that operates with such privilege (and enjoys such political double-standard) as American Jews and, especially, the state of Israel. Indeed, if white racism is deplorable, isn’t Jewish racism? For all of us devoted to combating racism, the Zionist movement poses pressing moral dilemmas. This cannot be ignored. 

By any objective measure, Jews in America are very successful, influential and free to travel anywhere. This is good. But it can be argued that there is an underlying racial element to ‘global Jewry’. Many organized Jews groups denounce racism but work tirelessly to prevent Jews from marrying individuals without a Jewish mother. This is not only hard to justify, but it suggests an overriding Jewish concern with DNA (race). This raises difficult issues. 

Many Jews operate in countless (and exclusive) groups that are designed to enhance Jewish cohesion, solidarity and influence. But there’s clearly a downside to this. Not everyone’s in the club.  

American Jews, I’ve noticed, tend to support multi-culturalism (and high levels of immigration) here in the US as they champion Jewish purity in Israel/Palestine. Isn’t this double-standard a challenge to our anti-racist agenda? This level of Jewish privilege demands scrutiny. Public scrutiny. We cannot ignore it. 

Many Jews are proudly atheistic. (I’m something of an atheist myself.) But interestingly, these atheistic Jews are as Jewish as any rabbi. Why? It is their ethnic identity that makes them Jews. Religious ideology, it seems, is a sidelight to modern Jewishness. Indeed, racial identity is what motivates Israeli Jews (and their supporters here) to try to ethnically-cleanse Palestine. As an anti-racist, isn’t this hard to support? Should people in Palestine be penalized to the point of exile for not having a Jewish pedigree? This is a difficult issue. 

As you doubtless realize, Jews also have extraordinary influence in Hollywood and Washington. If political/cultural underrepresentation is problematic, why not political/cultural overrepresentation? After all, power is a zero-sum game. 

Today, many Jews in America have attained privileged status. At the highest levels, many organized Jewish groups seem willing to inflict damage upon numerous Mideast peoples in order to enhance security for their ethno-state in Israel. This campaign is hugely expensive to the US taxpayer and, at times, undermines our reputation abroad. Favoring one ‘religion’ over others is also incompatible with settled American law. What (if anything) should we do about this?  

There are exclusive Jewish fraternities, Jewish neighborhoods, Jewish country clubs, Jewish political action committees (by the score) and even a Congressional Jewish caucus in Washington DC. These organizations actively discriminate against non-Jews and, since Jewishness is a birthright among Jews, the question of racism inevitably arises. It cannot be ignored. 

Most Jewish Americans seem comfortable with Israel’s harsh treatment of native non-Jews in Palestine. What’s the proper course of action for America now? Today, we Americans of all races are taxed to subsidize the Zionist battle against non-Jews in Palestine. Is this compatible with fighting racism? On a related subject, should America invade Iran to make Israel safer? These are challenging questions. But I think that it’s time that you spoke out against the most virulent forms of Jewish racism, particularly since it’s so intimately connected to the imperial doings of Washington DC.  

If possible, please take the time to explore these concerns, Tim. I as well as many of your supporters will surely appreciate it. Thank you for your consideration.  Sincerely, Mark Green

[Tim Wise to Mark Green, February 22]

I am an anti-Zionist jew and always have been. I have written about it and spoken out about it for years. If you did your homework you would know that. Although I do not think American Jews have nearly the power you think, I am certainly opposed to our special relationship with Israel. I think we should spend all military aid to Israel (and everywhere else for that matter), and that the proper solution in Palestine is a one-state, bi-national state, where all have equal rights, entirely.  tim wise

[Mark Green to Tim Wise on Feburary 24, 2010]:

Hi Tim. Thank you for your comments. I’ve done some reading by you and about you. Your anti-racist positions are indeed selective. I discovered little in your writings that critically explore Israeli racism. Nothing about ‘Jewish supremacism’. As far as I can tell, you’ve even managed to ignore the sorry condition of black Jews in Israel. Are you an Israeli mole? 

