It’s a little too simplistic to say that Europe’s Jews should just move to Israel and be done with it. For one thing, Israel has finite space and resources and extreme politics of its own. More important, Jews can’t abandon Europe. Its cosmopolitanism is part of who Jews are, and Jews contribute to its identity.
Europe’s Jews are proudly part of the fabric of Western plurality and liberalism. Not only should they resist being political tools for the extreme right, they should also be against any agenda that seeks to turn back the clock on multiculturalism, and oppose anyone who uses violence as a means to marginalize minority groups.
Strangely, the Jewish state favors its majority population. Why should not gentile states have the same privilege of favoring the majority over minorities?
Torah texts are strangely silent about the beauties of multiculturalism.
It seems like people such as Ari Paul want to reserve the beauties of cohesion and unity and nationalism for Jews but deny these gifts to gentiles.
Posted inEurope, Jews|Comments Off on Forward: After Brexit, Europe’s Right Wing Will Try To Woo Jews. Resist!
Rabbi Jason S. Rosner writes: “How did this happen? The tropes should sound very familiar in the United States. Xenophobia, racism, protectionism, a failing rural economy with high levels of wealth inequality. Generational divides in wealth and success here in Britain are some of the highest in the world. Ultimately, all these factors led to a rise in far-right-wing politics and a rage-vote of no confidence in the EU.”
“We must not allow hatred, fear, and xenophobia to govern the democratic process. Here in London the fear is the Syrian refugees and Muslim ‘terrorist’ migrants (if you want to know what this looks like, google “the Jungle” in Calais). As Jews, the echoes should be obvious: a group of people fleeing an oppressive government, camped on one side of a narrow strait of water looking for a way to get across to safety. If the Biblical echoes aren’t enough, we only need to reach back a few decades to see our own people fleeing from Iran, Ethiopia, and Poland.”
The rabbi does not say anything about Israel having a moral obligation to absorb people who hate it. Only gentile countries must swallow this poison.
Comments posted at the Jewish Journal:
* The Brexit movement started well before the recent influx of refugees. Probably the biggest problem with the EU in recent years has been the growth of EU bureaucracy and the general view that it has been becoming more self-serving than really useful. Add to that the genuine incompetence and lack of courage on the part of political leaders and the stress from the wave of refugees and other migrants who refuse to assimilate into European cultuer, and you naturally get an explosive mixture. Sound familiar?
There is nothing xenophobic about insisting that immigrants play by the rules. Contrary to the ranting in the mainstream media, Trump and the Republicans are not calling for a ban on all immigration, not even Muslim immigration. We are calling for immigration by the rules and that the rules be adjusted to promote the interests of the USA by encouraging immigration of productive folks while discouraging those who want to get the free goodies. We also do not want people coming to the USA who favor ridiculous, totalitarian systems such as Sharia. What’s wrong with that??!! We have had laws for generations which are intended to keep supporters of totalitarian systems such as fascists and communists out of the USA. Sharia is just as rabidly totalitarian as national socialism, and supporters of Sharia have just as little right to be in the USA as Nazis.
* This attack on the majority of British people who voted for Briexit reflects the hubris of the elites who sneer at the common people: those who have to bear the consequences of the elites’ narcissism, mandatory deculturation policies and social engineering. Indeed, it is clear that this charactistation of them as fascists and sub human was a significant factor in the revolt. They cherish freedom and sovereignty over the class interests of the ‘progressives’ and predations of commercial capitalism.
* What a fool! His self image as a caring, intellectually superior teacher is delusional and dangerous. He is anti-democratic and blithely dismisses the majority view. His borderless prescription is just what our dear Israel needs. Fewer reform Rabbis like this and more common sense must prevail.
* How can you blame those who wanted to leave the EU? As the above Rabbi said the inequality of the populace is one reason but as I see it the real reason is that Britain had no control over immigration.
As such they feared the onslaught of the Muslim immigration and the push towards Sharia law in Britain. Also the same fear of Isis agents infiltrating the refugees. In my opinion that was the real reason for the leaving of the EU. Whether we like it or not that is their wish and it seems to transend everything else.
