Jews as An Elite

Free to Cheat: “Jewish Emancipation” and the Anglo-Jewish Cousinhood, Part 1

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Editor’s note: This is a repost of a classic Andrew Joyce article from 2012. Never forget!

“Men, it has been well said, think in herds; it will be seen that they go mad in herds, while they only recover their senses slowly, and one by one.”
     Charles Mackay, 1841[1]

Shortly after his election to Parliament in 1830, Thomas Babington Macaulay (1800–1859), a famous historian and one of Britain’s leading men of letters, took up the cause of removing Jewish “civil disabilities” in Britain. In a succession of speeches, Macaulay was instrumental in pushing the case for permitting Jews to sit in the legislature, and his January 1831 article Civil Disabilities of the Jews had a “significant effect on public opinion.”[2] Professing Jews residing in Britain at that time were unable to take seats in the House of Commons, because prior to sitting in the legislature one was required to declare a Christian oath. In addition, Jews were “excluded from Crown office, from corporations, and from most of the professions, the entrance to which bristled with religious oaths, tests, and declarations.”[3] Even the 1753 Naturalization Act which had granted citizenship to foreign-born Jews had been repealed following widespread popular agitation, and a pervading atmosphere of suspicion and mistrust of Jews generally, and foreign Jews especially.[4] Ursula Henriques states that because of the resolute opposition of the British people to the involvement of Jews in British political life, since their readmission in the 17th century “the Jews had remained quiet.”[5]

However, buoyed by the granting of political emancipation to Protestant Dissenters and Catholics in 1828 and 1829, British Jews began to agitate for their own “emancipation,” and this agitation was augmented and spearheaded to a great extent by Thomas Macauley. Within thirty years the British elite had capitulated; not only had all Christian oaths been abandoned, but six unconverted Jews sat in the House of Commons. Within fifty years, Britain had sixteen Jewish Members of Parliament, and a Jewish Prime Minister who espoused a doctrine of Jewish racial superiority — Benjamin Disraeli; and under Disraeli Britain would pursue a foreign policy dictated to a large extent by what future Prime Minister William Gladstone called “Judaic sympathies.”[6] This foreign policy would include support for the Ottomans who were friendly to Jews and were massacring Christians in Bulgaria. And it would include waging of war on the Boers in a move highly beneficial to Jewish mining operations in South Africa.[7] How and why did such a dramatic change in circumstances occur? And how did the Anglo-Jewish elite repay Britain for its act of ‘justice’?

Let us first return momentarily to Macaulay. An in-depth survey of his life reveals no Jewish ancestry and no clear links to Jews. Son of a Scottish colonial governor and abolitionist, Macaulay seems at first glance to be something of a weak-kneed liberal idealist, and in addition he appears to have had very little knowledge of Jewish history or culture. He saw the Jewish agitation for entry into government as being primarily a religious issue, and perceived Jews as being, in his own words, “victims of intolerance.”[8] Macaulay prided himself on his knowledge of Greek literature,[9] and yet we can but wish he’d spent more time on his Greek philosophy, particularly that of Plato who condemned ” those who practise justice through timidity or stupidity,” and opined that “if justice is not good for the just man, moralists who recommend it as a virtue are perpetrating a fraud.”[10]

However, a complete reading of his 1831 article on Civil Disabilities of the Jews would leave us feeling slightly less antagonistic towards this would-be emancipator, and his article reveals much about the extent and nature of Jewish power and influence in Britain at that time. Macaulay, it seems, viewed emancipation as a means of ‘keeping the Jews in check.’ For example, he insisted that “Jews are not now excluded from political power. They possess it; and as long as they are allowed to accumulate property, they must possess it. The distinction which is sometimes made between civil privileges and political power, is a distinction without a difference. Privileges are power.”[11] Macaulay was also aware of the role of finance as the primary force of Jewish power in Britain. He asked: “What power in civilised society is so great as that of creditor over the debtor? If we take this away from the Jew, we take away from him the security of his property. If we leave it to him, we leave to him a power more despotic by far, than that of the King and all his cabinet.”[12] Macaulay further responds to Christian claims that “it would be impious to let a Jew sit in Parliament” by stating bluntly that “a Jew may make money, and money may make members of Parliament. … [T]he Jew may govern the money market, and the money market may govern the world. … The scrawl of the Jew on the back of a piece of paper may be worth more than the word of three kings, or the national faith of three new American republics.”[13]

Macaulay’s insights into the nature of Jewish power at that time, and his assertions that Jews had already accumulated political power without the aid of the statute books, are quite profound. Yet his reasoning — that permitting Jews into the legislature would somehow offset this power, or make it accountable — seems pitifully naive and poorly thought out. Nonetheless, I wish to take Macaulay’s article as a starting point. What was it in the nature of British Jewry at that time that so alarmed Macaulay, and provoked such a rash response on his part?

The Cousinhood.

We should first bring the Anglo-Jewish elite, referred to by Macaulay, into sharper focus. From the early 19th century until the First World War, English Jewry was ruled by a tightly connected oligarchy. Daniel Gutwein states that this Anglo-Jewish elite comprised some twenty inter-related Ashkenazi and Sephardic families including the houses of Goldsmith, Montagu, Nathan, Cohen, Isaacs, Abrahams, Samuel, and Montefiore.[14] At its head “stood the House of Rothschild.”[15] This network of families had an “exceptionally high degree of consanguinity,” leading to it being termed “The Cousinhood,” and among them “conversion and intermarriage [with non-Jews] was rare.”[16] Todd Endelmann attributes the lack of conversion to the fact that “conversion was not as useful, in general, to English Jews as it was to Jews in Central and Eastern Europe.”[17] The Cousinhood exercised control over the Jewish community through its leadership of the Board of Deputies of British Jews, an organization which would later become one of the chief engines of the move for Jewish emancipation.[18]

The other means through which the Cousinhood maintained control over English Jews was its practice of “systematized philanthropy.” The Cousinhood largely refrained from involvement in Jewish religious life but heavily devoted itself to founding and leading the Anglo-Jewish Association — “the principle arm of Anglo-Jewish political and education aid” to global Jewry.[19] Endelmann notes that these communal institutions “determined the tenor and the agenda of the public side of Jewish life in London.”[20]

To illustrate the extent of blood and financial ties of this network of families, let us consider the following: in 1870, the treasurer of the London Jewish Board of Guardians was Viennese-born Ferdinand de Rothschild (1838–1898). Ferdinand had married his cousin Elvina, who was a niece of the President of the London United Synagogue, Sir Anthony de Rothschild (1810–1876). Meanwhile, the Board of Deputies was at that time headed by Moses Montefiore, whose wife, a daughter of Levi Barent Cohen, was related to Nathan Meyer Rothschild. Nathan Meyer Rothschild’s wife was also a daughter of Levi Barent Cohen, and thus Montefiore was uncle to the aforementioned Anthony de Rothschild. In addition, Anthony was married to a niece of Montefiore, the daughter of Abraham Montefiore and Henrietta Rothschild[21]…et cetera, et cetera. In financial terms, the houses of Rothschild and Montefiore had united in 1824 to form the Alliance Insurance Company, and most of the families were involved in each other’s stock-brokering and banking concerns. Endelmann notes that in these firms “new recruits were drawn exclusively from the ranks of the family.”[22]

Working tightly within this ethnic and familial network, the Cousinhood amassed huge fortunes, and in the years before World War I, despite comprising less than three tenths of 1% of the population, Jews constituted over 20% of non-landed British millionaires.[23] William Rubinstein notes that of these millionaires, all belonged to the Cousinhood.[24] It is worth noting that this wealth was derived exclusively from the fields of “banking, finance, the stock markets and bullion trading.”[25]

By virtue of this incredible level of wealth, the Cousinhood enjoyed a certain degree of political influence. Endelmann provides evidence that the group had “used its economic power to insinuate itself into the different sectors of the political establishment: the political parties, both Houses of Parliament, and even the government.”[26] Endelmann further states that the  Cousinhood’s influence was wielded in the pursuit of “ethnic sympathies, family tradition, and group self-interest,” and it was this influence that so alarmed Thomas Macaulay.[27]

The Move Into Parliament.

