Steve Sailer: Will Black Anti-Semitism Once Again Short-Circuit the Latest Peak Black Moment?

Posted on June 8, 2020 by Luke Ford

Sailer writes:

Black people periodically go through boom eras when white people can’t seem to get enough of them, such as in the late 1960s and then in the late 1980s-early 1990s. But blacks then overplay their hand and step on the wrong toes, usually Jewish ones. Black anti-Semitism launched neo-conservatism in the late 1960s (along with Israel’s victory in 1967) (see Tom Wolfe’s Radical Chic for how Leonard Bernstein’s fundraising party for the Black Panthers foundered upon Jewish resentment of Black Power shakedowns of their shopkeeper relatives). Black anti-Semitism later brought a media backlash against the Spike Lee-gangsta rap-Minister Farrakhan era 30 years ago.

Now, one of the founders of gangsta rap, movie star Ice Cube of NWA’s “Straight Outta Compton” fame, who used Black Muslim’s Fruit of Islam bodyguards to battle the Easy-E/Jerry Heller axis’s employment of Rabbi Kahane’s Jewish Defense Force, is airing out his resentments of Jews again:

This mural was known as Freedom for Humanity. Only two of the six old-time financiers depicted are Jewish (Lord Rothschild and Paul Warburg) but the general style is pretty Weimar/Nazi-ish. It was painted by a white guy pal of Shepherd Fairey (of blue-red Obama poster fame) who calls himself Mear One.

We’ll see what happens next, but, much as everybody is currently forgetting, we have been down these paths before.

Tom Wolfe says:

But if the Bernsteins thought their main problem at this point was a bad press, they were wrong. A controversy they were apparently oblivious of suddenly erupted around them. Namely, the bitterness between Jews and blacks over an issue that had been building for three years, ever since Black Power became important. The first inkling the Bernsteins had was when they started getting hate mail, some of it apparently from Jews of the Queens-Brooklyn Jewish Defense League variety. Then the League’s national chairman, Rabbi Meir Kahane, blasted Lenny publicly for joining a “trend in liberal and intellectual circles to lionize the Black Panthers . . . We defend the right of blacks to form defense groups, but they’ve gone beyond this to a group which hates other people. That’s not nationalism, that’s Naziism. And if Bernstein and other such intellectuals do not know this, they know nothing.”

The Jewish Defense League had been formed in 1968 for the specific purpose of defending Jews in low-rent neighborhoods, many of which are black. But even many wealthier and more cultivated Jews, who look at the Defense League as somewhat extremist, Low Rent and gauche, agreed essentially with the point Kahane was making. One of the ironies of the history of the Jews in America was that their long championship of black civil liberties had begun to backfire so badly in the late 1960s. As Seymour Lipset has put it, “The integrationist movement was largely an alliance between Negroes and Jews (who, to a considerable extent, actually dominated it). Many of the interracial civil-rights organizations have been led and financed by whites, and the majority of their white members have been Jews. Insofar as a Negro effort emerged to break loose from involvement with whites,from domination of the civil-rights struggle by white liberals, it meant concretely a break with Jews, for they were the whites who were active in these movements. The Black Nationalist leadership had to push whites (Jews) ‘out of the way,’ and to stop white (Jewish) ‘interference’ in order to get whites (Jews) ‘off their backs.’”

Meanwhile, Black Power groups such as SNCC and the Black Panthers were voicing support for the Arabs against Israel. This sometimes looked like a mere matter of black nationalism; after all, Egypt was a part of Africa, and black nationalist literature sometimes seemed to identify the Arabs as blacks fighting the white Israelis. Or else it looked like merely a commitment to world socialism; the Soviet Union and China supported the Arabs against the imperialist tools, the Israelis. But many Jewish leaders regarded the anti-Zionist stances of groups like the Panthers as a veiled American-brand anti-Semitism, tied up with such less theoretical matters as extortion, robbery and mayhem by blacks against Jews in ghetto areas. They cited things like the August 30, 1969, issue of Black Panther, which carried an article entitled “Zionism (Kosher Nationalism) + Imperialism = Fascism” and spoke of “the fascist pigs.” The June, 1967, issue of another Panther publication, Black Power, had carried a poem entitled “Jew-Land,” which said:

Jew-Land, On a summer afternoon, Really, Couldn’t kill the Jews too soon,
Now dig. The Jews have stolen our bread
Their filthy women tricked our men into bed
So I won’t rest until the Jews are dead . . .
In Jew-Land, Don’t be a Tom on Israel’s side
Really, Cause that’s where Christ was crucified.

