John Graham: Why is the American Bar Association swinging Left?

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The alert but not particularly conservative Politico webzine has an interesting item “Right sees law group tilting left” by Josh Gerstein (9/25/10):

The American Bar Association, which was dogged for decades by criticism over a perceived liberal bent, is risking reigniting that debate by taking bold stands on a pair of hot-button social issues.

At its annual meeting last month in San Francisco, the nation’s largest lawyers’ group passed a formal resolution, urging every state in the union to permit same-sex marriages.

In June, the ABA took what it acknowledged was an “extraordinary action” by filing a brief urging a federal judge in Arizona to block enforcement of that state’s highly controversial law intended to crack down on illegal immigration

What is going on? Apparently what is going on is that the ABA’s new president is Stephen Zack of Miami, of whom Politico says that he

defended the group’s support for same-sex marriage and its opposition to the Arizona immigration law as part of the organization’s broad duty to defend civil rights…

The fact that the public is sharply divided on the gay marriage issue and appears to broadly support the Arizona immigration law isn’t relevant to whether the bar group should speak out on those issues, Zack insisted. “If that was the touchstone then in the 50s, we should not have taken a stand opposing segregation,” Zack said.

Evidently it is a personal matter:

Zack said his background has made him acutely aware of the danger of depriving people of their rights. “I came from Cuba in 1961. I’m the first Hispanic-American president of the American Bar Association,” he said. “I keep that experience very close to me. To me, the loss of liberty is not a theoretical exercise. It actually happened.”

Another of those socially conservative Hispanics? Well, not quite.

The preface to an article by Zack on Latina Lista (Guest Voz: First Latino President-elect of American Bar Association speaks out about civic education [November 20, 2009]) says

Mr. Zack will be the first president in the ABA’s 131-year history who happens to be both Latino and Jewish.

And Zack himself says

In the early 1900s my grandfather had come to Cuba from Russia, looking for a better life, searching for freedom, hoping for the right to practice his religion and beliefs without persecution. For many years, he found that. He raised a family, worked hard and prospered. Unfortunately, there came a time when that changed for my family in Cuba.

When I was 13, we left Cuba to come to the United States. My grandfather became a refugee for the second time, once again having to flee his home in search of that better life…

Far from being Hispanic — his family spent apparently less than 60 years in Cuba –- Stephen Zack is yet another descendant of Russian Jews working off ancestral animosities against mythical Cossacks by wrecking the societies which so unwisely gave them shelter and hospitality.

Complain to Stephen N. Zack

John Graham is the lead author of the TOO article “Is the Madoff Scandal Paradigmatic?”

Recent research on Individualism/Collectivism

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In cross-cultural perspective, the unique thing about European culture is the tendency for individualism. Individualism is the basis for Western modernization — for why the West has dominated the rest of the world. It is intimately linked with a suite of traits, including democratic and republic forms of government, relatively high status for women, relatively low ethnocentrism, moral universalism, and science.

Research on Individualism/Collectivism has become a rather large academic industry. Recent research has found genetic differences between individualist and  collectivist societies and has linked this dimension to economic growth and innovation. Several of these strands come together in a paper by Yuriy Gorodnichenko and Gérard Roland, “Culture, Institutions, and the Wealth of Nations” put out by the Center for Economic Policy Research (short online version: “Does Culture Affect Long-run  Growth.”)

The long version of the article notes that individualism/collectivism is “the main dimension of cultural variation.”

Individualism emphasizes personal freedom and achievement. Individualist culture therefore awards social status to personal accomplishments such as important discoveries, innovations or great artistic achievements. On the other hand, individualism can make collective action more difficult because individuals pursue their own interest without internalizing collective interests. Collectivism makes collective action easier in the sense that individuals internalize group interests to a greater degree. However, it also encourages conformity and discourages individuals from standing out. This framework implies that individualism should encourage innovation, everything else equal, but collectivism should have an advantage in coordinating production processes and in various forms of collective action.

Their model relies on the idea that collectivist cultures are better at producing goods but that individualist cultures are better at creating innovations required for new products. Individualist cultures are therefore proposed to be better at producing growth, but not as good for efficiently producing goods once the technology is in place. In support, they note several anecdotal examples where technological innovations originating in Western societies led to products that were produced more efficiently in Japan. As another example, they note that General Motors was unable to introduce the Toyota culture based on teamwork and consensus into the United States.