As one who listened to the Blitzkrieg of Poland in 1939 and witnessed the entire war and horrendous actions of the Nazi’s and now Isis, I can understand the older people’s fears. The Younger people were not alive at the time and they can’t relate to what was happening during the 2nd World War. Because of that they are more accepting.
Its not racism that caused the resulting vote it was realism from those who lived through the war and immediately after.
There is a big difference between putting your hand on a hot burner and telling about the pain resulting from it.
* Stop with the ‘immigrant’ issue; it wasn’t the major reason for voting Leave. People of the UK want to take back rule of their country and not leave it to bureaucrats ruling from Brussels, imposing strangling rules on them. And how many of those Jewish immigrants included possible terrorists?
Posted inBrexit|Comments Off on JJ: On Brexit, a view from an American rabbi in London
There’s been a profound cultural shift in the wake of the Paris attacks which has led many in the West to question whether or not Islam is fundamentally compatible with their civilization. The question is valid–the Paris attackers were all citizens of France or Belgium and likely incubated in French banlieues, which comprise de facto Islamic colonies on French soil.
Imagine the detailed and expansive logistical planning required to execute the French attacks. A network from Syria to France had to exist: automatic weapons had to be acquired and smuggled into the country, ammunition had to be stored, bombs had to be made in a lab in France or elsewhere, personnel had to travel from Europe to Syria and back again. Communications had to be made under the nose of French surveillance.
In the run-up to the suicide operation, the attackers had to walk past neighbors, speak with shopkeepers, old classmates, members of their mosque, and various others in their community on a daily basis. They had kin, wives, and friends local to the area as well. That such a savage and sophisticated attack could emanate just miles away from downtown Paris suggests that there is indeed an enormous social problem beginning to bubble up in Europe and the rest of the Western world vis-a-vis the Muslim population….
What this demonstrates is that there is a sentiment in the French Muslim community that is radically anti-Western and, even if it is not being openly acknowledged, there is now a concomitant and rapid growth of suspicion and hostility towards all Islamic communities across the West.
Shortly after the attacks, a football match was played in Turkey where a ceremonial “moment of silence” was to be held in honor of the French victims before kickoff. The Turkish crowd booed and jeered throughout the procession. This wasn’t surprising to me, but I remember reading comments of many shocked Westerners on social media who couldn’t believe the insensitivity of the Turks. This anecdote is tangentially related to the fact that there is now considerable anti-Western sentiment commonplace in the Muslim world…
I recently attended a Trump rally in Grand Rapids, Michigan. I’ve had an on-and-off interest in Trump since he announced his candidacy. What he’s espousing is essentially what’s been advocated among the “alternative right” for a while now.
If you don’t know, the alt right is an amalgamation of conservatives, traditionalists, and fascists. They comprise what is an internet-based bloc of people who, before Trump, were at the fringes of mainstream politics in the West. Now they are very much a part of the action, much to the horror of roughly half of America and most of the world.
Trump interests me because he represents, at least in the abstract, the contours of a leader who will absolutely create an industrious, confident, powerful America that I want to live in. He believes that the middle class is the engine of America’s economic might. His platform on the Middle East is sound: an end to regime change, support Putin in his destruction of Sunni Jihadists in Syria, no foreign policy centered around Israel–all practical ideas that demonstrate he’s (probably) not going to make the idiotic mistakes of past presidents.
However, his stance on Muslims in the West places a bright red target on me. The lack of nuance to his approach to Islam signals that I would not be “in” on the Trump America–that is, a White Christian America.
As a Levantine from a Muslim upbringing, it would be idiotic–even dangerous–to count on my being accepted by a quasi-fascist White American bloc. For the most part, I don’t want to belong to it either.
Thus, I am in the position where the movement I align with in the ideological abstract is hostile to me on the basis of my inherited, inextricable identity, and the people on the Left who would otherwise accept me on the basis of “ethnic diversity” outright repulse me. I went to the Trump rally unaware of the breadth of this fissure in my identity. Also, more practically, it was free of charge and only about 40 minutes away.