Comments at Steve Sailer:

* Jews have survived as a people and will continue to do so. Others who disparage them ought to look at their own people and ask if they also can likely make that claim, and, if not, perhaps first get their own house in order.

Israel is, in essence-translated into English-based on a simple concept: We must secure the existence of Jewish people and the future of Jewish children. They seem, for all their flaws and eccentricities and the occasional outrage, to be succeeding at that.

* I think Steve is referring to Podhoretz Sr.’s notorious 1963 article “My Negro Problem & Ours”, were he famously alluded to his ‘insane rage’ at Black antisemitism. While one can dispute its significance, it’s not crazy to consider it one of the earliest manifestations of neo-conservatism. I seem to recall the teachers strike of 1968 and the concomitant rift between Blacks and Jews as being an epiphany for some neo-conservatives as well.

* CrossFit CEO Gregg Glassman was just canned (or will be shortly) for irreverence to the cult of St. Floyd. The gist of his sinning Tweet or Instagram or whatever was calling the current riots FLOYD-19 in a play on the claim that racism is a public health crisis.

In related news, the head of the NYT Op-Ed department was liquidated after a mutiny of Fragile-American staff over his decision to publish a hum-drum GOPe, muh law-and-order Tom Cotton opinion piece.

Jewsish tradition has a notable streak of irreverence and backtalk toward the divine; I think it therefore likely, more than anti-Zionism, that the stifling, revival tent-style of cow-eyed conformity required by the Great Awokening is what will turn off Jewish people . I can imagine a based, 13 year old Stephen Miller wannabe out there hand-crafting his I own black “I can’t joke!” facemasks in a suburban basement somewhere.

Here are comments on another Steve Sailer thread about gay pride organizers wanting to hold a Black Lives Matter rally:

* Blacks pulled rank, and showed who’s boss among the “oppressed.” What’s more interesting is how blacks will react to the multitudinous hordes of white ” allies” who are busy out-hystericizing their black idols. I expect the blacks will sharply put them in their place soon – and then what will those “whiggers” do, who have staked their entire identity on rejection of the “bad guys” in history, their brother whites?

* Whites legally requesting a parade permit is racist. Blacks looting injuring killing and committing arson is virtuous and admirable. We’ve been told that since the 1964 Watts riots What else is new?

* Trannies include that subset of drug-addicted prostitutes, who are disproportionately black.

Homosexuals, at least since the end of “fruit patrols” in the distant past, have long been friendly with law enforcement. Natural allies in gentrification. Female police would barely exist without a heavy lesbian contingent. And gay men are always going to be well-disposed to clean-cut fit men in uniform.

* A lot of gays in Europe are beginning to realize that mass Muslim immigration is going to mean that they will get it in the neck sooner or later. Like Jews, they will never get above 2% of the population so they opt to try to turn the demographics into a plurality to where no one group, including the indigenous population can dominate. But mass immigration brings other problems and that strategy turns out to spoil a good thing. Worse, they end up being seen for being the traitors they are and lose the good will of the majority of the population earning them worst of both worlds.

Being the stupid party, the Republicans will probably end up taking these refugees in from the Democratic coalition only to be rewarded with betrayal and a knife in the back. The old white liberals that run the Democratic party are through. In fact, I don’t see how Biden can hang on for even this election cycle. Perhaps if he kisses the feet of Negroes every day they will tolerate him for a while but eventually they will want more free shit then he can give them and he will have to walk the plank.

