Steve Sailer writes: From the annals of the Sapir-Whorf effect …
Libertarian writer Cathy Young, a sort of Ayn Rand Lite, is getting some mileage in the Daily Beast out of accusing Ann Coulter of anti-Semitism due to guilt by association:
Ann Coulter’s Anti-Semitism Runs Deeper Than You Know
The Trump cheerleader shares his habit of promoting ethnic nationalists and their ugly ideas.
Amusingly, Cathy preceded this with a blogpost last month about how horrible it is that anybody could suspect that Sabrina Rubin Erdely, author of Rolling Stone’s notorious “A Rape on Campus,” is a wee bit anti-Gentilic (not that Cathy could imagine such a word):
… Luke Ford’s blogpost, which speculates on whether or not I’m a “neocon,” contains a tidbit that led me to another interesting discovery. As an aside, Ford takes a jab at me for having written two Reason.com columns on the University of Virginia/Rolling Stone rape hoax “without mentioning Steve [Sailer] or Richard Bradley”: “Hard to say if she is just lazy or ignores the work of writers she doesn’t like.” Actually, both of those columns were reprints from RealClearPolitics.com; earlier, I had written two other RCP columns on the subject which did mention Bradley, a blogger and former magazine editor, and credit him for being first to raise questions about the credibility of the alleged fraternity gang rape victim, Jackie.
I’m not really sure why I should have credited Steve Sailer, who posted about the case on his Unz Review blog and then wrote about it for Taki Magazine but added nothing original. (In the magazine piece, Sailer claims that his November 29 blogpost drew attention to Bradley’s post, which had languished unnoticed since November 24. Reason‘s Robby Soave wrote about it on December 1. I don’t know if he was tipped off to Bradley’s post by Sailer or one of Sailer’s readers, but I can say that Robby and I were among several journalists privately discussing the problems with the Rolling Stone story by November 25.)
However! Ford’s mention of Sailer’s commentary on the UVA story reminded me of something I had forgotten: the Sailer acolytes in Bradley’s blog comments who tried to argue that Rolling Stone author Sabrina Rubin Erdely’s piece about rape culture at UVA, centered around Jackie’s story, had something to do with Erdely being Jewish. Apparently, she had some kind of Jewish agenda to destroy UVA because it’s too white, Christian, pretty and conservative, or something. (When another commenter pointed out that many of the journalists who helped debunk the hoax were also Jewish, the conspiracy nuts were undeterred: Of course the Jews will do that when their mischief is caught out!)
Okay, so these are just random commenters. But a December 3, 2014 post at VDARE by one of their prolific bloggers, Eugene Gant, highlighting Sailer’s Taki Magazine article, referred to Erdely as “militantly Jewish” (linking to an article about a Jewish day camp that briefly referenced Erdely as one of the parents) and “a hit thing for the Christophobic left” (because she had previously written a story, also of dubious veracity, about a boy’s sexual abuse by priests). The Occidental Observer ran a longer piece depicting the rape-hoax story as “ethnic warfare” born from Erdely’s “anti-White animus” (in the Alt-Right taxonomy, Jews are, of course, not “white”) and noting that some of her staunchest defenders were “Jewish female journalists.” Oh, and Luke Ford did a blogpost that referred to Erdely as an “proud Jew and anti-white fabulist” (with a headline calling her a “left-wing Jew with a history of Christian-bashing).
As for Sailer? Well, he didn’t exactly peddle this slimy nuttery himself, but he sure did pander to it. Check out this April 7, 2015 Sailer blogpost at VDARE titled “Sabrina Rubin Erdely’s Kristallnacht on Campus.” Its actual subject is the theme of broken glass in Erdely’s story (such as the glass table shattering during Jackie’s alleged rape) and actual broken glass at the fraternity named in the rape allegations, which was attacked by vandals throwing bottles and bricks through the windows in December 2014, shortly after the story’s publication.
If it weren’t for the obsession with Erdely’s Jewishness in certain quarters, I would have assumed that “Kristallnacht” was just a fancy metaphor. But was it actually a not-so-subtle reversal of an infamous attack on Jews in which a “militant Jew” becomes the perpetrator inflicting a Kristallnacht on gentiles? You decide.
Okay!
COMMENTS TO STEVE SAILER:
* Questions about the credibility of the storyteller (Jackie) arose later. What Steve and Bradley did, I believe, was raise questions about the credibility of the story, which was flatly unbelievable on its face.