When I got to the stadium where The Donald was set to speak, it was packed with a live, energetic atmosphere. The capacity of the venue was 10,000 and it was brimming with people a couple of hours before Trump would even appear on stage. The Secret Service, who I found out are far more friendly than the TSA, were stationed everywhere in their white and black uniforms. I arrived an hour and a half early, but seating was already gone by the time I’d gone through security (no, I was not subjected to a special search), so I’d been relegated to the standing section next to the podium where Trump would be speaking. The upside was that I was about ten feet away from the man the whole time, which was pretty cool.
As you might have expected, the gathering was virtually 100% white, middle class folks. Did I get any nasty glances? No. Did I feel unwelcome? Nope. Just another face in the crowd, really.
Before the man himself came onto the stage, there was the Pledge of Allegiance. I’ve hated this pledge since a young age. Growing up during the War On Terror where I was regaled day in, day out, with news reports of Arabs being butchered by the truckload by the American war machine, I developed an ingrained enmity towards the American nationalism in whose name the slaughter was performed. At a very tribal, instinctual level, I cannot salute the American flag without being disgusted with myself deep down. This will never change and, yes, I realize that admitting this publicly affirms, perhaps even vindicates, Trump’s stance on Muslims.
He was a rapper trying to stop violence in Baltimore. Tyriece Travon Watson, better known as Lor Scoota, had just finished hosting a charity basketball game. The fliers advertising the event had said, “Pray for peace in these streets.” Music artists and important faces from around the city had come together to prove they could get along.
Lor Scoota got in his car and left the arena. Bringing peace to Baltimore was a message he had been trying to spread — on panels, in classrooms and in his music.
“How I’m supposed to live with all this death in my sight?” the 23-year-old had once sang.
Lor Scoota was about a mile away from the arena when he was shot and killed.
Posted inBlacks, Crime|Comments Off on WP: This rapper rallied to stop violence on Baltimore streets. An hour later, he was shot and killed.
Los Angeles Times: Matthew Heimbach, chairman of the Traditionalist Worker Party who did not attend the rally, said his group and the Golden State Skinheads had organized the Sunday rally.
Vice Chairman Matt Parrott, who was not present at the Sacramento rally, said it was a peaceful march and blamed “leftist radicals” for instigating the violence. Heimbach said that in the clash, one of their marchers had been stabbed in the artery and six of the “anti-fascists” had also been stabbed.
“We knew we were outnumbered. We stood our ground. We will be back. This is a victory for us because more of them walked away injured,” Heimbach said.
The Southern Poverty Law Center, which tracks hate groups, categorizes the organization as a white nationalist group. Parrott said the Traditionalist Worker Party supports ethnic nationalism, but was not violent nor “a supremacist party.”
On its website, the group describes itself this way: “The Traditionalist Worker Party is America’s first political party created by and for working families. Our mission is defending faith, family, and folk against the politicians and oligarchs who are running America into the ground. We intend to achieve that goal by building a nationwide network of grassroots local leaders who will lead Americans toward a peaceful and prosperous future free from economic exploitation, federal tyranny, and anti-Christian degeneracy.”
The rally at the capitol had been planned for some time.
The anti-fascist organization Antifa Sacramento, which had been promoting a “Shut Down Nazi Rally” event today on its website, did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
The violence came several months after another violent confrontation between members of a Klu Klux Klan group and counter protesters at an Anaheim park.
Posted inNazi|Comments Off on LAT: At least five people stabbed at neo-Nazi event outside Capitol in Sacramento
* In public, Americans often act very upbeat about immigration and diversity. Mostly to appear polite and accomodating. Expressing rudeness and unpleasantness in public is generally not how Americans do things. Unfortunately, that leads towards oligarchs flooding the country with foreign labor, while Americans stay silent because they fear being impolite.
In contrast, Israeli Jews are an extremely rude and obnoxious ethnic group, with little (if any) concern to manners or pleasantness. Not surprisingly, they get to have spirited discussions on immigration in their country.