This figure in the upper left below shows world-wide variation in individualism-collectivism ranging from yellow (individualist) to red (collectivist).

individualism

Geographical coincidence between serotonin transporter gene diversity and cultural traits of individualism–collectivism across countries. Gray areas indicate geographical regions where no published data are available. (a) Map of frequency distribution of Individualism-Collectivism. (b) Map of frequency distribution of S alleles of 5-HTTLPR. (c) Map of frequency of global prevalence of anxiety. (d) Map of frequency of global prevalence of mood disorders. Yellow to red colour bar indicates low to high prevalence. From Chiao and Blizinsky (2009).

Notice anything? Quite clearly, individualism is a European phenomenon.

Gorodnichenko and Rolandin essentially measure Europeanness  genetically, using Cavalli-Sforza’s (1994) data on genetic distance based on blood groups and corrected for the percentage of an ethnic group in country. Although the authors see the genetic data as mere proxies for the cultural differences, needless to say, they are also proxies for underlying genetic differences between these culture regions that go well beyond genes for blood type.  By their measures, the US is the most individualistic country in the world, so that the closer countries are genetically to the US, the more individualistic they are. This is a strong correlation: “The strong negative correlation between genetic distance (computed relative to USA, which has a highly individualistic culture) and individualism suggest that genetic distance may be a strong instrument.”

The article also plugs into recent research indicating a genetic basis for individualism/collectivism. Collectivist cultures are associated with two genetic markers  both of which make people more prone to stress in the absence of the kind of social support found in collectivist cultures. Chiao and Blizinsky (2009) found a strong correlation between collectivism and the presence of a short (S) allele in the polymorphism 5-HTTLPR of the serotonin transporter gene SLC6A4 in 30 countries. This allele is known to put individuals at greater risk for depression when exposed to life stressors. The idea is that that collectivist cultures protect individuals from these risks by embedding them more strongly in communities with strong social links thus providing strong psychological support networks. Therefore the gene is more adaptive in collectivist cultures and probably selected against in individualist cultures.

Here’s another figure from Chiao and Blizinsky (2009) again showing the rank order of cultures on individualism-collectivism but also showing the correlation with the percentage of the 5-HTTLPR allele.

rspb20091650f02

Another (compatible) explanation is that people with the short form of the allele are more sensitive to social disapproval, as found in a recent paper by Thomason et al. People with the short form of the allele reacted more strongly to frowning faces — not a good trait if one is adopting non-conformist positions. It’s a gene that those of us subjected to public opprobrium for politically incorrect views would do well to be without.

Another genetic marker for collectivism is the G allele in polymorphism A118G in the μ-opioid receptor gene that leads to higher stress in case of social rejection.Way and Liebermann (2010) reason that this gene and the other genes linked thus far to individualism/collectivism operate by making people more socially sensitive. This in turn makes them more prone to depression in the absence of the strong social support available in collectivist cultures. For example,  adults who have had a serious personal loss have less activation in the μ-opioid system, suggesting that it is sensitive to social inclusion. They also point to a genetic variant in the monoamine oxidase system that is activated under conditions of social exclusion, although to date this gene has not been correlated with individualism/collectivism.

Relying on a paper by Fincher et al., Chiao and Blizinsky propose that ultimately worldwide differences in genes for individualism/collectivism were favored by natural selection because collectivism is better for combating pathogens such as infectious diseases and parasites. The basic idea is that collectivist cultures would be less open to new people and hence less likely to be infected; retaining the status quo is adaptive because change may allow diseases and parasites to enter the  culture.

However, it should be noted that Fincher et al. simply find a correlation between pathogen presence and collectivism. Their proposal for why such a correlation should occur is not based on any data. The authors note that the basic correlation is with latitude: Warmer climates have fewer pathogens and are more likely to be collectivistic. This correlation is also compatible with my argument that the European tendency toward individualism is the result of lessened importance of group-based competition during the Ice Ages for the ancestors of Europeans because large kinship-based groups would not have been supported because of the ecological constraints imposed by a cold climate. Indeed, the explanation of collectivism as involving its utility in group-based competition has far more surface plausibility than an explanation based on the putative benefits of collectivism for avoiding pathogens.

