There are two fundamental ways to look at politics.
To some people, politics is ideological — it’s about big ideas, big issues, and big principles.
To others, politics is about group conflict — it’s about who you stand with, and who you stand against.
Everyone feels the tug of both of these ideas, and every successful political movement incorporates a little of both. But the modern Republican Party as a whole has become a very ideological organization. Trump is, fundamentally, a backlash to that.
Huge swathes of white working-class America have moved into the GOP orbit because they see the modern Democratic Party as fundamentally not for “people like them.” Many of these voters aren’t particularly interested in the details of the conservative agenda, and have no principled opposition to programs (like Social Security) that they see as benefitting them personally. What they want is a politician who’ll stand up for their interests, not a politician who adheres to a particular ideology.
That’s Trump.
But it’s also the Northeast. On the Pacific Coast, state Republican Parties have generally clung to conservative ideology and simply contented themselves to be outvoted in statewide races. The Northeast is different. Massachusetts, New Jersey, and Maryland all currently have Republican governors. George Pataki served three terms as governor of New York, and New City recently had a 20-year run of Republican mayors.
These politicians were (and are) pretty different from one another, but in that diversity there is a common theme: a fair amount of ideological flexibility that allowed them to build majority coalitions of white people prepared to stand against domination of state politics by “urban” machines.
This is Trump’s basic brand of politics. You may not know exactly what he stands for, but you do know exactly who he stands for — or at least who he stands against.
* Trump is merely exposing the fact that a lot of northeastern whites are fundamentally oriented toward populist-nationalist politics, not toward lamestream conservatism, or neoconservatism, or right-libertarianism, or centrist establishmentarianism. When there is not a populist-nationalist option available in Republican politics, these whites stay home, which is why the centrist establishmentarian wins. When there is, the otherwise apathetic whites show up and drown out the establishment. Trump is opening up a new lane in American rightist politics, and the supply is creating its own demand.
Posted inAmerica|Comments Off on Yglesias: Trump’s Northeastern Strength Represents “Who? Whom?”
In the aftermath of the most signifiant geopolitical event of my lifetime, the attacks of September 11,2001, the U.S. government proceeded to concoct a fairytale for public consumption in order to advance imperial ambitions overseas and a implement a domestic surveillance state at home. This should be obvious to everyone by now.
The official 9/11 story has been filled with holes since the very beginning, but a traumatized American public was too gullible and emotionally damaged to see them. Those of us who saw such inconsistencies and pointed them out have been derided as “conspiracy theorists” for years, yet fifteen years later, the biggest “conspiracy theory” in modern American history is rapidly becoming conspiracy fact.
At the very least, we now know there was Saudi involvement far beyond just the 15 of 19 hijackers who were Saudi nationals, but that’s still just scratching the surface….
The main thrust of this article is to highlight some new revelations from Pulitzer Prize winning journalist Seymour Hersh. Last May, he published a blockbuster article challenging the entire government story surrounding the death of Osama bin Laden, something I highlighted in the post: U.S. Officials Panic About Seymour Hersh Story; Then Deny His Claims Using Jedi Mind Tricks.
Well he’s back, and he recently shared more groundbreaking information in a fascinating interview with AlterNet. Here are some choice excerpts:
Ken Klippenstein: In the book you describe Saudi financial support for the compound in which Osama Bin Laden was being kept in Pakistan. Was that Saudi government officials, private individuals or both?
Seymour Hersh: The Saudis bribed the Pakistanis not to tell us [that the Pakistani government had Bin Laden] because they didn’t want us interrogating Bin Laden (that’s my best guess), because he would’ve talked to us, probably. My guess is, we don’t know anything really about 9/11. We just don’t know. We don’t know what role was played by whom.
KK: So you don’t know if the hush money was from the Saudi government or private individuals?
SH: The money was from the government … what the Saudis were doing, so I’ve been told, by reasonable people (I haven’t written this) is that they were also passing along tankers of oil for the Pakistanis to resell. That’s really a lot of money.
KK: For the Bin Laden compound?
SH: Yeah, in exchange for being quiet. The Paks traditionally have done security for both Saudi Arabia and UAE.
KK: Do you have any idea how much Saudi Arabia gave Pakistan in hush money?