By the mid-1830s, English Jews led by the Cousinhood began to press for the removal of Christian oaths in Parliament and this for their ability to enter the legislature. Between 1830 and 1836 no fewer than four Bills were tabled for the removal of Jewish ‘disabilities,’ and all failed to win the support of elected officials. Frustrated that their influence was proving ineffectual, the Cousinhood decided to directly confront Parliament by putting Lionel de Rothschild up as a Liberal candidate for the City of London constituency, and funding him to an extent that almost ensured victory before the campaign even began. Although the Cousinhood had, as Endelmann noted, backed all parties when it was in their interests, they settled on the Liberals because they were broadly supportive of religious liberty. By framing Jewish interests in a religious context, de Rothschild sought to “bring the issue of Jewish emancipation into the broader Liberal agenda of civil and religious liberty, and he was determined that Liberals should adopt Jewish emancipation as a cause.”[28]

De Rothschild came third in the 1847 General Election but won enough votes to take a seat in Parliament. Lord John Russell, then Whig Prime Minister, immediately set about introducing a Jewish Disabilities Bill which would do away with the Christian oath. The Bill was passed in the House of Commons, but resistance proved strong, and it was thrown out by the Lords twice in 1848, and again in 1849. A remarkable but quite unsurprising detail about this time concerns the complicity of Benjamin Disraeli in lobbying members of the opposition party for support of the Bill. The quintessential ‘damp Jew’, Disraeli had been baptized a Christian at age twelve but never ceased to support Jewish ethnic interests, and became notorious for espousing a repugnant Jewish supremacism in his novels Coningsby (1844), Sybil (1845), and Tancred (1847). Although a member of the Tory party since 1837 — a party which was ostensibly dedicated to supporting Christianity in the form of the Established Church of England — correspondence in the official Rothschild Archive reveals that Disraeli was actively working “behind the scenes” to generate Tory support for the removal of the Christian oath.[29] Even taking into account Barbara Kaplan’s dubious and ill-evidenced claim that while Disraeli “lauded the Jewish people” (an understatement to say the least) he “claimed that Christianity was the superior religion,”[30] we can only conclude that in acting to undermine the Christian oath, for Disraeli Jewish ethnicity trumped any feeling he may have had towards Christianity. In a letter marked “Private”, Disraeli wrote to de Rothschild in December 1847:

My dear Lionel,

I find that 18 men, now Peers, voted against the Jews in the Commons 1833, & only 11 in their favor! I agree with you, therefore, that we must be cautious in publishing the lists of the divisions, & rather give a précis of them, calling attention only to what is in your favor….Writing to Lord John Manners today, I particularly mentioned the anxiety of the Court that the bill should pass, as this will be conveyed to the Duke of Rutland who is a great Courtier….My friend thinks that a good petition from King’s Lynn would nail Jocelyn’s vote for the second reading.

Ever yours faithfully

D

The diaries of Louise de Rothschild, sister-in-law to Lionel, further reveal that Disraeli had become a regular dining companion with members of the Cousinhood, and that during one evening with the Rothschilds in November 1847, Disraeli had argued that “we [my italics] must ask for our rights and privileges, not for concessions.”[31] This bravado proved ineffectual in the House of Lords, where hereditary, non-elected nobles continued to reject the Jewish Disabilities Bills for another decade. This obstruction was only ended in 1858, when a change in government allowed Disraeli himself to become Leader of the House of Commons, a position which allowed him to secure a measure “allowing each House to make its own rules about the form of oath” — thereby side-stepping the second chamber as well as established British democratic precedent altogether.[32] Lionel took his seat at the end of 1858, and was joined by his brother a year later. By 1865 his son also had a seat in the Commons, and numerous relatives began to follow. Just as in business, politics was a family affair.

Go to Part 2.

[1] C. Mackay, Extradordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds (London: Bentley, 1841), p.xv.

[2] P. Mendes-Flohr (ed), The Jew in the Modern World (New York: Oxford University Press, 1980), p.136.

[3] U. Henriques, “The Jewish Emancipation Controversy in Nineteenth-Century Britain” Past and Present (1968) 40 (1): 126-146 (p.126).

[4] Ibid.

[5] Ibid.

[6] R. Quinault, “Gladstone and Disraeli: A Reappraisal of their Relationship” History (2006) 91 (304): 557-576.

[7] C. Hirschfield, “The Anglo-Boer War and Jewish Culpability” Journal of Contemporary History (1980) 15 (4): 619-631 and A. Saab, “Disraeli, Judaism, and the Eastern Question,” The International History Review (1988) 10 (4): 559-578.

[8] M. Cross (ed) Selections from the Edinburgh Review (London: Longman, 1833), vol. 3 ,pp. 667-75.

[9]  W. Williams (1993). “Reading Greek Like a Man of the World: Macaulay and the Classical Languages” Greece and Rome, 40 (2) , pp 201-216

[10] P. Foot (ed) Theories of Ethics: Oxford Readings in Philosophy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1967), p.99.

[11] T. Macaulay, “Civil Disabilities of the Jews” in M. Cross (ed) Selections from the Edinburgh Review (London: Longman, 1833), vol. 3, pp. 667-75.

[12] Ibid.

[13] Ibid.

[14] D. Gutwein, The Divided Elite: Politics and Anglo-Jewry, 1882-1917 (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1992), p.5.

[15] Ibid.

[16] T. Endelmann, “Communal Solidarity and Family Loyalty Among the Jewish Elite of Victorian London,” Victorian Studies, 28 (3), pp.491-526, p.491 & 495.

[17] Ibid, p.514.

[18] Ibid, p.494.

[19] K. Macdonald, A People That Shall Dwell Alone: Judaism as a Group Evolutionary Strategy (Lincoln: Writers Club Press, 2002), p.151 & T. Endelmann, “Communal Solidarity and Family Loyalty Among the Jewish Elite of Victorian London,” Victorian Studies, 28 (3), p. 495.

[20]Ibid, p.495.

[21] T. Endelmann, “Communal Solidarity and Family Loyalty Among the Jewish Elite of Victorian London,” Victorian Studies, 28 (3), p.496.

[22] T. Endelmann, “Communal Solidarity and Family Loyalty Among the Jewish Elite of Victorian London,” Victorian Studies, 28 (3), p.519.

[23] Ibid, p. 519.

[24] W. Rubinstein, “The Jewish Economic Elite in Britain, 1808-1909,” Jewish Historical Society of England. Available at: http://www.jhse.org/book/export/article/21930.

[25] D. Gutwein, The Divided Elite: Economics, Politics, and Anglo-Jewry, 1882-1917, (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1992), p.8.

[26] Quoted in Gutwein, The Divided Elite, p.8.

[27] Ibid, p.10.

[28] The Rothschild Archive: Available at: http://www.rothschildarchive.org/ib/?doc=/ib/articles/BW2aJourney.

[29] http://www.rothschildarchive.org/ib/?doc=/ib/articles/BW2bDisraeli

[30] B. Kaplan “Disraeli on Jewish Disabilities: Another Look,” Central States Speech Journal, 30 (2), pp.156-163, (p.158).

[31] Lady de Rothschilds Diary: http://www.rothschildarchive.org/ib/?doc=/ib/articles/BW2bLoudiary.