Perhaps you’ve described yourself as “anti-Zionist Jew” once or twice (though I missed it) but the sweep of your articles ignores Israeli violence and systemic Israeli racism altogether. Wikipedia has nothing to say about your being an “anti-Zionist Jew”. In fact, even your list of recommended books hasn’t one title devoted to the destruction of Palestine or the inordinate influence enjoyed by the Israel Lobby in Washington. Did you forget? 

Your obsession with “white privilege” is conveniently narrow. Is it the white privilege we find throughout our country at integrated, white-created institutions that hire and recruit African-Americans over more qualified white applicants because of their race? — or is this the kind of ‘white privilege’ that allows a nation of European Jews to colonize an already-populated area in the Middle East and then exile or subjugate the native people there because they lack a Jewish pedigree? Oddly, your writings obsess over the former and ignore the latter. Your sympathies lack moral balance.  

You say you want to suspend “military aid” to Israel. Big deal. The Israelis already have a nuclear arsenal and they’re threatening to use it. Doesn’t the threat of genocide concern you? Then say so. Or should thousands of Iranians die because their President doubts the Holocaust or intends to enrich uranium? 

Do you support the Boycott Divestment and Sanctions movement(BDS) against Israel? You did so aggressively in the case of Apartheid South Africa. If you do support these broad sanctions against the Zionist Israel, then why not say so loudly and endorse BDS?  

Your mining the same territory that Jewish liberals have been prospecting for the past 60 years: integration for blacks and whites, separate but equal for Israelis. This is a moral charade.  

The greatest racial violence and extremist danger today comes from Jewish zealots and their fundamentalist Christian allies. These people are threatening nuclear war against Iran and pushing our government towards continued aggression in Afghanistan, Syria, Pakistan, Yeman, Lebanon, and Iraq. Meanwhile, the slow motion annihilation of Palestine grinds on. As one who claims to be committed to the struggle against racism, doesn’t this bother you? Then say something about it that’s loud and clear. And keep saying it. 

Desmond Tutu famously said conditions in Palestine are “far worse” than anything he witnessed in Apartheid South Africa. Do you not believe him? Why then are you so accommodating towards the ‘special relationship’ (besides private claims to the contrary)? Your writings evidence more contempt for pro-lifers in America’s Bible Belt than an Israeli garrison dropping white phosphorous on Palestinian civilians. Why? 

You are you frothy over a problem that is rapidly improving (race relations in the US) but indifferent to a crisis that is growing worse (Zionist extremism). This smacks of intellectual dishonesty, Tim.  

Since you’re keen on human rights, how is the Arab minority doing in Israel? Any hiring quotas that you know of? What about ‘the problem’ of discrimination in housing? Terrible, right? Are these not expressions of institutionalized racism?  

Here’s my theory: you’re obsession with (past) white (Christian) sins is a deliberate cover for ongoing, government-subsidized, worldwide Zionist criminality. The shoe fits, Tim. 

To cover up for your work as an Israeli asset, you occasionally make noises about “hard line” or “right wing” Israelis, but never about the whole stinking racist society there. 

Also, please explain how Israel can become “one state” but also be “bi-national”. Are you serious? A bi-national state is what many Apartheid-era white South Africans sought so they could avoid racial integration and black rule. Are you blowing smoke again for Jewish segregationists? Indeed, recent polling indicates that the vast majority of Israeli Jews want the Jewish State ethnically cleansed of all gentiles in the event of a ‘peace deal’. That whole country is chock full of racist, supremacist Jews, Tim. But it doesn’t seem to bother you. 

You are surely aware that Jews may not marry non-Jews in Israel. Why have you not explored this as an expression of systemic Israeli racism? Is DNA mixing a bad thing for the Jews? Many Israelis think so.

Finally, which past or present Israeli leaders should be held criminally responsible for the multitude of crimes committed by the Zionist state? Please name names.  

Those horrid white American racists that you make a living ranting about couldn’t get elected to deputy sheriff in Amarillo, but those privileged whites from Israel get a private meeting with our President. Which problem is more urgent, Tim? Moral and political corruption on a massive scale is subverting justice and damaging our civilization. And you’re looking the other way. -Mark Green

[Tim Wise to Mark Green, February 23, 2010]:

Mark, You don’t get it. I am opposed to Zionism, entirely. I do not believe in a Jewish state, or any ethno-religious states.  

