Kevin MacDonald

Tag Archive for: Kevin MacDonald

Edmund Connelly’s "Goyland"

/19 Comments/in , /by

Edmund Connelly’s current TOO article “Goyland: Where the Wild Things Are” gets at an important aspect of Jewish psychology — the bunker mentality of imminent threat. The next Holocaust is always just around the corner. They see their own history in the West as one long vale of tears, beginning with the Romans sacking Jerusalem and destroying the temple, then suffering at the hands of Christian fanatics in the Middle Ages, then being accused of acting as a state within a state in emerging European nations, then the evil Czar, and then Hitler. (A good recent example of this mindset is Norman Podhoretz’s Why are Jews Liberals?) As Connelly notes, Jewish life in the Middle Ages was far better than the great majority of people, and this has generally been true throughout Jewish history. And they never consider the possibility that their own behavior has anything to do with whatever bad things happen to them.

Psychologically, these traits show that Jews are on the extreme high end of ethnocentrism — what I have termed Jewish hyper-ethnocentrism. We all have this trait, but there are individual differences in ethnocentrism, and Jews are at the extreme high end. Ethnocentric people see the world in terms of ingroups (morally upright, possessed of positive traits; always the innocent victim, never the perpetrator) and outgroups (evil, merciless, sub-human, always the aggressor). Every affront to the group is exaggerated. There is a sense of imminent danger from the evil outgroup. In the words of a Jewish writer, “Wherever we look, we see nothing but impending Jewish destruction. ”

This hyper-ethnocentrism is the most important aspect of Jewish psychology, leading them to be aggressive against their perceived enemies. As discussed in the above-referrenced article, in their minds, any criticism of Jews becomes a warrant for genocide. “Criticism of Jews indicates dislike of Jews; this leads to hostility toward Jews, which leads to Hitler and eventually to mass murder. Therefore all criticism of Jews must be suppressed. With this sort of logic, it is easy to dismiss arguments about Palestinian rights on the West Bank and Gaza because ‘the survival of Israel  is at stake.'”   Any sort of exclusionary thinking [such as opposing immigration of non-Whites] leads inexorably to a Holocaust. Recently several New York State legislators favoring same-sex marriage argued on the basis of their relatives being murdered in the Holocaust.

This hyper-ethnocentrism is a large part of why Jews are such formidable opponents. And it also implies that rational arguments are not going to be effective in swaying Jewish opinion. From their point of view, it’s a matter of survival.

Bookmark and Share

The Ilya Somin Conspiracy

/7 Comments/in , , , /by

Ilya Somin’s blog at the Volokh Conspiracy, “Confusing Overrepresentation with Domination” raises some interesting issues that are at the heart of my work. His purpose is to claim that Jews may be overrepresented in various movements, such as neoconservatism, without Jews dominating these movements. He also claims that Jews involved in various movements do not differ from non-Jews involved in these movements, so that the idea that Jews involved in these movements are pursuing Jewish interests is a non-starter. For example:

In the 1920s, Jews were indeed overrepresented (relative to their percentage of the general population) among both Bolshevik leaders and international capitalists [in Weimar Germany]. At the same time, non-Jews still greatly outnumbered Jews in both groups. A closely related fallacy was the assumption that overrepresentation in a field proved that the Jews involved in it were using it to promote some specifically Jewish interest. In reality, Jewish capitalists tended to behave much like gentile ones, focusing primarily on maximizing their profits. Jewish communists such as Leon Trotsky were brutal totalitarians. But their gentile counterparts, such as Lenin and Stalin, were much the same. There was no real evidence that either Jewish capitalists or Jewish communists were promoting specifically Jewish interests in any systematic way. Indeed, Jewish communists in the USSR actually supported the regime’s suppression of Jewish culture and religion.