[32] R. Blake, Disraeli (London: Eyre and Spottiswoode, 1966), p.261.

 

“The Default Hypothesis Fails to Explain Jewish Influence”

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Nathan Cofnas published a paper in the Israel-based academic journal Philosophia: Philosophical Quarterly of Israel in February of last year titled “The Anti-Jewish Narrative.” Andrew Joyce wrote a masterful reply, “The Cofnas Problem,” while I decided to try to  publish a response in Philosophia. My paper went through two rounds of peer review and was finally accepted. It was the lead article in the January issue of Philosophia,  and is available as an open-access paper on Springer Nature. I provide a local version due to concerns the article will be pulled by Springer Nature.

This is the first time I have attempted to publish an article on Jewish influence in the mainstream academic literature since The Culture of Critique was published in 1998 by Praeger, so it is something of a milestone. I have updated quite a bit of the material, particularly the scholarly writing on Jewish involvement in influencing U.S. immigration policy—Chapter 7 of The Culture of Critique. I have always felt that Chapter 7 was the most important chapter in the book. Intellectual movements can decline drastically in influence. This was the fate of psychoanalysis—but not Boasian anthropology, and the intellectual descendants of the Frankfurt School remain influential throughout postmodern academia. Moreover, at least in Western democracies, even political movements, as embodied in the Jewish subculture of radical leftism, can be reversed at the ballot box—unless the people against whom the 1965 immigration law was directed are replaced by a new electorate with no attachment to the people and culture of the West. As argued in the paper, this is exactly what the 1965 immigration law was intended to accomplish in the minds of the Jewish activist community that was by far the most influential force in enacting the law.

Besides updating some critical aspects of The Culture of Critique, the paper emphasizes the point that the enactment of the 1965 immigration law did not occur in a vacuum and cannot be understood apart from the wider context of the rise of a new Jewish elite with influence in a wide range of areas. As I note in the article, the rise of this new elite “implies that vital issues of public policy, including immigration, the civil rights of African-Americans, women’s rights, religion in the public square (Hollinger’s “secularization of American society”), the legitimacy of white racial identity and interests, cosmopolitanism [identifying a “citizen of the world”], foreign policy in the Middle East, and many others will be affected by the attitudes and interests of this new elite.” The post-World War II era saw the emergence of a new, substantially Jewish elite in America. This new elite exerted influence on a wide range of issues that formed a virtual consensus among Jewish activists and the organized Jewish community, including immigration, civil rights, and the secularization of American culture” The 1950s saw the decline of the old WASP elite, recounted in Eric Kaufmann’s The Rise and Fall of Anglo-America. By the 1960s this new elite was flexing its muscle, resulting in a cultural and demographic revolution which is ongoing and indeed accelerating. This new, substantially Jewish elite was (and remains) centered in academia and the media, and, because of Jewish wealth, this new elite has been able to have decisive influence in the  political process via donations to political causes.

The abstract:

The role of Jewish activism in the transformative changes that have occurred in the West in recent decades continues to be controversial. Here I respond to several issues putatively related to Jewish influence, particularly the “default hypothesis” that Jewish IQ and urban residency explain Jewish influence and the role of the Jewish community in enacting the 1965 immigration law in the United States; other issues include Jewish ethnocentrism and intermarriage and whether diaspora Jews are hypocritical in their attitudes on immigration to Israel versus the United States. The post-World War II era saw the emergence of a new, substantially Jewish elite in America that exerted influence on a wide range of issues that formed a virtual consensus among Jewish activists and the organized Jewish community, including immigration, civil rights, and the secularization of American culture. Jewish activism in the pro-immigration movement involved: intellectual movements denying the importance of race in human affairs; establishing, staffing, and funding anti-restrictionist organizations; recruiting prominent non-Jews to anti-restrictionist organizations; rejecting the ethnic status quo as a goal because of fear of a relatively homogeneous white majority; leadership in Congress and the executive branch.

Confronting the Judeocracy: The Six Stages of Enlightenment

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Anyone who has spent even a short time battling against the Judeocracy has surely experienced the frustration of attempting to persuade a trusted friend or colleague of the gravity of the situation—only to fail.  This is undoubtedly one of the most discouraging and troubling aspects of those who take up the mission for truth and justice.  We repeatedly encounter intelligent and well-read individuals who, we believe, surely must share our sense of concern and outrage.  If they do not, it can only be from lack of knowledge; therefore, a short chat or a targeted reading or two, we think, will do the trick.  The facts are indisputable, and hence it is merely a matter of information.  Once our friends have the requisite facts, they will surely—surely—see things our way.  And yet, time after time, they do not.

Why is this?  What are they thinking?  What is their logic?  How is it that they can fail to be fully convinced of the severity of the Jewish Question?  Or even just be sympathetic to our stance?  Why is it that they occasionally even become outright hostile—not to them, but to us?  How can they be in denial of what is, from a rational and objective standpoint, surely one of the major problems facing civilized humanity?  Undoubtedly this could be the topic of a book-length treatment, and I can only outline a few basic ideas here.  But I think there is some merit in examining the basic categories of response and denial by those confronted, perhaps for the first time in a serious manner, with the Jewish Question and with the many problems of living under de facto Jewish rule.

At its most basic level, the situation is one in which the relative novice is confronted with a difficult, troubling, and potentially catastrophic scenario: profound social corruption by wealthy and powerful Jews.  (I stress the ‘relative’ here; everyone, even the functionally illiterate, has heard something negative about the Jews, likely many negative things.)  It is a ‘bad news’ story of the highest magnitude.  And the last thing many people want in their lives these days is another bad news story.  God knows we’ve had enough troubles in recent years:  political upheaval, riots in the streets, a global pandemic, economic gyrations, unrestrained immigration, environmental decline, opioid crises, surging crime, falling lifespans.  Who needs yet one more disaster heaped upon their plates?  The Jews?  Really?  Are you serious?  And I suppose the Holocaust never happened!  (Hint:  it didn’t—not in the way described.)  What are you, some kind of Nazi?  A White supremacist?  On and on.

Despite all this, many of us persevere.  We realize that public education is one of our primary weapons in the Great Struggle, and we are bound and determined to press ahead and inform as many as possible of the nature of the problem.  Therefore, it is of some use to understand more precisely how people typically respond to our overtures, in order to be more effective in our communication.  After all, we are pursuing a noble cause, and we sincerely want people to be well-informed and, ideally, to join us in our mission.  Apart from our opponents, we genuinely want people to like and appreciate us.  You don’t get very far coming off like a fanatic or a jerk.  I’m quite confident that virtually none of us relish making enemies for the sake of making enemies.  We have no driving urge to be antagonistic or rabble-rousing.  Generally speaking, what we have are facts, experiences, and informed opinions on the Jews; these, combined with a general sense of concern for social welfare, justice, and the state of the world, incline us to undertake unusual, unpopular, but highly valuable actions to educate others, and to articulate possible solutions.  It is the prototypical ‘thankless task,’ and yet we do it all the same.

That said, it is helpful to have a model of how people react to the Jewish Question.  The approach I will outline here derives from another famous model describing how people react to a different crisis situation: death.  In the 1950s and 60s, Swiss (later, American) psychiatrist Elisabeth Kübler-Ross developed a well-known scheme that came to be known as “the five stages of grief.”  When confronted with imminent death, she said, people typically progress through five relatively distinct mental phases:  denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance.  Denial:  “No, this isn’t true, it can’t be happening.  There must be some mistake.”  Anger:  “How could this happen to me?  It’s just not fair!  Someone is to blame.  God, how could you let this happen!”  Bargaining:  “Please, God, get me through this and I promise to do x, y, z.  Or, doc, you have to help me; I’ll do whatever it takes.”  Depression:  “There’s no use, nothing will work.  I’m doomed.  What’s the use of even trying?”  And finally, Acceptance:  “Everyone dies, and I guess my time is up.  So be it.  Time to meet my Maker.”  This schema was first described in her initial book, On Death and Dying (1969).