Although not included in the Gorodnichenko and Roland study, another gene linked to non-conformity is the 7R allele of the D4 dopamine receptor gene associated with novelty seeking, impulsivity, and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder. This allele is absent in China, although alleles derived from the 7R allele are common. Cochran and Harpending (2009, p. 112) suggest that this pattern may be due to high levels of social controls weeding out non-conforming individuals. “The Japanese say that the nail that sticks out is hammered down, but in China it may have been pulled out and thrown away.”

This scenario of actively suppressing non-conformists does not fit well with the pathogen prevention explanation of non-conformity but fits well with the importance of getting rid of such a gene in the interests of promoting cohesive groups. Similarly, I have argued that there was strong selection for social conformity within traditional Jewish communities. People who were less ethnocentric were ultimately excluded from the gene pool.

In any case, getting back to the Gorodnichenko and Roland paper, innovation was measured by the number of patents per million of population. The figure below shows a strong correlation.

RolandFig2

Individualism versus Patents per Million Population

However, G&R do not correct their results for IQ — a rather amazing omission considering that Richard Lynn and Tatu Vanhanen’s IQ and the Wealth of Nations (2002) found strong associations between economic development and measures of average national IQ. Notice in the  figure that Japan with a high average IQ has the highest level of patents as measured by G & R but they score in the middle on individualism/collectivism. Israel is another society that, compared to Western norms, is relatively collectivist (~60 on Hofstede’s index) but relatively high on patents. We may anticipate that as China continues its spectacular development, they will also have increasing numbers of patents per capita, given its huge commitment to education in basic science and engineering.

On the other  hand, it has often been noted that because of the increasing dominance in the West of the financial sector, smart people are increasingly going into investment banking rather than engineering and basic science. Unlike engineering and basic science, the financial sector does not contribute to growth or innovation. Indeed, the recent financial collapse resulting from malfeasance in the  financial sector shows that this sector is quite capable of having a negative effect on economic growth.

Moreover, because of free trade policies, individualist  cultures are prone to exporting jobs to collectivist cultures with a strong sense that economic policy should be designed in the national interest. As a result of an unholy alliance between ethnic lobbies and business interests, individualist cultures are also prone to massive immigration of both skilled and especially low-IQ unskilled labor without regard for effects on national cohesiveness or any other costs.

European-derived cultures are committed to multiculturalism, and they are being swamped by economic refugees from collectivist cultures, dispossessing their founding peoples. In the long run,  in the absence of a political revolution against non-European immigration, it is highly doubtful that individualist cultures can survive. The research reviewed here indicates that predispositions to individualism/collectivism are genetically based. The biological basis of individualism/collectivism combined with an official ideology of multiculturalism means that people prone to collectivism will likely continue their collectivist ways even as citizens of individualist cultures. Certainly the lack of integration of Muslims in Western societies is a prime example of lack of integration. And, although Jews have certainly assimilated in many ways, they retain strong ties to other Jewish communities and they are highly organized in opposition to the interests of Europeans. As noted elsewhere, Jews would not matter except that they have a strong sense of fear and loathing of erstwhile European majorities. Jews are particularly important because of their elite status in terms of wealth as well as their influence on the media and on the political process.

As non-Europeans become the majority in traditionally European societies, there is no reason to suppose that they will retain individualist political and cultural institutions. As they say, demography is destiny.

Kevin MacDonald is editor of The Occidental Observer and a professor of psychology at California State University–Long Beach. Email him.

Rachel Maddow on Jim Russell

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Jim Russell, who is the Republican candidate for New York’s 18th Congressional District, is busy combating accusations about his association with The Occidental Quarterly. MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow’s take is a classic example of the power of the media to create an alternate reality where facts don’t matter and where simply stating Russell’s opinions is enough to create mild amusement in her audience benumbed by decades of leftist propaganda. No need to note that Russell is a scholar who has a Ph. D. and has written a book published by Oxford University Press on how Christianity was influenced by German culture during the early Middle Ages. No need for any informed scholarly opinions on his statements in the article in question. If that well-informed anthropologist and psychologist Rachel Maddow thinks something is outlandish, then it must be outlandish. End of story.