* Yeah, aside from pioneering the exploration of the evolutionary strategies of both sides of the Jew/White Gentile conflict (A People That Shall Dwell Alone/What Makes Western Culture Unique), of the White Gentile group strategies developed to compete with Jews (Separation and Its Discontents), and of the the Jewish response to prevent the formation of White Gentile group strategies (The Culture of Critique) — and being essentially correct in all of this — what has he [Kevin MacDonald] done?
* I wonder if Cathy Young can accept that “anti-white animus” exists. Anywhere. Every time she approaches the idea she seems to reflexively dismiss it. Think harder, Cathy. Look around.
* Another day, another foray into the blogosphere wars of who is more racist than who and whose commenters are the bigger meanies. All while trying to passively dismiss any argument you as the author overlooked. Keep up the good fight, Cathy.
* I thought the allusion was particularly apt given not just actual the thuggery of the attack on the fraternity, but especially because of the official support for the prevailing narrative and the ineffectual investigation of the actual vandalism. It definitely had the whiff (there goes the world that leftists love to use anytime some black/homosexual/transgender person is lynched mythically somewhere) of Nazi-condoned thuggery or even Maoist Cultural Revolution.
As for anti-gentilism, anyone who has grown up with a large Jewish population as I have can serve as a witness to the prevailing sense of fear and contempt toward gentiles that many Jews seem to harbor (one that is much more freely discussed among Jews themselves). Even though I am not Jewish, I frequently heard disparaging remarks about non-Jews, especially white Catholics and Asians, from Jewish acquaintances and colleagues particularly while I was in academia. For some reason, people seem to feel very free about their thoughts around me, and would tell me their inner thoughts readily (this came in VERY HANDY when I used to work as an investigator).
Growing up, I used to have a highly positive view of Jews, but that began to change once I grew up and began to see beyond the propaganda (“Light unto nations”) and Holocaust victimology.
* I don’t think anyone is implying that ALL Jews hate Christians. The sentiment seems to me to be more about the double standard/hypocrisy now common in the media and mainstream popular culture – that the accusation of “anti-Semitism” is utilized frequently by Jews, true or not, but any critique of ant-gentilism by Jews is immediately denounced as anti-Semitism/racism/irrational and ignorant prejudice.
* The evidence for Coulter’s supposed antisemitism is extremely thin.
She never “touted” Radix, she retweeted a tweet that was anti-NRO that had a Radix hashtag, one of several.
I mean, it was not even a link, it was a retweet of a hashtag mention!
Radix site is certainly antisemitic, but honestly the various alt-right sites like Radix that post ambitious, boring, long-winded articles kind of blur together for me, and quite likely Ann as well.
The second retweet had nothing to do whatsoever with Jews, but a joke about how Hillary’s anti-Trump ad makes Trump look really good. If I had twitter I’d retweet it myself, it was funny! Is she supposed to do a background check on everyone she retweets?
Next is that Ann links to VDare, which in turns publishes Kevin MacDonald. Now I think VDare doing so is an idiotic mistake. The man says nothing worthwhile, and brings disrepute onto the site and its many fine authors. However, he’s one of dozens of authors, and they run maybe one thing a year from him on average. He’s not even in the top 50 or so authors there, and he is not listed on the main directory of authors.
Balance this thin evidence against the fact that Ann (1) is a strong supporter of Israel (2) retweets Mickey Kaus about 20 times more often than any supposed anti-semite (3) supports Trump and his objectively pro-jewish policies, and calling her anti-semitic is simply slander.
Finally, we have Ann affection for supposed anti-semite Steve. The evidence for this is a single quote, which is indeed pretty ugly and antisemitic:
“Or in the case of the wealthiest, most powerful group, they use their influence over the media to instill [insecurity] in their children and to depress, demoralize, and divide other groups` children.”
This and a sparse number of other flirtations with MacDonald-style antisemitism, if they were the main theme of Steve’s rather voluminous writing about Jews, could indeed justify the label. But they are not very typical at all. At most they show Steve is at times anti-semitism-curious. Is Ann supposed to boycott him now for that or else be guilty by association?
* Jews voluntarily living in Exile in other people’s lands, preaching multiculturalism there, while simultaneously championing Jewish hegemony in Israel, are fundamentally neurotic.
Cathy, like the vast majority of Exilic Jews, is neurotic.
It is so sad to see them twisted up in mental knots, torturing themselves, unwilling to live among their own people, yet always fearful living among gentiles.
Zionism + aliyah are the only cure. No more excuses, Cathy.
* As a non-Jew living in Israel, I can definitely attest that anti-Gentilism is “a thing”, although it’s not especially sophisticated here. I haven’t experienced very much myself, but I have a somewhat special status here and I also live in a heavily Anglo (American/British/South African) area where everything is a bit gentler.