I’ll not debate the merits or demerits of Kübler-Ross’ theory here.  Some have found it helpful, and others dismiss it as largely irrelevant or at least unsubstantiated.  Still, based only on common sense, I think we can see that there is some insight here, and that many people—perhaps some we have known personally—indeed experience such stages in varying degrees.  Obviously not everyone passes through all five stages, and not necessarily in the prescribed order, but nonetheless, these stages do describe some essential aspects of human response to the looming tragedy of one’s own demise.

Inspired by this model, let me then propose something analogous:  The Six Stages of Enlightenment on the Jewish Question.  I claim no real scientific grounding here, and I have done no exhaustive surveys or interviews.  This is based simply on my own personal experience, over several years, of confronting people—students, family, friends, strangers—on the dangers of the Judeocracy.  My six stages are as follows:

1. Denial
2. Irrelevance
3.  Impotence
4.  Misplaced Anger
5.  Acceptance
6.  Righteous Anger and Action

As with Kübler-Ross’s theory, I do not claim that all people experience all of these stages, nor that they necessarily progress through them in order.  But I do think that many people, when confronted with the data, do experience some or most of these stages.  Let me briefly describe each in turn, and then outline some of the relevant facts that make the case for enlightenment.

DENIAL.  Upon first hearing a serious claim that Jews have outsized and detrimental influence in society, or dominate the ranks of the wealthy, or run the media, or control politics, the usual initial response is denial:  “No they don’t.  That’s ridiculous.  There are no more Jews in power than anyone else.  That’s just an anti-Semitic canard.”  This, even from highly-educated people.  Fortunately, this is an empirical question; an overwhelming Jewish presence can be easily proven, given the relevant data.  Below I offer a concise version of this argument.

IRRELEVANCE.  Once it is shown that Jews are massively over-represented in key sectors of society, the standard reply is that this fact does not matter.  “Ok, there are lots of Jews in media, finance, and politics, but this doesn’t really matter.  People are just people.  There are good ones and there are bad ones.  If Jews hold lots of influential positions, that only means that they worked hard and succeeded.  And anyway, they’re just doing their jobs.  If they didn’t do them, someone else would.”

This seems like a common-sense view, but to make such a claim is to hold an extremely naïve and ill-informed view of the world.  It’s true that most decent people, and especially most Whites, tend to view others as individuals; there are likely evolutionary reasons for this, which I won’t elaborate here, but see Kevin MacDonald’s book Individualism and the Western Liberal Tradition for a good recent account.  If we judge everyone as basically well-intentioned individuals, then of course, it doesn’t really matter if Jews or any other minority dominates society.  If Jews are disproportionate, then it can only mean that they are that much smarter or industrious than others, and thus they deserve their standing. (Nathan Cofnas is doing his best to make this thesis academically respectable—refuted in several places, most recently by Andrew Joyce).  And if some Jews commit crimes or other unethical actions, we have to judge and punish them individually, on a case-by-case basis.  Or so they say.

The Jewish critic must then respond to this stance with a demonstration that it does matter, that Jewish over-representation has a long-standing and deep-rooted grounding in anti-White and even anti-human actions, and that it is remarkably detrimental to social and human well-being.  This is a longer and more difficult argument to make, but it can be done; again, I outline this case below.

IMPOTENCE.  Once we have shown the deleterious effect of Jewish dominance, the next reply is typically something like this:  “Ok, if Jews have so much power and influence, then you can’t possibly win.  They are just too strong.  So why fight them?  It can only hurt yourself and your family.  Better to just ignore the whole situation and live your life as best you can.”

Certainly this is a pragmatic view, and many otherwise well-intentioned critics adopt this line.  But ultimately it means surrender:  a moral capitulation to a malevolent ruling power.  To yield to evil is itself a great evil.  It is to condemn one’s own future, and that of your children and grandchildren, to a life of increasing brutality and coarseness, of deprivation and suffering, of conflict and war.  No truly concerned person can accept this.  We must confront the situation head-on.  To fight against evil, even in the face of likely defeat, is noble; it actually makes life worth living.  Even if victory is a long way off—and ultimate victory for our side is inevitable, once we understand the history—it is still a fight worth pursuing.  Living in a Judeocracy means that every major aspect of society is affected.  If you have any concerns or causes in this world that you think are worth fighting for—the environment, social justice, education, human rights, health, democracy—then you need to engage in the fight against Jewish rule because it has a negative impact on virtually every other social issue.  To paraphrase Spengler, impotence is cowardice.

MISPLACED ANGER.  At this point, your friend is likely to start getting irritated—with you.  As a typical semi-thoughtful but uncritical television viewer, he has likely absorbed and internalized the conventional pro-Jewish mantra:  Jews are a beleaguered and innocent people who have been unjustly attacked over the centuries, most notably during the Holocaust, and thus we owe them vast amends.  Furthermore, being a typically decent person, he thinks that anyone attacking Jews, or any minorities, is a morally-deficient racist or neo-Nazi—and now, this is you!  For God’s sake, everybody hates a racist!  Even Tucker Carlson hates racists!—as he informs us every night, in his unthinking, dim-witted, and duplicitous manner.  Since you clearly hate Jews, you are now officially a ‘hater.’  And everyone hates a hater—don’t they?

Sensing that he has lost the argument, your friend then launches into either subtle or overt ad hominem attacks against you.  Rational discussion is out the window, and emotion rules the day.  You are now simply a ‘bad person’; no further need to debate with you.  Having demonstrated your incivility and cruel-heartedness, you are either pitied or detested.  Critically, the focus has shifted to you; Jews are suddenly nowhere in sight, even though this was the sole issue at hand.  They are suddenly off the hook.  How convenient; the Jews themselves couldn’t have scripted a better outcome.

Sadly, many people remain stuck in this mode for a long time, perhaps for their entire lives.  They never address the real issue, but continue only to think negatively of you and you alone.  This is a relatively good outcome for them; the social problem is not a multitude of wealthy, powerful, and ethnocentric Jews, but little ol’ you, and perhaps a few of your like-minded hater friends.  It’s much easier, and much less threatening, to deal with you and your “ilk,” rather than a potent, dispersed, malevolent force like world Jewry.

Sometimes, though, and often in surprising ways, there is a shift in attitude.  Your friend becomes curious.  He investigates, he reads, he asks questions.  Slowly, slowly, he comes around to your side.  “You know, I’ve been thinking, and I think you’re on to something.  Those Jews are everywhere, once you learn how to spot them.  No one criticizes them.  No one questions the Holocaust.  No one is even willing to simply name the Jews.  They get away with everything…”  Thus we arrive, with luck, at ACCEPTANCE.  Yes, Jews in fact dominate key sectors of society.  Yes, Jews in fact are the major wire-pullers in politics and business.  Yes, Jews couldn’t care less about human well-being, and they would just as soon cause mass suffering and even death, if it profited them in any way.  The denialism has been overcome.

Once at this phase, it is only a short step to the final stage: RIGHTEOUS ANGER—now against the real enemy—and corresponding ACTION.  Anyone with a conscience, with a sense of moral outrage, and with a larger sense of justice, will be utterly appalled at the situation.  They will now become activist, speaking out, writing, informing others.  They will develop the moral backbone to confront Jewish power and its proxies directly.  Being truly knowledgeable and well-informed, they will make a formidable opponent.  The movement will have taken one more small step forward.  And victory will be one day closer.