SH: I have been given numbers, but I haven’t done the work on it so I’m just relaying. I know it was certainly many—you know, we’re talking about four or five years—hundreds of millions [of dollars]. But I don’t have enough to tell you.
KK: Why didn’t they apprehend Bin Laden? Can you imagine the intelligence we could have gotten from him?
SH: The Pakistani high command said go kill him, but for chrissake don’t leave a body, don’t arrest him, just tell them a week later that you killed him in Hindu Kush. That was the plan.
Many sections, particularly in the Urdu-speaking sections, were really very positive about Bin Laden. Significant percentages in some areas supported Bin Laden. They [the Pakistani government] would’ve been under great duress if the average person knew that they’d helped us kill him.
KK: In the book you quote a Joint Chiefs of Staff adviser who said that Brennan told the Saudis to stop arming the extremist rebels in Syria and their weapons will dry up—which seems like a rational request—but then, you point out, the Saudis ramped up arms support.
Seymour Hersh: That’s true.
KK: Did the U.S. do anything to punish the Saudis for it?
SH: Nothing. Of course not. No, no. I’ll tell you what’s going on right now … al Nusra, certainly a jihadist group… has new arms. They’ve got some tanks now—I think the Saudis are supplying stuff. They’ve got tanks now, have a lot of arms, and are staging some operations around Aleppo. There’s a ceasefire and even though they’re not part of it, they obviously took advantage of the ceasefire to resupply. It’s going to be bloody.
KK: Just to be clear, the U.S. hasn’t done anything to punish or at least disincentivize the Saudis from arming our enemies in Syria?
SH: Quite the contrary. The Saudis and Qatar and the Turks put money into those arms [sent to Syrian jihadis].
You’re asking the right questions. Do we say anything? No. Turkey’s Erdogan has played a complete double game: for years he supported and accommodated ISIS. The border was wide open—Hatay Province—guys were going back and forth, bad guys. We know Erdogan’s deeply involved. He’s changing his tune slightly but he’s been deeply involved in this.
Let me talk to you about the sarin story [the sarin gas attack in Ghouta, a suburb near Damascus, which the U.S. government attributed to the Assad regime] because it really is in my craw. In this article that was this long series of interviews [of Obama] by Jeff Goldberg…he says, without citing the source (you have to presume it was the president because he’s talking to him all the time) that the head of National Intelligence, General [James] Clapper, said to him very early after the [sarin] incident took place, “Hey, it’s not a slam dunk.”
You have to understand in the intelligence community—Tenet [Bush-era CIA director who infamously said Iraqi WMD was a “slam dunk”] is the one who said that about the war in Baghdad—that’s a serious comment. That means you’ve got a problem with the intelligence. As you know I wrote a story that said the chairman of the Joint Chiefs told the president that information the same day. I now know more about it.
The president’s explanation for [not bombing Syria] was that the Syrians agreed that night, rather than be bombed, they’d give up their chemical weapons arsenal, which in this article in the Atlantic, Goldberg said they [the Syrians] had never disclosed before. This is ludicrous. Lavrov [Russia’s Foreign Minister] and Kerry had talked about it for a year—getting rid of the arsenal—because it was under threat from the rebels.
The issue was not that they [the Syrians] suddenly caved in. [Before the Ghouta attack] there was a G-20 summit and Putin and Bashar met for an hour. There was an official briefing from Ben Rhodes and he said they talked about the chemical weapons issue and what to do. The issue was that Bashar couldn’t pay for it—it cost more than a billion bucks. The Russians said, ‘Hey, we can’t pay it all. Oil prices are going down and we’re hurt for money.’ And so, all that happened was we agreed to handle it. We took care of a lot of the costs of it.
Guess what? We had a ship, it was called the Cape Maid, it was parked out in the Med. The Syrians would let us destroy this stuff [the chemical weapons]… there was 1,308 tons that was shipped to the port…and we had, guess what, a forensic unit out there. Wouldn’t we like to really prove—here we have all his sarin and we had sarin from what happened in Ghouta, the UN had a team there and got samples—guess what?
It didn’t match. But we didn’t hear that. I now know it, I’m going to write a lot about it.
Guess what else we know from the forensic analysis we have (we had all the missiles in their arsenal). Nothing in their arsenal had anything close to what was on the ground in Ghouta. A lot of people I know, nobody’s going to go on the record, but the people I know said we couldn’t make a connection, there was no connection between what was given to us by Bashar and what was used in Ghouta. That to me is interesting. That doesn’t prove anything, but it opens up a door to further investigation and further questioning.
