Jews as An Elite

Joe Biden’s faux pas

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Good  grief!  Joe Biden should  know the ground rules by now. You can praise the contributions of individual Jews. It’s totally permissible to wax eloquent on the accomplishments of  Sigmund Freud, Jonas Salk, or Albert  Einstein—perhaps even implying that humanity would never have come on these ideas and thus be infinitely poorer for it. (John Derbshire seems to agree, but it’s ridiculous on the face of it.) You  can even  praise the Jewish community’s role in enacting public policy on which there is a broad consensus, such as the Civil Rights movement.

But you can’t imply that Jews have real power and have used it to push America in directions most Americans don’t want to go or obviously conflict with the legitimate interests of other  groups—particularly Whites.

The Jewish people have contributed greatly to America. No group has had such an outsized influence per capita as all of you standing before you, and all of those who went before me and all of those who went before you … I think you, as usual, underestimate the impact of Jewish heritage. I really mean that. I think you vastly underestimate the impact you’ve had on the development of this nation. (See Jonathan Chait, “Biden praises Jews, Goes Too Far, Accidentally Thrills Anti-Semites“)

In particular, as noted also at TOO, Biden claims that Jews have been at the vanguard of gay marriage. We have also noted Jewish domination of the gun control movement and their responsibility for the mainstreaming of pornography and for the sexualization of culture. Jewish neocons with their power in the media and in the government were the main force behind the costly war in Iraq. And by far most importantly Jews have been the main force behind displacement-level non-White immigration (see also here regarding the current push for yet more massive increases in non-White immigrants). Biden cheerfully says, ““The embrace of immigration” is part of that, as is the involvement of Jews in social justice movements.” Read more

Pariah to Messiah: The Engineered Apotheosis of Baruch Spinoza — A Postscript on the Acceptance of “Jewish Genius” by Non-Jews

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Go to Part 1.

It’s interesting that the emphasis on Jewish identity and origins in the case of Spinoza is quite the opposite of that found among the intellectual movements discussed in The Culture of Critique, doubtless because the theories were promoted within a scientific framework in which ethnic interests and identifications would be seen as illegitimate.—

Although these theories were directed at achieving specific Jewish interests in the manipulation of culture, they “could not tell their name”; that is, they were forced to minimize any overt indication that Jewish group identity or Jewish group interests were involved. … Because of the need for invisibility, the theories and movements discussed here were forced to deemphasize Judaism as a social category—a form of crypsis discussed extensively in [Separation and  Its Discontents] (Ch. 6) as a common Jewish technique in combating anti-Semitism. In the case of the Frankfurt School, “What strikes the current observer is the intensity with which many of the Institute’s members denied, and in some cases still deny, any meaning at all to their Jewish identities” (Jay 1973, 32). The originators and practitioners of these theories attempted to conceal their Jewish identities, as in the case of Freud, and to engage in massive self-deception, as appears to have been common among many Jewish political radicals. (Chapter 6, p. 239)

For Freud, this cultivated invisibility is exemplified by his keen desire to have non-Jews in psychoanalysis in order to obscure its evidently Jewish nature. But he also made little secret in his works (particularly Moses and Monotheism; see here, p. 111 ff) of his opinion that Judaism was superior to Christianity. In a similar sense, while Boas, Adorno, et al. were pushing a cultural/social/political agenda in scientific form, their Jewishness was not explicitly expressed. However, they strongly implied that Judaism was/is morally superior to Christianity/Western culture; Horkheimer and Adorno’s Dialectic of Enlightenment is a classic in that regard (see here, p. 159 ff). There is an implicit chauvinism here, with the only difference being that it was more explicitly and aggressively asserted in the case of Spinoza, Mahler and other subjects of recent efforts to perpetuate the notion of ‘Jewish Genius.’

Moreover, while Popkin, Israel et al. are keen to point out Spinoza’s Jewishness, they do not make much (or anything) of their own Jewishness; indeed, they would strenuously deny that their high opinion of Spinoza has anything to do with their own Jewishness, and they would be extremely uncomfortable with anyone pointing out that the movement to exaggerate Spinoza is an entirely Jewish one. I can only imagine how horrified Popkin was when Hubbeling pointed out that exaggeration was coming exclusively from Jewish sources.