I don’t dispute this argument when it comes to capitalists, although there is good evidence that the political attitudes of Jewish capitalists were not interchangeable with non-Jewish capitalists — the  latter more inclined to liberal internationalism than their non-Jewish counterparts. But when it comes to leftist politics, one must deal with the data in Chapter 3 of The Culture of Critique — that Jewish Bolsheviks retained a Jewish identity and saw Communism as good for Jews — as indeed it was. As Yuri Slezkine exhaustively describes, Jews became an elite in the USSR, their influence declining only after WWII. As I concluded in CofC, “Clearly, Jews perceived communism as good for Jews: It was a movement that did not threaten Jewish group continuity, and it held the promise of power and influence for Jews and the end of state-sponsored anti-Semitism.”

Responding to Somin’s point about the suppression of Jewish culture and religion, I also show that Jewish communist activists produced a secular Jewish culture within the communist system, concluding:

Despite their complete lack of identification with Judaism as a religion and despite their battles against some of the more salient signs of Jewish group separatism, membership in the Soviet Communist Party by these Jewish activists was not incompatible with developing mechanisms designed to ensure Jewish group continuity as a secular entity. In the event, apart from the offspring of interethnic marriages, very few Jews lost their Jewish identity during the entire Soviet era (Gitelman 1991, 5), and the post–World War II years saw a powerful strengthening of Jewish culture and Zionism in the Soviet Union.

Somin goes on to dispute the importance of Jewish identity in the neoconservative movement (Mearsheimer and Walt to the contrary) and the recent financial crisis. Again, I don’t  want to dispute this with respect to the financial crisis because I have not seen a good article showing differences between Jews and non-Jews in the financial industry. (On the other hand, there is evidence, soon to be presented in TOO, that Bernie Madoff’s scheme likely could not have happened apart from his Jewish connections.)

But in the case of neocons, it’s simply not enough to claim “that the views of Jewish neoconservatives differ little from those of gentile ones, that neocon hawkishness on the Arab-Israeli conflict is just one facet of their hawkishness on other foreign policy issues unrelated to Israel (and therefore not likely to be a specifically Jewish agenda), and that the overrepresentation of Jews among neocons is similar to that in many other intellectual movements (including plenty that were opposed to neoconservatism on most issues).”

I agree that non-Jewish neocons typically hold the same views as Jewish neocons (otherwise they wouldn’t be neocons!). The question is whether Jewish and non-Jewish neocons have different motivations, and there is overwhelming evidence that they do. In my article on neocons, it quite clear that Jewish neocons typically have close family connections to Israel (e.g., Douglas Feith’s father was a member of a Jabotinskyist terrorist group), are involved with Israeli think tanks, and are on personal terms with Israeli political and military leaders. Many have ties with Jewish activist organizations such as the Zionist Organization of America. Several have been credibly charged with spying on behalf of Israel (Richard Perle, Paul Wolfowitz, Stephen Bryen, Douglas Feith, and Michael Ledeen). When not working in the government, they often work for overtly pro-Israel organizations such as the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. It’s simply not credible that their Jewish identity is not a critical factor in explaining their behavior.

I also try to fathom the motives of non-Jews involved in neoconservatism, noting “Because neoconservative Jews constitute a tiny percentage of the electorate, they need to make alliances with non-Jews whose perceived interests dovetail with theirs. Non-Jews have a variety of reasons for being associated with Jewish interests, including career advancement, close personal relationships or admiration for individual Jews, and deeply held personal convictions.” But whatever these motives are, they are not the same as the motives of the Jewish neocons.

It’s also true that Jewish neocons are generally hawkish, but this certainly doesn’t imply that their attitudes about anything affecting Israel are not affected by their Jewish identifications. Again, neocons have to make alliances with non-Jews; one  way to do this is to adopt a generally aggressive foreign policy stance that appeals to non-Jewish foreign policy hawks. Further, hawkish Jewish interests extend beyond directly aiding Israel. For example, the role of neocon Jews in the Cold War fit well not only Jewish interests in weaking an ally of the Arabs, but also with improving the status of Jews in the USSR.