Posted inAmerica, Saudis, Terror|Comments Off on Seymour Hersh: Saudis Paid Pakistan to Hold bin Laden To Prevent U.S. Interrogation
On April 12, Simone Zimmerman, a Los Angeles Jewish day school graduate and UC Berkeley alumna, was named head of Jewish outreach for Bernie Sanders’ presidential campaign, a dream job for a young, politically active, liberal American Jew. Then, on April 14, Zimmerman was suspended by the campaign.
Zimmerman’s downfall, her #IStandWithSimone supporters have argued on social media and in online opinion pieces, was not ultimately the fault of the Sanders campaign, but, rather, brought on by the Jewish-American establishment. They see the establishment as intolerant of millennial Jews who view Israel differently than what they were taught by their parents, teachers, rabbis and even their summer-camp counselors.
The Sanders campaign offered no official reason for the suspension, but it followed the revelation of a screenshot of a profanity-laden Facebook post by Zimmerman from March 2015 (which she later edited) in which she said Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu “sanctioned the murder of over 2,000” Palestinians in the 2014 Gaza war. Zimmerman had also penned an op-ed published by JTA in May 2013 that criticized Hillel International for refusing to sponsor speakers or partner with organizations that support the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement.
Zimmerman’s posts were first revealed by Noah Pollak, a conservative Jewish journalist at the Washington Free Beacon, and they came in the wake of a Sanders’ comment to the New York Daily News, in which he mistakenly called the number of civilian fatalities in the most recent Gaza war 10,000, instead of the accepted number, which is fewer than 2,000, an error he later corrected.
Pollak’s piece and others like it led to a torrent of criticism against Sanders from mainstream Jewish leaders, including from Anti-Defamation National Director Emeritus Abe Foxman, who told Jewish Insider, “Bernie Sanders needs to fire Simone Zimmerman.”
After the suspension, a counter-response erupted, led most prominently by Peter Beinart writing for Haaretz, along with bloggers at +972 Magazine and Mondoweiss, organizations such as Jews for Racial & Economic Justice and the Foundation for Middle East Peace, as well as many young American Jews taking to Twitter and Facebook.
What those 48 hours revealed — aside from being an embarrassment and distraction for the Sanders campaign — is a divide between mainstream Jewish America and a growing number of millennial Jews raised within those institutions. These young Jews now reject key elements of the narrative they were taught about Israel and are actively trying to change how American Jewry talks about and teaches the Israel-Palestinian conflict. These young activists consider America’s mainstream Jewish community as complicit in what they see as Israel’s immoral occupation of the West Bank.
Posted inIsrael|Comments Off on Young Non-Orthodox Jews Tend To Have A More Distant Relationship To Israel
Israel’s Ethiopian Jews clash with police at race rally
Dozens injured during anti-racism rally in Tel Aviv sparked by brutality against a black soldier.
Israeli riot police have fired stun grenades and water cannon on thousands of ethnic Ethiopian Jewish citizens in an attempt to clear one of the most violent protests in memory in the heart of Tel Aviv.
The protesters, Israeli Jews of Ethiopian origin, were demonstrating on Sunday against what they said was police racism and brutality after a video clip emerged last week showing policemen shoving and punching a black soldier.
Demonstrators overturned a police car and threw bottles and stones at officers in riot gear at Rabin Square in the heart of Israel’s commercial capital.
Israel’s Channel 2 television said tear gas was also used, something the police declined to confirm.
“I’ve had enough of this behaviour by the police, I just don’t trust them any more … when I see the police I spit on the ground,” one female demonstrator who was not identified told Channel 2 before police on horseback had charged.
Racism in Israel refers to all forms and manifestations of racism experienced in Israel, irrespective of the colour or creed of the perpetrator and victim, or their citizenship, residency, or visitor status.
More specifically in the Israeli context, however, racism in Israel refers to racism directed against Israeli Arabs by Israeli Jews,[1] intra-Jewish racism between the various Jewish ethnic divisions (in particular against Ethiopian Jews,[2] and to historic and alleged current racism towards Mizrahi Jews and other Jews of colour), and racism on the part of Israeli Arabs against Israeli Jews.