Constructing the Case

Given that nearly everyone begins at some level of the ‘denial’ stage, it is worthwhile to offer some specific facts that can help build the case against it.  The goal, again, is to show that Jews are massively disproportionate amongst the wealthy and powerful in society.  This is the core truth from which all the rest proceeds.  Fortunately, as I said, this is an entirely empirical matter.  Basic research will reveal the truth.  Of course, the names vary from nation to nation, and they change constantly over time.  A specific case must be made at a given point in time, and in a specific nation of interest.  Since I am an American, and the data here is extensive, let me briefly review the case in the present-day USA.  Even a cursory overview demonstrates the failure of denial.

We can separately examine four sectors of American society:  politics, academia, finance, and media.  In politics, we have a strong Jewish presence in all three branches of government–Congress, the White House, and the Supreme Court.  Regarding the latter, we currently have 2 Jews among the 9 justices:  Elena Kagan and Stephen Breyer.  Until the recent death of Ruth Bader-Ginsburg, the figure was 3 of 9, and if President Obama had had his way late in his final term, it would have been an astonishing 4 of 9, with Merrick Garland.  (We can be sure that any future Biden nominee will be Jewish.)

The current US Congress has 38 Jews among its combined 535 members, with 10 in the Senate and 28 in the House.  This constitutes around 7% of the Congressional total, versus an American Jewish population of some 6 million, or just under 2% of the nation.  Hence Jews are over-represented in Congress by a factor of 3.5, and in the Senate by a factor of 5.  The record high for Jewish representation, incidentally, occurred in the aftermath of the 2008 federal election, when fully 48 Jews held seats in Congress (15 Senate, 33 House).

The Biden administration, like that of Trump, Obama, Bush, and Clinton, has an extensive Jewish presence.  Start with the families of Biden and Kamala Harris.  Remarkably, all three of Biden’s adult children married Jews:  daughter Ashley married Howard Krein, son Hunter married “filmmaker” Melissa Cohen, and now-deceased son Beau married Hallie Olivere.  Correspondingly, three of Biden’s six grandchildren are half-Jews.  Biracial VP Kamala Harris married a Jewish lawyer, Doug Emhoff, back in 2014; thankfully, they have no children.

Biden’s sympathies to the Jews extend, of course, to his highest-level administrative positions.  Of 25 cabinet or cabinet-level positions, eight (32%) are held by Jews:  Tony Blinken, Alejandro Mayorkas, Janet Yellen, Merrick Garland (yes, that Merrick Garland), Ron Klain, Avril Haines (half), Isabel Guzman (half), and Eric Lander.  Other high-ranking Biden Jews include John Kerry (half), Rochelle Walensky of the CDC, Jeff Zients, Wendy Sherman, Gary Gensler of the SEC, David Cohen, “Rachel” Levine, Anne Neuberger, Andy Slavitt, Victoria Nuland, and Roberta Jacobson.  And this is not to mention Judeophilic Gentiles like Jake Sullivan, or Gentiles with Jewish spouses, like Samantha Power.  Below I offer some thoughts about why, exactly, this situation came to be.

What about academia?  Here is one remarkable indication:  It was recently noted that of the eight Ivy League schools—Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Columbia, Penn, Brown, Cornell, and Dartmouth—fully seven have Jewish presidents.  In other words, 88% of these elite schools are run by Jews.  We can be sure that this Jewish orientation then extends down into provosts and deans who are disproportionately Jewish, into faculty members who are disproportionately Jewish, and into the very curriculum itself, which undoubtedly caters to liberal-left Jewish interests.

Then consider university faculty more broadly.  In an article published in 2006, Schuster and Finkelstein found that “25% of research university faculty are Jewish, compared to 10% of all faculty.”[1]  An older study by Steinberg[2] found that 17.2 percent of faculty at “high ranking” universities were Jewish.  By a different assessment, Harriett Zuckerman[3] examined just the “elite” scientific and research faculty.  She found the following, by major discipline:

Law                 36% Jewish
Sociology         34% Jewish
Economics       28% Jewish
Physics            26% Jewish
Poli Sci             24% Jewish

What about students?  Experience shows that when Jews constitute more than just a few percent of the student body, they begin to dominate campus life.  As it happens, there are nine major American universities with over 20% Jewish undergrads (in descending order: Brandeis, Tulane, CUNY-Brooklyn, Binghamton, Queens College, George Washington University, Columbia, Boston University, and Washington University-St. Louis).  And there are another 23 major schools with more than 10% Jews (Maryland, American University, Brown, University of Miami, Rutgers, University of Florida, Cornell, Penn, Syracuse, Michigan, New York University, Northwestern, University of Hartford, Wisconsin, Yale, Indiana, UC-Santa Barbara, Duke, University at Albany, Harvard, Cal State-Northridge, Florida State, and USC).  Hence we have 32 major American universities, representing the intellectual elite of the nation, with a hugely disproportionate Jewish presence, top to bottom.  Again, this in a nation of scarcely 2% Jews.

Consider, next, the realm of finance and wealth.  When we run down the list of wealthiest Americans, we find a striking fact:  around half of them are Jews.  Among the top ten, we find five Jews:  Mark Zuckerberg, Larry Page, Sergey Brin, Larry Ellison, and Michael Bloomberg.  Of the top 50 richest men, at least 27 are Jews, including Steve Ballmer, Michael Dell, Carl Icahn, David Newhouse, Micki Arison, and Stephen Ross.[4]  The combined wealth of these 27 individuals comes to roughly $635 billion.  Note: If Jews were proportionately represented among the top 50, there would be one individual; instead, there are 27.

More broadly, we can infer that this “50% rule” holds throughout much of the wealth hierarchy.  In support, we may cite Benjamin Ginsberg, who wrote, “Today, though barely 2% of the [American] nation’s population is Jewish, close to half its billionaires are Jews.”[5]  At present, there are something like 615 American billionaires, which implies around 300 Jewish billionaires.

Or perhaps the figures are even worse than we suspect.  A recent study of the most malicious “vulture” capitalists showed a heavy preponderance of Jewish names, far more than half.  And one ranking from a few years ago of the richest hedge fund managers in the US listed 32 individuals by name; of these, at least 24 (75%) are Jews.  It seems that the more we look, the worse it gets.

Even more impressively, consider total private wealth.  In 2018, the total assets of all private households in the US hit $100 trillion for the first time ever.  The 50% rule suggests that the 6 million or so American Jews own or control, in total, some $50 trillion.  This works out to an average of $8 million for every Jewish man, woman, and child—a truly astonishing figure.

So much for Jewish wealth.  More importantly, these various sectors are deeply interconnected.  Jewish wealth is directly related to Jewish political influence.  Take, for example, Joe Biden’s top political donors.  It turns out, unsurprisingly, that the vast majority of Biden’s political donations came from Jewish billionaires.  As Andrew Joyce writes, “of [his] top 22 donors, at least 18 are Jews,” followed by the list of names.  This is perhaps extreme but not surprising, given that Jews overall provide at least 50% of Democratic political funding, and at least 25% of Republican funds.  These are truly disturbing numbers for anyone who cares about political corruption.  Note that there are literally hundreds of lobby groups, all donating to their favored candidates.  And yet one lobby—the Jewish Lobby—provides 25 to 50%, or more, of major candidate funding.  Imagine if, say, half of your income came from one person, and the other half came from a mix of 200 other individuals; who would you listen to?  The answer is obvious.

Finally, take the media.  Hollywood, as we all know, has long been a Jewish domain—reaching back to its origins in the 1910s and 1920s.  It was constructed by the likes of Carl Laemmle (Universal Pictures), Adolph Zukor, Jesse Lasky, Daniel and Charles Frohman, and Samuel Goldwyn (Paramount), William Fox (Fox Films, later 20th Century Fox), and the four “Warner” Brothers—in reality, the Wonskolaser clan:  Jack, Harry, Albert, and Sam.  They were soon followed by Marcus Loew (MGM), William Paley (CBS), and Harry and Jack Cohn (Columbia), establishing nearly complete Jewish control over the film business.