I spend my time focusing mostly on U.S. white racism because I am an American. I believe I can have the greatest influence where I live, and believe in cleaning up my backyard first. I receive white privilege in the U.S. as someone who is seen as white (whether you and your type believe Jews are white or not is irrelevant to the issue of whether we receive white advantage). I do not accept that as a Jew I have some special obligation to focus on Israel, per se, because I do not believe in Israel and have said so repeatedly. I would never live there, have no desire to go there, and even quit my own religious instruction as a youth because of my views re: Israel among other things.  

i agree with Tutu and have said so. 

I support the boycott and divestment from israel. 

When I say bi-national state, I merely mean that Jews should be able to live in palestine with Arabs (Christian and Muslim), with equal rights, but no special rights or privileges. 

I’m not sure what would satisfy you. Perhaps you think we should simply nuke Israel, or round up Jews and kill them, and only those who are willing to go along with such bigoted bullshit are legit in your view. Whatever. people like you who believe in worldwide Jewish conspiracies tend to be beyond reason, so I doubt there is much reason in discussing it with you further.  

I am critical of Jewish racism. You are not critical of traditional white racism. And therein lies the difference. You are the hypocrite my friend. Not me. 

Fuck you very much. Tim

[Mark Green to Tim Wise, February 24, 2010]:

Tim- No need for profanity or hatred. Your attack upon my character is a familiar canard. Stop changing the subject.  

Your written record is clear. Your public “criticisms” of Jewish racism are a basically non-existent. This is no accident. You have a forum but you’d rather denounce redneck hillbillies instead of billionaire Zionists. As for being an American, this didn’t prevent you from tirelessly pursuing sanctions against Apartheid South Africa, did it? It’s ‘white’ (Christian) racism that you detest. Nothing more. This is a familiar pattern among Jews. 

Israel is allowed to kill because US-based Jews such as yourself would prefer to blow smoke about less urgent issues. In case you haven’t noticed, racist Israel relies on American aid, American arms and American cover provide by Jewish activists like yourself to commit their everyday atrocities. Because of the highly effective efforts of Zionists, America and Israel are virtually one political entity. This arrangement damages America and undermines international law. Your deceptive behavior make you complicit, that’s all. -Mark Green

[Tim Wise to Mark Green, February 24, 2010]:

… and I support cutting off that assistance, just like I did with South Africa. But actually, one thing I learned while doing the S. Africa work was that it was inappropriate to focus only on injustice elsewhere when there is substantial racism and injustice here (this is documented in my books, by the way, whether you believe it or not). I did not make the connections to the local context that I needed to when I was a student in the antiapartheid movement, and I resolved not to ever again focus mostly on what was going on elsewhere, over what was going on here.

To the extent the US is complicit, I call that out and am on record as supporting a) an end of all support for Israel (military and economic), b) an end to Israel as a “Jewish state,” and a one-state, democratic solution for all, c) an end to the special relationship with Israel in the U.S. I’m not sure what more I’m supposed to do. fact is, I receive white privilege in the U.S. and feel that it is ethically necessary to take responsibility for that, first, because that is the system of injustice from which I most directly benefit. I do not receive Jewish privilege in this country (I would in Israel, but don’t have any desire to even visit, let alone live there). In this country, I have never been favored in anything because of my Jewishness, while, on the other hand, I was often marginalized as a Jew growing up, told by Christian assholes that I was going to hell etc.