Maddow starts by labeling TOQ a “White supremicist journal” —shorthand for not having to deal with the ideas presented there and not being sensitive to the obvious difference between White supremacy and White advocacy. Does she think that it is always illegitimate for any ethnic group to seek to advance its interests? If so, then she should come out publicly against the ADL, the NAACP, and La Raza.

She then puts up on the screen this quote from the article:

While liberals and universalists constantly yammer about “bringing us together” and “diversity is our strength,” it may be suggested that the biological function of human language and culture is just the opposite, that is, to keep discrete groups apart.

What an absolutely outrageous idea! Maddow, being Jewish by descent,* could not possibly be expected to grasp the concept of a culture that erects barriers between itself and the surrounding society—as Diaspora Judaism has done for its entire history and as Israel has now taken to the point of building walls between themselves and the Palestinians, providing separate roads and neighborhoods—in short, apartheid.

Contemporary mainstream evolutionary theories of culture highlight the  importance of badges of group membership, such as language and modes of dress that function to define ingroups and outgroups, and psychologists are well aware that there is a powerful evolutionary psychology of social identity that responds to these cues by making people in ingroups have exaggerated negative attitudes toward outgroups and exaggerated positive attitudes toward their ingroup.

She then highlights Russell’s quoting “old racist arguments” from T. S. Eliot:

The population should be homogeneous…. What is even more important is unity of religious background; and reasons of race and culture combine to make a large number of free-thinking Jews undesirable.

As noted here repeatedly, multiculturalism has huge costs, especially for the majority ethnic group in terms of social cohesion, social isolation, and lack of willingness to contribute to public goods like government-sponsored health care— with no discernible benefits apart from ethnic restaurants. Yet if there has been one overriding goal of Jewish intellectual and political activism in the US and other Western societies over the last century, it has been to legitimize multiculturalism and pathologize any sense that the  traditional people of these societies have any interests in maintaining their demographic predominance and their culture.

Maddow then goes after Russell’s expressed concern about the effects of the media on imprinting children with images of other races because they may affect later mating preferences. Notice that Russell expresses himself quite tentatively: “One wonders how a child’s sexual imprinting is affected by forcible racial integration and near continual exposure to media stimuli promoting interracial contact.” But in fact, there is quite a bit of research that has come out since Russell wrote his article indicating just that. For example, this is a quote from an academic article of mine:

Research on human
infants indicates that preference for own race occurs by 3 months
of age but is not present at 1 month (Kelly et al., 2005). However,
racial ingroup preferences are weakened by exposure to outgroup
faces during infancy (Bar-Haim, Ziv, Lamy, & Hodes, 2006;
Sangrigoli, Pallier, Argenti, Ventureyra, & de Schonen, 2005).

Research on human infants indicates that preference for own race occurs by 3 months of age but is not present at 1 month (Kelly et al., 2005). However, racial ingroup preferences are weakened by exposure to outgroup faces during infancy (Bar-Haim, Ziv, Lamy, & Hodes, 2006; Sangrigoli, Pallier, Argenti, Ventureyra, & de Schonen, 2005). (p. 1022)

The reality is that social psychology provides strong support for the idea that exposure of babies to other races would make them favor their own race less. And Russell is certainly correct that the media is doing its best to aid this process. However, the good news is that the media does not really have access to infants, or at least much less access than it does to older children and adults. The research seems to indicate that babies learn who their people are by seeing family members–resulting in hysteria over “racist babies.” One can anticipate government programs that force White babies to be exposed to non-Whites (but exempt non-Whites from this process).

Maddow then goes off on Russell’s accusation that the media promotes miscegenation in films directed at adolescents and pre-adolescents and his claim that parents have “a natural obligation as essential as providing food and shelter to instill in their  children an acceptance of appropriate ethnic boundaries for socialization and for marriage.” Again, research supports the idea that media images could indeed overcome our natural liking for people like ourselves (programmed in infancy; see above) and lead people to be more open to miscegenation—especially in impressionable and conformist-minded children who are led to think that such behavior is “cool” and the sort of thing popular, attractive teenagers do. Several prominent social psychologists have argued that constant repetition by media images–especially if they are seen as coming from elite, mainstream sources–can overcome predispositions to be attracted to our own people.

One would think that Maddow would be well aware that her people have had very strong socialization pressures for marrying within the group which has led to very strong genetic commonality among long-separated Jewish groups. Urgings by Jewish religious and secular authorities (e.g., Alan Dershowitz, Elliott Abrams) to marry other Jews are commonplace. But when Russell makes similar suggestions, he is labeled a racist and a kook.