It was only when I got back from college in 1980 did I notice any Israelis in the SFV. The Israeli Influx I first noticed while playing 3 on 3 basketball at Valley College. There was a customary way regulating who would be the next team to challenge the team that had just won, but an Israeli threesome simply walked on the court. The team of laidback Valley Boys who were, by tradition, the next to play politely pointed out how the system worked, so one of the Hebrew-accented interlopers grabbed the Valley Boy by the shoulders and attempted to head-butt his face in. This was before Bob Hoskins movies had made much of an impact in America, so it was a striking sight.
Today, the Valley has a large Israeli population, including a sizable fraction of the tradesman population. For example, the amiable, competent locksmith who changed our locks last year was from Israel. The kitchen remodeling salesman who quoted us a staggering price noted that his father was a Persian Jew and his mother an Israeli. The retired housepainter who lives around the corner keeps his hometown Israeli TV station on all the time so he can stay constantly outraged at what the Palestinians are up to.
Americans need to be more like that. Less Midwestern nice and more Israeli loutish. Then we can have an informed public discussion of immigration.
* My decent amount of experience with Israelis is they keep their nasty shit on the down low. They know the shit they’re pulling, and don’t want to be caught at it. They are clannish as can be. They’ll scam other Jews who aren’t Israeli. Most average american jews who’ve had significant experience with Israeli’s would agree with me.
Think of barnyard gypsies, and add 30-40 IQ points.
* In this day and age of political correctness and cultural Marxism, most white people know enough what to say and what NOT to say to the news media.
* Of course, there are some extremely boorish WASPs who don’t mind being offensive.
* Trump’s two extended families, the Scots and the Germans, both have a history of valuing the United States as a second home and a refuge from the Old World. His heritage inclines him towards treating this country as an asset that needs good management to maintain its worth. I can’t say that about all the diversity trash that has flooded into the country over the last few decades.
* I think James Fallows should inform Robert Putnam as to just how wrong how all his studies of diversity were. It is simply false, based on the unbiased and unskewed observations of Fallows in the truly universal example of Dodge City, KS, that diversity undermines trust and creates societal disharmony. To the contrary, it results in hand-holding Kumbayas by nightly campfires, treasured by all.
Who are you going to believe, James Fallows, or your lying science?
* Yes, we will shrivel from 325 million to what? Currently our 325 million puts as the third most populous nation on Earth. China and India, who are currently vying for the top spot with 1.3 billion, are the only nations besides us to ever exceed 320 million people.
Let’s say we shrivel all the way down to 140 million. That would put us back to where we were during WW2 when we had 12 million in uniform and millions working in the factories churning out the weapons of war for the allied effort. It would also mean we would be about the 8th most populous nation on Earth being edged out by China, India, Indonesia, Brazil, Pakistan, Nigeria and Bangladesh. We’d be tied with Russia and slightly ahead of Japan.
It’s funny how the elites keep pushing us to grow, grow, grow our population. Yet the only nations ahead of us are pure hell holes. Maybe being number one in population is not such a great thing. We need new leaders to come up with new metrics. Anyone who advocates growing our population further needs to be immediately disqualified from any position of authority. Similar to how anyone with racists beliefs is persona non grata, any population fetishist should meet a similar fate.
* I have grown quite fond of advocating – for lack of a better term – “White Zionism”.
In fact, about 6 weeks ago while visiting Toronto I floated this idea to a friend-of-a-friend. Some odious broad who is proudly involved in importing “refugees” to Canada as Tikkun-Olam. We’ve locked horns several times over the years.
I told her how much I admire the Jews and Israel that I hope my people have a Zion of our own one day. I also highlighted the impressive actions of groups such as the Irgun.
Her head basically exploded. The next day I was informed I was dis-invited to that night’s festivities.
I think I’m on to something.
Extremely effusive praise of Israel can really tongue-tie a certain kind of liberal American Jew.
* Shut up, collect as much money as possible, vote and donate to Trump or whoever succeeds him, and spread crimethink to people you think are susceptible. Trolling hardcore progressives is fun but only exposes you to risk. You’ve got to get libertarians who already think the government’s bad, conservatives who love America but still believe Market Knows Best, or heterodox liberals who actually believe in freedom of speech (I’ve met a few).
Trump opened the door and almost made it. The Republicans know amnesty is death now. Trump was Goldwater; now you have to build the organization that will support Reagan.