So, because I believe our first responsibility is to address injustice from which we benefit, I think dealing with white racism/privilege in the U.S. has to be my priority. But that has not kept me from writing about Israel, openly proclaiming my anti-Zionist views at hundreds of speeches, and ending up on the shit list of every Zionist and pro-Israel group in the country as a result. You may not be familiar with my public stance, but Zionists are. I have had them attempt to get me fired from jobs, they have forced places to cancel my speeches, I get death threats from them on occasion, etc. So frankly, your own ignorance about my views says little about the reality: I have attacked Zionism. Not just the hard right in Israel, but Zionism. The fact that this upsets your simplistic worldview, which says that all Jews are Zionists and support Israel, is your problem, not mine… tim 

[Mark Green to Tim Wise, February 25, 2010]:

Hello Tim. I’ve got to give you credit, you’re a lot better on the Zionist problem than most of your co-ethnics. I am also sorry to hear that you were “marginalized as a Jew growing up…by Christian assholes”. This is unfortunate, and revealing. Unfortunately, you’ve still got a chip on your shoulder the size of Brooklyn.  

You are wrong to allege that I believe that “all Jews are Zionists and therefore support Israel” (though polling data proves that the vast majority of the world’s Jews are committed Zionists and do support Israel with little reservation). But I never floated this facile, straw man generalization about “all Jews” so kindly stop claiming so. 

I don’t know whether or not you actually believe that you have “never been favored in anything because of [your] Jewishness”, but allow me to inform you that, as an American Jew, you are supremely privileged in our society. Supremely.  

Just consider your occupation. You go around scolding white (overwhelmingly non-Jewish) Americans for their ethnocentrism in what’s become the most integrated, tolerant and multi-racial nation in human history. Racism (and expressions of racial preference) have become truly taboo for ordinary, white Americans. If white Americans were half as racist as you believe, they’d be following Israel’s example and enacting laws to manage their ethnic future. Only it’s not happening. US borders remain open as Israel builds a “security fence” bigger than the Berlin Wall. What’s worse, the very discussion of these perplexing double-standards is severely limited. 

For instance, do you think that a gentile with my views (highly critical of organized Jewry) would be allowed to promulgate these concerns on any major campus (without violent interruption) or on any major media outlet? It just doesn’t happen. It’s not allowed to.  

Do you think this level of censorship or these political double standards has taken root by accident? Authoritarianism and conformity of this kind protects activists like you, Tim. Your opponents are delegitimized and marginalized. These double-standards are in place by design. This is privilege. It is Jewish privilege. 

Each and every day, white Christians pay tribute to the nuclear-ready Zionist State via taxation and unwavering diplomatic and military assistance. These subsidies have been going on without interruption for generations. And no level of Israeli cruelty causes their cessation. Yet you make a living out of scolding these witless, hapless gentiles for their racist tendencies! You’re so Jewish you can’t even see straight. 

And while American pay tribute to Israel, fully 98% of American taxpayers would be denied citizenship in Israel because of their non-Jewish genealogy. This grotesque problem isn’t about “another country”, Tim. This is happening in Washington, in Palestine, and on your TV right here and now.  

Israel’s extraordinary exemption from everyday rules (and law) is an expression of Jewish privilege. This is doing genuine and irreversible damage to our nation and the world.  

Being Jewish in America today means never having to say you’re sorry (except to other Jews). It must be nice. And when criticizing Jews, we gentiles must be very, very careful, since the charge of ‘anti-Semitism can be ruinous. Jews suffer no similar opprobrium for any display of ‘anti-gentilism’. (Does such a thing even exist?) These double-standards are a cancer. In today’s multi-cultural America, there’s a galaxy of federations, alliances and organizations devoted strictly to ‘minority’ special interests. The vanishing white majority has been totally disarmed. This extraordinary double-standard represents the triumph of ‘political correctness, Tim, and it’s got Jewish fingerprints all over it. 

American Jews are blessed with top tier victim status today, in no small part due to the omnipresent Holocaust narrative. … In this universe, no other genocides matter. Perhaps no other genocide ever even happened. Today, the Holocaust parable symbolizes the eternal white (Christian) propensity for evil-doing (anti-Semitism) against a backdrop of Jewish exceptionalism and Jewish innocence. Those who doubt the veracity of any essential element (or meaning) of this Truth are to be shunned. In many democratic countries, repeated violators may suffer job loss or imprisonment.  

On the other hand, expressions of Jewish xenophobia — no matter how racist or extreme — suffer from no comparable sanction. Even Israel’s push for the annihilation of Iran achieves considerable US approval.

Jewish privilege is real and it is doing genuine harm. 