And finally, it doesn’t follow from the fact that Jewish neocons are motivated by their attachment to Israel that Jews who are opposed to neoconservatism are not motivated by their own conception of Jewish interests. In the same way, before the establishment of Israel there was real debate within the Jewish community over whether Zionism was a good idea. The point is that both factions in the debate viewed their perspective as better for Jews. Right now we have the conflict between AIPAC and J Street. (Granted, the conflict may be more apparent than real). But in any case, both sides see their perspective as good for Jews.  Even Mearsheimer and Walt argue that their approach to Israel policy is good for the Jews. But M&W are surely correct in seeing Jewish neocons as motivated by their perception of Jewish interests.

Bookmark and Share

Wilhelm Marr’s The Victory of Judaism over Germanism: Viewed from a Nonreligious Point of View

/30 Comments/in , , /by

I decided to mention current TOO articles in the blog as a general policy, thereby facilitating discussion in this forum. I just posted an article based on a recent English translation of the 1879 edition of Wilhelm Marr’s  The Victory of Judaism over Germanism: Viewed from a Nonreligious Point of View. My article attempts to hit the high points of Marr’s presentation, with a bit of commentary thrown in. Marr’s pamphlet is a provocative and prophetic read.

Wilhelm Marr

Bookmark and Share

Avatar: Anti-White or Anti-American?

/11 Comments/in , , /by

As Joe Webb’s review makes clear, Avatar is an anti-White movie. Today’s LA Times article by Patrick Goldstein (“Avatar: Why do conservatives hate the most popular movie in years?”) shows that the movie has been panned by conservatives. But of course no mainstream conservative could actually label the movie “anti-White.” That’s simply not an aproved part of the lexicon because mainstream conservatives must be completely blind to race. Conflicts must be phrased in terms of American citizenship or conservative values, but not as Whites versus non-Whites, even when (as in Avatar and in the real world)  racial conflict is staring them in the face. Instead, it’s “anti-American.”

Big Hollywood’s John Nolte, one of my favorite outspoken right-wing film essayists, blasted the film, calling it “a sanctimonious thud of a movie so infested with one-dimensional characters and PC cliches that not a single plot turn, large or small, surprises…. Think of ‘Avatar’ as ‘Death Wish’ for leftists, a simplistic, revisionist revenge fantasy where if you freakin’ hate the bad guys (America) you’re able to forgive the by-the-numbers predictability of it all.”

John Podhoretz, the Weekly Standard’s film critic, called the film “blitheringly stupid; indeed, it’s among the dumbest movies I’ve ever seen.” He goes on to say: “You’re going to hear a lot over the next couple of weeks about the movie’s politics — about how it’s a Green epic about despoiling the environment, and an attack on the war in Iraq…. The conclusion does ask the audience to root for the defeat of American soldiers at the hands of an insurgency. So it is a deep expression of anti-Americanism — kind of. The thing is, one would be giving Jim Cameron too much credit to take ‘Avatar’ — with its … hatred of the military and American institutions and the notion that to be human is just way uncool — at all seriously as a political document. It’s more interesting as an example of how deeply rooted these standard issue counterculture cliches in Hollywood have become by now.”

As the article makes clear, conservative viewers have flocked to the movie because of the spectacle, not the politics. Goldstein points out that Avatar reflects long held Hollywood values, emphasizing opposition to religion and the military as well as pro-environmentalism. But of course he does not mention Hollywood’s anti-White values as documented by Edmund Connelly: Reel bad WASPs; Reel bad whites — values that reflect the strong Jewish influence in Hollywood.

Cameron is not Jewish. I don’t  know where his leftist attitudes come from, but there’s no question that they sell well at the box office. He may well have figured that non-Whites would love to see bad White guys defeated by non-Whites. (James Cameron’s movie has already grossed over $1 billion, 2/3 of it from foreign countries.) And of course Whites don’t mind seeing themselves defeated as long as they have fun doing it. After all, most Whites are used to seeing themselves as the bad guy (see links to Connnelly above) and have internalized that attitude. It’s money in the bank.