Her piece is a good example of how the media is focused on changing the behavior  of one group and one group only: White Christians.

*According to WikiAnswers, Maddow was raised Catholic, with an Irish mother and Russian father. She asserted she is “distantly Jewish.” See also here.

Jewish-Muslim Tensions

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The current Marty Peretz uproar is one  of those many times when a White advocate can see nothing good on either side of a debate. It makes for depressing reading when all the sides heard in the mainstream media are corrupted.

Peretz is the famously fanatic pro-Israel nutcase who happens to own the New Republic. He is also rich, having married into enough money to buy his bully pulpit and make it into an excellent example of Jewish double standards: Liberal on pretty much all domestic issues, but gung-ho in favor of ethnic cleansing and apartheid in Israel. The recent controversy came about because he wrote, “frankly, Muslim life is cheap, most notably to Muslims. And among those Muslims led by the Imam Rauf there is hardly one who has raised a fuss about the routine and random bloodshed that defines their brotherhood. So, yes, I wonder whether I need honor these people and pretend that they are worthy of the privileges of the First Amendment which I have in my gut the sense that they will abuse.”

In his apology, he disavowed the First Amendment comment. Let’s get real. Does anyone seriously think that Muslims believe in free speech as a principle (think Danish cartoons, Salman Rushdie, and Theo Van Gogh)? Or that Jews do?   Whites will learn soon enough that the people replacing them have no regard for things like constitutional government or the First Amendment. Harvard, with the left’s typical lack of concern with facts, condemns Peretz—claiming that his statement is “the diametric opposite of what we in the Committee on Degrees in Social Studies stand for.”

Nevertheless, Peretz will be allowed to speak at the event and will return to Harvard to give a longer talk at some later date. No indication that Harvard will return the money in a fund for undergraduate research named after Peretz — probably because the money will be used to support the sort of left-oriented research that is de rigueur at universities these days and doubtless approved by Peretz: “the study of intercultural understanding, inequality, and social justice.”

I suspect that this sort of problem will become more and more common for American Jews and especially the organized Jewish community. On one hand they provide Israel with unconditional support — even though Israel and the Israel Lobby are attempting to re-organize the entire Muslim world to be subservient to Israel and ignore what’s going on with the Palestinians. On the other hand, they see their main problem in the US to be any peep of opposition by the traditional majority of the country to the vast transformations engulfing the country. Peretz’s New Republic is completely on board with mass immigration, multiculturalism, and the moral obligation of White people to become a minority in the country they built.

Another interesting example is the ADL. Their opposition to the Ground-Zero Muslim triumphalism was much denounced by liberals. Like Peretz, the ADL backs Israel unconditionally. The ADL also has no doubts at all about the proper role of Muslims in American society: to be part of the multicultural coalition aimed squarely at lessening the power of the White majority. So it’s not surprising that the ADL recently announced an “Interfaith Coalition on Mosques”—an ADL-led initiative which will “monitor incidents of mosque discrimination around the country, gather facts and analyze the information, and speak out when appropriate to help Muslim communities who are encountering prejudice.” As noted in the article, a prominent Muslim activist is publicly supporting it.

So at least some Muslims are quite happy to see the ADL leading the charge against the discomfort of the White majority at having yet another aggressive Middle Eastern religious group have a major impact on our culture. In the ideal Jewish world, American Muslims would become part of the anti-White alliance while ignoring the role of the Israel Lobby in getting America to agree to the dispossession of the Palestinians and to wage wars against Islam in the Middle East. I don’t think this will work in the long run. It’s certainly not working in Europe.

Christopher Donovan: Mental Illness and White Resistance

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Blogger Mark Nestmann expresses skepticism about the newly-minted psychiatric diagnosis of “oppositional defiant disorder“, noting that resisting authority isn’t necessarily a sign of mental illness.
 
Indeed, it’s not.  Opposing authority can be a sign of robust mental health.  Especially if that “authority,” as Whites find it today, is openly antagonistic to Whites’ group concerns and goals.
 
