In Search of The Western Bushido

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Bushido: The Soul of Japan
Inazo Nitobe, 1899.

 Warrior Race: A History of the British at War
Lawrence James
Little, Brown & Co., 2001.

The recent release of The Northman, along with my reading of two fascinating books, Bushido: The Soul of Japan and Warrior Race: A History of the British At War, has prompted me to share some thoughts on the nature and trajectory of Western warrior culture and its place in the West today. The Japanese concept and path of Bushido (“the way of the warrior”) is a useful tool for examining Western warrior culture because it is perhaps the only such system outside the West that offers some striking similarities. And yet there are also enough differences between Bushido and the history of the Western warrior to bring into sharp relief those qualities that make the European experience unique. In the following essay I want to offer something between a book review and a contemporary social commentary. It should be obvious that at the heart of the problem of the West is a failure to participate in the basics of life: to reproduce, and to compete with other groups. Competition in modernity has been reduced to a mostly economic exercise, accompanied by sports only insofar as those sports serve the goal of hypnotic mass entertainment and provide an impotent outlet for the universal instinct towards tribalism and conflict. The classic motifs of the way of the warrior  (disdain for death, quest for individual glory, and the building of a morality around concepts of honor rather than simple “fairness” or “equality”) have today either been sublimated to the point of becoming almost invisible, or have vanished entirely. Whence the Western bushido?

Honor and Death 

Perhaps the best content found in Lawrence James’s Warrior Race concerns the culture of the ancient Celtic Britons, and that of the Roman and Germanic invaders they came into conflict with. Common among all three, though more pronounced among the Celts and Germans, was the individual quest for honor and prestige. James writes that “personal honour, pride in his unit and reverence for his commanders and the state they served motivated the Roman soldier.”[1] Among the Celts meanwhile, were “professional warriors attached to tribal rulers. Their fighting methods were Homeric, with each man deliberately seeking to prove his audacity and prowess in the manner of a champion.”[2]

Warrior bands were united by shared pride in courage, and by loyalty to a noble lord. James comments that

If [a warrior band] leader was slain, his followers would fight on to the death. For the Romans, such behavior was another example of barbarian madness, but within the Germanic and Celtic traditions it was a mark of the highest distinction. And it long remained so. A fifth-century Roman was puzzled by the fact that among the Alani ‘a man is judged happy who sacrificed his life in battle.’ Six hundred years later, the gravestone of a Scandinavian warrior proclaimed: ‘He did not return at Uppsala, but fought while he could hold weapons.’[3]

The uniqueness of the Western warrior’s contempt for death is thrown into even sharper relief when considered alongside Japanese accounts. In Nitobe’s Bushido, it is remarked that the samurai warriors of feudal Japan possessed a “stoic composure in sight of danger or calamity, that disdain of life and friendliness with death.” This disdain of life, however, did not manifest in the ‘Homeric’ quality in battle alluded to by James. Nitobe adds that the Japanese warrior was not seen to “run all kinds of hazards, to jeopardize one’s self, to rush into the jaws of death.” The modern manifestation of the kamikaze is probably the closest Japanese behavior to the European example, but even here it is too goal-orientated, and rooted too heavily in shame-avoidance (suicide attacks being more effective in attacking warships than conventional attacks), to compare with the assertive seeking of death and honor found among the Europeans.

There is a calculated aspect to the Japanese warrior that is much less evident among the classic European ‘berserker’ type. James points out that “Celtic, Anglo-Saxon, Scandinavian, Pictish, and Irish warriors held similar values, followed similar codes of conduct, admired the same qualities, and shared a common pride in their calling.” Personal honor and reputation were primary, since “it gave the warrior status in his lifetime and renown after death, for his exploits would be relived by the versifiers and minstrels who entertained fighting men as they ate and drank in their lord’s hall.” Disdain for death was assisted among all the Northwest European tribes by the common practice of entering an animalistic and predatory state. The Irish called this process riastarthe, which may be rendered as ‘battle fury,’ and in the annals concerning the Irish hero Cuchulain some literary license was employed in explaining how its onset was accompanied by a terrifying physical transformation:

You would have thought that every hair was driven into his head. You would have thought that a spark of fire was on every hair. He closed one eye until it was no wider than the eye of a needle; he opened the other until it was as big as a wooden bowl. He bared his teeth from jaw to ear, and he opened his mouth until the gullet was visible.

Germanic fighting men, who raised themselves to a similar battle fury, became ‘berserk’ (bear-like) or ‘as mad as dogs or wolves; they bit their shields and were as strong as bears.” James suggests that

vulpine characteristics were particularly cherished, for wolves hunted in packs and their savagery was proverbial. Warriors clad in wolves’ skins absorbed that beast’s ferocity. They are described in the ninth-century Norse poem Raven Song: ‘Wolfcoats they are called, those who bear blood-stained swords to battle; they redden spears when they come to the slaughter, acting together.’

One of the remarkable features of the history of British warfare is the long persistence of such traits in the population. James argues that the knights of the middle ages were, after all, “direct descendants of Germanic and Celtic super-warriors.” An excellent case in point is the English lord Sir Giles D’Argentine, who distinguished himself against Scottish forces at the Battle of Bannockburn (1314):

At Bannockburn, when the tide turned against the English, Sir Giles scorned to join the general retreat. Instead, he spurred his horse straight into the ranks of the Scottish spearmen shouting his war cry ‘Argente!’ and was killed. Those of his enemies qualified to judge on arcane chivalric matters rated him ‘the third best knight of that day.’

Even into the nineteenth century, it was believed that the aristocracy could not rely on lineage alone to prove their elite status, but rather should demonstrate it by deeds, especially those involving military courage. In 1855, during the Crimean War, Viscount Palmerston addressed Parliament after news emerged of a heroic charge:

Talk to me of the aristocracy of England! Why, look at that glorious charge of cavalry at Balaklava — look to that charge, where the noblest and wealthiest of the land rode foremost, followed by heroic men from the lowest classes of the community, each rivalling the other in bravery.

A French officer observing another British attack on Russian lines was “astonished by the cold, drill-book manner in which the British moved forward.”[4]

Perhaps the most remarkable example of the persistence of the link between death and honor, found in Warrior Race, concerns an 1803 dispute between Lieutenant-Colonel Robert Montgomery, Household Cavalry, and Captain James Macnamara, Royal Navy. Both were walking their dogs in London’s Hyde Park when the dogs began fighting. Montgomery’s dog was badly wounded, and Montgomery demanded that Macnamara call off his dog or “I’ll knock it down.” Macnamara retorted that such language and conduct was not befitting a gentleman. This was a serious charge, and resulted in the declaration of a duel. The following morning the men met at a secluded part of Chalk Farm were they fired upon one another with pistols. Montgomery was fatally wounded. Three weeks later Macnamara appeared in court charged with manslaughter but defended his actions on the grounds that his role as leader in the Navy demanded that he maintain integrity of dignity and character, and defend his personal honor. He told the court, “It is impossible to define in terms, the proper feelings of a Gentleman; but their existence has supported this happy country for many ages, and she might perish if they were lost.” Macnamara was acquitted and eleven years later he was promoted to rear-admiral. James comments:

By deliberately facing death in a nonchalant manner, the duellist proved his capacity to suppress that most deeply implanted of all human impulses: the urge for self-preservation. If he surrendered to his animal reflexes or his reason, he would simply run away and reveal himself a coward. Cravenness was inexcusable in a gentleman and automatically disbarred him from the company of his equals.

The Fluid Hierarchy

Western social structures and class barriers were more fluid than those among other peoples, and is another difference between the Western warrior culture and the Japanese bushido who followed a rigid hereditary samurai class. Western warrior culture very often rewarded individual heroism with social promotion and the granting of lands, and the long tradition of piracy and battle-looting, which stretched back to the times of the Saxons and Vikings, persisted well into the nineteenth century. James describes how

Some years ago, a member of a Scottish landowning family told me how her ancestor, one of several sons of a crofter, had been taken by his father to enlist in a Highland regiment at Inverness. There was no alternative, for the family land could only support his eldest brother. The young man in question was literate and was promoted quickly, for the could attend to the orderly book, and the high wastage of officers in the Crimea secured him a commission. He served in the army that relieved Lucknow in 1857 and ruthless looting gained him sufficient cash to return home and purchase an estate.

James refers to the long history of such social fluidity, pointing out that

Early modern British society was hierarchical but fluid. A man acquired the public status of gentleman when he secured the symbol of knighthood, a coat of arms. In Elizabethan England and afterwards, they were freely available to anyone who would pay the herald’s fees and convince them that they lived either by their intelligence, if they were lawyers, or had acquired land, if they were merchants or, for that matter, a playwright property-owner like Shakespeare.

Religion 

For the samurai, bushido was informed by both Zen Buddhism and Shinto. Nitobe comments that the former inculcated a “calm trust in Fate, a quiet submission to the inevitable,” while Shinto encouraged loyalty to the sovereign and for ancestral memory. Pre-Christian religious influences on Western warrior culture are evident in the transformative, animalistic battle rituals of the ancient Celts and Germanics. It is worth pointing out that Christianity did very little to dull the edge of Western warrior culture, and in fact complimented it very well. As indicated in the early ninth century Saxon poem Heliand, Jesus Christ was embraced as an ideal warrior king who had arrived on Earth as the Ruler’s son, gathered about him a loyal band of men, and, as the “Might-Wielding Christ” had embraced a heroic end in battle against Satan and Death and will one day return upon a white horse to “judge and make war.” Lawrence James stresses that

Superficially at least, the Christian faith condemned all violence, but there were significant exceptions which together added up to the canonical concept of the just war. St Augustine of Hippo argued that force could be used in defence of the weak, to chastise rebels and oath breakers and, of course, against heretics and pagans. … There was little here that would have disturbed the conscience of an early medieval king who, ostensibly, only went to war to protect his otherwise defenceless subjects from aggression or to suppress rebellions. Furthermore, the church respected the calling of the warrior, the more so if he used his arms in pursuit of aims of which it approved.

The Present Day 

What remnants of Western warrior culture exist today? Not many. Ted Kaczynski’s concept of “surrogate activities” is appropriate for a wide range of phenomena in the modern West, and involves an activity that is directed toward an artificial goal that people set up for themselves merely in order to have some goal to work toward, merely for the sake of the “fulfillment” that they get from pursuing the goal. Kevin MacDonald has written, referring also to Ricardo Duchesne’s The Uniqueness of Western Civilization, that extreme sports are “a context of implicit Whiteness.” MacDonald writes

In this analysis, White men jumping off buildings and sky surfing are reenacting a fundamental script of Western culture—the same script that underlies Western energy, inventiveness, exploration and creativity. While I argue that this berserker military ethos of daring and adventure is not the whole story of Western individualism (there are also the morally constructed egalitarian ingroups that feed into today’s stifling political correctness; see here, p. 23ff),  I think Duchesne has a key insight that explains the psychology of a great many White men and is likely a critically important aspect of the evolutionary psychology of the West.

Such activities are impressive, and are certainly a way to “make ones name” in modernity. But they are also fundamentally without meaning or lasting legacy. For this reason, MacDonald expressed the hope that “such men develop an explicit sense of their White identity and interests and that they redirect their sense of physical daring and adventure to lead their people in the struggles that lie ahead.”