* Isn’t it striking that liberal journalists are comfortable using expressions like “lily white” or “whitebread” when describing areas with concentrations of their fellow white citizens? The word “white” would suffice by itself, and the modifiers are obviously meant pejoratively. They don’t describe Detroit as “coal black” or “black as the ace of spades,” do they?
* Only on an anonymous Internet forum would I admit that my old neighborhood in Minneapolis was ruined — RUINED!– by Somali immigrants. What used to be a nice working class Polish neighborhood turned into a dangerous run down area full of menacing Somali youths. But if a NYT reporter had asked me to attach my name to a quote! “Oh I love our vibrant new neighbors parking their shitty cars on my block at 1 am all Ramadan to go to the mosque that replaced the office building.”
* Politeness and tolerance are some of the absolute best qualities in the American people. In the West in particular, there’s a strong live-and-let-live ethos. Living in a country where people are boorish, pugnacious, and tribal is not fun.
Fallows doesn’t seem to understand that it’s possible to be personally kind to immigrants and to try to make the best of the situation while still wanting the government to restrict immigration.
Kansas elected the extremely strong-on-immigration Kris Kobach as their Secretary of State, so I imagine there are a lot of voters who fit that profile.
* I think the German cinema shooting on Thursday helped tip the scale, especially after they refused to release the name or ethnicity of the shooter. People put two and two together.
* My best friend toiled in the IT department of Sheldon Adelson’s Comdex vineyard in the late 80s/early 90s. When Shecky married 2nd wife Miriam, an Israeli, there was an influx of Israelis to the company. My friend said that these argumentative, gold-chain-wearing, sartorially-challenged guys were derided by the non-Chosen staff as “Jewish Puerto Ricans”, leading some to underestimate them as the new guys were easing them out the door.
* I’ll try to explain the liberal point of view on the problem with pattern recognition and crime.
We liberals aren’t stupid. We know that blacks commit crime at a high rate. But because we want to make sure everyone gets a fair chance, and to reduce segregation and inequality, we are conscious of the knock-on effects. Allowing people to discriminate freely as individuals will have bad effects at the macro scale.
If it becomes common knowledge that blacks commit crime at a much higher rate, and people are allowed to act in individually reasonable ways on that knowledge, then that will keep blacks marginalized.
It may be strictly rational for every employer in the country to avoid hiring blacks, but the collective result of that would be that blacks are totally unemployed.
If you accept that government should want to avoid keeping some groups of people as a permanent underclass, then you should want to avoid this. Hence, affirmative action hiring and opposition to racial profiling.
Just as in any complicated system, you cannot simply assume that reasonable looking rules at the micro level will translate to desirable emergent properties. I feel conservatives have trouble getting this point. It’s not enough to claim your desirable society gives individuals a nice looking set of rights. You have to look at how they actually perform in reality.
* I’m sure that some liberals — maybe James Flynn or Christopher Jencks of Harvard, say — would endorse what Frizzled says over a drink if they were assured of complete confidentiality.
But how many would come out and say it publicly in an explicit fashion?
Why is this point of view more frequently encountered in iSteve than in, say, the New York Review of Books? (And the New York Review of Books, by the way, is pretty good, if getting a little long in the tooth. I read it regularly.) I’d be interested if Frizzled can point to prominent current liberals who have recently stated this view in public as clearly as he just did.
And how many young people actually get this understanding before they reach Emeritus status at their university? Why the spread of Anti-White Guyism?
Israel also has companies which can break into iPhone encryption, develop facial recognition software and write malicious programs like Stuxnet. You really to bend the facts to call the frontier of artificial intelligence a racist “white guys’” project.
* People need to stop inviting nice White ladies like her to weddings and other social events. In other words they need to be shunned from the White society they claim to hate so much. If everyone did that, this bullshit would be over with by Labour Day. White ethno-masochism would be as declassé as white shoes.
* Has anyone else noticed the creeping use of the term “white guys” in place of “white men” in serious pieces in serious publications, such as this?
Now there’s nothing inherently offensive about the term as a means to refer to young white men in a casual context, but in cases such as this it’s clearly meant to demean, as even elderly white men are “white guys”, whereas men of other racial/ethnic groups are “men”, and adult females of any race are “women”.