You should know that, apart from the ultra-religious groups, anti-Gentilism is much more common among the Mizrahim here than among the Ashkenazi founders of the state. (The Ashkenazi founding elites have been pretty much swamped by relatively unsophisticated immigrants from the Middle East and the former Soviet Union — the smart ones got out earlier — over the past 68 years, although the Ashkenazi elites still keep the country going economically.)
Jewish immigrants are routinely quizzed about their Jewishness (even when they are clearly orthodox), while anyone who speaks Hebrew with a native accent is given a pass, even if they (like Ariel Sharon), have questionable Jewish background. An exception might be really unassimilated post-1991 Soviets, many of whom are well-known not to be Jewish according to the Rabbinate. But the assimilation pressures here are very strong — I’m not really sure if very Slavic-looking people (you do see them around) who speak Hebrew fluently are under suspicion.
* Good Lord, you people are a bunch of creeps. (Oh, and by the way… the so-called “racial” component of being Jewish is an ethnicity, not a race. “Whiteness” is not an ethnicity. And Israel recognizes black Ethiopian Jews as Jewish.
So, a white rich fraternity had to be inconvenienced for a bit. Boo fucking hoo.
* In situations like this, it’s always worthwhile to reverse the fact pattern and see how you would react. If your answer changes depending on whose ox is being gored, then you are probably acting out of bias or animus and not general principles.
So, imagine a black fraternity is accused of raping a woman. A well known right winger writes a story about it in a national magazine and provides lurid details about how the giant evil black men did the deed. (Forget that this would never happen in post-1964 America – perhaps it happened in 1952 but liberals remember this incident as if it happened yesterday). The outraged white students on campus march to the frat and break all their windows. The frat members, fearing lynching, have already escaped. Later it is revealed that it was all a hoax and that no one was raped.
Would you be telling us to move on or would this not be one of the great liberal cause celebres of all time? Are we not still talking about the “Scottsboro Boys” 85 years after the fact?
* I really dislike this kind of attempt at smear thru guilt by association – your cousin’s friend’s brother’s wife once posted an anti-Semitic comment on a blog, therefore you are an anti-Semite too.
That being said, I don’t think that people like Erdely act out of specific anti-gentile bias. Erdely doesn’t hate Christians in the same way that say Rev. Wright hates white people. Some of her best friends are gentiles. If she is not married to one already, then one of her children (if she has any) probably will be someday. What she hates are badwhites. All goodwhites, whether Jewish or Gentile, hate badwhites. Really religious Jews (whose religion is Judaism, not liberalism) don’t really care about badwhites one way or the other. The difference is this – if I go before Rev. Wright and renounce my whiteness, it won’t help – the taint is in the blood (Rachel Dolezal is the exception that proves the rule). But if I appear before Erdely and her bunch and announce that I have become a goodwhite, they will accept me as long as I adhere to the rules of goodwhitism.
* I honestly never really thought about Sabrina’s ethnicity much, because of the Hungarian last name, but it did seem clear on reading her article that she has hostility towards WASP’s. However, “Jewishness” itself has nothing to do with it; she’s no more anti-WASP than Camille Paglia, who is Italian Catholic. What’s going in Philadelphia, anyway?
– It’s interesting that people can imbibe prejudices when they are kids (“our people are so great, hey, let’s tell jokes about people who are not like us”) and then act like it’s something to be proud of and/or a central element of of their identity when they are middle aged (“I’ll never forget the time that black guy called me honky”). I thought that as you got older you were supposed to acquire some wisdom, which includes becoming a little bit less self-centered.
– There are family prejudices among Jews just as there are among other people (e.g., Sabrina, Camille). In that sense, yes, I’ve known some Jews who have made snarky comments about non-Jews, especially Palestinians and Svartzers, and I’ve known some non-Jews who have made nasty comments about Jews. I don’t think it’s a problem unless it becomes a guiding light to someone’s conduct and/or if such petty attitudes start determining how one live’s one’s life.
– Speaking of petty, claiming that anyone who criticizes Jews is doing so because they are racially jealous, particularly in the sexual domain, is really getting into the gutter.
– Cathy Young: There’s some merit to what she says. There are a lot of people who associate things they don’t like with Jews, and this is due to simplistic stereotypes. Carrying those stereotypes into a typological ideology (like McDonald) is I think a mistake, and a gratuitous one, not only because it encourages irrational feelings among non-Jews, but irrational feelings among Jews, as well.