Another layer to “surrogate activities” is that key instincts are “outsourced” into entertainment forms and petty clannishness. This is especially obvious in the sporting world, where the instinct towards tribalism and conflict is directed into spectacles that are ultimately without meaning. Watch a European soccer game and you will very like hear rhythmic mass chants and clapping that are reminiscent of what once could have boomed over an ancient battlefield. In Europe, until recent times, soccer matches would be accompanied, both before and after the game, by mindless and meaningless running street battles between one faction of fans and another. One of the fastest rising sports in the last 15 years is mixed martial arts (MMA), in which men fight in a cage under a relatively loose set of rules (in the original Ultimate Fighting Championship there were hardly any rules at all). One positive effect of this has been a boom in martial arts training among White males, and Whites remain dominant as trainers and instructors.

Coupled with superhero movies and action films of all kinds, however, violence is now primarily something that entertains, rather than something that informs ones view of life and death. Lawrence James closes his history by discussing modern British office workers fighting with paint guns in forests as corporate “team-building exercises,” and the trend for those seeking some kind of personal fulfilment to undergo training programs devised by the Special Air Service. The warrior-aristocratic ethos of violence and conflict that lay at the heart of chivalry and blended with Christian ideals of social responsibility and Renaissance notions of virtue has largely disappeared from the culture of the West. It has been replaced with commercialism, crudity, vulgarity, and overwhelming cowardice.

The social structure of the West remains fluid, but the warrior and gentleman is no longer present in the hierarchy. He has been ousted by the oligarch, the technocrat, the merchant, and the career politician. The military elite is now nothing more than a tool of these forces, rather than a directing force in its own right. Long gone are the days when European heads of state led their troops into battle, earning their right to lead through courage and daring. Although aristocratic dominance of the armed forces in Britain persisted until well into the 19th century, the total wars of the twentieth century “democratized” and watered down the nature of warfare, reducing war to a calculation of numbers and technology in a manner that continues to this day. Where is the warrior in the age of the drone and the intercontinental ballistic missile?

Religion has also collapsed as a support of the European warrior ethos. Long-gone in the West is any hint of the “Might-Wielding Christ.” Today Christianity has been largely reduced to a foot-kissing immigration-assistance network. Look at any mainstream church and you’ll hear plenty about being meek and humble, and nothing about treading down one’s enemies like a winepress (Rev. 19:15). The result is that Christianity will undergo a shift in which less liberal, and more masculine, males gravitate towards very small enclaves of ultra-traditional Catholicism or Orthodoxy where asceticism and older visions of Christ prevail, while mainstream churches become more and more female-dominated. 

Writing at the end of the nineteenth century, Inazo Nitobe lamented the gradual decline of bushido in Japan, but remained hopeful that remnants of it would somehow persist:

Bushido as an independent code of ethics may vanish, but its power will not perish from the earth; its schools of martial prowess or civic honor may be demolished, but its light and its glory will long survive the ruins.

I wonder, if Nitobe observed Japan today, whether he would agree that bushido has survived the ruins. For my part, I find myself surveying the ruins of Western culture, and finding only debris.

[1] James, Warrior Race, 8.

[2] James, Warrior Race, 11.

[3] Ibid, 31.

[4] James, Warrior Race, 322.

Dreams of a Racial Utopia

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Dreamworlds of Race: Empire and the Utopian Destiny of Anglo-America
Duncan Bell
Princeton University Press, 2020.

Duncan Bell’s Dreamworlds chronicles the largely forgotten efforts to unite the British and American empires during the late Victorian and Edwardian eras. What I found most interesting, however, was not the core narrative, but the broader historical continuities and changes his story reveals. During the early Victorian period Britain was at the top of its game. Having earlier helped dispatched Napoleon, it saw no threat on the continent, its population was growing, its empire was expanding, being the first nation to industrialize it was “the workshop of the world,” and Britannia ruled the waves. Half a century later its population growth had slowed considerably, while the population of a rapidly industrializing Germany was expanding along with its military prowess. To the west the US was now a continental power with the largest economy in the world and a growing navy. Many in British leadership realized that the “Splendid Isolation” policy that had worked earlier needed to be revised. Some British elites even envisioned reuniting with the former colony across the Atlantic to achieve Anglo-American world domination, ushering in a millennium of global peace and progress. Supporters of this idea noted the shared language and other characteristics between the two nations especial that of race. Almost all the advocates for a British-American union mention that both were Anglo-Saxon nations. Although by this time American had absorbed millions of Irish, German, Scandinavian, and other immigrants, US culture and US elites were still overwhelmingly of British origins.

So in an era when White racial consciousness remained a positive force it was natural to see this racial affinity as a critical asset. Peoples’ articulation regarding race was a bit less precise in this period. Thus we have the “English race,” or even the “English speaking race.” The term Anglo-Saxon was sometimes applied to any English-speaking White person. The initiative for this Anglo-American union came mostly from Britain. American historical memories of the Revolutionary War, the War of 1812, and border disputes such as “Fifty-four Forty or Fight” provided context for the relationship during much of the nineteenth century. Only after 1898 did some Americans see any need or advantage in a British alliance. Bell highlights four of the most prominent proponents of the US -British union: Industrialist and philanthropist Andrew Carnegie, journalist and editor W.T. Stead, imperial businessman and politician Cecil Rhodes, and novelist and essayist H.G. Wells. Three of the four were British, Carnegie being a Scottish-born American, more evidence that the wooing was predominately British.

I believe this project was largely a product of British elite’s anxiety over the rise of Wilhelmine Germany, though Bell does not explicitly state this. The author is a professor of international relations at Cambridge with a special interest in the history of the British Empire. His research on the issue of British-American union was prodigious. Among many interesting facts we learn that: “Arthur Conan Doyle dedicated his 1891 novel The White Company to ‘the hope of the future, the reunion of the English speaking races’” (203). Bell did stumble at least once, identifying the famous American historian Frederick Jackson Turner as “Frederick Turner Johnson” (60). The book’s main shortcoming, however, is its narrow focus which only hints at the wider issues that persist in the face of the historical change manifested in his monograph. These continuities include: race, globalism, and the role of Germany in world affairs. A more relevant study would relate these topics to our current state of affairs. The most useful historiography looks at the past to better understand the present, and perhaps even predict the future. Obviously the centrality of race is a major theme of the book, “race” is in the title. So for continuity we can say that the level of racial consciousness in the early twenty-first century is as high as it was in the late nineteenth century.

But the character of this consciousness has changed tremendously, and that change has occurred largely on the part of Whites. The positive White identity prevalent in an earlier time produced confidence, optimism, self- assurance, and pride in the British who created a world-wide empire and the Americans who conquered and settled a continent. Today the decedents of these men express shame, self- abasement, contrition, and penitence for these deeds. Race is central to both individual and collective identity so it is natural that White racialism would be pervasive in a White society. In the period dealt with here, White normativity was embedded into every aspect of culture. Today we have the reverse side of the same racial coin. Ethnic diversity and cultural inclusion are now the dominant values and have become intertwined in every facets of society.

The White racialism described by Bell transcended political and economic ideologies, as well as national borders. There were liberal racialists and conservative racialists; there were socialist racialists and capitalist racialists. And although the era is remembered for its national rivalries, Bell describes “how unionists sought to build a globe-spanning racial community” (6). Cecil Rhodes, for one, believed in “the ontological priority of race to political institutions” (139). After his death in 1902 his colleague W.T. Stead wrote that Rhodes was the “first distinguished British statesman whose Imperialism was that of Race and not of Empire” (142). Rhodes put his money where his mouth was by establishing the Rhodes scholarship at Oxford for young men from the Commonwealth, America, and Germany. Carnegie also praised Rhodes “for rejecting a myopic form of imperialism in favor of an expa—nsive ‘race imperialism’” (149). Today Rhodes is a controversial figure across the political spectrum. Bell’s understanding of his beliefs may run counter to some White racialists who are critical of Rhodes’ affiliation with the Rothschild’s Bank and his role in the Second Boer War.

Those promoting an Anglo worldwide federation considered including reciprocal or transnational citizenship. These ideas were “often fused with a commitment to ‘race patriotism,’ a reengineered account of loyalty and affective signification that identified race as a privileged site of political devotion, even love” (251). There was a belief on the part of many that “individuals owed allegiance to a nested set of communities, including their country and their race” (252). Carnegie thought “that treaties and defense pacts were temporary, whereas the ‘patriotism of race lies deeper and is not disturbed by waves upon the surface’” (288). What Bell is describing here—the idea of an international racial union to manage world affairs—is the genesis of today’s globalism. Its racial exclusivity has mutated, of course, into a militant multiracial, multicultural inclusivity.

Christian universalism played a role in this transformation. For example, in an 1885 book Our Country influential Congregational minister Josiah Strong wrote that Anglo-Saxons were God’s anointed people, destined to bring civilization to the less fortunate of the world. In The New Era (1893) Rev. Strong penned, “that the day is not far distant when Great Britain and the United States will join hands in defense of justice and liberty the world over” (90). What Rudyard Kipling called “The White Man’s Burden” evolved after World War II into the US (with Britain as junior partner) playing global cop and social worker, dispensing cruise missiles or humanitarian aid depending upon the circumstances.

It’s not hard to see how liberal imperialism of the late nineteenth century morphed into, the neoliberal globalism of the late twentieth century. While Christian universalism was an element in this internationalism, Jewish particularism saw an increasing role in the latter period. The words “Jew” and “Jewish,” however, do not appear in the 400 pages of Dreamworlds.

Of Bell’s four main characters: Carnegie, Stead, Rhodes, and Wells, Andrew Carnegie comes across as the most thoughtful and insightful. In his younger days he engage in some sharp business practices, but he spent the last twenty years of his life engaged in an unprecedented level of philanthropy. Although the British-American union he envisioned was never realized he was right about most issues. A Darwinist and a racialist, he was concerned about “intra racial animosity” (51). He recognized the unity between the Anglo-Saxon and the German. “The Briton of today,” wrote Carnegie in 1893, “is himself composed in large measure of the Germanic element, and the German, Briton, and American are all of the Teutonic race” (56). Carnegie was an anti-imperialist. The only expansion he supported was settler colonialism which would lead to self-government. Anticipating the Spanish-American War he declared: “If American can learn one lesson from England, it is the folly of conquest, where conquest involves the government of an alien race” (84). His pre-World War I proposed League of Peace “was inflected by his belief in the ontological primacy of race . . . [and] he argued that it was essential to ally (not unify) with Germany, given their shared Teutonic origins” (337).

It is widely believed that the optimism that produced visions of a racial utopia died in the mud and blood of World War I, so the failure of the Angles and Teutons to pursue common interests rather than narrow national interests proved disastrous. As noted above, many Anglo unionists — Carnegie, Stead, Rhodes — sought to include Germany in their project to one degree or another. At this time there was a wide-spread belief that a common thread ran from the ancient German folk assemblies described by Tacitus in Germania (98 AD), through England to the political institutions of the New World. Sometimes call the Teutonic Germ theory, this idea was articulated by scholars such as Herbert Baxter Adams, a founding member of the American Historical Association. A proponent of this thesis cited by Bell was James Bryce, author of The American Commonwealth (1888). Bryce saw “the history of Teutonic self-government stretching back through England to the Germanic tribes.” Political practices are “expressive products of racial deep time, New England town meetings could trace their origins back centuries” before Plymouth Rock (59). Incidentally, Bryce was a liberal racialist who criticized the rise of the gilded age plutocracy and advocated for civil service reform.

We can discern, perhaps, during this period the possibility of an ORION (our race is our nation) ideology developing. Instead, in 1914 Germans became baby-killing Huns and Anglo-Saxons and continental Saxons commenced slaughtering each other. After 1945 Germany was gelded and lobotomized. Its natural role in economic and political leadership subsumed by NATO and the European Union. Germany is needed to both check and partner with the Orthodox/Cyrillic civilization to the east.