Racism on the part of Israeli Jews against Muslim Arabs in Israel exist in institutional policies, personal attitudes, the media, education, immigration rights, housing,[3] social life and legal policies. Some elements within the Ashkenazi Israeli Jewish population have also been described as holding discriminatory attitudes towards fellow Jews of other backgrounds, including against Ethiopian Jews, Indian Jews, Mizrahi Jews, Sephardi Jews, etc. Although intermarriage between Ashkenazim and Sephardim/Mizrahim is increasingly common in Israel, and social integration is constantly improving, disparities continue to persist. Ethiopian Jews in particular have faced discrimination from non-Black Jews. It has been suggested that the situation of the Ethiopian Jews as ‘becoming white’ is similar to that of some European immigrants like Poles and Italians who arrived in the United States in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.[4]
Israel has broad anti-discrimination laws that prohibit discrimination by both government and nongovernment entities on the basis of race, religion, and political beliefs, and prohibits incitement to racism.[5] The Israeli government and many groups within Israel have undertaken efforts to combat racism. Israel is a state-party to the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination, and is a signatory of the Convention against Discrimination in Education. Israel’s President Reuven Rivlin announced to a meeting of academics in October 2014 that it is finally time for Israel to live up to its promise as a land of equality, time to cure the epidemic of racism. “Israeli society is sick, and it is our duty to treat this disease,” Rivlin stated.
Posted inBlacks, Israel|Comments Off on Israel’s Pro-Black Migrant Protest
Ramsey Paul put up a good video post a few weeks ago. It quite clearly explains the problems with the 1488 crowd and the Alt-Right.
Now some definitions according to me:
1) Dissident Right= All groups not represented by what is known as the mainstream Right. i.e. G.O.P, UK conservative Party, Australian Liberal party etc.
2) 1488= Supporters of the ideology of the Nazi party and its local variants.
3) NRx=NRx
4) Alt Right=?
Now, what I don’t understand from the way the term seems to be used, is the Alt Right:
1) Alt Right = Dissident Right.
2) Alt Right = Dissident Right – NRx
3) Alt Right = Dissident Right – NRx – 1488
4) Alt Right = 1488 by another name?
From what I can see, in common usage amongst the Dissident Right, the term seems to be used interchangeably and without any specificity which I feel is a dangerous habit. As Ramsey Paul points out, with the increasing mainstream acceptance of the “Alt Right” there seems to be a concerted effort by the 1488 crowd to co-opt that moniker. In essence what the 1488 crowd are trying to do is associate themselves with the dissident right.
Cognitive misers–i.e. the average man–doesn’t think in terms of concepts, rather, he “thinks” in terms of associations. And what matters for the hearts and minds of the proletariat is not what they think of you rather what they associate with you. It’s a simple principle of advertising and that’s why when they’re trying to sell you a product the actors in the commercials are always attractive or agreeable. On the other hand when they’re trying to diss a product, the users are always hopeless and unattractive.
Why the 1488 crowd wants to call itself the Alt-Right is up for speculation. I imagine a section of it wants to gain political legitimacy for its ideas by repackaging itself in a form that doesn’t trigger previous associations with Nazism but if that’s the case, it’s doing a very bad job.
My personal view, and it appears to be Ramsey Paul’s as well, is that the the role of the 1488 crowd is to discredit the dissident Right. (Note, when Ramsey uses Alt-Right he uses it in a way that excludes the 1488 crowd.) And I don’t think that this is a conspiracy theory that’s too hard to swallow.
There are some really, really nasty people in the NeoNazi groups which the authorities would be wise to monitor. But there is considerable documentary evidence that many of the groups themselves may actually be heavily influenced by law enforcement officials. Some reading:
“Domestic right-wing terrorist groups often adhere to the principles of racial supremacy and embrace antigovernment, antiregulatory beliefs. Generally, extremist right-wing groups engage in activity that is protected by constitutional guarantees of free speech and assembly. Law enforcement becomes involved when the volatile talk of these groups transgresses into unlawful action.
On the national level, formal right-wing hate groups, such as the National Alliance, the World Church of the Creator (WCOTC) and the Aryan Nations, represent a continuing terrorist threat. Although efforts have been made by some extremist groups to reduce openly racist rhetoric in order to appeal to a broader segment of the population and to focus increased attention on antigovernment sentiment, racism-based hatred remains an integral component of these groups’ core orientations.”