Finally and more generally, it appears that Jews are becoming more and more flamboyant and confident (or aggressive) in asserting their dominance; the efforts of Popkin, Goldstein, and Israel should be seen in this context. While the ADL would like us not to think of Jewish power and influence at all, there are recurrent examples where Jews unabashedly assert their influence:

  • Joel Stein’s op-ed on Jewish power in Hollywood;
  • Lee Siegel’s triumphalism on Jewish  displacement of WASPs as an elite;
  • similar triumphalism on the victory of Jews over the WASPs by Robert Frank in his Wall Street Journal article, “That Bright, Dying Star, the American WASP”);
  • Manny Freidman’s comment in The Times of Israel that “Jews own a whole freaking country” (including the media);
  •   this article in YNET about the extent of Jewish wealth;
  • an academic book by a Jewish professor on the role of Jews in getting celebration of Christmas out of the public square;
  • the predominant role of Jews and Jewish organizations in the gun control movement;
  • sociologist Earl Raab’s well-known comment from 1993 that Jews have taken the lead in altering American immigration policy against the bias in favor of Northwestern Europe  (see here, p. 246);
  • comments by Jewish social scientists and journalists on the vast overrepresentation of Jews in financial contributions to federal elections (e.g., in the 1990s Seymour Martin Lipset and Earl Raab estimated that Jews provide 50% of the funding for the Democratic Party and J. J. Goldberg in his book Jewish Power estimated Jews contribute a third to a half of all money in federal elections);
  • the widely acknowledged power of the Israel Lobby over U.S. foreign policy.

Jews see their future in a world where their claims of Jewish superiority are met with mere acceptance or apathy from the White population. This is neatly summed up in the 1979 ADL-sponsored book Anti-Semitism in America (by Harold Quinley and Charles Glock; New York: The Free Press). The authors state (p. 2) in relation to accusations that Jews are a moneyed elite that “a majority of Jews are in fact moneyed in the sense of having above-average incomes.” The writer added (p. 2) that 97% of American respondents to a survey on this fact said they weren’t bothered by it because they attributed it to individual merit, rather than seeing Jews as a group. This is precisely the goal sought by organizations like the ADL. The ADL’s enmity is aroused when, as Quinley and Glock put it (p. 3), discussion of such facts goes “beyond a simple recognition.”

Indeed, this perspective on Jewish accomplishment was clearly articulated by the Frankfurt School’s Theodor Adorno in his discussion of the “Genuine Liberal” in The Authoritarian Personality.

The epitome of psychological health for the authors of The Authoritarian Personality is the individualist who is completely detached from all ingroups, including his or her family. … For Adorno the most laudable type … is “The Genuine Liberal,” whose “views regarding minorities are guided by the idea of the individual” (p. 782). The exemplar of a genuine liberal discussed in the text … believes that anti-Semitism is due to jealousy because Jews are smarter. This person is quite willing to allow completely free competition between Jews and gentiles: “We don’t want any competition. If they [Jews] want it they should have it. I don’t know if they are more intelligent, but if they are they should have it” (p. 782).

According to Adorno, then, psychologically healthy gentiles are unconcerned about being outcompeted by Jews and declining in social status. (See here, p. 187)

In the wake of The Authoritarian Personality, intellectuals such as Richard Hofstadter analyzed illiberal thought as a psychopathological expression of “status anxiety” by people who were overly concerned about being eclipsed socially and economically (see above link, p. 195). Concerns about Jewish ascendancy emanate from diseased minds.

In other words: It’s permissible to recognize above-average Jewish wealth and Jewish over-representation in the media, politics, etc. But accept it. If you question it, discuss it, debate it—and most especially if you discuss how Jewish power conflicts with the interests of other groups, you’ll be labeled an extremist and an anti-Semite. Whites are simply expected to recognize this fact and then ignore it and its implications.

The fact that we now live in a ‘liquid’ society, in which bonds between Whites are less solid than at any time in history, has had the knock-on effect of inhibiting the ability of Whites to perceive group strategies in others. The ‘default’ setting of White attitudes to outgroups has thus been fundamentally altered. In 1950, a White student reading Israel’s books may well have been instantly suspicious that Israel’s opinion of Spinoza was strongly colored by his own background and origins.

Today, on the other hand, White students are much more likely to view the Jewish background of all these scholars as merely incidental. Jews have come a long way in achieving one of their oldest goals – the invisibility of their group status. This can only be described as a remarkable achievement given the visible prevalence of Jewish lobbies, intellectual movements, and activist groups. Despite increasingly vocal and visible assertions of Jewish influence and wealth, the majority of Whites are now seemingly incapable of moving “beyond a simple recognition” of these facts. Of course, one cannot make sense of atomized facts without a corresponding appreciation of their place in a bigger picture, in which underlying principles, patterns, and relationships contextualize and explain them. From their youth, however, modern Whites have been educated to believe that probing patterns and contexts in relation to Jewish influence is at best esoteric and the result of obsession, and at worst the result of pathology and murderous hatred.

Jewish confidence is also rooted in the belief of leading Jewish intellectuals that the changes wrought in society, by critical theory in particular, are permanent. In some cases, these intellectuals have given accounts of Jewish motivations and influence which are only thinly veiled. For example, Zygmunt Bauman writing on the impact of Marcuse, Horkheimer, Adorno and Fromm in his Liquid Modernity (Blackwell; New York, 2000; p. 22) crowed that: “What has been cut apart cannot be glued back together. Abandon all hope of totality, future as well as past. … Neither the rerooting of the uprooted nor the ‘awakening of the people’ to the unfulfilled task of liberation is on the cards.”