In the last chapter Bell shifts gears and describes what he calls “Afro-modernism contra White Supremacy” (373).Here again we see a continuity in the arguments Black writers have used to challenge White society. The first such author examined is Martin Delany. In his The Principia of Ethnology (1879) Delany claims that Black Egypt gave rise to Western civilization. Bell does not dispute this falsity, but he does note that Delany was also a novelist and “Afro-modern writers frequently utilized speculative fiction as a medium of political critique, vindication, and desire” (377). To provide an example Bell pivots to a contemporary Black novelist Colson Whitehead. A product of the Black bourgeoisie, an elite prep school, and the Ivy League, Whitehead is the author of The Underground Railroad (2016), a convoluted alternative history lavishly praised by the critics. It is not much of a stretch to believe that the novelist speaks through one of his nineteenth-century characters to express the rage the twenty-first-century Black literati. “This nation [America] shouldn’t exist if there is any justice in the world, for its foundations are murder, theft and cruelty” (379). There in a nutshell explains why statues and monuments must be toppled, history revised, and social and cultural institutions remade.

Another Black author Bell considers is W.E.B. DuBois. In The Color Line Belts the World (1906) DuBois repeats the Black Egyptian theory. He goes on to express joy over Russia’s defeat by Japan in 1905, probably not realizing that the Japanese were as race conscious as Southern Whites and generally held Blacks in low esteem. In The Souls of White Folks (1910) “DuBois argued that the best social science of the day had wholly discredited the idea of race as a distinctive entity” (383). So the idea that races really do not exist also has a long history, though at the time these Black contras wrote, few Whites took their ideas seriously. A third turn-of-the-century Black writer examined by Bell is T.E.S. Scholes. Scholes explained the current low status of Africans as part of a historical cycle, claiming that Blacks like “all peoples rose and fell, undergoing periods of progressive development before they eventually declined” (388). Thus Black Egyptian civilization led the way for European ascendency.

One interesting observation made by both DuBois and Scholes is that White elites tend to be less racially conscious and more cosmopolitan than the White middle and working classes who seek support from a racial community. Jamaican-born Scholes believed that while the imperial elite of the British Empire was somewhat open to integrating natives, the settler populations were not. He goes on to complain that American racialism was negatively influencing British colonial administrators.

Relevant points: More evidence that the diversity and inclusion ideology has been a top-down movement from the start; and nineteenth century British liberal imperialism had a seminal role in producing today’s globalism. I think we can read Dreamworlds as further indication that there will be no post-racial America, much less a post-racial world. Race is an essential aspect in both interpersonal and group dynamics. Most Whites cannot help but to think and act White. It is literally in their DNA, so authors such as Robin DiAngelo, who claim that to be White is to be racist, may have a point. Only by transcending their essence can Whites be “anti-racist.” To achieve such a change on a large scale would require a totalitarian political and social order. Many of the individuals described in Bell’s book believed that Anglo-Saxons had a special genius, not only for self-government, but also for governing others; that they should be global administrators for mankind. This idea has led to the current interventionism and destructive globalism. There is an obvious need to reform present international organizations or create alternatives, ones that take into account the importance race. One such proposal is Euro-Siberia advocated by Guillaume Faye. Another, bit more esoteric plan, is Hyperborea, a union of northern nations based on Greek mythology. The ideal international arrangement would be a confederation that protects and enhances Western peoples and culture by addressing collective needs while preserving national independence. Perhaps the most important contribution made by a book such as Dreamworlds is as a reminder that Whites were once the masters of their own destiny. We have since lost our sovereignty, but while utopia was never a real possibility the hope for an instauration remains.

The Nature of Women and the ‘Woke’ Problem

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Anyone who is perceptive of current social and political trends in America knows that women — especially White liberal women — play an inordinate role. They are almost always at the forefront of any protest lecturing others about ‘systemic racism,’ ‘white privilege,’ ‘toxic masculinity,’ and the need for ‘equity’ in every sphere of life.

These same women are given every conceivable platform to spew their revolutionary rhetoric. They demand to be heard, and they haven’t the slightest hesitancy to confront and shout down their opponents. The prevailing attitude among them best fits the popular quote attributed to the late Harvard professor, Laurel Thatcher Ulrich, who wrote in 1976 that “well-behaved women seldom make history.” This was apparently taken out of its context and given the new meaning that if women are to make an impact on society for good, they must rebel against the norm and be disruptive. The notion of a woman who is gracious and well-mannered as she protests is anathema to the thinking of most contemporary liberal female activists.

All of this, of course, is not a recent phenomenon. It has its roots in the women’s suffrage movement beginning in the nineteenth century and increasing in influence ever since. The most notable modern feminists were Jews such as Betty Friedan, Naomi Klein, Gloria Steinem, and the late Supreme Court judge, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, can be named among them. In fairness, there are plenty of gentile women who have also played a significant role in feminist history. Yet it would be hard to deny that Jewish feminists have played a more influential and disproportionate one. I suspect this is due in large part to Jews controlling news corporations, print media, Hollywood, and much of academia.

Feminist women have always created scenes for their cause. They have always engaged in public antics. They have always been vocal and confrontational. What we are witnessing today, then, is not necessarily new, but it is different in its degree and scope.

The contemporary feminist woman of today is not just passionate about what she believes, she is uber-passionate about it. She’s not just a believer, she’s a fanatic. She’s not just on a mission, she sees herself as a revolutionary bent on transforming the world. She cannot be reasoned with. She’s not just ready to argue, but ready also to brawl. She doesn’t just lecture, she screams her message  at others. She demands that you listen to her, and if you don’t, she’ll force you to listen. She invades public spaces demanding to be heard.

The modern ‘woke’ feminist is consumed with her own self-righteousness. She is obsessed with virtue signaling before others. She hasn’t the faintest doubt about the rightness of her cause. And anyone who opposes her or even tries to temper her opinions is no different than the most deplorable humans we could imagine. Restraint and moderation aren’t permitted among today’s feminists. Like the most rabid religious fundamentalist, there is no reasoning with them. It is an all or nothing proposition.

The new and hard-core feminists of today are not limited to a few cranks who are childless and have never been married. A good many of these women, instead, are married and have children. They are part of mainstream society. Other than the ‘pussy hats’ they might wear to some rallies, they wouldn’t necessarily stand out all that much from ‘normie’ women.

Nevertheless, leftist women have a number of differences, as revealed by a recent U.K. survey.

  • The most popular LGBT identity is bisexual, which is significantly more common among women than men.
  • When we look at homosexual behavior, we find that it has grown much less rapidly than LGBT identification. Men and women under 30 who reported a sexual partner in the last five years dropped from around 96% exclusively heterosexual in the 1990s to 92% exclusively heterosexual in 2021. Whereas in 2008 attitudes and behavior were similar, by 2021 LGBT identification was running at twice the rate of LGBT sexual behavior.
  • The author provides a high-point estimate of an 11-point increase in LGBT identity between 2008 and 2021 among Americans under 30. Of that, around 4 points can be explained by an increase in same-sex behavior. The majority of the increase in LGBT identity can be traced to how those who only engage in heterosexual behavior describe themselves.
  • Very liberal ideology is associated with identifying as LGBT among those with heterosexual behavior, especially women. It seems that an underlying psychological disposition is inclining people with heterosexual behavior to identify both as LGBT and very liberal. The most liberal respondents have moved from 10-15% non-heterosexual identification in 2016 to 33% in 2021. Other ideological groups are more stable.
  • Very liberal ideology and LGBT identification are associated with anxiety and depression in young people. Very liberal young Americans are twice as likely as others to experience these problems. 27% of young Americans with anxiety or depression were LGBT in 2021. This relationship appears to have strengthened since 2010.
  • Among young people, mental health problems, liberal ideology, and LGBT identity are strongly correlated. Using factor analysis in two different studies shows that assuming one common variable between all three traits explains 40-50% of the variation.
  • Because the rise in LGBT identity is so heavily concentrated on the political left, its influence on the balance of power between the two parties is likely to be limited.
  • College students majoring in the social sciences and humanities are about 10 points more LGBT than those in STEM. Meanwhile, 52% of students taking highly political majors such as race or gender studies identify as LGBT, compared to 25% among students overall.
  • Various data sources indicate that gender nonconformity – trans and non-binary identity – reached its peak in the last few years and has started to decline.
  • Overall, the data suggest that while there has been an increase in same-sex behavior in recent years, sociopolitical factors likely explain most of the rise in LGBT identity.

Yet this is where the potential of their destructive message and influence could be greater than feminists of previous generations. They may not necessarily look like the traditional feminist with their short, cropped hair, tattoos, piercings, blue hair, and the like (there are plenty of modern feminists, admittedly, who still appear as I have described). Instead, they physically appear to be no different than every other adult woman. This gives the feminist message of today a less threatening appearance and, thereby, more acceptable to the gullible women who might entertain such notions.

The question naturally arises why women are so seemingly susceptible to such radical social and political movements? Why do women so often comprise the shock troops and first ranks of any Leftist political protest?

I think there are reasons for this, none of which are accidental.

The first reason lies in a woman’s nature. Women are nurturers. They are disposed to care for, treat and help others. They are natural do-gooders. They have an innate pull to help and ease the suffering of the less fortunate. Their inclination is to make things better. They are helpers at heart. These are not necessarily bad qualities, but they must be kept in check lest it morph into the kind of militant ‘woke’ women who have taken hold in our society.

The collective insanity of our women is perhaps no more perfectly illustrated in the massive numbers of American women who are rabidly pro-abortion. If women do indeed possess nurturing qualities when it comes to babies and children, why are so many of them willing to terminate their pregnancies — even to the point of supporting partial-birth and after-birth abortions?

These same women must literally suppress their most natural instincts in order to support abortion. Spiraling to this level of evil doesn’t occur overnight. No, it occurs incrementally until one completely sears and deadens their moral conscience. What accounts for this other than a nationwide mass delusion of our women? What sort of wickedness has crept into their hearts and minds for them to celebrate laws that permit the deaths of millions of unborn and partially born babies?

The second reason lies in the emotional nature of women. They tend to think from the heart and not so much from the head. Women, generally, tend to be less critical and cautious in their thinking than men. They are often reactionary, and their heartstrings can be more easily pulled than their male counterparts.

Obviously, there are exceptions to what I’m saying. There are plenty of women who are careful thinkers and who are not as easily manipulated emotionally as other women. But in my estimation these kinds of women are the exception and not the norm. They are the outliers. I don’t even think it comes natural to them. They must fight against their more trusting and emotional natures in some way.

Bear in mind that I’m not saying that men are completely free of emotionalism and less critically minded in the way women generally are. There are plenty of men who can be just as irrational at times and emotionally driven. But overall males tend to be different in this realm than females. Men are not so easily emotionally manipulated as women, and in this sense the two sexes really are different from each other.

It should surprise no one, then, why religious charlatans and radical Marxist groups have so easily preyed on females. They too understand the nature of females, and they exploit it for all it’s worth. Most churches are filled with women, and they often lead the various committees and church ministries. Even cosmetic manufacturers target women in their advertisements in ways that comport with the nature and unique proclivities of females.

They know good-and-well that most women are gullible and can be easily manipulated. They would never admit it, of course, but they would not have had the same level of marketing success if these fundamental distinctions were not kept in mind.

Go to any Leftist protest, and you will witness crowds of angry women with posters and picket signs on behalf of their political cause. The sheer numerical dominance of female protesters, in fact, often serves as the impetus for some men to join the cause so they can have easy access to all the women. The point being that women are the ‘weaker sex’ and not just physically, but emotionally and in terms of critical awareness.