Bookmark and Share

 

Charles Dodgson’s "Get Smart! and Birth of a Nation: Lessons for White Cultural Emancipation"

/6 Comments/in , , , , , /by

I hope people get a chance to read Charles Dodgson’s latest TOO article. The critical take-home point is the power of the media in shaping attitudes. The Birth of a Nation of 1915 was a powerful call to White racial awareness and defense. Right now, there is a huge amount of anger among Whites in America, but it will probably be channeled within politically acceptable boundaries —boundaries in which White racial consciousness and the need for racial defense will remain beyond the pale of acceptable political discourse. Hence the  energetic attempts at containment by organizations like the ADL and the $PLC aimed at completely cleansing the mainstream media of anything remotely likely to legitimize White racial consciousness and defense (even Glenn Beck).  As Dodgson notes, “White Americans will continue to lose the culture war — and their freedom and identity — until they retake the commanding heights of mass entertainment and guard that position with the same determination with which their forebears defended the nation’s physical borders.”

Stephen Pollard on the English Defense League

/29 Comments/in , , , , , /by

The TOO article on right-wing culturism reminds us once again that race and ethnicity are the true bogeymen of political discourse in the West. Stephen Pollard’s statement is particularly striking: “Mainstream Islam …  is no more of a threat to Western society than the Quakers.”

This is nothing more than a gratuitous wave-of-the-hand gesture aimed at preempting all debate. No need to discuss whether a predominately Muslim England would compromise the interests of native Brits, whether it would lead to a society hopelessly fractured along ethnic and cultural lines, increased social alienation, chronic friction and jockeying for position by the different groups, etc.

According to Pollard, who is the editor of The Jewish Chronicle, England’s leading Jewish publication, anti-Muslim groups like the English Defense League “are racists who would expunge all who do not fit their supposedly native White Anglo-Saxon Protestant definition of English society.”

“Supposedly native”? No one has a problem identifying indigenous peoples in any other culture in the world. No one would talk about the “supposedly native” Koreans or the “supposedly native” Native Americans. What is it about White people that they can’t be indigenous–even in Europe where they have existed for thousands of years? The mindset that questions whether Whites can be indigenous is the same mindset that questions the reality of race and ethnicity as biological realities — while nevertheless behaving as an ethnic activist within his ethnic group.

What animates someone like Pollard is a fear of any expression of White solidarity. The EDL is clearly doing its best to fit into the politically correct zeitgeist. It admits Blacks and it has shown no hostility toward Jews or Hindus. It’s pro-Israel stance is clearly an attempt to ingratiate itself with the powers that be — to no avail. The politically correct posturings of the EDL are not enough for Jewish activists like Pollard. The ideology of Western suicide is that Whites — and no one else, least of all Jews among whom the idea of Israel as a Jewish state is sacrosanct — must give up any attempt to defend themselves or their culture.

Pollard’s article is another example of how the organized Jewish community is attempting to manage White rage at their dispossession. As I noted previously in a comment on the American context, Jewish interests may suffer with the influx of masses of Muslims and other groups who are hostile to Israel or do not have any history of philo-Semitism. Nevertheless, Jews overwhelmingly continue to favor mass immigration because they “may well have a reasonable fear that any movement to restrict immigration is bound to bring White racial consciousness to the fore.”

Similarly, the image of all those White people in the EDL protesting against Islam (even with a sprinkling of Blacks and waving Israeli flags) is troubling for Jews because such White people are not far from adopting an explicitly White racialist viewpoint.  And when they do, they may well see that  historically the organized Jewish community has indeed been a major force acting against White people and their interests.  Based on its historical experience in Europe, what Jews fear most is a culturally and ethnically homogeneous White society with a confident sense of its identity and its interests.

The strategy is to continue to suppress and demonize any expression of  White solidarity and opposition to White dispossession — even by organizations like the EDL who do everthing they can to ingratiate themselves with Jews.

