Review of Paul Gottfried’s “Leo Strauss and the Conservative Movement in America,” Part 1

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Paul Edward Gottfried
Leo Strauss and the Conservative Movement in America: A Critical Appraisal
New York: Cambridge University Press, 2012

Paul Gottfried’s admirable book on Leo Strauss is an unusual and welcome critique from the Right.

Leo Strauss (1899–1973) was a German-born Jewish political theorist who moved to the United States in 1937. Strauss taught at the New School for Social Research in New York City before moving to the University of Chicago, where he was Robert Maynard Hutchins Distinguished Service Professor until his retirement in 1969. In the familiar pattern of Jewish intellectual movements as diverse of Psychoanalysis, Marxism, and Objectivism, Strauss was a charismatic teacher who founded a cultish school of thought, the Straussians, which continues to this day to spread his ideas and influence throughout academia, think tanks, the media, and the government.

The Straussians have not, however, gone unopposed. There are three basic kinds of critiques: (1) critiques from the Left, which range from paranoid, middlebrow, journalistic smears from such writers as Alan Wolfe, Nicholas Xenos, and John P. McCormick, to more scholarly critiques by such writers as Shadia Drury and Anne Norton, (2) scholarly critiques of the Straussian method and Straussian interpretations from philosophers and intellectual historians such as Hans-Georg Gadamer and Quentin Skinner, and (3) scholarly critiques from the Right.

As Gottfried points out, the Straussians tend only to engage their critics on the Left. This makes sense, since their Leftist critics raise the cultural visibility of the Straussian school. The critics are also easily defeated, which raises Straussian credibility as well. Like all debates within the parameters of Jewish hegemony, the partisans in the Strauss wars share a whole raft of assumptions which are never called into question. Thus these controversies look somewhat farcical and managed to those who reject liberalism and Jewish hegemony root and branch. Read more

Is White Nationalism Real?

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Theoretically, White Nationalism is the political ideology supporting the formation of a homogenous state or “homeland” for the White race.  Although the definition might vary somewhat, the concept is universally consistent. Obviously the philosophy is real, but is the movement endorsing the dogma a reality?  Is White Nationalism figurative terminology in efforts to make the ideology more socially acceptable (i.e. “I’m a White Nationalist, not a racist”), or is it an actual movement?

First off, simply put, movements move.  Understandably, Rome wasn’t built in a day, but the concept of White Nationalism is nearing the age of needing heart meds (literally and metaphorically).  Excluding a handful of leafleteers and diversity dodgers, the only movement is that of fingers on a keyboard.  The keyboards allow for just enough recycled thought to prevent total ideological stagnation. Through the years, numerous would-be White Nationalists have searched the realms of Cyberia in hopes of finding White camaraderie in their geographical region; only to eventually permanently “log out” after discovering the movement is primarily an internet based phenomenon.  It doesn’t take the intellectual to comprehend keyboard removal will simultaneously induce movement default.

Sure, there will be those in the movement who disagree with my pessimistic observation, but isn’t White Nationalism comprised in racial realism, which is fundamentally supported by social and biological truths? One can’t pick and choose the truths they accept, for the truth doesn’t lie.  As Orwell said, “In a time of universal deceit — telling the truth is a revolutionary act.” Read more

Conversion to White Advocacy: The Social Nexus

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Greg Johnson asked me to comment on my conversion to my present political views in his essay on William James’s ideas on religious conversion “The Psychology of Conversion” (December 17, 2013).  I agree with the general point that people who convert have already come to accept a new set of ideas, so that conversion for me was a matter of re-prioritizing beliefs already there. As an evolutionary biologist by training, I was open to the idea that the human mind was shaped by natural selection. I could see that in many ways, particularly in the area of sex differences. But when scientists like J. Philippe Rushton came out with data on race differences in IQ, I saw this work as subject to the same standards of scientific scholarship as any other.

I had long been aware that the opponents of sociobiology were often the same people who made hysterical, blatantly political pronouncements on race differences, and from my days as a graduate student, I was aware that the most prominent among them were Jews in elite academic positions—most notably, Stephen Jay Gould and Richard Lewontin. Much of this then became the focus of Chapter 2 of The Culture of Critique, which may be seen as a sort of intellectual, footnoted version of what started out as a gut level reaction to my surroundings and readings as a graduate student in the 1970s.

And at an even more basic level, an appreciation of the process of evolution makes one aware that the name of the game is competition between different gene pools—a basic idea underlying my writing on Judaism from an evolutionary perspective. Again, the same people who were trashing sociobiology and the science of race differences were creating an evolutionary biology of humans in which fitness (what Frank Salter labels “ethnic genetic interests”), particularly relative fitness between groups, didn’t matter at all. Quite frankly, I became very concerned about the future of the people from my gene pool—would we prosper in the future, or even survive at all. Going the way of the dinosaurs is more than an expression. Where are the Samaritans now? The decline of Whites and their culture is happening with breathtaking speed. As humans, we can decide not to play the evolutionary game. But if you don’t play, you lose. Animals instinctively play the game—they are engineered to do nothing else. But at this point and given the importance of culture for humans (the culture of White pathology), White people have to decide that the game is worth playing and that it is morally acceptable to play. Read more

Two Ingroup Morality Items

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infiltration_pesach_400As noted ad nauseum at TOO, while Diaspora Jews in the West continue to promote immigration and multiculturalism as intrinsic goods and unquestioned moral ideals, in Israel the whole point of public policy is to retain its Jewish character. The most recent example is shipping to Sweden dozens of African refugees living in Israel. Patrick Cleburne’s account at VDARE says it all:

  • The similar size and ethnic diversity of the two countries means that the only rationale for sending Africans to Sweden is that Sweden cares nothing about retaining a Swedish identity, whereas Israel cares deeply about remaining a Jewish state;
  • While the U.S. government policy on immigration and multiculturalism remains at odds with the interests of the traditional people of the West, especially the working class (so, as Cleburne notes, we can expect many of these African refugees to end up in the U.S.), the Israeli government sticks up for their own people: Interior Minister Gideon Sa’ar said he was “not very impressed with all the crying and complaining” by business owners whose employees were on strike. “With all due respect to the restaurant and café owners in crisis, or those whose cleaning staff didn’t show up, this will not determine Israel’s national policy. On the contrary, let’s think about those Israelis who have lost their jobs [to migrant workers].”