I would add that the presence of large numbers of women at Marxist and feminist political rallies serves also to disarm any political opponents who may be in attendance. Who would, after all, like to be surrounded by throngs of hostile and screeching women? Any male who sought to engage them would be drowned out with a barrage of epithets and the vilest profanity. Today’s loud-mouthed ‘pussy hats’ are not ashamed to say what they really think. Even if a melee broke out, what man would want to be filmed fighting a woman? Women, then, are used by Leftist activist groups to intimidate and demoralize any male opposition that might be present.

The third reason lies in what women are told about themselves by those who control the messaging. Women in America are told they can do anything a man can, and even better too. Women are portrayed in the media, television and Hollywood as practically super-heroes. These are lies, of course, but we’re not allowed to say so. Expect consequences if you do.

Turn on any television commercial and the woman is always portrayed as smarter and more quick-witted than any man. Males are portrayed as clueless and dull-minded. Whether it’s working as a police officer or in combat infantry, females can do it all. There are no intellectual or physical barriers, and anyone who suggests there might be is a backward patriarchal fool.

Anyone who appeals to the physical limitations of women compared to men in the realm of sports, is immediately denounced. No amount of reality and facts will persuade the feminist mindset.

For example, during a CBS This Morning interview, the once great professional tennis player (now retired), John McEnroe, tried to talk some sense into host Gail King when he stated in a 2017 NPR interview that if Serena Williams “played the men’s circuit she’d be like 700 in the world.” She wouldn’t accept it even though McEnroe admitted that Serena was “the greatest female tennis player that ever lived.” Gail wanted so badly for McEnroe to say that Serena was the greatest tennis player among both men and women. To his credit, he wouldn’t say it because it wasn’t true.

At one point, McEnroe was asked by one of Gail’s co-hosts, “Would you like to apologize?” Thankfully, he refused to cave to such pressure. Yet it serves to illustrate that fundamental and biological differences between men and women, including differences in physical abilities, cannot be admitted even when the facts are readily available.

Also, why must people apologize for an opinion they have, especially if it is sincerely held and can be proven? The question reveals more about the mindset of the person asking for the apology than the opinion of McEnroe.

The reality of innate male and female differences and their physical abilities should be patently obvious to anyone, but is now denied so as not to arouse the displeasure of today’s feminists. We must pretend that men and women are the same. We must deny what our lying eyes see and what we instinctively know.

Any man who dares to publicly challenge the reality-denying worldview of ‘woke’ feminism will soon find himself de-platformed and likely unemployed. A voice free to express itself, personal dignity, and even employment cannot be given to society’s ‘heretics.’ The very things that feminists demand and force upon society they quickly deny to anyone who challenges their dogma. It only serves to prove just how disingenuous and intellectually dishonest they are at their core.

The fourth reason lies in the breakdown of the family and society. Feminism did not arise in a vacuum. There were an array of historical events and influences that contributed to its development. Like most misguided political movements, especially those that had strong Jewish and Marxist influences, it was just a matter of time before what seemed like a well-intentioned movement for ‘equality’ turned into a nation destroying agenda led largely by crazed women bent on imposing their Utopian values on the rest of us.

It has been said that when even the women of any society become as debased as the men of that same society, you can rest assured that its days are numbered. Surely America’s days are numbered if one considers how far too many of our women conduct themselves, especially when given a platform. Just look at how they dress. You can’t go to any store or public event without seeing an enormous ham-beast wallowing about attired in the tightest and most revealing clothes imaginable. Jiggles and cellulite for all to see. Tatted sleeves on every arm. Pierced like an African tribesmen, and a foul mouth to boot. She has no sense of shame. No self-awareness. God help the man who’d dare to suggest that she’s not the Greek goddess she imagines herself to be!

There is nothing gracious or even feminine about them. Nothing that could be deemed dignified or classy. They are not soft-spoken nor reasonable — the very qualities that might attract more men to their cause!

This is what our American women have morphed into. This is what ‘woke’ feminism does to the women of any society stupid enough to tolerate it. Is it any wonder why so many American men are turning to Asian and Eastern European women who possess the slimness, femininity, grace, and traditional values they want?

Our women, in truth, have abandoned the natural order of things. They are in complete rebellion, but they are too brainwashed and self-righteous to see it. At least two generations of American women have been duped into believing that causal sex, abortion, and climbing the corporate ladder will bring them happiness. A good many of them have discovered it doesn’t. They are now in their late 30s and 40s, and they want to get married and have children. But for most of them, it’s too late.

Some of them have only recently discovered what they were intended to be all along — namely, mothers and homemakers. Instead of saving themselves sexually for their husbands, partnering with those same husbands, and rearing responsible children possessing real values and character, they opted for a corporate career with no husband and no children. They spent their best years pursuing a worthless college degree (at least in most cases) and partying. Having hit the wall by the time they reached thirty, and having gone through multiple sexual partners, there remains few marriageable men and those who are single may not necessarily want a woman who has a host of bed notches to her name.

The fifth reason is because men have largely abdicated their role as leaders in the home, church, and society. Women have rebelled against the natural order of things, no doubt, but men have also allowed it to happen. They have remained content to do nothing about it. They have become passive. Some of these same men have aligned with feminists in order to have access to them and to gain their approval. Other men have done it because like so many feminists they too have a need to virtue-signal.

When our men refuse to take their leadership roles in society, there will arise plenty of women who will be glad to do it for them. And this is where the problems begin.

Far too many men do not have their lives together. They have no framework or worldview in which to interpret the society around them. They have not developed a practical philosophy of marriage and child-rearing. Most men do not even think in such terms. It’s completely foreign to them. Their fathers never taught nor modeled before them how a husband and father is to conduct himself. There is a complete absence on the part of these same fathers of imparting values and practical wisdom to their sons. They either haven’t considered it or don’t think it’s important to do so. Their own fathers may have never addressed such subjects. And so whatever knowledge is gained by our young men is almost always based on a liberal and materialistic worldview — which will always prove detrimental to the lives and future of Whites.

I know this will be difficult for many to accept, but the dominance of women in almost every realm of our society is not a good indicator of our national health. When women and transexuals are promoted to important and even strategic positions within our military, this is not a good sign. It certainly signals to our enemies that we are weak, that we are driven more by popular ‘woke’ rhetoric and artificial constructs than by the safety of our countrymen. Any nation, such as the U.S., that exalts and virtually deifies women sets itself on a course that will surely collapse under the weight of its own stupidity. This is not to say that honorable and virtuous women should not be honored by society, but only that national and social policies should not be determined by what women ‘feel’ nor by any false or inflated views of what they can do.

In other words, when women rule a nation’s most important institutions — especially if its foundation are ideologically ‘woke’ — it will inevitably self-destruct. Consider, for example, Germany’s former Chancellor, Angela Merkel, and the problems she saddled her nation with because of her bleeding heart for Islamic migrants. In Sweden, 47% of its Riksdag (parliament) is comprised of women. Switzerland’s Federal Assembly has 41.5% females. It should surprise no one that these same countries also have extremely liberal social policies and permit large numbers of Islamic people to immigrate.

While there may be some historical exceptions to what I have written, the point remains: Women in national leadership roles generally tend to weaken a nation because of their sympathetic natures, their susceptibility to social contagion, and poor discernment.

The same thing could be said about the presence of women in the police profession. Although women do well in support roles (e.g., dispatchers), they do not have the natural physical traits and upper body strength that’s required to do the job. Most male cops will admit this, albeit privately. Is it any wonder why so many female officers are injured in the course of their duties? Most male felons will comply with a female officer only when she’s accompanied by stronger male officers.

When women are given endless platforms to spew the sappiest political drivel, including the most nation-destroying social ideas, and then celebrated for it, this too is not a good thing. It is a sign that we are done with as a nation since only a people bent on national suicide would permit it. And it’s not because there aren’t any intelligent and perceptive women because there surely are. But when a society tolerates only one viewpoint — a liberal feminist one — there is little hope that that same society will turn out wiser and stronger in the end.

The old 1968 Virginia Slims cigarette TV commercial used to say, “You’ve Come A Long Way, Baby” — but for great numbers of American women, it’s been a self-imposed disaster for themselves and the nation at every step.

Jewish Media Ownership and Management—An Update

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As recently as last month, I was struck by the similarity of a headline on the popular Children’s Health Defense website to the headline of an article I had read elsewhere some years ago, dated 2012. The CHD article was titled “6 Companies Control 90% of What You Read, Watch and Hear. Here’s Why You Should Care,” by Rebecca Strong. The 2012 article was titled “Six Jewish Companies Control 96% of the World’s Media.” The apparent author of this earlier article was unclear. Today an internet search using this exact title will bring at least six exact hits, all of them either giving the name of the person who posted it but showing no author attribution, falsely claiming another author, or in one case even admitting “As Editor of this publication, I have never become aware of who wrote this article. My apologies.”

I’ve always thought the author was Professor Johan Galtung, who originally wrote his study of world media ownership in 2012. I thought I might confirm the authorship by reviewing the June 13, 2012 posting of an article focused on Galtung by The Occidental Observer editor Kevin MacDonald, titled “Johan Galtung on Jews.” The TOO article references a Haaretz article which claims Galtung made the accusations of Jewish world media ownership in a lecture he gave at the University of Oslo, which was then published in “the Norwegian press,” and further presented in Haaretz in the form of an interview with Galtung. Further disconnecting Galtung from the actual essay asserting Jewish ownership of 96% of world media, that content is attributed to William Luther Pierce, founder and leader of the National Alliance, who once wrote a pamphlet titled “Who Owns America.” Galtung merely referred to this material, but did not research or write it. MacDonald confirms this in a footnote link (footnote #45 on p. 85) in Chapter 2 of Separation and Its Discontents which quotes Pierce verbatim in the conclusion.

Having discovered the original source material falsely attributed to Galtung, we can now understand Galtung’s fate. Referencing Pierce was more than enough to have Galtung condemned as an “anti-Semite,” regardless of how accurate Pierce’s research was. This is because Pierce is portrayed as a “Nazi,” “anti-Semite” of the worst kind, and “White supremacist,” making Galtung almost equally condemnable by association. In the lens of Jewish-influenced public opinion, whether any of these labels are accurate is irrelevant. In our opinion however, their accuracy is crucial.

In a previous essay, “Obscuring the Jewish Problem in Alt Media: An Example,” I examined an article by naturopathic doctor and holistic health advisor Dr. Joseph Mercola, mirrored by CHD, in which he identified a number of media organizations censoring and discrediting him as part of the effort to suppress “disinformation” on the covid pandemic generally and covid vaccines specifically. Children’s Health Defense reposts Mercola’s essays, since Mercola is forced to take down his articles from his own website within 48 hours in order to try and avoid the censorship plus defamation these media organizations inflict on him. In my analysis, Mercola and CHD do well in the essay to reveal the aggressive censorship and media distortion activities of such organizations as Publicis Groupe and Newsguard, but fail to identify the true nature of those who own and control such organizations, using them as weapons of censorship and defamation against Mercola and CHD: Jews.

Here I will conduct a basic analysis of Rebecca Strong’s recent article on the CHD website, claiming 90% of media is owned by 6 companies, in light of Pierce’s analysis of Jewish media control referenced indiscreetly but boldly by Galtung. Pierce’s analysis was first presented in 1995 according to MacDonald. It is past time to update our understanding of Jewish control of mass media today. We will look exclusively at the sources and references Rebecca Strong provides in her article itself. Just like Mercola and CHD when examining the media monsters censoring and defaming them, Strong too has the ability and insight to recognize the overwhelmingly Jewish ownership and operation of the media giants she examines—but will not.