* When I was born, my dad was working at a meat packing plant in rural Iowa. His wage was enough to support our family. He got other work after wages were driven down. The plant he worked at and the town it was in (Storm Lake, IA, thankfully not my hometown) was destroyed by itself. They imported Mexicans for low wages and got Mexican gangs and disorganization. Mason City, IA recently rejected 1100 jobs and a meat packing plant. Good thing too. It’s a nice, clean town. Even worse than importing Mexicans is the modern meat pack model of importing Somali’s. We are sure to learn some hard lessons here in Minneapolis about the wisdom of such immigration, and soon. Cedar in Southeast Minneapolis is to be avoided, unless you want to see the horn of Africa on the cheap.
* Why would anyone want America to become more like Israel, or for Americans to be more like Israelis? We just need our rulers and leaders to act like Americans.
I guess it’s also worth mentioning, though it’ll likely get me censored, that pushy Jewish activist, media and financial types have played a solid role in creating the financial, demographic and cultural problems that are destroying America.
* The funniest tale about Israelies I heard once was from someone who visited there:
Nobody waits in line in Israel, because there are no lines.
Apparently, whether it be for buses, government offices, banks, sporting events, or anything, Israelis don’t bother getting in a line; they merely push and shove to be first. Everyone just tries to step on or push aside everyone else.
It’s like Kissinger said about Israel: the only reason Israel has a foreign policy is to keep it from having a civil war over domestic policy.
Posted inAmerica, Blacks, Israel|Comments Off on Time For Americans To Get Israeli Rude About Immigration?
Here’s the deal on these degenerate equalist freaks: once you understand that their religion is race creationism — and that any attacks on their religious belief using incontrovertible evidence to the contrary will be met with the same ear-plugging, gum-flapping storm of rage and denial and psychological projection that one will often see manifest when the strict adherents of any traditional religion are attacked — then you’ll know why sanctimoniously preaching about “gun control” is a big part of their liturgy.
The gun control (((debate))) is a classic case of negative transference. American Whites have a gun violence rate about on par with White Europe. The Rabbit Warrens know deep in their schoolmarmy, sooty hearts that blacks and Muslim migrants are disproportionate vectors of gun violence (either drive-by or mass-shooting), but they can’t abide that percolating reality. It clashes with their entire worldview. To own up to a racial reality would be to disavow their most cherished beliefs. It would be like an Evangelical renouncing Jesus or a Jew accepting Jesus. Sheer heresy.
And they can’t have that. So they transfer their cognitively demanding bad feelings about black and Muslim violence onto Whites, and most ludicrously onto lawful White men in particular, to help ease the pain of self-doubting waywardness from their religion. “Bad White man! Bad guns that White men love so much! Ahh, I’m a good Race Creationist again. I’ll still go to gated community heaven, where all signals are virtuous and all self-righteousness at the expense of BadWhites rewarded with a Godly smirk of knowingness.”
Trump, of course, is the hungry wolf who found the rabbit warren, and is busy tearing apart rabbit flesh as tufts of bloody fur fly in every direction. That’s why Elizabeth Warren looks like she escaped the funny farm recently. Trump knows, like we DGAFians of the shiv-right know, that there’s no reasoning with religious fanatics. There’s only mockery, derision, ostracism, and if things get bad enough, cleansing cruelty.
Posted inAmerica|Comments Off on The Moral Derangement Of Elizabeth Fauxcahontas Warren
From Heartiste: In a study of paraphilia (obsession with unusual sexual practices), a curious sex difference poked out of the findings. See if you can spot it.
That’s right, men are over-represented in every sexual perversion except one: masochism. Women are the eager beavers of sexual masojism. It is to LOL.
Any regular Chateau guest would not be surprised by the discovery that women are more sexually masochistic than men. Women are attracted to dominant men, and one way male dominance is exerted is in the bedroom. Women therefore enjoy the masochistic pleasure of submitting to a dominant, takes-what-he-wants man, or will purposely assume a masochistic sex play role to fulfill their need for submission to a dominant, takes-what-he-wants man if such a man isn’t satisfyingly forthcoming with his dominance prowess.