The expansion of such diagnoses is bad for Whites on several levels.  I have noticed, anecdotally, that those taking a White advocacy position are often dismissed as suffering from mental illness—a major project of the Frankfurt School and widely disseminated by the organized Jewish community.  Beyond the usual tactic of calling your political opponent nuts, the notion of “racism” as mental illness does have professional support. From the Washington Post story:

“They are delusional,” said Alvin F. Poussaint, a professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School, who has long advocated such a diagnosis. “They imagine people are going to do all kinds of bad things and hurt them, and feel they have to do something to protect themselves.”

Of course, crime statistics tend to support a view that Blacks will commit crimes against Whites.  I don’t expect Poussaint, who is Black, to be happy about that, which is why he takes the tack he does.

But clearly, an effective way to dispatch your opponent is to simply label him “crazy”, and I am confident that as White advocacy grows stronger, those hostile to Whites will employ this tactic more often.  When racially conscious Whites seek elective office or other positions of power, note how they’re treated.

I also nuture a belief that young boys — often, White — are “diagnosed” as having attention deficit disorder or other mental problems, when the reality is that their behavior is pretty normal.  It just doesn’t fit the current politics, which dictate that boys should be calm, polite and obedient, like girls.  If they’re unruly, give them medication and calm them down.  Bigger picture:  if you want to neuter the fighting instincts of a people you seek to dominate, drug their males into submission. 

Much of the rest of the White race is drugged up with anti-depressants and other mood changers, and I am very skeptical that much of this is needed.  It may not be directly true that our racial enemies are pumping us full of these drugs to dispossess us, but a more appropriately paranoid race of people would at least be on the lookout for such things, and resist.

Barbara Lerner Spectre: Jews play a "leading role" in promoting multiculturalism in Europe

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In the video below, Barbara Lerner Spectre, who runs a government-funded Jewish study group in Sweden, makes the following remarkable statement—remarkable because she does not attribute anti-Jewish attitudes to irrational prejudices or even Muslims who hate Israel. Instead she says that it’s because of the “leading role” played by Jews in the  movement  toward multiculturalism:

I think there is a resurgence of anti-Semitism because at this point in time Europe has not yet learned how to be multicultural. And I think we are going to be part of the throes of that transformation, which must take place. Europe is not going to be the monolithic societies they once were in the last century. Jews are going to be at the centre of that. It’s a huge transformation for Europe to make. They are now going into a multicultural mode and Jews will be resented because of our leading role. But without that leading role and without that transformation, Europe will not survive.


Her comment is an example of the  age-old Jewish self-concept of a “Light Unto the Nations”: Jews saving Europe by leading it to multiculturalism. One wonders why she thinks Europe could not survive as a set of monocultural societies. Israel and many other societies function quite well with a recognized dominant culture and people and, as repeatedly emphasized here, multicultural societies have a hosts of costs and no visible benefits. The better question, of course,  is how Europe can survive multiculturalism. By definition, it can’t.

The interview is part of a longer set of interviews available here.

Self-Deception and Guruism among Jews

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Life is really easy if you are in the business of refuting “anti-Semites” in the Mainstream Media. There is a ridiculously low standard for arguments and an easy confidence that contrary voices will not be heard.

Bret Stephens of the Wall Street Journal has a predictably vacuous column on the comments of Karel De Gucht–a topic previously discussed here. Mr. De Gucht stated, “Do not underestimate the Jewish lobby on Capitol Hill.” Stephens says that the comment dispenses with “the usual fine-grained, face-saving distinction about the difference between a ‘Jewish’ and an ‘Israel’ lobby.”

What makes it so easy for Stephens is that he doesn’t have to actually provide any data showing the relationship between Jews and the Israel Lobby. It’s enough to simply say that De Gucht failed to make the distinction to brand him an anti-Semite. Of course, it wouldn’t have mattered if he referred to the Israel Lobby when talking about “the grip [the Lobby] has on American politics—no matter whether it’s Republicans or Democrats.”  That too would doubtless cast him as an anti-Semite. Titling their book The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy certainly didn’t prevent John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt from being labeled anti-Semites.

Stephens uses the same tactic in dismissing De Gucht’s statement that “There is indeed a belief—it’s difficult to describe it otherwise—among most Jews that they are right. And it’s not so much whether these are religious Jews or not. Lay Jews also share the same belief that they are right. So it is not easy to have, even with moderate Jews, a rational discussion about what is actually happening in the Middle East.”