– However, going around saying that someone is “flirting” with anti-semitism is tantamount to saying, “I really want to deliver a social death sentence to you, and call you an anti-semite, but I can’t, because your own words aren’t sufficient, so I will intimidate you by giving you this threat: if I can continue to find people who have any six degrees of separation from you who use bad words I will call you an anti-semite” which to ordinary people is going to be construed as bullying and a smear. If the shoe fits, wear it.
* I think Steve’s role in publicizing Richard Bradley’s early skepticism was very important, and furthermore, Steve’s analysis of literary and historical roots to the hoax, as well as the causal catfishing roots was miles ahead of everyone else.
* I like the Kristallnacht reference because the Jackie-Youth threw stones through the fraternity’s windows, shattering the glass. The analogy was:
* Nazis = Jackie-Youth
* Jewish synagogues and stores = Fraternity
———
I like also the pogrom reference. The analogy was:
* Gentile boy found dead right before Easter = Jackie did not get a weekend date
* Jewish village deserves to be attacked = Fraternity deserves to be attacked
———
Cathy Young seems to think that these analogies incite hostility toward Jews. I thought she was smarter than that.
Young grew up in Moscow, Russia. Her family was allowed to emigrate from there to the USA because the family is Jewish. Now she is spending her time and energy making bogus accusations of anti-Semitism against her fellow American citizens here. Her Jewish resentments are making her behave stupidly.
* Cantor’s sons were in the very same frat that was accused. Perhaps it was a hatchet job, designed to come out right before the election, “Congressman’s two sons in Rape Frat,” but Cantor lost the GOP primary in June.
Perhaps Erdely was not anti-Gentilic but anti-Cantor?
* Why do so many Jews change their names to things like “Young”, “Sanders” and “Stewart” that are clearly not Jewish? It’s almost as though in spite of their “achievements” Jews are ashamed to be seen as Jewish.
More to the point; regardless of how “libertarian” they might be pretending to be in the moment, have we not seen enough of the malice and destructiveness of Jewish feminism to know to completely ignore what a female Jewish writer has to say about anything? Any potential UVA rape hoax of the future can be avoided if everyone takes my sage advice.
* I used to think it would be possible to remain a patriot (of America) and a Jew at the same time. After all, there are American Catholics who are patriots of America and not Ireland or Italy or some other Catholic nation. For me personally, it’s never been difficult to do this at all. Of course I love America more than Israel. America is where my forefathers have lived for almost two centuries. Israel is nothing to me.
But Jewish activism in this country is burning every possible bridge with patriots, and I don’t really see how this gets walked back anymore. Due to this invidious rhetoric from my co-ethnics, I’m sadly coming to the conclusion that the only viable options for Jewish diaspora in America are complete assimilation (reject entirely Jewish identity and blend into Stale Pale America) or emigration. Split loyalty and “dual” loyalty are bogus ideas. As I learned from Sailer on this very blog, politics is primarily about Whose Side Are You On. Loyalty comes in a strict hierarchy and at some point each person is called upon to declare, stand, and deliver.
Any Jew who advocates open borders for their home country and ethnic preservation policies for Israel should be ostracized, silenced, or deported to Israel, in that order. The insanity has got to end.
For me personally, Jewish identity is nothing at all compared to White American identity. But after spending so much time in alt-right circles, I can’t deny that there’s really something to the Jewish ethnocentrism case. (With many notable exceptions. Many great men of the Right are Jewish or Jewish ethnicity.)
For me, I’ve given up on Jewish identity completely. It’s easy for me since I’m not a believer. My wife is a believing Christian, and my kids are coming up Christian. They won’t learn of my Jewish heritage until they are fully grown because I don’t want to open the door to childhood self-reimagining as a poor oppressed Jew. Nobody has it better than the Jews in this country. They have all the advantages of high status and few of the disadvantages of being Pale and Stale. The only dignified disposition of Jewish Americans towards the USA is gratitude and service.
* I used to enjoy the way Jewish writers would refute and argue with each other, dismissing others as maniacs not worth talking to. So for Jon Chait for example, Jonah Goldberg is, unfortunately, wrong but salvagable. While say Ramesh Ponnuru is a rabid wolverine that needs to be put down. Funny stuff.
* The Nazi accusations against the Jews included much sexual hysteria.
* The pimps were Jews who made Gentile women work as prostitutes.
* Jews raped Gentile women.
* Children born from sexual intercourse between Jewish men and Gentile women suffered from congenitally defiled blood.
Sabrina Rubin Erdely has tried to make a journalist career by inciting sexual hysteria against men. Her major targets have been a Roman Catholic priest and a university fraternity. Her accusatory articles are reckless. She essentially incited a pogrom against an innocent fraternity.