Bauman can barely contain his delight that a cohesive ‘solid’ world has passed away—a world in which he believes (p.26) “all those presumed not to be or found to be malleable enough were doomed to perish of exhaustion or sent to gas chambers and crematoria.” He writes (p. 3) that due to critical theory “the first solids to be melted away and the first sacreds to be profaned were traditional loyalties, customary rights and obligations.” This was followed (p. 6) by a ‘melting’ of “family, class and neighborhood.” In one section which obviously refers to the Jewish interest in ‘open borders,’ Bauman writes (p.13) that “We are witnessing the revenge of nomadism over the principle of territoriality and settlement. In the fluid stage of modernity, the settled majority is ruled by the nomadic and exterritorial elite. Keeping the roads free for nomadic traffic and phasing out the remaining check-points has now become the meta-purpose of politics … which as Clausewitz originally declared, are but ‘extension of war by other means.'”

The media has played its part in providing the foundations for White acceptance of Jewish assertions of dominance, with portrayals of smart Jews saving the world etc. (e.g., Edmund Connolly’s article on Independence Day, as well as positive portrayals of Jews and Judaism and portrayals of people who have anti-Jewish attitudes as deranged and mentally inferior (see here, p. 53ff).

Whites are increasingly inclined to unthinkingly accept this narrative. Contrast this with attitudes in the 1950s: Jews simply wouldn’t have be able to get away with it; they had a lot less confidence in publicly expressing their dominance. Although crypsis as a strategy has not disappeared entirely, it has changed substantially from the pre-1960s period. The change in our social context is key to understanding the upsurge in Jewish confidence in asserting their dominance.

To sum up, a Jewish chauvinism is present in all of these movements, with the difference in modern efforts being a subtle change in emphasis brought about by a radically different social context. Only in a modern world which has in large part accepted “tolerance” “pluralism” and “secularity”, and in which Whites are fed daily the image of “Jewish genius” can the Spinoza advanced by Israel et al. acquire anything approaching a hero status. To a homogenous society, Spinoza would have appeared deplorable — as he did in his own lifetime, to Jew and non-Jew alike.

The difference in strategy employed by Freud/Boas and Popkin/Israel really illustrates just how radically our world has changed.

Ron Unz on the illusory American meritocracy

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French Translation, by Armor

An enduring aspect of the self-concept of Jews is that their ascent to elite status in America and elsewhere is the natural result of a meritocracy. For example, after Elena Kagan was nominated for the Supreme Court, Robert Frank penned an article in the Wall Street Journal (“That Bright, Dying Star, the American WASP”) hailing the rise of a meritocracy where Jews could finally assume their rightful place as an elite, and cheering the demise of those lazy, corrupt WASPs who did everything they could to thwart the rise of the Jews, including placing limits on Jewish enrollment in the elite universities.  The fact that Kagan is remarkably unqualified to be a Supreme Court Justice in terms of the usual standards (judicial experience, academic publications, or even courtroom experience) never seems to have entered his mind. In Frank’s view, her ascent from Princeton undergraduate to Harvard Law, to high-level government positions and dean of Harvard Law is the American meritocracy in action—a view that conveniently ignores the role of her Jewish ethnic connections (see also here) in greasing her ascent, most egregiously her appointment as dean of Harvard Law by Larry Summers.

Ron Unz has published a very important article showing that Kagan’s remarkable rise is a symptom of a far wider issue—that Jewish admission to elite universities is far from meritocratic (“The myth of American meritocracy: How corrupt are Ivy League admissions?”). (On the basis of Unz’s article, it would be interesting to look at Kagan’s SAT and LSAT scores!) Because of their role in replenishing elites, university admissions is a huge lever of power. The implication of Unz’s article (although he would probably shy away from this wording) is that a Jewish elite now controls this lever of power and has used it to its advantage, resulting in a massive overrepresentation of Jews in elite universities compared to their academic qualifications or intelligence, while discriminating against non-Jewish Whites and against Asians. Read more

Elena Kagan’s “diversity problem” and Jewish privilege

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The reaction to the appointment of Elena Kagan to the Supreme Court in 2010 was a case study in how taboos are maintained in our society regarding the 600-pound gorilla of Jewish power. It is not just that little was said about the fact that she would be the third Jewish justice on the nine-member court in a country barely two percent Jewish, leaving the majority-Protestant country without a Protestant on the high court. It is not just that she was generally lacking in qualifications for the appointment and for pretty much every other job she has ever gotten. What was really interesting was how the Jewish media diverted attention from the phenomenon of Jewish power and privilege by raising the specter of White privilege. And when I say specter, I really mean ghost, because White privilege for all intents and purposes is dead and gone, as the Elena Kagan nomination “controversy” illustrates.