Given that immigration and multiculturalism are presented as moral imperatives in the West, this results in a double moral standard—one morality for the ingroup and a quite different morality toward the outgroup; the theme of Jewish moral particularism. Unlike the addiction of the West to moral universalism, Jewish groups behave as a foreign policy realist (or evolutionary psychologist) expects states to behave. They simply pursue their interests with the aim of surviving and prospering.

And that means pursuing radically different strategies depending on whether Jews are a demographic majority or a tiny minority. In the West, the organized Jewish community avidly pursues displacement-level immigration and multiculturalism as tools to render the traditional majorities relatively powerless and incapable of mounting attacks on Jews. In Israel, the goal is to retain Jewish identity and minimize the presence and the influence of non-Jews—goals that are enthusiastically supported by Diaspora Jews and Jewish organizations.

Read more

Moshe Is Monitoring You: Duplicity, Double-Think and the Jewish Dream of a Communist Europe

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Denis “The Slug” MacShane had a bad 2013. This veteran campaigner against anti-Semitism, a former Minister for Europe and policy advisor to Labour Friends of Israel, was charged with fraud in July and jailed shortly before Christmas (see here). But he must have been celebrating in March. Why? Because, like the journalist Nick Cohen and the lawyer Anthony Julius, he’s a staunch defender of free speech. In March, a university tribunal struck a strong blow for this vital freedom:

Lessons should be learned from this sorry saga. We greatly regret that the case was ever brought. At heart, it represents an impermissible attempt to achieve a political end by litigious means. It would be very unfortunate if an exercise of this sort were ever repeated … We are also troubled by the implications of the claim. Underlying it we sense a worrying disregard for pluralism, tolerance and freedom of expression. (See here)

Cohen, Julius and MacShane must have celebrated this ruling long into the night. When Cohen published a book defending free speech in 2012, Julius and MacShane wrote extravagantly positive reviews. Julius said the book deserved to stand beside “Milton’s Areopagitica and Mill’s On Liberty” (see here); MacShane saluted Cohen as heir to Voltaire and other “giants of the 18th century” (see here). That’s why they must have been so pleased by the university ruling in March. But what was the case about? Here are the details:

Denis MacShane, Friend of Free Speech

Denis MacShane, Friend of Free Speech

A Jewish academic who claimed the University and College Union’s policy on Palestine constituted harassment has been rebuked by an employment tribunal for misusing the legal process. Ronnie Fraser, a further education lecturer and founding director of Academic Friends of Israel, argued that the UCU [University and College Union] was institutionally anti-Semitic owing to motions passed in favour of a boycott of Israel.

Despite enlisting the services of Anthony Julius, best known as Diana, Princess of Wales’ divorce lawyer and a partner at Mishcon de Reya, all of his 10 claims of harassment have been “dismissed in their totality”. During the 20-day hearing in December, Mr Fraser called several witnesses to give evidence, including Howard Jacobson, the Booker Prize winning novelist, John Mann MP, the former MP Denis MacShane and numerous leading Jewish academics. …

The action is branded by tribunal panel members as “an impermissible attempt to achieve a political end by litigious means” and a case which showed a “worrying disregard for pluralism, tolerance and freedom of expression”. Scorn is also invoked for Mr Julius’s decision to pursue certain points, with complaints variously dismissed as “palpably groundless”, “obviously hopeless” and “devoid of any merit”. (Tribunal slams academic for bringing anti-Semitism case, Times Higher Education Supplement, 27th March 2013) Read more

Making “America as user-friendly to Jews as possible.” The Anti-Defamation League and the Indoctrination of our Youth.

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I’ve recently been occupying my spare time with careful study of the ADL’s “Anti-Bias Lesson Plans and Resources for K-12 Educators.” On the ADL’s website, it is said that these lesson plans, which target children in grades three through twelve, have been designed to help “educators” “integrate multicultural, anti-bias, and social justice themes into their curricula.”

In reality, it doesn’t take long for the informed individual reading through these lesson plans to conclude that they are little more than crude tools designed to strip White children of any sense of identity, rendering them little more than androgynous automatons — pliant prototypes of the ‘tolerant age,’ utterly devoid of race and gender.

There is a range of delicious fare on offer for those teachers with an appetite for ensuring that little boys and girls understand the concept of “gender stereotyping,” and who believe that little Mikey should be actively encouraged to play with dolls and a stroller since, as one ADL anti-bias handbook puts it, “there really is no such thing as a girl’s toy or a boy’s toy.”

More interesting still are the numerous lesson plans on offer which claim to “address anti-Semitism,” bearing tag-lines boldly proclaiming that these educational gems will challenge anti-Semitism by “debunking the myths and responding with facts.”

It is to an example from the latter set of these lessons plans that I wish to devote some attention in the following article. In studying these plans, we may well come to learn something — though that “something” will be considerably different from that envisaged by our erstwhile tutors. Read more