As a Jew, she ought to be more mindful about the consequences of inciting sexual hysteria against entire demographic groups of our society.
* Of course, this blog made many original contributions to the exposure of Jackie Coakley’s hoax.
To toot my own horn, I pointed out that, while a high-school student, Coakley was a teammate of a championship swimmer named Bailey Monahan in the YMCA Stingray Swimming Club in Stafford, Virginia. When Coakley enrolled at the University of Virginia, she used that high-school swimming-club experience to obtain a lifeguard job at the university’s swimming pool. Working there, she supposedly met the imaginary lifeguard named Haven Monahan.
* Cathy Young is in the awkward position of staking her career on pretending to fight SJWs while simultaneously staking her career on being one.
This could work only at a publication called “Reason”.
* But it’s not about Jews as “individuals”. It’s about the organized Jewish community. It’s irrelevant that not all Jews agree with the dogma and policies advocated by the organized community. The point is that the community has the resources and coordination to erect a false consciousness among gentiles and prevent the emergence of organized opposition.
Jews tend to prevail in these conflicts, despite their smaller numbers, when they are able to act as a group while we are not.
* My own experience at a 20% Jewish university would corroborate pretty much everything you say here.
I will however say that I managed to get a few Jewish friends out of undergrad. All of them are atheist/agnostic and we regularly enjoyed Christmas music and Irish bacon together (we can’t now because we live on opposite sides of an ocean, but we talk regularly). Two of them are sisters born in Montreal to an Anglo-Jewish father and a Jewish-American mother. Their father was raised Orthodox in north London (now a predominantly Paki area, much to his horror) and rejected religious practice in his young adulthood, becoming accustomed to the Brit “pub and grub” socializing.
Needless to say these folks are “off-the-circuit” with respect to their ethnic group and don’t find much in the way of useful connections from people “of the tribe.” They’re too irreverent to fit in with the religious crowd and their assimilationist affinity for Anglo/Christian culture as well as their disdain for Third World immigration and the LGBT agenda makes them pariahs with most of the “uppity” crowd.
* In your standard corporate non-white ethnic grievance, the basic remedy is to increase minority hiring at the organization and to appoint a gatekeeper such as ombudsman or diversity Commissar to rat out future incidents. But it would be unthinkable for an organization such as the RS to add “white” writers to police minorities so they keep a rigid defense and never admit even the slightest guilt. In fact how can there be anti-white hatred when whites don’t even exist?
* Is this another case of personal envy informing an ostensibly political attack? Coulter is a more accomplished author than is Young, and is also prettier than her, is more popular than her, and appears on TV more frequently than Young.
* “Are there political taboos surrounding race-related genetic cognitive and behavioral differences? Of course (and for very understandable reasons, given historical experience). The controversy around Wade’s 2014 book, “A Troublesome Inheritance,” demonstrates how sensitive the subject is. It is very likely this sensitivity has deterred legitimate inquiry. Some people who have waded into this minefield have also been, in my view, unfairly tarred as racists—such as Charles Murray, with whom I disagree on a number of things but whom I am honored to know.”
This Cathy Young quote leads me to believe that Cathy Young suspects that HBD is right on the facts.
* Cathy Young used to date John Fund, so you’ve got that whole WSJ/Open Borders/Bomb the Middle East connection.
* In all seriousness, in what sense are Jews in the US today more beleaguered than WASPs?
Are they more “marginalized” because they lack power? Because they have no influence? Because they are not accepted at the top echelons of any institution of significance? Because they lack economic prosperity? Because somebody, somewhere, is celebrating Christmas publicly?
So why is it, exactly, that anti-Semitism is considered an unspeakable evil, but open mocking and criticism of WASPs and what they stand for is completely acceptable? If WASPs are The Man, why aren’t Jews The Man?
When does the shelf-life of the relevance of historic and genuinely damaging acts of anti-Semitism in the US finally run out? How much more centrality and power must Jews achieve before they become the establishment, and may be treated as such?
Or does it never end?
* Thank you, Steve, for writing about anti-gentilism. Very few people realize it exists, and much of that lack of attention may indeed be due to the Sapir-Whorf effect.
When you don’t have a word or name for something, it is harder to think about and easy to miss. Anti-gentilism, or some similar term, should be used and used until it securely enters the lexicon.
My only doubt is whether or not this term is enough. The real problem is anti-white-gentilism or anti-gentilism directed at whites. Or at white men. You see how tricky this is?
We need a name for this. We know what it is: the subversion of us!
It might be best for us to adopt a victim’s stance. That seems to work for those who are subverting us. The more decimated we become, the easier this will be, but if we don’t turn things around now, we might never be able to.