Today the situation is little changed—and is neither disputed nor even controversial.  A notable story published in the LA Times in 2008 openly proclaimed that “Jews totally run Hollywood”.[6]  It investigated every major studio and found nothing but Jewish bosses.  Today the names have changed, but not the ethnicities.  A recent survey of major executives or owners reveals the following:

20th Century Studios  (S. Asbell)
Paramount  (S. Redstone)
Disney Studies  (A. Bergman, A. Horn)
Warner Bros Studios  (T. Emmerich, A. Sarnoff, R. Kavanaugh)
MGM  (M. De Luca)
Sony Pictures  (T. Rothman, S. Panitch, J. Greenstein)
Lionsgate  (M. Rachesky, J. Feltheimer)
Relativity Media  (D. Robbins)
Millennium Media  (A. Lerner)
The Chernin Group  (P. Chernin)
Amblin Partners  (S. Spielberg)
Participant  (J. Skoll, D. Linde)
Sister  (S. Snider, E. Murdoch)
Spyglass  (G. Barber)
Glickmania  (J. Glickman)

As before, all of these individuals are Jews.[7]  With such dominance, we should scarcely be surprised to find pro-Jewish themes repeatedly appear in film:  from the Holocaust and the ‘evil Nazis,’ to the Arab and Muslim ‘terrorists,’ to the ignorant and corrupt Whites, to support for various socially and ethically degrading behavior such as casual sex, homosexuality, interracial couples and families, recreational drug use, crude materialism, and rampant multiculturalism.  All these themes serve Jewish interests.

The overall media situation is even more telling.  The five largest media conglomerates in the US are:  1) Disney, 2) Warner Media, 3) NBC Universal, 4) Viacom CBS, and 5) Fox Corporation.  A look at their owners, largest shareholders, and top officers is revealing:

  • Disney:  Robert Iger, executive chairman; Alan Horn, Chair, Disney Studios; Alan Braverman, exec VP; Peter Rice, chair, Content; Dana Walden, chair, ABC; Lowell Singer, senior VP.
  • Warner:  Jason Kilar, CEO; David Levy, Pres, Turner Broadcasting; Jeff Zucker, Pres, CNN; Ann Sarnoff, CEO, Warner Pictures; Michael Lynton, chair, Warner Music (Parent company:  AT&T:  John Stankey, CEO).
  • NBC Universal:  Jeff Shell, CEO; Robert Greenblatt, Chair, NBC Entertainment; Bonnie Hammer, Chair, Cable Entertainment; Noah Oppenheim, president, NBC News; Mark Lazarus, Chair, Sports; Ron Meyer, Vice Chair, NBCUniversal  (Parent company:  Comcast:  Brian Roberts, CEO).
  • Viacom CBS:  An unusual situation:  Viacom is a “public” company but voting stock is 100% owned by Shari Redstone and the heirs of Sumner Redstone.  Leading individuals include David Nevins, CCO; Susan Zirinsky, president, CBS News; David Stapf, president, CBS TV.
  • Fox Corporation:  Similar to Viacom, a public company but 39% of voting stock is owned by Rupert Murdoch and Lachlan Murdoch.

All of these individuals are Jewish, with the possible exception of the Murdochs—although it seems certain that they are at least part-Jewish.[8]  And given the difficulty in ascertaining ethnicity, Jewish influence is certainly greater than shown here.  Hence the above is undoubtedly a conservative estimate.  It furthermore says nothing about the many Jewish underlings who implement day-to-day decisions.  Once again, it’s difficult to convey the degree of dominance here.  These five corporations produce the vast majority of all media consumed in the US, which includes all of the major news outlets and most of the major Hollywood studios.  In fact, Jewish leadership or ownership at the top translates all throughout the organization, to middle-managers, staffers, reporters, television personalities, and editors.  It has a very concrete effect on how the media is produced, what is presented, and what is not presented.  It affects who we see, and who we don’t see.

And it’s not only the so-called liberal media outlets.  The conservative venues also are dominated by Jewish interests—typically, via right-wing or neo-conservative Jews.  Fox News, and its parent corporation Fox, owned and operated by the Murdoch family, is every bit as pro-Jewish and pro-Israel as the liberal outlets.  Fox News anchors disagree vehemently with just about every liberal position, and yet, remarkably, they are fully on-board with all Jewish issues.  They struggle to outdo their peers at CNN and MSNBC in their obeisance to Jewish and Israeli interests.[9]  This, again, is no coincidence.  It is evidence of Jewish domination of American media, across the political spectrum and across all venues.

In addition to the above, various other media are also well-represented by American Jews.  Among newspapers, the New York Times has been Jewish-owned and -managed since Adolph Ochs bought the paper in 1896; the current owner, publisher, and chairman is Arthur G. Sulzberger.  US News and World Report is owned by Mort Zuckerman.  Time magazine is owned by Warner Media, and its current chief editor is Edward Felsenthal.  Advance Publications is a mini media conglomerate entirely owned and operated by the Jewish Newhouse family; it manages a wide array of venues including Conde Nast (Vogue, The New Yorker, GQ, Glamour, Architectural Digest, Vanity Fair, Pitchfork, Wired, and Bon Appetit), Discovery Channel, Lycos, and Redditt.  And in broadcast media, we have National Public Radio (NPR), which has long been a Jewish preserve; its on-air staff is unquestionably more than half Jewish.[10]

I think we can put to rest all thoughts of denialism here.

Is Jewish Dominance Irrelevant?

If we then proceed to stage two, Irrelevance, we must counter the view that Jewish dominance is inconsequential.  Again, from the naïve standpoint, Jews predominating in government, academia, finance, and media seems not to matter.  These Jews are largely invisible as Jews, and their Jewishness is rarely displayed explicitly.  As before, the influence is generally manifest in myriad subtle ways—in which voices and views are presented (and which not presented), which individuals are allowed to speak (and which not allowed), which values are projected as good and positive, which causes are worthy of attention, and so on.

The central issues here are (a) that Jews tend to work collectively, in their own best interests, and (b) that they tend to have little regard for all non-Jews, and they tend to hold particular contempt for White Europeans, who have, historically speaking, proven to be their most formidable opponents.  Jews work tribally, as a pack; they assist each other in attacking and undermining all perceived enemies.  Jews in finance and academic Jews can count on media Jews to give them positive coverage and to downplay or bury any negative stories.  Media Jews will slander an enemy even as finance Jews put the squeeze to that person’s employer.  It can be very effective when multiple actors in a trillion-dollar cabal are arrayed against you.

On occasion, these dominant Jews will indeed fight with each other, as when conservative right-wing Jews spar with their liberal leftwing brethren—such as the recent rift between the rightwing Murdoch Jews and the left-wing ADL Jews, especially Jonathan Greenblatt, over comments by Tucker Carlson.  But this is only an internal dispute about the best way to promote Jewish interests, nothing more.  Much of current political confrontation is mere show; Democratic-Republican squabbles are meaningless when both sides are backed by wealthy Jews.  And Jews across the political spectrum love to use Gentile lackeys like Anderson Cooper, Chris Cuomo, Chris Hayes, Sean Hannity, and yes, Tucker Carlson, to cover for them.  This again serves to obscure the real power structure.