Thus ended our correspondence. I conclude with a quote from Wise’s website:

After all, acknowledging unfairness then calls decent people forth to correct those injustices. And since most persons are at their core, decent folks, the need to ignore evidence of injustice is powerful: To do otherwise would force whites to either push for change (which they would perceive as against their interests) or live consciously as hypocrites who speak of freedom and opportunity but perpetuate a system of inequality.

Who’s the hypocrite?

Mark Green is the editor of Persecution, Privilege and Power. He can be reached at: PersecutionPrivilegeAndPower.com

Part 2 of Connelly on White Victimization

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Part 2 of Edmund Connelly’s article on White victimization is posted. I was unaware of the following quote from Solzhenitsyn that Connelly found on Israel Shamir’s website:

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn summed up the process during the Bolshevik Revolution, when the

executed army officers were Russians, the noblemen, priests, monks, deputies were  Russians. . . . In 1920s, the pre-revolutionary engineers and scientists were exiled or killed. They were Russians, while their place was taken by Jews. The best Russian Psychiatric institute in Moscow, its Russian members were arrested or exiled, while their place was taken by the Jews. Important Jewish doctors blocked the advancement of Russian medical scientists. The best intellectual and artistic elites of Russian people were killed, while the Jews grew and flourished in these (deadly for Russians) years.

It’s passages like this that make an English translation of Solzhenitsyn’s 200 Years Together essential. Americans must be made aware of the enormous risks that lie ahead when White political power diminishes and Jews continue to be a hostile elite.

Solzhenitsyn shows that the Bolshevik revolution meant the rise of Jews in psychiatry. The following passage from Ch. 4 of Culture of Critique shows that the result of Jewish domination of psychiatry in the USSR was that psychoanalysis became official dogma. It also shows the strong overlap among Jews, psychoanalysis, and political radicalism. As noted throughout CofC, psychoanalysis proved to be a very useful tool in constructing theories in which White identity and interests were analyzed as a sign of psychiatric disorder. To some extent, this revolution has already occurred bloodlessly in the West since WWII, given the influence of the Frankfurt School and other Jewish intellectual movements in the contemporary world. Psychoanalysis has died a well-deserved death and for that we should all be grateful. But the theoretical basis for rejecting White identity and interests has simply migrated to other pathologies of the academic left.

This belief in the curative powers of sexual freedom coincided with a leftist political agenda common to the vast majority of Jewish intellectuals of the period and reviewed throughout this book. This leftist political agenda proved to be a recurrent theme throughout the history of psychoanalysis. Support of radical and Marxist ideals was common among Freud’s early followers, and leftist attitudes were common in later years among psychoanalysts (Hale 1995, 31; Kurzweil 1989, 36, 46–47, 284; Torrey 1992, 33, 93ff, 122–123), as well as in Freudian inspired offshoots such as Erich Fromm, Wilhelm Reich (see below) and Alfred Adler. (Kurzweil [1989, 287] terms Adler the leader of “far left” psychoanalysis, noting that Adler wanted to immediately politicize teachers as radicals rather than wait for the perfection of psychoanalysis to do so.) The apex of the association between Marxism and psychoanalysis came in the 1920s in the Soviet Union, where all the top psychoanalysts were Bolsheviks, Trotsky supporters, and among the most powerful political figures in the country (see Chamberlain 1995). (Trotsky himself was an ardent enthusiast of psychoanalysis.) This group organized a government-sponsored State Psychoanalytical Institute and developed a program of “pedology” aimed at producing the “new Soviet man” on the basis of psychoanalytic principles applied to the education of children. The program, which encouraged sexual precocity in children, was put into practice in state-run schools.

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More On Our Unethical Financial Elite

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Matt Taibbi is at it again, this time with “Wall Street’s Bailout Hustle.” I can’t really comment on many of his substantive claims, but there is an awful lot of smoke at this point for one to suppose that there is no fire. Note especially the point that the financial system “assumes a certain minimal level of ethical behavior and civic instinct over and above what is spelled out by the regulations” (p. 7).