* They won’t learn of my Jewish heritage until they are fully grown.
If you want your kids to spit on your grave, the best way is to hide something really big from them that they learn of when they are adults (extra points if they find out from someone else, which they will) and which rocks their world. Maybe one of your kids wants to be the grand wizard of the KKK – imagine when he finds out that he is really 1/2 Jewish himself. He’ll probably convert and become a rabbi just to spite you.
On the other hand, if you tell kids the most unimaginable things when they are little (“The Lubavitcher Rebbe was your grandfather”) it doesn’t bother them one bit because the world that they are presented with seems “normal” to them no matter how strange it is to anyone else.
I assume that you must not have any relationship with you parents, siblings or any other blood relatives? If you are going to keep this secret, it wouldn’t do to attend Cousin Eddie’s bar mitzvah.
To be a self hating anything, including a self-hating Jew, is a sad thing. Get some therapy and learn to be comfortable in your own skin.
* It’s funny, but, the Jews’ frequent refrain of “look how often we’re intermarrying” actually reveals their particularism. Whites don’t notice so-called “intermarriage” at all. It’s their norm. They don’t even think to bring it up, and they don’t track its frequency (and if they do it’s usually on Jews’ behalf!). That this is not so for Jews reveals that they’re concerned about it in a way that whites are not.
* What is telling is that in the linked piece she doesn’t really delve into the claims against Erdely, she just engages in uproar and concludes antisemitism – where antisemitism as used now completely coincides with Sobran’s definition that an antisemite is someone whom the jews hate, rather than someone who hates jews.
Erdely could have focused her piece on an allegation having taken place at her alma mater, the University of Pennsylvania (25% Jewish student body far outperforming their proportion of high achievers) and where she would have the lay of the land, or allegations against black athletes – she chose, instead, to focus her attentions on the Southern, gentile and white fraternity culture at Virginia. Her piece is riddled with expressions of Jewish anxieties and inferiorities – she feels the need to mention all of the blondes at Virginia in the piece, for example.
The standard Young seems to be holding out for accusations against Erdely clearly don’t apply to accusations against Erdely’s accusers. There seems to be this need to deny the existence of Jewish solidarity (as if Young’s piece doesn’t unwittingly stand as evidence of it) and group interests against all and copious evidence that these things exist. On the one hand she’s willing to attribute the passions and beliefs of villagers in rural Poland 300 years ago to all white gentiles, while categorically excluding the possibility that a well-healed, well-connected and powerful group with numerous ethnic advocacy organizations are pursuing a common interest.
* the boundaries of ‘white’ in America are notoriously ever-changing, but what makes the most sense is to say that Ashkenazi Jews are a white European ethnicity (like Italians or whatever), while Sephardic Jews are a North African ethnic group (I suspect North Africans will melt into ‘whites’ in the US and for the second generation already have, in that little distinction is noted unless someone is ostentatiously Muslim).
* Jews are a white ethnic group, same as the others. Like all ethnic groups, we share a particular history and customs, in this case a religion (although it’s not uncommon for religion to line up with ethnicity). I wouldn’t deny that the history of anti-semitism has led some (though hardly all) Jews to feel a particular kind of alienation from Christian ethnic groups, and that sometimes gets reflected in an eagerness to follow along with popular culture/political trends that demonize other groups. But there are certainly plenty of non-Jews that follow those ideologies as well, from their own particular kinds of alienation.
The line between anti-semitism and depictions of real ethnic/cultural differences comes when you posit Jews as some kind of collective conspiracy against the health of the wider society, rather than as people who are influenced by their own backgrounds as other people are.
* Cathy Young is not a “big name” author, columnist or talking head. Coulter has made millions of dollars on her books while Young has not written a published book since 1999. There is simply not a market for people like Young anymore. There are too many left-libertarians for her to be marketable. She sells her articles for around 100 dollars. Young had her “prime” ten years ago when criticism of radical feminism was considered to be “courageous” in the center-right mainstream. As always, Conservative Inc. lost and racial feminism won. Her piece has very little substance. Set aside all guilt by association her key argument goes;
1. Israel was founded by as an ethno-state and United States was not.
2. Israel is surrounded by hostile states (and hostile people) and United States is not
3. If Israel allowed Palestinian refugees to return or allowed massive immigration it would change the demographics and Israel.
4. Finland grants automatic citizenship to ethnic Finns in the Diasporas and limit immigration
Hence, ethno-nationalism is tolerable when practices by Israel but not United States. Coulter is anti-Semitic because she does not criticize Finland for their ethno-nationalism.