But the fact that powerful Jews work with each other, against all others, is a well-established historical fact that has been well-attested, over the centuries, by some of the West’s most brilliant thinkers.  This topic literally requires a book-length treatment—see my book Eternal Strangers: Critical Views of Jews and Judaism through the Ages (2020), which is the first to fully document the historical record.  It dates back over 2,000 years, at least to remarks by Hecateus of Abdera and Theophrastus circa 300 BC, proceeding to the likes of Cicero, Seneca, Tacitus, Porphyry, Thomas Aquinas, Martin Luther, Voltaire, Rousseau, Fichte, Kant, Hegel, Schopenhauer, Bakunin, Nietzsche, Mark Twain, H. G. Wells, Heidegger, and chess genius (and half-Jew) Bobby Fischer, among many others.  It is an impressive list.

The criticisms are uniformly blunt and damning.  Jews are “misanthropic and hostile to foreigners,” “the very vilest of mankind,” “look upon all other men as their enemies,” “an accursed race,” “the basest of peoples.”  They are profoundly and deeply different—in a bad way—from the rest of humanity.  Medieval theologians condemned the Jews for their usury and their abuse of Christians and Christianity.  Luther called them “a heavy burden, a plague, a pestilence, a sheer misfortune,” adding that “we are at fault in not slaying them.”  For Voltaire, they “display an irreconcilable hatred against all nations”; for Rousseau, the Jewish race was “always a foreigner amongst other men.”  German philosopher Johann Herder called them “a widely diffused republic of cunning usurers.”  Kant saw them as “a nation of deceivers.”  Schopenhauer was especially blunt:  “scum of humanity—but great master of lies.”  Heidegger captured the situation well in just three words: “planetary master criminals”.[11]

This 2,000-year history of hatred and contempt for the rest of humanity is played out in the present day, though with much stealth and deception.  Jews often work in the background, hidden, out of the limelight; they are, as Hitler said, the “wire-pullers” (Drahtzieher) of contemporary society, using money and power to steer events in their favor.  History tells us that Jews will stoop to anything—the most heinous, the most egregious, the most unethical—to promote their ends.  Even war: there is an equally long and damning history of Jewish involvement in wars, from the Jewish-Roman wars in the first and second centuries to the present-day “war on terror”.[12]  This is not speculation; all these facts are well-attested and well-documented.  We need only do a basic bit of reading, from reputable sources.

The bottom line, of course, is that Jewish over-representation in major sectors of society does matter—it matters very much.  Arguably it is the root cause of virtually all our present-day social problems, all of which have been created or exacerbated by powerful Jews.  We can scarcely imagine what life could be like without their manipulating and malevolent presence.

This brief account of pernicious Jewish influence should help lay to rest the “irrelevance” stage.  But impotence need not be the consequence.  Accept the reality, and turn your anger onto the real targets.  And then act.  Bear in mind:  Every Jewish victory in past centuries has been ephemeral, and has instead been transformed into concrete action against the Hebrews—isolation, ghettoization, incarceration, expulsion, or worse.  And so it will be this time.  Either the Jews themselves will recognize that they are on the brink and voluntarily retreat to their “homeland” in Palestine, or else native peoples around the world will, once again, take action.

The path to enlightenment is hard.  And yet it must be pursued, if humanity is to flourish and prosper.

Thomas Dalton, PhD, has authored or edited several books and articles on politics, history, and religion, with a special focus on National Socialism in Germany.  His works include a new translation series of Mein Kampf, and the books Eternal Strangers (2020), The Jewish Hand in the World Wars (2019), and Debating the Holocaust (4th ed, 2020), all available at www.clemensandblair.com.  For all his writings, see his personal website www.thomasdaltonphd.com.

[1] J. Schuster and M. Finkelstein, The American Faculty (2006), p. 66.

[2] S. Steinberg, The Academic Melting Pot (1974), p. 103.

[3] H. Zuckerman, Scientific Elite (1977).

[4] Bloomberg Billionaires Index (2018).

[5] The Fatal Embrace (1993), p. 1.

[6] “How Jewish is Hollywood?” (19 Dec 2008).

[7] Until recently, we could have included the Weinstein Company (aka Lantern Entertainment), but the sex scandal surrounding Harvey Weinstein drove the corporation into bankruptcy in early 2018.

[8] Rupert’s mother, Elisabeth Joy Greene, appears to have been Jewish.  See here, here, and here.  We could also cite Rupert Murdoch’s award from the heavily-Jewish group ADL in 2010, and his son James’ $1 million donation to the same group in 2017.  If the Murdochs are not Jewish, they are in very good graces with them.

[9] Sean Hannity is particularly egregious in this respect.

[10] Current and recent individuals include, at a minimum:  N. Adams, H. Berkes, M. Block, D. Brooks, A. Cheuse, A. Codrescu, K. Coleman, O. Eisenberg, D. Elliott, D. Estrin, S. Fatsis, P. Fessler, C. Flintoff, D. Folkenflik, R. Garfield, T. Gjelten, B. Gladstone, I. Glass, T. Goldman, J. Goldstein, J. Goldstein, R. Goldstein, D. Greene, N. Greenfieldboyce, T. Gross, M. Hirsh, S. Inskeep, I. Jaffe, A. Kahn, C. Kahn, M. Kaste, A. Katz, M. Keleman, D. Kestenbaum, N. King, B. Klein, T. Koppel, A. Kuhn, B. Littlefield, N. King, N. Pearl, P. Sagal, M. Schaub, A. Shapiro, J. Shapiro, W. Shortz, R. Siegel, A. Silverman, S. Simon, A. Spiegel, S. Stamberg, R. Stein, L. Sydell, D. Temple-Raston, N. Totenberg, G. Warner, D. Welna, L. Wertheimer, D. Wessel, E. Westervelt, B. Wolf, and D. Zwerdling.

[11] For an enlightening list of some 50 such quotations, see the website of Clemens and Blair, LLC publishing (here).

[12] See my book The Jewish Hand in the World Wars (2019).

Failed Crypsis and Its Discontents: Past and Present

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“Some accuse me of being a Jew; some excuse me for being one; some even praise me for being a Jew. But all think about it.” Thus wrote the nineteenth-century writer and journalist Judah Loew Baruch (1786—1837) who, after ostensibly converting to Christianity, assimilating, and renaming himself Ludwig Börne, struggled to understand why Germans insisted on seeing him as a Jew.

Börne’s lament is a classic of failed Jewish crypsis, and one of my personal favorites. Looking back, one wonders how Börne could ever be surprised. The reasons of the Germans were surely not that difficult to surmise. Börne was an acerbic ethnic activist who used his journalism to pour sarcastic scorn on German Romanticism and folk nationality that he clearly feared and despised. He was a key figure in the Junges Deustchland (Young Germany) movement, a social reform and literary movement in nineteenth-century Germany (c.1830—50), influenced by French revolutionary ideas, which acted as a vehicle for culturally hostile Jewish ideas and opposed the German Romanticism and nationalism then current. Members of Young Germany considered themselves to possess formidable intellectual and literary gifts, and they engaged in a scathing culture of critique. But they failed to inspire much enthusiasm, instead exciting widespread animosity. This is because “Young Germany” was more like “Young Israel,” being intellectually inspired by the Jewish converts Börne and Heinrich Heine, and given a European face by a ‘social justice’ gang of philo-Semites and Leftists who had married Jewish women (e.g., Georg Herwegh). In the words of one Young Germany leader, Karl Gutzkow, “It needed two Jews— Heine and Börne — to overthrow the old ideology and shake all illusions.”[1] Many Germans agreed, which resulted in the movement being discussed colloquially as “Young Palestine,” and the banning of many of its publications. When it came to Jewishness, much to Börne’s despair, all thought about it.

Ludwig Börne

This early alliance of Leftists and Jews, each aware of the destructive power and potential of the other, would result in the promotion of Young Germany novels like Wally, die Zweiflerin, (Wally, the Doubter) that attacked marriage and preached “sexual emancipation.” Such activities, now all too familiar to us, marked an initial confluence of interests between Jews and non-Jewish radicals, since both were keen, as Gutzkow put it, to “overthrow the old ideology and shake all illusions.”

