Luke Ford

Paul Gottfried writes:

A few months ago I encountered at a conference an eminent Straussian scholar who teaches at an Ivy League institution, and he almost immediately launched into a tirade against “the Europeans,” who are at the point of “finishing Hitler’s work.” The only exception that my interlocutor would concede to this sweeping statement was for the English “who were never anti-Semites and who gave us Churchill.” A spirited English lady who overheard these remarks chimed in: “That’s because we expelled all the Jews in the middle Ages. There were none around for us to torment.” The speaker however didn’t seem to notice this injection of levity and went on with his diatribe. Although he hated the Germans in particular because of Nazi crimes, he was now coming to the realization that just about any of the continental European countries would have done the same thing to the Jews as Nazi Germany.

Until a few days ago I assumed such a venomous outburst could only be heard from the most over-the-top neoconservatives. Although all members of this group seem to hate the Germans intensely, I did not believe this sentiment extended to other Europeans. After all, neoconservatives and Straussians do talk about something called the “West,” and presumably this concept or cultural community would have to include the Europeans. If this is the case, however, as I’ve now come to understand, the operative term only applies in a very limited way. Good Europeans are the ones who take orders from the American state department and the American media, or at least from those parts of these entities that are influenced by neoconservative policies. They are also expected to lament the Holocaust publically, even if those doing the lamenting bear no responsibility for Nazi crimes. Needless to say, the same good Europeans are expected to support Israel, by which is meant the politics of the Israeli Right. European newspapers or politicians fall immediately under the neoconservative imperial ban, if they criticize such practices by the present Israeli government as building more settlements on the West Bank.

Despite the hate-speech I heard several months ago, I naively assumed until I listened to the Fox-Allstars on Tuesday evening that neoconservatives do their worst venting in private, or among other Jews or in the company of gentile underlings. Then I listened to Charles Krauthammer who, at the obvious urging of moderator Brett Baier, raged for five minutes, on the seventieth anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz, against “the return of European anti-Semitism.” According to Krauthammer, anti-Semitism is the defining characteristic of European civilization (believe me that I’m not exaggerating the intensity of this outburst!). Although Europeans were “forced to be on their best behavior for the last seventy years,” now they have gone back to a trait they never abjured, hating and persecuting Jews. Soon “all Jews would be leaving Europe,” which Krauthammer thought was a fine idea, given that the French, Germans and Italians were about to lower the boom on the group they loved to hate.

Aside from the hysterical hyperbole, which Krauthammer was energetically invited to engage in, what I found particularly upsetting about his performance was his refusal to tell us the full truth about the anti-Jewish feelings now on display in Europe. It most definitely is not coming from the nationalist or traditionalist Right, despite the repeated efforts of “conservative” commentators like Glenn Beck to associate Marine le Pen and the National Front in France with interwar anti-Semitism. What we are witnessing are the fruits of the triumph of the cultural left in Europe and what one French writer Renaud Camus, who is now on trial for hate speech in Paris, calls “le grand remplacement.” The French core population is being replaced by Muslim settlers from North Africa, with the help of their antiracist (and until recently disproportionately Jewish) backers. Jewish organizations and Jewish activists in France, Germany, Sweden and Italy were long in the forefront of this “grand remplacement,” the result of which has been the creation of “no-go “regions in European urban areas…

JAY B COMMENTS: “These Neo-Cons are total hypocrites in every way. They believe in proposition/abstract/ideological/New World Nation idea, while believing in the Jewish Ethnostate. 2.They claim that America is the best County in the world and only nation to ever be built on an idea rather than blood/language/religion (not really true) while insisting on exporting that ideal to ethnic or actual nations like Iraq or Yugoslavia, which would not make us the best in the world (unless the memory of progenitor is kept eternal.) 3. They are anti-totalitarian (against fascism and communism) yet see world in black and white, good versus bad, extreme way. No grays on Iraq. 4. They claim making countries democracies will mean less wars…while supporting wars to make them democratic. 5. They claim they are simply defensive but want to export democracy and attack small nations, not just defend US bloc and Monroe Doctrine. They want to get Syria and NK. They also want to expand USA after end of cold war, so much for anti-communism. 6. They are jingoless jingoists, pax Americana without the America which is ethnically destroyed by mass immigration, obese cheeseburgerism, and jobs overseas. 7. They conflate national security with existence of non-American countries, not empires or directly threatening one’s.”

Paul Gottfried: “Kevin MacDonald is right that what neocons hate about conservatives, meaning rightists, is that they’re conservative at all. I’m not sure however that neocons hate “Western man,” providing they’re the ones who construct the appropriate definition. Although the neocons wouldn’t care for a Western civilization they couldn’t shape and run, they do approve most heartily of what they now call “the West,” that is, is a collection of formerly Western countries that are vassal states of an American empire under neoconservative tutelage.”