Young’s arguments are not solid;
1. United States was actually funded by as an ethno-state. The Naturalization Act of 1790 only allowed free white persons of good character to become citizens. In fact United States was more or less an ethno-state until 1965.
2. It may be true that Israel is surrounded by hostile states (and hostile people) but the same argument could be used by Americans who would argue that Latin-America is “hostile states”
3. In 1950 United States was close to 90 percent non-Hispanic white and 70 percent protestant. In 2010 about 63 percent of the US population is non-Hispanic white. Consequently, the American society has transformed from a fairly homogeneous society to a multiracial society. Although not contributed fully to immigration the Protestant population has dropped to 38 percent (2015). Israel was in 1950s more homogeneous than Israel is today.
4. Young claim that Finland grant citizenship based on ethnicity is actually not true. Her own link to Wikipedia does not even claim that. However, Germany do or rather did do so to Germans in Eastern Germany in very recent times. However, this does not contribute to the case that Coulter is Anti-Semitic. Coulter does not criticize Finland, Germany or Israel. She only claims that she wants the same for United States. The only one in this beef who actually present a double standard (based on faulty facts) is Cathy Young.
Anyway….
The reason why Cathy Young feels uncomfortable is that she does not like ethno-nationalism in other countries than Israel and she fears that United States is turning that way with the election of Trump – who implicitly appeals to it. If Young had been smarter she would take the position of Philip Weiss at Mondoweiss or journalist Max Blumenthal who rejects all ethno-nationalism. However, that wouldn’t go well with her employers and I guess ADL wouldn’t be happy about it. From her view her piece was unnecessary and did not successfully push her agenda because it was so bluntly hypocritical. Young does has a point that the Alternative-Right is growing and that civic-nationalism and populism may spill over until explicit ethno-nationalism. I have no doubt it will – but instead of accusing people for Anti-Semitism she ought to take a coherent position. Either she accepts being a minority (together with African-Americans, Indians and others) in a white US ethno-state (which is also fully possible in Israel) or she goes full Philip Weiss. It is up to her.
* In his “Making of the President” book for the 1980 Presidential election, “America in Search of Itself,” which I consider the best of the 5 book series (1960, 1964, 1968, 1972 and 1980 elections), Theodore H. White, summa cum laude graduate of Harvard College, a noted liberal, and a great friend of the Kennedys, described the 1965 Immigration Act as “the worst of the Great Society legislation” that would dramatically change America–and not for the better. Even he acknowledged that was a bold conclusion for a very liberal child of Russian Jewish immigrants to make.
* I’d say it’s more like an arms race in which Jews and goodgoyim vie for peak anti-badgoy status. But from an evolutionary POV, Jews are destined to be the winners of this battle.
* In my experience most Jews simply can’t grasp the concept of gentiles victimized by Jews. *A priori*, gentiles always have secure, unshakable power to oppress Jews; and Jews are always the struggling underdog and justified in taking any advantage against their opponents.
Showing evidence doesn’t make a difference. Erdley is Jewish; therefore by definition she is punching up.
* Can somebody please define anti-semitism?
I’m completely serious. From what I see (at least around here), it generally means pointing out things about Jews (or the Jewish community) that Jews would rather not have discussed. The actual merits of the comment are rarely discussed.
AndrewR’s assertion that “Any criticism of Jews is anti-semitism” seems to be correct – again, at least in these parts; however, I’m open to discussion. Why is AndrewR’s definition not correct?
Webster’s definition of anti-semitism is uses the words “hostility” and “hatred” toward Jews. Does criticism constitute hatred and/or hostility? If so, how is any discussion of any political topic possible? Or is that the point?
Basically, where the line between criticism and hatred? Also, if Group A is attacking my group, is it even wrong for me to be anti-Group A?
* Whites seem to me to have some kind of white tribal identity. They know perfectly well to hold one another to one, higher, racial standard, and other groups to another, lower one. E.g., whites will give one another crap over up-PC slip-ups waaay quicker than they’ll give blacks crap about equivalent slip-ups, if at all.
* Name calling doesn’t work. His theories answer questions about Jewish group behavior throughout history and their conflicts with various other cultures they live with. All with plausible explanations.
He may be wrong or right, but his theories aren’t bunk. They are merely falsifiable. Pinker is on the extreme end of rejecting them outright; most evolutionary dudes are cool to the idea of group selection, but not about to say it couldn’t be possible.
* Whites are treated as a group; it’s ridiculous to expect us to not react as a group. “White guilt,” “white privilege,” cis white males,” “the white race is the cancer of the world” — give me a break.