We will. I will present this analysis in multiple parts, since Strong’s essay is admirably long and thorough (except for the key omission which we will explore).

Before we get to the article itself, in her “author’s note” Strong quotes Supreme Court Justice Louis D. Brandeis: “We can have democracy in this country, or we can have great wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, but we can’t have both.” Brandeis was of course celebrated as the first Jewish appointee to the Supreme Court, and was certainly a member of that group that at least by the 1960s could be characterized as having “wealth concentrated in the hands of a few”—the American Jewish power elite, and an elite hostile to the traditional White majority.

Strong’s essay begins with a story of her first job in journalism at BostInno. Her first source is to BostInno’s new owner at the time, American City Business Journals, which is itself owned by Advance Publications. Curiously, ACBJ does not show its CEO on its website, only its Executive Vice President, Chief Financial Officer, and other executives, some of whom may be Jewish and some clearly not. The chokepoint of media control is found higher up, at Advance Publications. It was founded by a man going by the name Samuel Irving Newhouse, a benignly Gentile name, but whose real name was Solomon Isadore Neuhaus, Jewish, born of Jewish immigrants. The Neuhaus family continues in substantial ownership and operation of Advance today. Descendant of founder Solomon, Steven Newhouse (Neuhaus) is the current President and CEO, and past Presidents included Robert Sauerberg, also Jewish.

Ms Strong, whose profile picture shows her to be a fair-skinned blond Nordic type, next  displays a tweet listing a few major corporate media mergers as evidence for the claim she makes in the title. It would require a complete essay itself to explore the Jewish influence among the corporations named, but here we will look at only the larger firms swallowing the smaller ones, and only at the founders and top executives.

The first is the New York Times, originally purchased by the Jew Adolph Ochs and now well-known to be owned and operated by the Jewish Sulzberger family for well over a century. Its new Executive Editor will be Joseph Kahn, the fifth Jewish top Editor at the Times since 1964, covering almost the entire period until today. Next in the mergers and acquisitions list is BuzzFeed. Founder and CEO Jonah Perretti was born of a Jewish mother, making him Jewish. Peretti was also the founder of Huffington Post, now HuffPost, also consolidated under BuzzFeed ownership.

VOX (which claims it “explains the news”) is next in the “Great Media Consolidation” Strong features. According to the About Us section of VOX,  it was founded by three people, Ezra Klein, Melissa Bell and Matthew Yglesias. “Klein was raised in a Jewish family,” according to his Wikipedia Early Life entry. Bell appears to be non-Jewish, but Yglesias is three-quarters Jewish.

Next, Axel Springer SE is the largest publisher in Europe. It is majority owned by an investment firm known as KKR, whose main founder, Jerome Kohlberg, was Jewish, with other founders as his relatives. Founder of Axel Springer SE, Europe’s largest “digital and popular periodical publishing house,” a German by the same name, had a Jewish first wife. A full section on his Wikipedia entry titled Friend of Israel states “no German played a more significant role in the effort to repair his country’s burdened relationship with the Jews, and to ensure its support for their state, than Axel Springer.” Springer was an ardent philo-Semite. The penultimate corporation in Strong’s list is Dot Dash, which boasts “We are America’s largest digital and print publisher.” I did not engage in the tedium of researching the racial/religious identity of all twenty-eight members of Dot Dash’s Corporate Leadership team, but obvious possibilities include Michael Brownstein, President of Client Partnerships, and Andrew Gorenstein, President of Advertising and Partnerships. CEO Neil Vogel appears non-Jewish, and for once I could not find substantial ownership or operation of this media corporation as Jewish.

Last on the list of “The Great Media Consolidation” Strong presents is Minute Media. Its About Us page states: “Founded in Israel in 2011, Minute Media’s portfolio now consists of 6 global sports and entertainment brands…”

In her rather lengthy and admirably thorough (except for the Jewish Issue) essay, Strong develops an understanding of the great power media can have over key aspects of our society, and why it is dangerous to allow such power to be held in so few hands. She refers to this as “the CNN effect,” described as “by influencing consumers and investors, our current 24-hour real-time news cycle can impact our economic climate, driving the market values of certain industries and companies.” In her reference link, “the CNN effect” is partly defined by “‘media pervasiveness’ [that] had impacted upon government – particularly the process of foreign policy making … forcing policy-makers to respond to whatever issue journalists focused on.”

Obviously “the CNN effect” is a useful label to refer to the impact many major media corporations have on both the economy and government policy, in the same way Band Aid refers to many forms of wound dressings. But what about CNN itself? Until very recently, its President was Jeff Zucker. He resigned when a scandal revealed he had not disclosed an intimate affair with another CNN executive, and over violations of journalistic ethics when Zucker “advised governor Andrew Cuomo on how to respond to criticism’s (sic) of Cuomo made by Donald Trump.” A sex scandal and violations of journalistic ethics in a media executive is enough to identify Zucker as most likely Jewish, but his Wikipedia Early Life section confirms it.

The latest CNN President is Chris Licht, who appears to be not Jewish. It is interesting that so common is it to expect him to be that someone wrote an article titled “CNN Replaces Jeff Zucker With Chris Licht & Viewers Wonder If He Is Jewish.” The article states definitively “Chris Licht is not Jewish.,” but then asserts “There is no information regarding Chris Licht’s religion on the Internet,” and “Chris Licht has not disclosed his ethnicity on the Internet.” I concur, I could not find any definite information either. The author of this article does not give any reference for the claim Licht is not Jewish, so to me his identity remains unclear. It is telling that “viewers” and many others expect him to be Jewish.

The ownership of CNN is a complex matter at present. Currently CNN is owned by WarnerMedia (formerly Time Warner), which is owned by AT&T. AT&T is set to acquire Discovery this quarter, and then combine Discovery with WarnerMedia in a new company. This new Warner Bros Discovery company will own CNN.

Who are the people who own and operate CNN, however? Are they primarily Jews?  In part 2 we will examine the six companies Rebecca Strong claims controls 90% of media, to discover how much of that control is Jewish.

Strong invests some space in explaining why consolidating media control in so few companies is dangerous and alarming, and so “why you should care.” Let us look at a quote from as far back as 1918 expressing alarm over consolidation of power in a political apparatus, and apply the same warning to media ownership today:

“I consider that the immediate suppression of Bolshevism is the greatest issue now before the world, not even excluding the War which is still raging, and unless as above stated, Bolshevism is nipped in the bud immediately, it is bound to spread in one form or another, over Europe and the whole world, as it is organized and worked by Jews, who have no nationality, and whose one object is to destroy for their own ends the existing order of things.”[1]

*   *   *

Strong’s essay was originally published on her own blog Down the Rabbit Hole with the title “The Monopoly On Your Mind, Part 1: Consolidation Craze & Illusion of Choice.” The subtitle reads: “Six companies control 90% of what you read, watch, and hear. Here’s why that’s dangerous.” CHD used her subtitle as the title, and changed “why that’s dangerous” to “why you should care.” I agree with Strong, such central control of mass media is dangerous, and that’s why we should care.

The essay details the ways in which legislation and regulations were changed to allow for the massive media consolidation we have today. This included deregulation in the 80s by Congress and the FCC, the 1996 Telecommunications Act, and the 2017 overturning of an FCC regulation limiting ownership of multiple media outlets in the same market. Another essay should be devoted to the Jewish presence in these deregulation efforts which led directly to mass consolidation. We should expect it to be similar to the Jewish presence in changing the nation’s immigration laws (p. 11ff), influencing gun control legislation, and others.

 

At the heart of Strong’s presentation are the six companies. She relies on an article written by Adam Levy (most likely Jewish) for The Motley Fool, which offers investment advice. The article is dated April 29, 2022. Here is where the “Big Six Media Companies” are listed: Comcast, Walt Disney, AT&T, Paramount Global, Sony, and Fox.

Comcast

Comcast is the largest cable provider in the world, after it acquired AT&T’s cable arm in 2000. President since 1990 and current Chairman and CEO of Comcast is Brian L Roberts. Among Roberts’ awards and philanthropy are “the 2004 Humanitarian Award from the Simon Wiesenthal Center,” “the 2002 Walter Kaitz Foundation Honoree of the Year for his commitment to diversity in the cable industry,” “the USC Shoah Foundation Institute’s 2011 Ambassador for Humanity Award,” and “The Aileen K. and Brian L. Roberts Foundation was one of the largest contributors to the restoration of the Alfred W. Fleisher Memorial Synagogue at Eastern State Penitentiary in Philadelphia, named in the honor of his maternal grandfather.” According to his Wikipedia  Early Life, “Roberts was born into a Jewish family in Philadelphia.”

Significantly, “Roberts served as Chairman of NCTA (National Cable and Telecommunications Association) from 1995 to 1996, when the landmark deregulatory 1996 Telecommunications Act became law.” Here we see a clue to the Jewish influence on the deregulation which led directly to Roberts’ ability to acquire AT&T and build his media empire into one of the six largest. “The NCTA is one of the largest political lobbying organizations in the United States,” and no doubt had strong influence with the FCC over deregulation in 1996, when Roberts was the Chairman.

 

Comcast now owns or has ownership stake in NBCUniversal, Telemundo (16 stations), Vox, Buzzfeed and many others. Its media reach and influence is enormous and it is primarily owned and operated by a Jewish family.

A notable former executive at NBC, Ben Silverman, has had a career in media production at multiple companies, including some he founded himself. He produced such content as Date My Mom, and worked to release movies through a company owned by corrupt Hollywood sex offender Harvey Weinstein. Silverman is Jewish.

Walt Disney

Walt Disney was originally founded in the late 1920s by Walt and Roy Disney, who were Irish, German and English. Disney had a reputation as very conservative, patriotic (he cooperated with the House Un-American Activities Committee in its anti-communist investigations). And he was anti-Jewish—particularly singling out the Jewish movie studio heads. He also complained about the major studios having control over distribution and movie theaters, and he survived many attempts by the other studios to bankrupt or take over his company. However, after his death in 1966, Michael Eisner, a Jew, was named CEO in 1984. He held his leadership position until 2005, overseeing many mergers and acquisitions, including ABC, A&E and ESPN, along with Mirimax Films and others, thereby building Disney into the media monstrosity it is today. Eisner’s Disney leadership was plagued with controversy, and indeed the company was called “Monster Inc.” by The Independent, which stated “He’s been described as psychotic, greedy and soulless.” It also claimed Eisner “ousted” Walt’s nephew Roy Disney from the board, but the Disney Company’s Wikipedia entry says, “a surprising 45 percent of Disney’s shareholders, predominantly rallied by former board members Roy Disney and Stanley Gold, withheld their proxies to re-elect Eisner to the board.” Gold is Jewish.

During Eisner’s two decades at Disney, he appointed Michael Ovitz, also Jewish, President. Jeffrey Katzenberg, also Jewish, was Disney Studio Chairman under Eisner, but resigned and formed DreamWorks because Eisner would not appoint him to President, choosing Ovitz instead. The only question at Disney at this time was which Jews would dominate the top leadership positions, determined by the outcome of Jewish in-fighting.

After Eisner was forced to resign in September 2005, Robert Iger (also Jewish) took over as CEO. Also notable in 2005, the Weinstein brothers Bob and Harvey, founders of Miramax studios, left Disney to run their own movie company. Harvey is well-known now as a repeat sex offender. The Weinsteins are also well known to be Jews.

Iger would remain until 2020, and oversee acquisition of Pixar, Marvel Entertainment, Lucasfilms, 20th and 21st Century Fox, and others. During this time, in 2009 the last original Disney family member with active involvement in the company, Walt’s nephew Roy E Disney, died. That same year Disney Channel President Rich Ross, Jewish, was promoted to Chairman. Iger cut deals with Jewish media mogul Haim Saban for the sale of the PowerRangers and Digimon franchises.