Also, the fact that men excel at all sorts of sexual fetishes is indicative of their inherent “cheap sperm” reproductive status. Men are constantly on the lookout for mating opportunities, and expanding the field of sexual outlets beyond normie sex with an alt-right tradwife widens (heh) men’s scope of intercourse possibility. It is therefore hypothesized by your free-thinking host that very LSMV men will be found at the margins of sexual proclivity, hoping to snag some kind of scrotal relief that they are hard-pressed to achieve the normal way.
Essay: Most people believe that race exists. They believe that Denzel Washington is an African American, that George Clooney is a Caucasian, and that George Takei is an Asian.* Many intellectuals, however, contend that this belief results from an illusion as dangerous as it is compelling. “Just as the sun appears to orbit the earth”, so too do humans appear to belong to distinct and easily identifiable groups. But, underneath this appearance, the reality of human genetic variation is complicated and inconsistent with standard, socially constructed racial categories. This is often touted as cause for celebration. All humans are really African under the skin; and human diversity, however salient it may appear, is actually remarkably superficial. Therefore racism is based on a misperception of reality and is as untrue as it is deplorable.
With appropriate qualifications, however, we will argue that most people are correct: race exists. And although genetic analyses have shown that human variation is complicated, standard racial categories are not arbitrary social constructions. Rather, they correspond to real genetic differences among human populations. Furthermore, we believe that scientists can and should study this variation without fear of censure or obloquy. Racism isn’t wrong because there aren’t races; it is wrong because it violates basic human decency and modern moral ideals. In fact, pinning a message of tolerance to the claim that all humans are essentially the same underneath the skin is dangerous. It suggests that if there were real differences, racism would be justified. This is bad science and worse morality. Promoting a tolerant, cosmopolitan society doesn’t require denying basic facts about the world. It requires putting in the hard work and effort to support the legal equality and moral dignity of all humans.
Race exists, but variation is complicated
Scholars who have assailed the concept of race have forwarded three general arguments against it. Although the arguments are worth consideration, they do not ultimately show that race is a useless or fictional concept. The first two objections are aimed at a straw man, and the last, we will contend, is entirely wrong.
(Objection 1): Human variation is clinal or gradual, not discrete. Skin pigmentation, for example, does not come in four, five, or seven distinct colors, but varies gradually from very dark near the equator to very light in Northern Eurasia.
This charge against the validity of race is undoubtedly correct: a lot of human variation is gradual, not discrete. However, we are not familiar with any prominent proponent of the usefulness of race who would disagree with this contention (assuming they actually understand the evidence). The famous German intellectual and early theoretician of human variation, Johann Friedrich Blumenbach (1775), who is often accused of clumsily categorizing humans into discrete racial groups, contended that, “no variety [of human] exists …so singular as not to be connected to others of the same kind by such an imperceptible transition, that it is very clear they are all related, or only differ from each other in degree.”
For a period of time, polygenism, or the belief that the races arose from separate creations, was popular, but it was widely discredited by genetic and archaeological evidence clearly demonstrating that modern humans originated in Africa (a view promoted by Darwin, who also happened to believe that human races existed). Today, most researchers would agree with Blumenbach, including, for example, Nicholas Wade, who recently wrote a book about race that provoked a furious backlash. In that book, Wade asserted that “because there is no clear dividing line, there are no distinct races — that is the nature of variation within a species. Nonetheless, useful distinctions can be made” (p. 92). This is the key point: although the argument that human variation is continuous rather than discrete is correct, it does not vitiate a sophisticated understanding of race. It only refutes a platonic conception that few contemporary scholars take seriously.
This claim is true in a circumscribed sense, but is largely irrelevant to the question of whether population group differences are biologically meaningful. As pointed out by Jeffry B. Mitton and A.W.F. Edwards, the original finding that genetic diversity among human races is insubstantial compared to genetic diversity within races was based on a peculiar way of measuring genetic variation. Roughly speaking, the original claim about genetic diversity was based on analyses at single genetic loci (spots on the chromosome where genes are located) and not on analyses that considered the correlated structure of multiple genetic loci (many locations). Failure to consider multiple loci assures that broad, distinct patterns of allele (gene) frequencies get lost in the noise of diversity at single loci. This sounds painfully abstruse, but the basic point is this: patterns that are nearly invisible for individual genes become visible if one examines multiple genes at the same time (i.e., looks at gene 1 + gene 2 + gene 3 + gene 4…et cetera).