So far it’s working. But the game is far from over.

Bookmark and Share

Navigating the Racial Landscape

/74 Comments/in , /by

It’s depressing to read the continual barrage of racial propaganda in the mainstream media.  A December 28 LA Times’ op-ed, “The dark side of white,” by Gregory Rodriguez is a wonderful example of intellectual confusion and ethnic special pleading. He writes, “Oh sure, some dim-witted people thought [race] was a rigidly scientific category. But for the most part, the evolving definitions and elastic boundaries were subject to cultural bias and, let’s face it, whim and subjectivity.”

Races are descent groups. It couldn’t be more obvious or more rooted in the modern science of population genetics. Of course, there is a biological reality to race as even a brief glance at a diagram like the following shows.

Race exists as a biological reality and, as Frank Salter reminds us, race constitutes an important storehouse of genetic interests for all humans. The number of races is not set in stone but is a more a matter of where one wants to draw lines. The figure results in seven different racial groups, but one could easily combine some groups together and get a lower number.

Biological descent is not the whole story, but I suspect that Rodriguez is well aware that the cultural components of race are far more than “whim and subjectivity.” To a large extent cultural influences result from conflicts of perceived interest and political infighting, and multiculturalists like Rodriguez are experts at this game.  Indeed, the #1 way that culture influences our concept of race is the denial by the political left that there is any biological basis for race at all.

As noted in a previous blog, by using our rational faculties (what psychologists label ‘explicit processing’), we can decide how to carve up the racial landscape to best suit our political and genetic interests. A good example is in crime statistics where “Hispanic” is considered as a victim category for “hate crimes” but not considered a category of offender.  Another example is provided by Rodriguez: An Arab American leader complains “because we are not treated as white in society and by the government, but we also don’t qualify as minorities to get the benefits of some programs.” There are obvious benefits for being in an official victim category.

Rodriguez notes that the 2010 census will not have ethnic breakdowns for Whites — a tribute to the genetic and cultural assimilation among the pre-1965 White population. On the other hand, Latinos and Asians will have sub-categories (Mexican-American, Cuban; Chinese, Japanese). He then worries that “we as a nation care less about the many ethnic groups that helped build this country than the divisive racial categories that have generally served to divide it. … As the concept of ethnicity vanishes into whiteness, society’s alienation abounds.”

In Rodriguez’s ideal world, there would be no category of ‘White” at all—the peoples that now make up the category of White would remain separate — German-Americans, Italian-Americans, etc.

But it’s too late for all that: America has indeed been a melting pot for the various European ethnicities and there’s no going back. Getting rid of the category of White would be a great strategy for Rodriguez and his people but would be a poor strategy for Whites:  For a European-American, it makes much more sense to identify with others who can trace their ancestry back to Europe before 1492, but quite possibly excluding Jews given the unusually long history of hostility and mistrust between Jews and Europeans and  because most of their genetic background derives from the Middle East.  We may not want to include Arab Americans because of the genetic distance and because their voting patterns are not similar to those of European Americans.

Rodriguez would love it if Whites identified themselves only as Scottish Americans or Italian-Americans because these relatively small groups have much less political potential in multicultural America than the category of White or European-American.

When push comes to shove in the US — and push will come to shove, it will indeed be Whites versus the non-White racial and ethnic minorities. We have already traveled a long way down this road, with 90% of Republican votes coming from Whites and an average of around 80% of non-Whites voting Democrat. The gulf will only become more obvious as time goes on. (Incidentally, including groups like Jews and Arabs in the White category functions to blunt perceptions of the racial divide in American politics because these groups are far more likely to vote with the multi-cultural Democrat coalition than people whose ancestry derives from Christian Europe.)

The concept of race is not set in stone. How we behave on the basis of this information is not at all determined by the genetic data. We Europeans must define ourselves in a way that makes strategic sense. And we have to make explicit assertions of racial identity and explicit assertions of our racial interests. No other strategy will succeed in staving off the dispossession of European America.