We are now almost two centuries removed from the Young Germany-Young Palestine controversy of 1835, and this confluence of perceived interests seems to have sustained the Left-Jewish alliance for almost the entirety of the intervening years. And yet, if recent events are anything to go by, this alliance appears to be fraying at the edges. The main reason for this fraying, I suggest, is that the initial goal of overthrowing the old cultural and political status quo has now been largely achieved. As we progress into a Cultural Marxist endgame, the alliance is being revised by some, and the most radical on the Left are reassessing their erstwhile partners. What are they getting out of this? Who exactly are these people and what are their interests? How valid are their victimhood credentials? Most important has been the apparently novel discovery that far from being among “the oppressed,” Jews are incredibly influential and bear all the hallmarks of an elite. The mask slips and crypsis fails. The resurgence of Börne’s crisis — the lament of failed crypsis — and with it a revision of perceptions of interests, is thus an old/new characteristic of present-day politics.  Read more

Leonard Bernstein and the Jewish Cultural Ascendency — PART 1

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Introduction

2018 marks the centenary of the birth of Jewish-American conductor, pianist, composer and teacher Leonard Bernstein. This milestone has seen a global bonanza of 2,500 concerts, programs, exhibitions and theatrical productions. Bernstein features prominently in the pantheon of “Jewish geniuses” as designated by the West’s Jewish-dominated cultural and intellectual establishment. Bernstein’s centenary year inevitably yielded hagiography: for his Jewish biographer Allen Shawn, he was not just a “genius” but “a powerful cultural and political voice and symbol, transcending all categories.”[1] Mark Horowitz, curator of an exhibition at Philadelphia’s Jewish museum celebrating Bernstein’s “pride of tribe,” fully endorses this view, while for the Jewish music writer for the New Yorker, Alex Ross, Bernstein remains “American music’s dominant figure.”

Bernstein lived during the heyday of the recording industry, at the dawn of the television era and of video recording. He left behind what is possibly the most extensive documentation in recordings, films, and on paper of any musician in history. His archive at the Library of Congress already lists some 400,000 items.[2] During the 1950s and 1960s Bernstein was not only the best known of all American classical musicians; his fame rivalled that of Elvis Presley or Marilyn Monroe. Attitudes to Bernstein varied dramatically during his lifetime, and many responded negatively to the fact he was so visible, so outspoken, so dramatic, and so politically active on the left.

Famous for his flamboyantly extroverted temperament, Bernstein was a “personality on such a big scale that he would naturally manage to offend many people along the way. … His self-regard and need for attention were also, to be sure, extreme.”[3] Bernstein’s brash self-confidence and monstrous ego incurred the enmity of many of those he encountered. He “loved to be the center of attention, even if it meant being obnoxious” observed a fellow student at the Curtis School of Music who noted that his “extroversion was extreme.”[4] John Rockwell, writing for the New York Times in 1986, observed that “It is quite a remarkable personality, for better and for worse, the defines every aspect of his near-manic existence. There are those who still find him inherently annoying — when he shoots off what he likes to call his ‘big Jewish mouth,’ when he prances and gyrates on the podium, when he seems to squander his compositional gifts in flashy trivia or overwrought excess.”[5] Bernstein’s own children pointed out his unsurpassed ability to become emotional on his own behalf, to “move himself.”[6]

Bernstein’s unusual, extremely emotional, visual presentation was his trademark as a conductor. He conducted with his entire body in a style that led to much criticism and derision over the years. German composer Gunther Schuller, for example, observed that Bernstein was “one of the world’s most histrionic and exhibitionistic conductors.” Schuller saw Bernstein as a musician with “very little discipline and no shame,” whose interpretation of Brahms’ First Symphony contained “too much of an ‘oy-vey’ Weltschmerz to be bearable.”[7] Read more

Joe McCarthy and the Jews: Comments on Jewish Organizations’ Response to Communism and Senator McCarthy, by Aviva Weingarten (2008).

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Beginning in the 19th century, liberal/leftist politics has been a hallmark of the Jewish community in America and elsewhere. The attraction of Jews to the success of the Bolshevik Revolution was an entirely mainstream movement among large numbers of Jews in America and led to one of several anti-Jewish stereotypes during the 1920s and 1930s — stereotypes that were aided and abetted by people like Henry Ford and Father Charles Coughlin. Into the 1930s the American Communist Party (CPUSA) had a Yiddish-speaking Jewish section. and Jews around the world had positive attitudes toward the USSR, at least partly because Jews had achieved elite status there.

After World War II, however, anti-Semitism declined precipitously in the US, and Jewish organizations were poised to spearhead the transformations in civil rights and immigration legislation that would come to fruition in the 1960s. By 1950 the Jewish community was part of the establishment — well connected to the power centers in the media, politics, the academic world and the construction of culture generally.

But there was a major problem that the organized Jewish community was forced to confront—a problem stemming from the long involvement of the mainstream Jewish community in communism and the far left, at least until the end of World War II, and among a substantial number of Jews even after this period. In Jewish Organizations’ Response to Communism and Senator McCarthy, Aviva Weingarten points to a “hard core of Jews” (p. 6) who continued to support the Communist Party into the 1950s and continued to have a “decisive role” in shaping the policies of the American Communist Party (CPUSA) (p. 9).

Weingarten notes that unlike other communists, Jewish communists continued to have an ethnic  identity (p. 10) and often participated in the wider Jewish community. This is a refreshing change from a long history of Jewish apologetics over this issue. The standard line, not only among Jewish activist organizations but by academic authors such as Yuri Slezkine, has been that Jews ceased being Jews when they joined the Communist Party or participated in other far left causes. As a result, the focus of Chapter 3 of The Culture of Critique is to demonstrate that Jewish radicals retained a strong Jewish identity and a sense of pursuing specifically Jewish interests. Most egregiously, the American Jewish Congress — by far the largest Jewish organization in terms of membership — continued to be associated with the far left and was formally affiliated with organizations listed as subversive by the US Attorney General. The CPUSA viewed members of the American Jewish Congress as “democratic forces”  in their attempt to create “democratic and anti-fascist” policies in the World Jewish Congress (p. 25).

This history of Jewish involvement in communism and sympathy toward communism was now combined with the new situation of the Cold War in which the Soviet Union had become the mortal enemy of the United States. Read more

In Praise of James Petras

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I’m thrilled to see that retired scholar James Petras is still punching above his weight. Last month he published yet another powerful essay on his website, this one explicitly bringing to our attention the whopping over-representation of one particular ethnic group at the top of America’s power structure. He begins: “Obama’s nomination of Merrick Garland to the Supreme Court marks a continuation and deepening of the lopsided ethno-religious representation in the US judicial system. If Garland is appointed, Jewish justices will comprise 45% of the Court, even though they represent less than 2% of the overall population.”

PowerPetras, retired Bartle Professor of sociology at Binghamton University whose views are generally on the left, came to my attention nearly a decade ago when he released three books that were extremely critical of not just Israel but Jewry as a whole. First was the 2006 book The Power of Israel in the United States, followed a year later by Rulers and Ruled in the US Empire: Bankers, Zionists and Militants. Then, in 2008, came Zionism, Militarism, and the Decline of US Power. (For those interested, my forty-two-page review of The Power of Israel and Rulers and Ruled appeared in the Winter 2007–2008 issue of The Occidental Quarterly.)

Obviously, it’s rare to see such critical prose from an academic. Despite his stature and wide exposure, Petras has continued to this day his principled criticism of Jews and Zionism — and has not been silenced by the usual tactics. I’m impressed. Read more