In 2020 Robert Chapek became Disney CEO. I could not confirm Chapek’s racial/religious identity. Former Jew Milton Kapman, now known as Brother Nathaniel (convert to Orthodox Christianity) on his Real Jew News outlet denounces Chapek and others at Disney as Jewish, in his “Disney Decauches Your Children” video. Another Jew-watch outlet, zogathome, also identifies Chapek as Jewish in its “Who Controls Disney” management team list, but I see no citations from either source and could not find positive identification myself. Chapek’s mother’s funeral was held at a Catholic church, as was that of his father Bernard.

Other Jews among the Board of Directors and Executives at Disney include Alan Bergman, Safra Catz, Michael Froman and Jennifer Cohen. Collectively they bring significant influence to the immense media conglomerate of The Walt Disney Company, debasing it far from its original family-friendly, White European roots.

AT&T

Remarkably, among ten members of the AT&T Board of Directors, I could not identify a single Jew. Likewise among eleven top Executives, I see not a single Jew. CEO John Stankey appears to be White European descent. One Executive is “Latino,” three are blond women, and two are Black (probably with White admixture).

Institutional investors in AT&T are topped by Vanguard Group and Blackrock, each with over 500 million shares. They together own over 15% of AT&T. Blackrock’s founder and CEO is Larry Fink, Jewish, but Blackrock has significant stock ownership in almost every major corporation in the world and has been influential in promoting ESG—Environment, Social, Governance—which promotes liberal-left policies among the corporations it holds stock in and is essentially a way of getting liberal-left ideas, particularly regarding race and gender, enacted without voter input. In any case, a main source of Jewish influence now be via mechanisms such as the push for ESG in corporate governance.

Paramount Global

This media giant is composed of CBS, Viacom, MTV, Showtime and many other entertainment and media outlets. President and CEO of Paramount Global is Robert M Bakish, apparently non-Jewish. Another President and CEO of International Networks, Studios and Streaming is Raffaele Annecchino, not Jewish. Jewish executives at Paramount include Dan Cohen, Jonathan Karp, and David Nevins. Paramount shows twenty-six executives, so this is not an overwhelming Jewish presence. When we look to the Board of Directors, Candace K. Beinecke, Susan Schuman and Nichole Selligman appear to be Jews. Selligman “received national attention in the United States for her representation of Lieutenant Colonel Oliver North during the Iran–Contra hearings, and of President Bill Clinton during his impeachment trial.” She is married to Joel Klein, Jewish, who “was the Chancellor of the New York City Department of Education, the largest public school system in the United States.”

Jewish control of Paramount becomes clearer when we see the Chair of the Board is Shari Redstone. She is the grand-daughter of founder of National Amusements Michael Redstone (b. 1902, d. 1987; given name Max Rothstein). National Amusement now owns Paramount Global. Max Rothstein ostensibly changed his name to Redstone to disassociate himself from a Jewish organized crime boss named Arnold Rothstein. It is unclear whether they were related, though they are certainly members of the same tribe. Max became associated with another Jewish organized crime boss, Harry “Doc” Sagansky. They ran gambling rackets, night clubs and loan sharking operations. Max also used Sagansky loans to purchase and build drive-in theaters. The Israeli news outlet Haaretz glorifies this debased story, and identifies not the Jewish mob, but the Irish mob as working with Rothstein. However, one of the footnotes on Max’s Wikipedia page reveals an article about Sagansky that notes Max was a close associate of the Jewish crime boss. By 1959 Max formally established National Amusements “to consolidate the family’s ownership interests and make it easier to obtain financing.”

Max’s son Sumner worked for his father until Max’s death in 1987, when Sumner took over. Sumner oversaw the acquisitions of CBS, Viacom and Paramount Pictures, making National Amusements “one of the largest media conglomerates in the United States.” Multiple scandals involving CBS CEO Les Moonves (also Jewish) led to Moonves resigning under accusations of sexual harassment, sexual assault and abuse. Sumner also had ongoing disputes and in-fighting with CBS executive and eventual CEO, fellow Jew Mel Karmazin. Karmazin left National Amusements, deciding he could not co-exist with Sumner. Karmazin is known for establishing and promoting the grotesque soft-porn radio host Howard Stern, who is also Jewish. During this period, MTV was under National Amusements ownership and was accused of deliberately arranging the brief moment of public nudity during the 2004 Superbowl half-time show when Janet Jackson’s breast was exposed.

Sumner’s daughter Shari Rothstein became involved in National Amusements and engaged in contentious arguments with her father over the management of National Amusements and its holdings. In his will, Sumner bypassed Shari and left all his stock to his grandchildren. Shari is today listed as the owner since Sumner’s death in 2020. As we saw, she is the Chair of the Board of Directors of Paramount Global, exercising direct control from the top of the hierarchy. Shari married a Rabbi (now divorced) and one of her children, Tyler, attended the Maimonides School and became a Rabbi as well. They all work or worked for National Amusements.

Sony

It appears all executives and leadership positions at Sony Corporation, based in Tokyo Japan, are Japanese. Jews start to show up at top executive positions in Sony’s American affiliates, especially Sony’s entertainment operations. Sony Entertainment which oversees all of the American subsidiaries had Jews Michael Lynton as CEO and Nichole Seligman as President until 2017 and 2016 respectively.  Tom Rothman, Jewish, is CEO of Sony Motion Picture Group, with Josh Greenstein as Co-President. Sony Pictures Worldwide Acquisitions department, which The Hollywood Reporter called “Sony’s surprising (sic) most profitable division,” shows Steve Bersch, undisclosed racial identity, as President.

Michael Helfand is Executive Vice President of Business Affairs, a veteran of over 30 years in the entertainment industry with many high-level executive positions including President and COO of Marvel Studios, Senior Vice President of Mirimax, and a founder of two movie production and financing studios, one aimed at youth. I found no clear confirmation of Helfant’s (alternate spelling) racial/religious identity, but another Michael Helfand “is an expert on religious law and religious liberty. He is currently is (sic) the Brenden Mann Foundation Chair in Law & Religion and…  Visiting Professor… at Yale Law School and Senior Fellow at the Shalom Hartman Institute.” This Helfand writes extensively for the Jewish journal Forward, and is confirmed as Jewish. By name association and chosen occupation, the Michael Helfand Vice President at Sony Pictures Worldwide Acquisitions, is most likely Jewish.

It would take many pages to identify all the Jews in the Sony Corporation’s complex global structure and multiple sub-divisions, so let us end with a definite non-Jew who is President of Sony Pictures Home Entertainment division. Keith Le Goy is definitely not Jewish. I find it interesting that Le Goy was noted in my previous essay, Obscuring the Jewish Problem in Alt Media: An Example, as on the Board of Governors of the Los Angeles Paley Center which was censoring and defaming Dr. Joseph Mercola, as well as Children’s Health Defense for featuring Mercola’s writings. Recall at the beginning of this essay that it was Rebecca Strong’s essay, reposted by CHD, and its headline similarity to the analysis by Pierce as presented by Galtung, which inspired this current analysis of Jewish ownership and control of mass media.

Fox Corporation

Our final inquiry will be into the Fox Corporation. Its news reporting is either revered or reviled by those who choose one side of the engineered political divide (I choose third position). For clarity, recall that Disney bought some Fox assets and will still use the Fox name until 2024. What was left became the Fox Corporation in 2019, primarily TV news, business and sports broadcasting. Fox’s owners also own and operate News Corps, and we will examine it as well under the Fox section.

Founder and majority owner of Fox is Rupert Murdoch, 91. Murdoch inherited a small newspaper in Australia from his father in the early 50s, and after forming News Corp, by 2000 “owned over 800 companies in more than 50 countries, with a net worth of over $5 billion.” Murdoch’s ancestry is presented as mixed British Isles. Some accounts say Murdoch was funded by the Jewish banker family the Rothschilds, though this is unconfirmed. It did emerge in 2013 that Murdoch joined with Jacob Rothschild and others, including Dick Cheney, in investing in Genie Energy to drill for oil in the disputed Golan Heights region, currently occupied by Israel since its 1967 war with Syria. Murdoch’s son-in-law Matthew Freud is great-grandson of Sigmund Freud, Jewish.

Murdoch first acquired interest in 20th Century Fox in 1984, when he bought $250 million of stock owned by Marc Rich, Jewish hedge fund manager and financial criminal. This deal was brokered by Marvin Davis, Jewish, who at one time was majority owner of 20th Century Fox. Later Murdoch bought Davis’ stock. Murdoch bought six TV stations owned by Metromedia, founded by John Kluge, German, but whose CEO was Stuart Subotnick, Jewish. Murdoch bought a house in Beverly Hills from Jules Stein, founder of Music Corporation of America, Jewish. By 2005, Murdoch and News Corps bought Intermix Media, which held MySpace, gaming networks and other social media. Intermix was originally founded by Brad Greenspan, Jewish. A year prior to Murdoch’s purchase, Richard Rosenblatt, Jewish, became Intermix CEO.

This much at least can be gleaned from Murdoch’s biography. The current Executive Leadership at Fox Corporation show Rupert and his son Lachlan as Chairman and CEO, with Suzanne Scott, Joe Dorrego and Jay Wallace as top executives at Fox News Media. All are non-Jews. Jay is not related to the former well-known news anchorman Mike Wallace (Wallik), Jewish, married to Norma Kaphan, Jewish; their son Chris Wallace “was ranked as being one of the most trusted TV news anchors in America,” having worked at every major network including Fox. Of thirteen other executives Fox displays, I could not verify one of them is Jewish, including suspects John Fiedler and Jason Klarman.

Conclusion

Strong draws her claim in her subtitle that 90% of media content is controlled by six companies from Levy’s article at The Motley Fool, which states: “Some estimates claim as much as 90% of U.S. media is controlled by just six companies.” We don’t see a citation for where those estimates come from or who made them. The phrase “as much as” leaves a wide range of error. Likewise, the original William Pierce essay later attributed to Johan Galtung makes its claim to 96% Jewish world media ownership without presenting detailed calculations.

I have little idea how to calculate such a figure from my own current research presented here. Much more research remains to expose the Jewish presence in main media throughout the corporate hierarchies, funders, advertisers, management, content creators, public personalities and influencers. It would be simplistic to declare that Comcast, Disney, Paramount and aspects of Sony (American division) are Jewish, while AT&T and aspects of Fox (the Murdochs and executives) are not. Would that mean Jews own and operate at least 66% of media? I would never assert such a loose estimate in a title or subtitle.

It is clear that the Jewish presence in media ownership and operation is extensive, far beyond Jewish proportional representation in the US population at 2–3 percent. Jewish influence on media content and presentation of all kinds is strong and pervasive today, spreading a Jewish-dominated influence throughout the populations that consume such media. The trend over time has been overwhelmingly negative, bringing a perverse, degraded, materialistic and hedonistic decay as we have seen with some of the media scandals presented here. This is in contrast to the once relatively wholesome media content produced by such pre-Jewish outlets as Walt Disney and others. Sincere students can study the 86 articles on Jewish Influence and the 42 articles on Media Influence at The Occidental Observer to discern whether or to what extent this cultural degradation by Jews through media has been intentional.

As I asserted in my article examining the media attacks on Joseph Mercola and his response, also presented by Children’s Health Defense, I here assert that Rebecca Strong as mirrored again by CHD must have known of the Jewish ownership and control of the media she examines. She makes not one mention of Jews, though my analysis of the sources and citations she presents amounts to a penetrating grasp of the obvious. Like Mercola and CHD, Strong may choose to obscure the presence of Jewish power in media, as a form of self-preservation, or because like them she knows it can be futile and career-ending to present it.

