Review of Civilization: The West and the Rest, by Niall Ferguson

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Review of Civilization: The West and the Rest, by Niall Ferguson (2011) London: Allen Lane.  402 pages.

If you’ve ever found yourself saying, as I have, that your major political preoccupation is the salvaging of the best of “Western Civilization” [WC], you may then have been queried, “What is it? What aspect of WC is so important?”

[Let us pause here while you review your own list…]

Perhaps a bit of uncertainty? Not sure how long a list to compile? Not sure of your priorities? Isn’t it a matter of taste? And importantly, most of us are not at all sure how WC came about.

Niall Ferguson will certainly help you out here. He is the now well-known and popular (e.g., The Accent of Money) Scottish economic historian, teaching at Harvard and the London School of Economics, and frequent TV commentator.  The book under review was the basis for a six-part documentary, for Channel 4 in Britain, “Civilization: Is the West History?”. (Aha! That ought to wake you up, all you readers of The Occidental Observer.) Read more

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William J. Murray knocks Alison Weir’s camera across room at CNI press conference

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Confessions of a Former Racist

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I repent my former heresy.  I realize the error of my ways.  I was so wrong to believe that my race, the White race, has a legitimate claim to identity or any right to advance its collective interests.  Now I know that as a White man, it is my duty to wait on the sidelines while every other race organizes and lobbies for race-based legal privileges, monetary redistributions or subsidies, and affirmative-action employment.  I apologize for balking at the idea of handing out unearned money, respect, or employment based on the color of a person’s skin.  I used to call such programs anti-White, unfair, unconstitutional, or illegal.  Now I understand they are a part of “social justice,” which is sorely needed to correct the historical injustices committed by White people against non-White people.

I am so sorry for believing that race is a useful way to predict group behavior.  I was so wrong to say “society is a racial construct” because I have since realized that race is mostly a social construct.  All of the racial crime statistics, biological differences, and behavioral variations are merely artifacts of a White supremacist society.  Once White privilege disappears, the underachieving races such as Black Africans or Australian Aborigines will skyrocket to cultural, economic, philosophical, and scientific success on a grand scale.  But presently White privilege causes other races (except for Jews and North Asians) to economically fail, commit vicious and violent crimes, and stagnate as a permanent underclass in any society that contains White people. Read more

Herman Cain: Tea Party Rock Star

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Last year on the Fourth of July I went to a local Tea Party rally. As usual, the crowd was all White–a case study in implicit Whiteness. But one of the speakers stood out because she was Black–the only Black person in the crowd. Eager to show their anti-racist credentials, they applauded her enthusiastically. These middle-class White folks were open to opposing illegal immigration, but no speaker dared to comment on legal immigration.

Herman Cain

Reading today’s LA Times I couldn’t help noticing Jonah Goldberg’s comment that Herman Cain, the Black businessman and Republican presidential candidate is a “rock star” among the Tea Party crowd. I assume it’s the same logic. What could be better than having two Black major-party candidates square off in the 2012 presidential election? Could there be any doubt that White Americans are good people after all? So much for all that media talk that the Tea Partiers are nothing but a bunch of White racists. Read more

John Mearsheimer on Obama versus Netanyahu

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This is a short interview of John Mearsheimer commenting on the recent U.S.-Israel flap. His points are familiar, but it’s great to see his brutally frank comments on the power of the Israel Lobby in suppressing discussion of the issues and on spineless American politicians who fail to protect U.S. national interests.

As in the past, Mearsheimer takes the view that Israel is hurting its own interests by pursuing the West Bank settlement project and resisting a two-state solution. I am not convinced of this (see here, p. 49ff), but, as Mearsheimer notes,  it is certainly true that Israel is increasingly isolated in the world. In any case, armed to the teeth, politically dominated by messianic fanatics who would engage in a civil war if there was any meaningful pullback, and supported to the hilt by a very wealthy and powerful Diaspora community, Israel is not going to change its current direction. Indeed, they may well have the military power to annex most of the West Bank  with impunity — as I think likely if the Palestinians succeed in getting a UN resolution declaring it a state.

Ashkenazi Eugenics and Attitudes of Racial Superiority

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The current TOO video is a compelling account of how thousands of North African Jews died  as a result of a bizarre treatment for ringworm during the 1950s (see also here). The ideology underlying this treatment was the racial inferiority of these Jews. The video notes, as also discussed in my review of John Glad’s book on Jewish eugenics, that attitudes of racial superiority and eugenics in the sense of racial purification were common among the Ashkenazim who created Israel.

A correspondent who watched the video informed me that Hannah Arendt, the well-known Jewish intellectual and author of Eichmann in Jerusalem, had similar views on Middle Eastern Jews as well as an attitude of superiority toward Eastern European Jews. Such attitudes were common among German Jews, especially in the early decades of the 20th century. For example, it is well known that the German Jewish establishment in America centered around the American Jewish Committee looked down on the Eastern European Jews immigrating to the US. (Nevertheless they were quite successful in keeping the gates open until the 1924 Immigration Restriction Law.) Read more

Review of Jared Taylor’s “White Identity: Racial Consciousness in the 21st Century”

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Jared Taylor, White Identity: Racial Consciousness in the 21st Century (Oakton, Va.: New Century Books, 2011)

Some time in late 1992 or early 1993, a friend mentioned he was reading Jared Taylor’s new book Paved With Good Intentions. He praised the book for its solid debunking of the racism-made-me-do-it “root cause” of sociopathic Black behavior. It seemed too good to be true. In the back of my mind during our brief conversation I wondered: Jared Who?

The next day I walked a few blocks from my office near the White House and purchased a copy of Paved With Good Intentions at Sidney Kramer Books — the premiere bookstore that catered to D.C.-based policy wonks until it went out of business in the late 1990s. Taylor’s book was prominently displayed as a new release. This well-articulated, iconoclastic view of race relations — a rare surprise from a commercial publisher — remains unsurpassed in dissecting liberal shibboleths on race, civil rights, crime, and affirmative action.

Taylor’s book astutely summarized the problems associated with “diverse” urban districts, which any one familiar with our nation’s capital would acknowledge: higher crime rates, dangerous, underperforming public schools, widespread loitering, the stress and strain of working elbow-to-elbow with affirmative action hires (carrying the workload of incompetent co-workers), and the daily toll of exhausting commutes (50–60 miles one way) in order to reap the benefits of good schools, low crime, affordable homes, and pleasant neighbors. Read more