Further, Ethiopian Jews are treated like crap in Israel. See The tribulations of being an Ethiopian Jew, The plight of Ethiopian Jews in Israel, and Israel: No promised land for Ethiopian Jews. There are plenty more articles like that out there. Do a search.
* …this is not about “conspiracies”: this is about the fact that groups will tend to have similar goals, interests, and values, and thus are predictable in their actions, either affective or “rational.” For example, there is a tendency to make vast generalizations about black people on this blog, and about how predictable their actions, opinions, and so on will be. But no one would attribute this to a conspiracy among black people.
I’ve made it clear that vast generalizations about Jews are a waste of time and at minimum will aggrieve Jewish posters here: that’s why I call it unhelpful. But then, if we start labeling such things “anti-semitic”, next we will start calling things “racist”, then “homophobic”, then “misogynist”, then “transphobic” and by that time this blog will be indistinguishable from “The Atlantic”.
Let’s get back to the case. Is there some “thing” that connotes a hostility to “rich whites” or “WASPs” or “gentiles” or “goyim”? If there is such a thing. is there a particular strain of it that comes from Jews towards whites? I think the answer to both questions is affirmative, the problem is that just because some Jewish person (credibly, Sabrina) is hostile to preppy well to do whites. that doesn’t mean it applies to all or even a lot of Jews. But what I have read in this thread is Jews and non-Jews largely playing the dozens, reaching for ever more extreme group insults. Is this productive, or is it merely entertainment?
Is Cathy Young another person who fits the stereotype, that is, of a certain type of Jewish person who basically resents beautiful and privileged honkies? There are people like that. And to answer the question, I don’t know. I don’t think very highly of her anymore, however.
* Radix is not “anti-Semitic”, that most certainly isn’t their focus. An occasional article has some (((references))) but reminding readers of the disproportionate number of Jews in the media or government, which is normally why these are used, is not in itself anti-Semitic.
Your further point about degrees of anti-Semitism is really important. I’m Jewish and know people that:
1. Think Jews are disproportionately influential
2. Think they use that influence for their own gain
3. Think they also use that influence to attack their host societies
4. Think that all Jews should be exiled or exterminated as a result.
For me, only #4 is truly anti-Semitic. #1 and 2 are obvious, and #3 has enough of an empirical and theoretical basis that it needs to at least be taken seriously and debated, not dismissed as some kind of irrational primal hatred.
I also am beginning to wonder if we should start thinking in terms of “JewE,” that is, of a Jewish establishment that produces “official Jewish thought” that does not necessarily reflect how rank-and-file Jews think. JewE would be the AJC, the ADL, etc.
The question here is whether most Jews really support the ideas of JewE. Granted, a large number of them seem to support these ideas on the surface – but how many really believe in the foundational ideas, and how many just sort of go along for the same reason goodwhites in general do? (And of course, there are many who are opposed – Paul Gottfried, Nicholas Stix). If large numbers of Jews in Europe are supporting the “right-wing” parties, as I have heard they are, perhaps there is as large a gulf between JewE and rank-and-file Jews as between GOPe and rank-and-file Republicans.
* LF: Genocide is more natural than same-sex marriage. It has been done throughout history and throughout nature. When one type of moss wipes out another type of moss at a pond, it is a moss holocaust.
Slaughtering your enemies has often worked out well for the victors. It is primal but it is not irrational.
Most Israelis wish that all Palestinians would disappear. Most Palestinians wish the Jewish state would disappear along with most if not all of its Jews. These genocidal hatreds will persist until there’s a clear winner.
The American Indians were not going to lie down while whites took over the continent. One group had to wipe out the other before the killing could stop. That’s how the world works.
You don’t find two subspecies living together in the same place in nature. It’s not natural and normal for different human subspecies to live side by side in peace and tranquility. The normal thing is for one group to expel or wipe out the other. In the Torah, God commands Israel to wipe out the original inhabitants of Canaan.
* Can dual loyalty a problem? Perhaps. A case by case analysis might be useful. But there’s no question that any American who puts the interest of a foreign country ahead or even equal to the interests of the US can fairly be accused of dual loyalty. And this doesn’t just pertain to Jewish Americans and Israel: it could be applied to other citizens and other countries. For example, in the first decades of the 20th Century it was applied to many groups, particularly Germans and other central and southern Europeans.
* Mark Twain: “By his make and ways [the Jew] is substantially a foreigner wherever he may be, and even the angels dislike a foreigner. I am using this word foreigner in the German sense–stranger. . . . You [Jews] will always be by ways and habits and predilections substantially strangers–foreigners– wherever you are, and that will probably keep the race prejudice against you alive.”