Given the Leftward shift of society, and given the Government propensity to weaponise its agencies against its political rivals, and given that the current administration is very hostile to right wing views, it is highly probably that many of the extremist Alt-Right– in the 1488 sense–are either complete nut-jobs or agents provocateurs. It’s also quite probable that there are attempts afoot to discredit the Dissident Right by association with the 1488 crowd.
THEY NEED TO BE PURGED.
I think it’s a rather sad state of affairs that they’ve even been able to gain admission and illustrates just how poor the state of Rightist thought is at the moment. (Another reason why the Left always wins). As I’ve said before, how can socialism for white people only be considered Right Wing?
The task ahead is to delineate what is Dissident Right and what it is not, and to walk the tight-rope between the Mainstream Right and the Nazi Party.
To move forward with our proper focus, the destiny of Western civilization. To distinguish between the legitimate revisiting of old assumptions and the distracting rehashing of old arguments.
When were those Questions Settled?
Between 2008 and 2013. The great debates on male-female dynamics, race, and the future of our nations shifted into high gear in 2008 at Chateau Heartiste and related blogs. I single out the Chateau because that’s where the passion and the new ideas churned and then fanned out to the broader culture. The July 13, 2013 acquittal of George Zimmerman was a watershed moment for us and it marks the anti-White narrative’s Stalingrad collapse. That date is a fitting marker for when the big questions were internally settled.
What is the Alt-Right’s Baseline Consensus?
The points below are what all but the most radical among the nationalists, manosphere writers, traditionalists, and libertarian neo-reactionaries agree on. Most of these points come across as moderate relative to much of the writing out there, being that they represent an overlap in the sometimes competing visions within the Alt-Right’s big tent.
So here is the Alt-Right consensus:
Blacks. They require assistance in achieving and maintaining a level of civic and material comfort on par with that of other races. Quantity + Equality = Can’t Have Nice Things.
Christianity. It is not an internally settled matter. For some, Christian faith is a non-negotiable foundation of our identity with implications on the afterlife. Others see it as detrimental to our vitality.
Democracy. In its present form, it is the rule by those who control the formation of public opinion and whose interests are not aligned with the interests of the voters. The two-party system in the United States is real, just like pro wrestling.
Family. While the role of extended families varies by culture, the traditional patriarchal model is the only one that provides a healthy environment for raising children.
Immigration. It is harmful to Western nations at present levels, low-skill immigration in particular. Manifest incompatibility between host and guest populations belie the economic- or demography-based arguments in favor of mass immigration.
Institutions. Traditionally conservative or masculine institutions such as the Republican party, the military, large corporations, mainline churches, and professional sports have been coopted by liberalism.
Islam. Don’t let it in.
Jews. As self-identified minorities with an enduring identity, they have acquired — justly or not — a reputation for subverting their host nations. Israel is a model of practical nationalism.
Multiculturalism. Diversity is not our strength. The involuntary comingling of disparate peoples is not “enriching.”
Race. It is a fundamental element of a human being’s identity. The human biodiversity model is predictive on the macro scale.
Religion. A purely materialist philosophy is insufficient as a pillar of a culture or an ethical system. Nobody wants to die over a contract.
Russia. It is not a potential threat to any Western nation beyond her near-abroad European neighbors. An enemy-of-an-enemy is an ally, and our common adversary is U.S.-led globalism.
Sex. The female is attracted to male power, charm, and confidence. She has contempt for male weakness or supplication. The male is attracted to the female’s youth, beauty, and femininity and is repulsed by her physical or moral decay.
USA. Her foreign and domestic policy is controlled by interests whose ambitions are at odds with the welfare of her own citizens, the existential question of Western nations, and geopolitical stability.
Whites. Interracial obligations do not justify self-destructive sacrifice on the part of the White benefactor, nor are they mandated by any notion of historic debt. Charges of racism fail to explain the disparity between the achievements of Whites and others.
Women. They crave male leadership and go batshit without it. Given the power, they will destroy their world, especially from the voting booth. Don’t listen to what she says — watch what she does.
Posted inAlt Right, Nazi|Comments Off on The Alt-Right’s Settled Debates
"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)