It is not effective self-preservation in the end to avoid it. It is not futile. If an overwhelming influence over such a powerful tool of societal, political, economic and even spiritual control as mass media is being administered by Jews, we need to know and we need to say so. The battle for the minds and hearts of the world’s populations, and in our case the increasingly diverse populations of the US, depends significantly on media impacts. In our post-modern high-tech world, media is crucial. We have quality media not controlled by Jews, of which The Occidental Observer is only one among many. Knowledge that much main media is disgorged by Jews will only help to drive quality people away, and toward more honest, wholesome and positive media.

[1]          British White Paper, Russia No. 1, April 1919, M. Oudendyk, Netherlands Minister at St. Petersburg. This same quote and more of Oudendyk’s report on Bolshevism in Russia was included in a speech given by German Minister of Information Dr. Joseph Goebbels at the Seventh National Socialist Party Congress delivered at Nuremberg, September 13 1935.
Joseph Goebbels, Communism with the Mask Off and Bolshevism in Theory and Practice, Ostara Publications, 2013, ppg 24–5.

Are All Men Created Equal?

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Where is the historic, scientific or empirical proof of the defining dogma of American democracy that “all men are created equal”?

Ideology is political religion, said the conservative sage Russell Kirk.

And what is the defining dogma of the political religion, or ideology, of America in 2022?

Is it not that, “All men are created equal”?

Yet, as with every religion, a basic question needs first to be asked and answered about this defining dogma of liberal ideology.

Is it true? Are all men truly created equal? Are all races and ethnic groups equal? Are men and women equal? Are all religions equal? Or do we simply agree to accept that as true — and treat them all equally?

All Americans, we agree, have the same God-given rights to “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness,” the same constitutional rights in the Bill of Rights, and the same civil rights, enshrined in federal law.

But where is the historic, scientific or empirical proof of the defining dogma of American democracy that “all men are created equal”?

Thomas Jefferson, the statesman who immortalized the words, did not believe in equality, let alone equity. How he lived his life testifies to this disbelief.

When he wrote the Declaration of Independence that contained the famous words, Jefferson was a slave owner. In that document, he speaks of the British as “brethren” connected to us by “ties of our common kindred,” ties of blood.

But not all of those fighting against us were the equals of the British.

There were, Jefferson wrote, those “merciless Indian Savages, whose known rule of warfare, is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.”

In an 1815 letter to John Adams, Jefferson celebrated “a natural aristocracy among men. The grounds of this are virtue and talents. … The natural aristocracy I consider as the most precious gift of nature for the instruction, the trusts, and government of society.”

Jefferson was an aristocrat, not a democrat.

Abraham Lincoln opposed slavery but did not believe in racial or social equality. Though he cited Jefferson’s “all men are created equal” at Gettysburg, he had conceded in an 1858 debate with Stephen Douglas that, “We cannot, then, make them equals,” adding that the White race in America should retain the superior position.

With the Brown v. Board of Education decision desegregating public schools in 1954, and the civil rights acts of 1964, 1965 and 1968, a national effort was undertaken to bring about the social and political equality that Jefferson’s words of 1776 seemed to promise but failed to deliver.

At Howard University in 1965, Lyndon Johnson took the next step, declaring: “Freedom is not enough. … We seek … not just equality as a right and a theory but equality as a fact and equality as a result.”

Yet, over half a century after the civil rights revolution, incomes and wealth are not equal. Nor is there equal representation in professions like law, medicine and higher education.

President Joe Biden’s people have pledged to Black America that they will mandate and deliver that equality of results. If equity does not now exist, the Biden administration will impose it.

And why not?

If all men (and women) are created equal, the most reasonable explanation for a consistent inequality of riches and rewards between men and women, and Black and White, is that the game has been rigged. An inequality of riches and rewards exists because “systematic racism” coexists in American society alongside “white privilege.”

The remedy is also clear. As Ibram X. Kendi, author of “How to Be an Antiracist,” told The New York Times’ Ezra Klein: “Racist policies are defined as any policy that leads to racial inequity … intent of the policymaker doesn’t matter. It’s all about the fundamental outcome.”

Thus, a policy that ensures an equal place at the starting line but consistently fails to deliver an equal place at the finish line is, de facto, racist.

If Asian and black kids start kindergarten in the same class, and Asian kids in 12th grade are studying calculus while most black kids are still trying to master algebra, racism alone, by Kendi’s rule, can explain such a regular result.

The solution to persistent inequality?

Mandate equity; mandate equality of results; mandate equal rewards for Black and White. Compel the government to produce policies that deliver an equality of results.

But what if inequalities have another explanation?

What if Asian Americans are naturally superior in mathematics?

What if an inequity of rewards in society is predominantly a result of an inequality of talents and abilities?

What if it is more true to say that, based on human experience, no two men were ever created equal, than to say all men are created equal?

As Kirk said, ideology is political religion.

What we witness today is the refusal of true believers in egalitarian ideology to accept that their core doctrine may not only not be true, but may be demonstrably false.

What we are witnessing in America is how true believers behave when they realize the church at which they worship has been erected on a bright shining lie and reality must inevitably bring it crashing down.

On Russophobia and “Anti-Semitism”

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I first learned of the term “Russophobia” many years ago in Robert Wistrich’s 1991 book Antisemitism: The Longest Hatred. My initial impression was essentially that Russians on the “radical right” were attempting to turn the tables on Jews by accusing them of what is effectively the inverse of anti-Semitism (i.e., Russophobia). Of course, this was little more than a mere stratagem designed to obscure their true anti-Semitic intentions. Although not at all thuggish or violent, the proponents of Russophobia, according to Wistrich, were especially dangerous since they included many prominent writers and scholars and had viable connections within the Soviet power structure of the day. Wistrich saw through it all, and so should any right-thinking gentile.

Of the people decrying Russophobia, Wistrich writes:

They are in favor of patriotism, law and order, and traditional values blended with ecological concerns to preserve the Russian cultural heritage. What they claim to hate are the destructive influences of ‘liberals’ in Soviet life, the fads and so-called ‘Russophobes’ – those émigrés, dissidents and above all Jews who are quite falsely said to denigrate Russian history and mock the backwardness of Russian culture. [Igor] Shafarevich’s tract, entitled Russophobia (1989), can be taken as the Bible of this anti-Western, anti-Socialist and antisemitic gospel, driven by intellectual paranoia and an apocalyptic vision of the spiritual crisis confronting Soviet society.

This was essentially my baseline for Russophobia for many years prior to my conversion on the Jewish Question upon reading Kevin MacDonald’s The Culture of Critique. I again encountered Shafarevich’s name when researching Solzhenitsyn and the Right. Solzhenitsyn mentions Shafarevich quite often in his memoirs—always in a positive light—and included three of Shafarevich’s essays in his 1974 From Under the Rubble collection. One of these essays was the incipient version of Shafarevich’s famous work The Socialist Phenomenon.

Shararevich (who was one of the twentieth-century’s leading mathematicians and who died in 2017 at the age of 95.) distributed his long essay “Russophobia” as samizdat in the early 1980s, and published it in the Soviet periodical Nash Sovremennik in 1989. In 2002, he published an expanded version of this essay as Three-Thousand-Year-Old Enigma, a full-length treatise on Russo-Jewish relations, similar to Solzhenitsyn’s Two Hundred Years Together—but with greater emphasis on religion. Unfortunately, no English translation of this work exists as of yet.

What’s interesting about “Russophobia,” however, is not only its thoughtful and well-argued counter-Semitism, but the shallow and dishonest responses it engendered from Jewish writers, which tarnished much of Shafarevich’s reputation in the West after the fall of the Soviet Union. From the essay’s onset, Shafarevich expresses concern for the “spiritual life” of Russia. He notes that starting in the 1970s, a flood of anti-Russian literature was being produced which he saw as “the expression of the view of an established, cohesive school.” According to these writers, Russia is inherently despotic and oppressive due to the backward nature of the Russians themselves, which manifests itself mostly through violence, servility, and “messianism.”

Shafarevich counters such slander over several pages of historical discussion, for example, on Richard Pipes’ claim that Tsar Nicholas I served as the model for not only Soviet totalitarianism but for Hitler’s Third Reich as well. Shafarevich demonstrates clearly that totalitarianism was fully developed in the West prior to Nicholas I, and so Tsarist Russia should be let off the hook for initiating “all of the 20th century’s antiliberal tendencies.” As for “Messianism,” Shafarevich deftly reminds his readers that the outlook which appoints a certain group as being “destined to determine the fate of humanity and become its savior” began not with the Russians but with the Jews thousands of years ago. And as for the claim that “the revolution in Russia was predetermined by the whole course of Russian history,” Shafarevich points out that socialism was already fully-developed in the West before gaining any kind of foothold in Russia in the nineteenth century. For evidence, he cites the lack of Russian proto-socialist authors of the stature of Thomas More or Tommaso Campanella, and how early Russian socialists such as Mikhail Bakunin and Alexander Herzen started their socialist endeavors only after they emigrated to the West. He concludes [emphasis in the original]:

Thus, many phenomena that the authors of the tendency we are examining proclaim to be typically Russian prove to be not only not typical of Russia but altogether non-Russian in origin, imported from the West: that was the payment, as it was, for Russia’s entry into the sphere of the new Western culture.

Now, by this point in the essay, the savvy reader will know where it’s going. Although Shafarevich had hardly used the J-word, the people he was skewering had names that echo into eternity—or if they don’t, they should. Grigory Pomerants, Richard Pipes, Boris Shragin, Alexander Yanov, Boris Khazanov, and others. Essentially, Shafarevich is accusing Jewish writers for being the nucleus of this Russophobia and imbuing it with Jewish nationalism. He’s not responding to these people as individuals. He’s responding to them, however politely, as Jews. And that is unacceptable to the same Jews who gleefully condemn Russians as Russians. See how that double standard works?

“Are these authors interested in the truth at all?” he asks. He later probes for ulterior motives:

And hatred for one nation is usually associated with a heightened sense of one’s belonging to another. Doesn’t this make it likely that our authors are under the influence of some sort of powerful force rooted in their national feelings?

In this passage, one can sense a precursor to the evolutionary struggles between populations as found in MacDonald’s Separations and its Discontents and The Culture of Critique.

Shafarevich borrows terms from historian Augustin Cochin, who divided the antagonists of the French Revolution into “Lesser people” and “Greater people.” The former group, an elite minority, lived in a spiritual and intellectual world at odds with the established order, as represented by the latter group. The Lesser People were bent on revolution and enforcing newfangled notions such as equality and freedom, while the Greater People insisted upon Catholicism, concepts such as honor and nobility, loyalty to the King, and taking pride in French history. These were the very things that the Lesser People considered dead weight and wished to remove, with maximum violence if necessary.

Shafarevich applies this duality to 1980s Soviet life by demonstrating how this Jewish school of Russophobia had the same motives and possessed the same hatred that Cochin’s Lesser People had for the Greater People. Their platforms were eeriely similar. In both cases, the Lesser People stressed individualism over nationalism, a disconnect from history, and an utter contempt for the people.