When Obama was set to make his second nomination for the Supreme Court, Kagan’s selection was neither a surprise nor ever seriously in doubt. She had already been on the short list of candidates to fill the first vacancy, which eventually went to Sonia Sotomayor. There were some voices raised, mostly on the “right,” regarding Kagan’s complete lack of judicial experience and her relative lack of courtroom experience. However, the truly interesting objections were raised by observers on the “left” regarding the lack of “diversity” in her recruitment of professors while she was the dean of Harvard Law School.

The liberal on-line magazine Salon published an article by four law professors from less prestigious schools noting that all but one of the 32 tenure-track professors hired while Kagan was dean were White. These professors, two of whom were black, one south Asian, and one with a half-Hispanic hyphenated surname (Luis Fuentes-Rohwer), make seven references to Whites in their 1679-word piece, yet never once use the word “Jew.” Read more

Jews at US Colleges and Universities

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Reform Judaism has posted a chart listing the top 60 colleges and universities attended by Jews. See here. Six of the 8 Ivy League universities are included, with Jewish enrollments of around 25% of the total undergraduates.

The topic of Jewish overrepresentation at elite universities has been discussed several times at TOO. See, e.g.,  Edmund Connelly’s “Harvard Hates Whites“,  Trudie Pert’s “Post Genome Princeton” and my “Jewish overrepresentation at elite universities explained.” Princeton is especially interesting because it is not among the Ivy League universities highest Jewish enrollment. From “Jewish overrepresentation at elite universities explained“:

One might simply suppose that [Jewish overrepresentation] is due to higher Jewish IQ. However, on the basis of Richard Lynn’s estimates of Ashkenazi Jewish IQ and correcting for the greater numbers of European Whites, the ratio of non-Jewish Whites to Jews should be around 7 to 1 (IQ >130) or  4.5 to 1 (IQ > 145). Instead, the ratio of non-Jewish Whites to Jews is around 1 to 1 or less. (See here.) …

These data strongly suggest that Jewish overrepresentation at elite universities has nothing to do with IQ but with discrimination against non-Jewish White Americans, especially those from the working class or with rural origins. It would be interesting to see the dynamics of the admissions process. How many admissions officers are Jewish? And, whether or not they are Jewish,what pressures are they under to admit Jewish students? The brouhaha that engulfed the Princeton campus because Jews were “only” overrepresented by around 6.5 times their percentage of the population suggests that there is considerable pressure for high levels of Jewish admission. The Daily Princetonian ran four front-page articles on the topic, and the New York Times ran an article titled “The Princeton Puzzle.” (See here;  the NYTimes article is here.) Clearly anything less than 20% Jewish enrollment would be met with raised eyebrows and perhaps intimations of anti-Semitism. Read more

Philip Weiss on the Disintegration of WASP Society

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

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

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

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

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

SEC’s Becker/Madoff saga: How could it smell worse?

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"It was THIS big!"


The announcement on Monday Former SEC Counsel Rejoins Cleary Gottlieb Amid Madoff Scrutiny by Joshua Gallu (Bloomberg May 9, 2011) pretty much settles the matter: former General Counsel David Becker’s departure from the Agency was hasty and unplanned. Becker had been unemployed since the end of February: no professional living by generating hourly fees would normally permit such a gap.

As I have previously noted, Becker was recruited to the Agency in February 2009 by incoming Chairwoman Mary Schapiro — who herself got her job as a direct consequence of the Madoff fiasco which had shattered the reputation of the SEC the previous December. The following month, in a meeting with Schapiro and whistleblower Harry Markopolos, Becker

picked a quarrel over extraneous trivia and threw a tantrum so violent that Markopolos’ lawyer “thought that he was about to come right over that table and go for my throat” (Markopolos, 249). Consequently, the meeting was terminated

See Is the Madoff Scandal Paradigmatic? In this essay, Kevin Macdonald and I suggested this was another example of the typically lethal Jewish response to those deemed to have been instrumental (however innocently) in harming Jewish interests. We cited the notorious Cliff Robertson blacklisting: and Professor Macdonald has subsequently reported another. However, it turned out that David Becker had a more personal motive: a few days after the abrupt February 1st announcement of his departure he and his two brothers were sued by the Madoff trustee for some $1.545 million of the $2.045 million Madoff account they inherited from their mother in 2004 and liquidated the following year. While he claimed not to know this was happening, the suit was filed in late 2010 and it is inconceivable that the Trustee did not try to settle before litigating. It rapidly became clear that few if any of his colleagues with whom he dealt on Madoff matters had any idea that Becker had such an involvement. Read more