Stephens comments:

Here, then, was a case not of “criticism of Israel” or “anti-Zionism,” the usual sheets under which this sort of mentality hides. Mr. De Gucht’s target was Jews, the objects of his opprobrium their malign political influence and crippled mental reflexes. If this isn’t anti-Semitism, the term has no meaning.

Again, Stephens feels no need to actually discuss whether Jews tend to behave this way. The subject is out of bounds—automatically; nothing more than “anti-Semitism.”

Since Mr. De Gucht will not attempt to defend his comments (he has already profusely apologized for his indiscretion—rejected, of course, by Stephens), I’ll give it a try. Part of the issue is self-deception, as per my previous comments on De Gucht. We are all prone to self-serving biases. But in particular, people who are highly ethnocentric are prone to not seeing how their own ethnocentrism blinds them to rational discussion of anything related to their ethnic interests. One of the more laughable mainstays of neoconservative rhetoric is the assertion that, despite their easily-documented strong Jewish identification and their close ties to Israel, they really believe that their policy recommendations are in the interests of the United States—including the disastrous war in Iraq and the impending war with Iran. Anyone who has taken a course in Social Psychology 101 would be aware of how naive that is. But of course, that doesn’t prevent it from being asserted with absolute self-confidence by writers like Jacob Heilbrunn (see here, p. 16).

The title of Heilbrunn’s book is relevant to De Gucht’s comments: They Knew They Were Right. The other part of this syndrome is absolute confidence in their ideas–what one  might term ‘guruism’. Heilbrunn calls attention to the neocons’ penchant for “sweeping assertions and grandiose ideas” (p. 26). There is a towering self-confidence that is doubtless exaggerated by being within an echo chamber of like-minded others. I remember talking to an academic psychiatrist long before psychoanalysis became a chapter in Culture of Critique. As a biologically oriented psychiatrist, he was not a believer in psychoanalysis, but he said what struck him about psychoanalysts in their heyday was their absolute self-confidence and sense of superiority. They were completely immune to empirically-minded naysayers–of which there were plenty, even at the height of their power. Keep in mind that psychoanalysis is perhaps the greatest intellectual fraud of the 20th century–a set of beliefs that explained everything but had only the most tenuous connection to reality and an ideology that empirical research was for bean counters.

The same thought crossed my mind while reading Thirteen Bankers, by Simon Johnson and James Kwak. Near the heart of the financial meltdown was the towering self-confidence of Larry Summers, Robert Rubin and Alan Greenspan in opposing any regulation on the derivatives market. Summers seems to be pivotal. When Brooksley Born, head of the Commodities Futures Trading Commission, proposed that some thought should be given to regulation,  Summers reportedly said “I have thirteen bankers in my office, and they say if you go forward with this you will cause the worst financial crisis since World War II.” As Johnson and Kwak note (p. 9), we don’t actually know if there were any bankers in Summers’ office; “more likely he came to his own conclusion.” The point is that Summers had an unshakable faith that what he was saying was correct—a faith that was ominously unrelated to empirical reality. Nevertheless, Ms. Born was successfully pushed aside and ultimately a law was enacted  preventing any regulation of the derivatives market. It’s quite analogous to Freud’s total confidence in the Oedipal Complex as a core doctrine of psychoanalysis and expelling anyone who disagrees.

Self-deception is not the entire story here. More likely, it relates to the centrality of charismatic leadership among Jews—a theme of Culture of Critique and very apparent in the Bernie Madoff scandal: The rabbi guru surrounded by worshipful disciples. Madoff was “like a God” People around him “regarded Bernie like a messiah. He was spoken of as if godlike.” “He was received like visiting royalty, mysterious and unapproachable” (see John Graham and Kevin MacDonald, “Is the Madoff Scandal Paradigmatic?”) He was brilliant; a genius. Because of his financial wisdom, everything turned to gold. Naysayers were ignored, and Jewish naysayers were labeled anti-Semites for not believing in the wisdom of Bernie.

Of course, Madoff exploited this tendency toward hero worship  among Jews to his own advantage and defrauded others in the process. In the case of the imperial wars so confidently trumpeted by the neocons and in the case of the financial meltdown, the victims are the entire country. And the scary thing is that Summers is still running the economy.