He states that Yanov pushed the idea that

humanity is quantized ONLY INTO SEPARATE INVIDUALS, and not into nations. It is not a new viewpoint. Humanity dispersed (or “quantized”) into individual units that are totally unconnected to one another—such, evidently, is Yanov’s ideal. [emphasis in the original]

As for Russian history, it is complete “savagery, coarseness and failure;” nothing but “tyranny, slavery, and senseless, bloody convulsions.” Religion, according to Pomerants “has ceased to be a trait of the people.” Pomerants also declared that love for one’s people is more dangerous then love for animals and that Russians possess “a lackeyish mixture of malice, envy and worship of authority.” Watch how he advocates for genocide:

The peasant cannot be reborn except as a character in an opera. Peasant nations are hungry nations, and nations in which the peasantry has disappeared [sic!] are nations in which hunger has disappeared.

Andrei Amalrik, a non-Jewish ally, insults the Russian thusly:

And if language is the fullest expression of the spirit of the people, then who is more Russian—the “little Negro” Pushkin and the “little Jew” Mandelshtam, or the muzhik in the beer hall who, wiping his spittle across his unshaven cheeks, bellows: “I’m a Russian!”

Khazanov declares not only that he finds Russia repulsive but that “to be a member of the Russian intelligentsia at the present time inevitably means being a Jew.” Shragin proclaims that the Russians being treated worse than all other groups in prisons was “just and logical.” Furthermore, none—not a single one—of these authors apply similar criticisms to Jews—only to Russians. The authors simply presume Jewish innocence before going out to destroy the reputation of the Russian people. Such attitudes breed revolution and terrorism, as was demonstrated in the late nineteenth century and early twentieth, and culminated in the inhuman atrocities of the Bolsheviks (which, Shafarevich demonstrates, also contained a nucleus of Jews). Shafarevich recognizes that for the Greater People, this is essentially a recipe for death.

Shafarevich:

[a] people that assesses its own history IN THAT WAY cannot exist. We are dealing here with a phenomenon that vitally affects us inhabitants of this country. [emphasis in the original]

This sentence represents the essence of the current struggle of the White Dissident Right, and the core of “Russophobia.” We, as the Greater People elite, oppose the Lesser People elite—most of whom are Jews—not because we possess an a priori hatred of Jews but because we wish to survive as a people. Shafarevich demonstrates how adhering to the Lesser People’s platform will guarantee that we won’t survive as a people. Really, it’s either-or.

As expected, Jews everywhere accused Shafarevich of anti-Semitism. Walter Laqueur responded with a New Republic essay entitled “From Russia with Hate,” in which he straight-facedly asks if Shafarevich was an admirer of Hitler (despite how Shafarevich condemns the Nazis as totalitarians in “Russophobia”). Semyon Resnik nitpicked on minor factual inaccuracies regarding Shafarevich’s treatment of the murder of Tsar Nicholas II and his family. He also accused Shafarevich of perpetuating a blood libel by describing the murder as a “ritual act”—as if this undermines the main points of Shafarevich’s essay.

In his stunningly spiteful 1990 essay entitled “Russian History and Anti-Semitism of Igor Shafarevich,” Eliezer Rabinovich sets up a straw man by accusing Shafarevich of blaming solely the Jews for the Bolshevik Revolution (something Shafarevich explicitly does not do in section eight of his essay). He dodges the question of whether Jews were prominent among the Bolsheviks by declaring such Jews as Trotsky and Zinoviev as “anti-Jewish Jews.” He then disputes much of Shafarevich’s historical exegesis and harps on Russian flaws and Russian culpability for past atrocities. Fair enough. No people is without sin, and Shafarevich claims nothing of the sort with Russia. Further, Rabinovich’s arguments do not necessarily refute Shafarevich’s. It is possible for Russophobia and anti-Semitism as the authors describe them to exist simultaneously. Yet Rabinovich states flatly that “Jewish Russophobia simply does not exist,” while Russian anti-Semitism does. Talk about presumption of innocence! How can anyone take such a self-serving zealot seriously?

Josephine Woll in her Soviet Jewish Affairs essay entitled “Russians and ‘Russophobes’” smears Shafarevich as a radical slavophile. She then, quite superficially, attempts to employ logic against him.

Shafarevich argues inductively, from results to ’causes.’ There are demonstrations and strikes. Their causes cannot be objective circumstances (in any event, Shafarevich does not consider that possibility). Therefore they must be provoked. Who could benefit from provoking them? Those who hate Russia and wish to see her weak. Who feels such hatred for Russia? Jews. QED.

Note how Woll completely ignores the evidence Shafaravich presents to support his idea that Jewish nationalism is the driving force behind Russophobia. Do the quotes he presents not evince contempt for Russia? Are most of their authors not Jewish? Aren’t these authors attacking Russia and Russians while not simultaneously attacking Israel and Jews? How can one not detect enemy action in all of this?

And this brings us back to Wistrich and his ludicrous claim that certain Jews “are quite falsely said to denigrate Russian history and mock the backwardness of Russian culture.” Falsely, is it? Did he not read “Russophobia?” In his book, Wistrich didn’t even include “Russophobia” among his source material, only Woll’s article and others like it. Did Robert Wistrich lie out ignorance or knowing? And none of these writers make credible attempts to counter Shafaravich’s evidence or disprove his conclusions. For them, it’s enough to label such conclusions as anti-Semitic. Whether such conclusions adhere to the truth, like the existence of Russophobia itself, is a less pressing matter.

The Military Analysts and the Negative Coverage of the War

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I’ve written about the military people in Russia before, but it’s worth bringing up again.

There are, or rather, there were nationalist political groups in Russian politics, but they were either assimilated, like Dmitri Rogozin’s “Rodina” party, which basically faded into irrelevance once Rogozin himself was offered a position in the government, or they folded like the internet journal Sputnik & Pogrom.

You’ve probably heard of Rogozin — he got into a spat with Elon Musk recently:

Leading to this cryptic tweet:

I really don’t think Rogozin is going to assassinate Musk — but hey, it’s topical to mention it.

Anyway, there’s no real point in talking about nationalist groups in Russia unless it is to mention various weirdo Neo-Nazi groups who seem to only exist so that the FSB can roll up on them periodically, send them to penal colonies, and thereby justify their budget.

The only serious bloc of patriotic voices with right-wing views, organizations and any form of political activism in Russia are basically military organizations like veterans’ groups and the various other support communities built up around them like “Mothers of Soldiers” and the military people who run journals, host get-togethers, summer camps, choirs, rock concerts, parades or special remembrance days.

The people running the various military journals and blogs are serious and they are respected by civil society because the military as an institution is generally well-liked in any country by the masses. There was a poll floating around about two years ago that showed that in terms of respect, Putin came in second place in Russia when compared to the respect accorded to the military as an institution.

As a result, the FSB and the oligarchs and parts of the government are quite leery of them. This is a major fault-line running through Russian civil society that few people analyze or talk about. If it wasn’t clear before, then I’m going to spell it out now — I am unabashedly on team military/team patriot and hope that they gain a greater foothold in Russian politics as a result of the war.

That being said, it’s worth realizing that these people have a dog in the political fight and since they are the only ones providing serious in-depth analysis of the war from the Russian side, it’s going to factor into their coverage. You’ve probably seen a machine-translated article of theirs or two floating in the blogosphere by now.

Their official line is basically this: “the corrupt elements running many of the institutions in Russia now are fighting the war poorly and have proven that they need to be replaced.”

I largely agree with them, but I also generally take their analysis of the situation with a grain of salt. See, it’s in their interests to play up the mistakes of the Russian government in Ukraine (of which there are indeed many) because it fits with their political narrative. Again, I like their political narrative and am sympathetic to it. But, again, let’s acknowledge that they do have an incentive to take a pessimistic stance on the war and the way things are being run at home. So, that means that they spend a lot less time focusing on the victories and the successes on the military front and a lot more time talking about the mistakes. Like the Moskva sinking. Boy, oh boy did they have a field day with that.

Me, personally, I don’t really think it reflects poorly on the current war effort in Ukraine seeing as the Moskva was plagued with problems for years. It was supposed to be refitted in 2016 after its deployment to Syria, but it was clear that this wasn’t a priority as Russia was shifting to subs and lighter ships as part of its modernization efforts.

Bloggers like the Saker, were, at the time, praising the Moskva with its goofy ramp and rusted out hull and denouncing anyone who disagreed as being victims of Anglo-ZOG propaganda as I recall. But the boat was objectively old and clearly near obsolete. Sailors didn’t like serving on it and some military journals at the time had no problem calling it a “white elephant” that seemed to be kept around for its symbolic value instead of any real strategic importance.

The loss of the sailors was tragic, of course, but the loss of the boat itself? People who were calling for it to be sold to China or the North Koreans all of a sudden began using the Moskva debacle as a cudgel against the Kremlin.

Overall, I don’t really see any harm in their critical posturing as the situation stands now. Although, it has to be said, that people like Igor Strelkov, the hero rebel of Donbass, are routinely posted by Ukrainian propaganda channels because of his constant criticism of the Russian government and the war effort.

Doomer Strelkov

To be fair, the Russian government did Strelkov dirty. He wanted to take all of Novorussia back in 2016 and he was right to call for a fast blitzkrieg. The Ukrainian Army was not ready, the cities weren’t fortified and the speed and success of the Crimean operation had them demoralized. Instead, the Russian government, the political class and people like Lavrov decided to go the Minsk I and II route. They seemed to believe that they could keep all of Ukraine by participating in the electoral process and negotiating with their “most-esteemed Western partners.”

Well, they were dead wrong and they never apologized for losing the entirety of Ukraine through their unprofessionalism and stupidity. Say it with me: Igor was right and did nothing wrong.

Anyway, the army fighting in the Ukraine is basically Putin’s private army. It is a professional, paid force, which is only a fraction of Russia’s actual full militarized might and it is mixed with ethnic auxiliaries called up by local tribal chieftains of the various periphery republics. It is not a Russian draftee army and so, does not necessarily need to be motivated by an ideal or patriotic propaganda to do its fighting. They’re fighting because they’re getting paid to fight and because they’re good at it. Sure, they’re generally pro-Russia and there are volunteers there who are clearly Russian revanchists who believe in the ‘Greater Russia’ ideal for sure, but these people would be down for a good scrap in any case. After all, they fought in the Donbass in the early days when the situation was far more dire for the pro-Russia side simply because of their commitment to Russian nationalism restorationism.

Believe me, if a general or even partial mobilization is announced, the military people will change their tune quick. At that point, the nature of the war changes and it becomes one’s patriotic duty to rah-rah-rah and not demoralize the war effort. We’re not there yet though, and it’s worth understanding that these people are engaging in political point-scoring and also in making the case that they would do a better job protecting Russia’s interests than the mystery-meat politicians running the show now.

They want the Russian government to call them in to fix the problem. They want general mobilization and total war against NATO. They see an opportunity for themselves and for Russia as a whole to move in the right direction.

Ukraine, in contrast, does not allow a single peep of criticism of their war effort. Videos of units complaining about being abandoned by their officers, sent to fight without equipment, not being paid and so on are suppressed and the soldiers who record them are charged with sedition and desertion by the secret police.

That, plus the power of Western propaganda creates a highly skewed perception of the war. One side appears to be uniformly positive and never admits to making mistakes or even losing a single battle, while the other is analyzing, debating and talking openly about what’s happening on the front.

But the squeaky wheel often gets the grease, and you have to give them credit where credit is due — the military people and their talking points are starting to take hold in Russia. People are starting to ask questions about the war effort and demand that the government do more. ‘Mobilization’ is a buzz word that’s gaining ground in the public arena.

Again, I’m biased, but if I were the Russian government, I’d just deal these people in, if only to get them to stop criticizing the “special operation.” But, you see, because these people are so popular, they represent a potential threat. The way I see it, the real story isn’t to be found in the trenches of Donbass, but in the politicking happening behind the scenes on the home front in Russia.