Consider a simple but illustrative example.a Imagine that a friend is describing an animal one adjective at a time (e.g., “big,” “furry” et cetera). You are trying to guess the animal. At first, it is difficult to guess because there are many “big” animals, and there are many “big” and “furry” animals. But as her description continues, it gets much easier to guess correctly because each adjective adds to the prior adjectives. The information that allows you to guess correctly does not reside in any one adjective but in the list of adjectives strung together (“big,” “furry,” “antlers,” “white tail,” “ hooves,” “spritely,” “brown,” et cetera). The same holds for population groups. Each genetic locus, like each adjective, is relatively uninformative; but a string of 200 or 300 loci is very informative.
Daily Mail: A Jewish man who was ‘essential for the Nazi war effort’ has been revealed as the most prolific smuggler in wartime Europe.
Michel Szkolnikoff smuggled looted art and jewellery from France, making a fortune for himself and the Nazis.
Szkolnikoff escaped the genocide and amassed a fortune worth six billion French francs in 1945 – 491million euros (£377million) in today’s money – and died mysteriously at the end of the war, with some conspiracy theorists believing he fled to South America.
French journalist and historian Pierre Abramovici has written a book about Szolnikoff, which explains how he managed to avoid the fate suffered by millions of other Jews and set himself up in a life of luxury.
Abramovici said: ‘The Nazis needed specialists, Jews or not. Szkolnikoff’s situation was complex. He was considered a Jew by the French and Aryan by the Nazis.
‘He was arrested twice by the (Vichy) French and released each time by the Nazis.’
The US Embassy in Madrid pointed to Szkolnikoff as a major smuggler of works of art.
A confidential report from August 1944 said Szkolnikoff also smuggled jewellery, gold and gems from France ‘on behalf of the Gestapo’.
Szolnikoff was born in 1895 in Tsarist Russia but fled after the revolution and became a German citizen, before moving on to France in the 1930s.
He changed his first name to Michel, to disguise his Jewish origins, and began trading in textiles, which he sold to Paris department stores.
But he was still struggling to make a living when war broke out but was soon to make his fortune producing military uniforms for the German Army, the Navy and even the SS.
Abramovici said: ‘He was a poor man before the war but then he met his mistress, a German woman named Hélène Samson. She introduced him to the members of the KriegsMarine (German Navy) and then the SS.
‘This man was a textile merchant without any religious, political or moral ideals. He just wanted to make money and in three years he became the richest man in France.’
Abramovici said: ‘Eventually he owned the main part of the luxury hotels of France and Monaco and dozens of expensive buildings in the centre of Paris around the Champs Elysées, a castle and other properties.’
He said Szolnikoff became ‘essential for the Nazi war effort’.
Abramovici’s book, Szkolnikoff: Hitler’s Jewish Smuggler, tells how Szolnikoff’s origins as a Karaite Jew enabled him to avoid being defined as Jewish and therefore avoid the concentration camps.
The author said: ‘Members of a little Baltic Jewish community named Karaites were considered as non-Jewish and pure Aryan, first by the Italians then by the Nazis in 1938.’
Abramovici said: ‘Nazi Minister of Propaganda Joseph Goebbels declared ‘I decide who is Jewish or not’.’
France was looted economically by the Nazis, especially Hermann Göring, who used Szolnikoff as an intermediary.
Szkolnikoff based his business empire in Monaco and invested most of his profits into property, especially hotels.
After Hitler’s death and the German surrender in May 1945, prominent Nazis fled for their lives and those who had collaborated in France were hunted down.
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"This guy knows all the gossip, the ins and outs, the lashon hara of the Orthodox world. He’s an [expert] in... all the inner workings of the Orthodox world." (Rabbi Aaron Rakeffet-Rothkoff)
