Jews as An Elite

Philip Weiss on the Disintegration of WASP Society

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

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

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

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

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

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

Navigating Hollywood: Conservatives and Christians Need Not Apply

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

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

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

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

In the 1930s: Chapter 19 of Alexandr Solzhenitsyn’s “200 Years Together”

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The project of translating Alexandr Solzhenitisyn’s 200 Years Together into English continues apace. The 18,000-word Chapter 19, “In the 1930s” is now available (see here). The decade of the 1930s was tragic almost beyond description. The main idea advanced by Solzhenitsyn is that all segments of Soviet society suffered, including Jews who had been members of the elite. However, the suffering of Jews pales in comparison to the suffering of the Ukrainian and Russian farmers undergoing forced collectivization. Moreover, Jews were never targeted as Jews, and in general Jews remained vastly overrepresented in elite positions throughout the period, even after the purges.

Solzhenitsyn emphasizes the culpability of the West. The brutal process of industrialization was carried out with the cooperation of Western merchants and bankers eager to do business with the Soviet Union. Such commercial cooperation had been prohibited under the Czars because Jewish activist organizations had pressured governments not to do business with Russia because of its treatment of Jews — much as there are now sanctions against trading with Iran because of the concerns of the Israel Lobby. As we also see today, financial and commercial interests were not concerned with ideological commitment to capitalism or with human rights but simply sought to expand their profits.  Trade was allowed because there was the perception in the West that “Soviet power would not oppress the Jews, but on the contrary, that many of them would remain at the levers of power.” Read more

Derrida’s (Crypto-) Jewish Identity

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In Culture of Critique I had a brief section on philosopher Jacques Derrida’s strong Jewish identity and how that informed his writing. (See here, p. 198ff.) It emphasizes the point that Derrida thought of himself as a crypto-Jew. Despite his pose as “a leftist Parisian intellectual, a secularist and an atheist,” Derrida descended from a long line of crypto-Jews, and at one point he explicitly identifies himself as a crypto-Jew: “Marranos that we are, Marranos in any case whether we want to be or not, whether we know it or not.” Derrida changed his first name to the French Christian sounding ‘Jacques’ in order better blend into the  French scene.

Indeed, one might say that Derrida’s crypsis is typical of Jews on the left:

[Leftist] universalism may thus be viewed as a mechanism for Jewish continuity via crypsis or semi-crypsis. The Jewish radical is invisible to the [non-Jew] as a Jew and thereby avoids anti-Semitism while at the same time covertly retains his or her Jewish identity. Lyons (1982, 73) finds that “most Jewish Communists wear their Jewishness very casually but experience it deeply. It is not a religious or even an institutional Jewishness for most; nevertheless, it is rooted in a subculture of identity, style, language, and social network. . . . In fact, this second-generation Jewishness was antiethnic and yet the height of ethnicity. The emperor believed that he was clothed in transethnic, American garb, but [non-Jews] saw the nuances and details of his naked ethnicity.” (Chapter 3 of CofC, p. 91)

The Forward has an article on a recent biography of Derrida that adds to the portrait. It notes that Derrida was “acutely aware of his ethnic identity” and as a result much of his early writing was on “fellow Jews.” He took his crypto-Judaism to the grave:

Abundant details provided by Peeters prove Derrida’s lasting devotion toYiddishkeit … When Derrida was buried, his elder brother, René, wore a tallit at the suburban French cemetery and recited the Kaddish to himself inwardly, since Jacques had asked for no public prayers. This discreet, highly personal, yet emotionally and spiritually meaningful approach to recognizing Derrida’s Judaism seems emblematic of this complex, imperfect, yet valuably nuanced thinker.

In other words, Derrida was a crypto-Jew until the end and instructed his family to participate in the charade.  Read more

Tim Wise Hates White People

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

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

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

Lasha Darkmoon: Sex Plague

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Kevin MacDonald: I invite comment on Dr. Lasha Darkmoon’s current TOO article “Sex plague.” It is yet another take on Jews as a hostile elite—the “sheer destructive power” of the Jewish intellect, as Paul Johnson had it. Psychoanalysis attacked the most basic institutions of Western society—its sexual mores. It was the most egregious pseudo-science ever invented. Maintained by cult-like devotion and the political discipline worthy of a communist cell, it opened the door to a host of cultural changes. But it is the motivation of these Jewish intellectuals that is critical: Freud’s “we are bringing them the plague” and his hatred of the Catholic Church are paradigmatic. But Darkmoon also brings in contemporary descendants of this attitude: Al Goldstein’s “The only reason that Jews are in pornography is that we think that Christ sucks.” And Richard Pacheco who saw no conflict between his career as a porn star and his career as a rabbinical student. And Annie Sprinkle, who blurs the border between pornography and high art—a feat that is possible only in a culture that is completely degraded.

There can be little doubt that these movements have had a generally negative influence on the culture and on the cultural self-confidence of those espousing traditional values. My view is that the biggest effects of this cultural onslaught have been on people on the lower end of the Bell curve. See here.

As usual, there is no claim that all Jews have these attitudes. And certainly many non-Jews have been involved whether motivated by fame, fortune, or psychosis. (Darkmoon mentions Tracey Emin, Hannah Wilke, and Karen Finley.) And yet, while not necessarily focused on sexual subversion, it is acknowledged on all sides that in general Jews have hostile attitudes toward the people and the culture of the West, particularly Christianity. (See, e.g., here.) Of course, this wouldn’t matter if Jews were a powerless minority like the Gypsies. It matters a great deal when Jews have risen to an elite in all of the areas that matter: politics, the media, personal wealth, and the academic world.