That’s the thing. We have not only replaced a manufacturing economy with a financial economy (see Kevin Phillips). We also have a financial elite is completely corrupt — with devastating consequences to the rest of the economy and the long term prospects of growth. As Taibbi notes, the system depends on a “true believer” syndrome in which people simply can’t believe they were conned. We desperately want to trust our elites — the people who come from the best schools and have close ties to the government. As Francis Fukuyama emphasizes, trust in elites and the assumption of civic mindedness are critical characteristics of individualist societies:

To this set of traits, Francis Fukuyama also adds trust as a critical virtue of individualist societies. Trust is really a way of emphasizing the importance of moral universalism as a trait of individualist societies. In collectivist, family-oriented societies, trust ends at the border of the family and kinship group. Social organization, whether in political culture or in economic enterprise, tends to be a family affair. Morality is defi ned as what is good for the group—typically the kinship group (e.g., the notorious line, “Is it good for the Jews?”). This lack of ability to develop a civil society is the fundamental problem of societies in the Middle East and Africa, where divisions into opposing religious and ultimately kinship groups define the political landscape. The movement of the West toward multiculturalism really means the end of individualist Western culture. (See here, p. 27)

We are entering an era where trust in political and cultural elites is fast becoming a thing of the past. Robert Putnam has shown that trust is lower in multi-ethnic societies. This decline in public trust will be accelerated when people really grasp the enormity of the disaster created by Wall Street and its close connections to the government. It’s really the end of a key feature of what made Western societies so successful. As Taibbi points out, there’s no change on the horizon–just a short pause for reloading.

Finally, I can’t help referring to today’s Doonesbury cartoon about the development of an ethical sense among bankers. The banker begins as a college grad who thinks “I hope to do something of value well and be fairly paid.” By middle age he is saying “I demand to be paid obscenely well for destroying value.” The cartoon illustrates the point that lack of trust in financial elites is very widespread and that they are reasonably portrayed as a predatory elite rather than an elite that helps create value.

The only problem with the cartoon is that it’s at least doubtful that the people who make it to the top in this system ever thought much about creating social value. As Edmund Connelly’s recent blog recounts, there is a very long history of vastly disproportionate Jewish involvement in financial fraud. And rather than a long history of civic responsibility, there is a long history of Jews thinking of themselves as outsiders in Western societies — a hostile elite with a strong sense of historical grievance. The long term prosperity of the society is certainly not uppermost in their minds.

This is the relevant passage from page 7 of Taibbi’s article:

Con artists have a word for the inability of their victims to accept that they’ve been scammed. They call it the “True Believer Syndrome.” That’s sort of where we are, in a state of nagging disbelief about the real problem on Wall Street. It isn’t so much that we have inadequate rules or incompetent regulators, although both of these things are certainly true. The real problem is that it doesn’t matter what regulations are in place if the people running the economy are rip-off artists. The system assumes a certain minimum level of ethical behavior and civic instinct over and above what is spelled out by the regulations. If those ethics are absent — well, this thing isn’t going to work, no matter what we do. Sure, mugging old ladies is against the law, but it’s also easy. To prevent it, we depend, for the most part, not on cops but on people making the conscious decision not to do it.

That’s why the biggest gift the bankers got in the bailout was not fiscal but psychological. “The most valuable part of the bailout,” says Rep. Sherman, “was the implicit guarantee that they’re Too Big to Fail.” Instead of liquidating and prosecuting the insolvent institutions that took us all down with them in a giant Ponzi scheme, we have showered them with money and guarantees and all sorts of other enabling gestures. And what should really freak everyone out is the fact that Wall Street immediately started skimming off its own rescue money. If the bailouts validated anew the crooked psychology of the bubble, the recent profit and bonus numbers show that the same psychology is back, thriving, and looking for new disasters to create. “It’s evidence,” says Rep. Kanjorski, “that they still don’t get it.”

More to the point, the fact that we haven’t done much of anything to change the rules and behavior of Wall Street shows that we still don’t get it. Instituting a bailout policy that stressed recapitalizing bad banks was like the addict coming back to the con man to get his lost money back. Ask yourself how well that ever works out. And then get ready for the reload.

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