In a Machiavellian sense, Gays have been wise not to split their vote and they have picked their side. They don’t get caught up on infighting or dilute their vote which gives them power but it also subjects them to catastrophic failure if things go wrong. In the Prince, Machiavelli wrote that a small country between two much larger ones will not benefit by being neutral. Neither of the larger countries will respect their neutrality and when that country is inevitably occupied, it won’t receive any mercy from the victor or the loser. There is no reason for the right to try and help the splinter groups on the left or accommodate them. They will be fleeing from the Democrats soon enough and will just be happy not to have been made into a bar of soap.

* This sort of bullying of gay organizers from blacks has been a long time coming, I started noticing it a few years ago when black lives matters groups would randomly interrupt gay pride parades and demand that the police not be allowed to march. Of course the spineless twits who have assumed leadership in most LGBTXENU organizations bowed down to their demands. Well, they made their bed and now they get to lie in it. They should’ve put their foot down and told them to F off, gays are supposed to be one of the protected sacred groups, they had a shot at standing their ground and making sure their turf was respected. Too late now, the negroes smelled blood and now they have an excuse to really express how much they are disgusted by us in a socially acceptable way. Bye bye dumb parade.

* Gay men have lost most of their “protected status”, using anti-gay slurs and making jokes about gays hardly gets a reaction in comparison to the meltdown insulting blacks would cause. Gays are just perceived as too white to often too middle class to warrant much benefit from political correctness.

* Think Globally. Steal Locally.

* The most ‘red-pilled’ people I’ve ever met were from Brussels. Even young liberal women from upper middle class backgrounds. I’d never considered it but they’re genuinely scared in a city like that. She told me a story of once getting trapped in a cinema when some arabs went riot outside. She was 17 at the time. She and her friends were terrified about what might happen if they’d stepped outside before the police broke it up.

To put this in perspective, I did not lead her into this conversation, such lines with people you don’t know are dangerous. She told me, despite it being highly likely from my background that I’d be horrified at her ‘racism’.

* Circa 1988 when the anti-nuclear/anti-military/anti-US protests in Europe were running out of steam, there was a news photo from, I think, West Germany that showed how riot police had contained a bunch of protesters and then compressed them into a human square about 100′ on a side. As I remember it, the police were holding the perimeter with just a single thin black line of riot troops, while the surplus officers who were no longer in contact with the protesters just chatted and smoked amiably on the sidelines.

It was a very arresting and comic image, because it had so many themes going on at once:

• the extreme efficiency of German/Euro law enforcement
• the strong German will to Order: not only were the protesters contained, they were contained in a dense, perfect square
• the bored look on the faces of the disengaged, lounging officers: yeah, just another at the office…
• the dogged idealism of the protesters, who were still holding their signs and shouting their slogans even as their highly contained circumstance made the whole exercise absurd, to which the protesters seemed oblivious
• the visual implication that whatever complaint it was the protesters had, it was a spent force
• the casual way life continued as normal around the human square, even as the unkempt protesters continued their disorder within the square, which spoke to the way that in crowded Europe, orderly Europeans compartmentalize, contain and bypass disorder

* Man arrested for wearing blackface in Toronto.

* If you’re an ally of a movement whose premises defame your people, your country, and your history those on the business end of that defamation have no obligation to give you the benefit of the doubt.

* The opening sentence of the NY Post article you linked is highly misleading.

Brooklyn’s Orthodox Jewish community registered its outrage over the racially charged police-custody death of George Floyd Sunday,

The very next paragraph begins,

More than 200 demonstrators, nearly all of them Orthodox Jews,

Even if the total number of demonstrators were double that, i.e. 400, it would still be but a minuscule fraction of Brooklyn’s total Orthodox Jewish population. Said population, like Orthodox Jewry in general, is actually composed of many different and even quite distinct communities. There is much fractionation and multiple layers of subsets.

Note that in the photos of the demonstrators that accompany the article, one can clearly see women dressed in a manner that flagrantly violates even the most lenient of the standards of modesty that vary across the Orthodox spectrum. While one can find such individuals who are affiliated with a synagogue that is at least nominally Orthodox, in lifestyle and outlook they are actually closer to non-Orthodox Jews than to serious, devout, rigorously Orthodox Jews.

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This Is Your Brain on Sports: The Science of Underdogs, the Value of Rivalry, and What We Can Learn from the T-Shirt Cannon

Posted on June 7, 2020 by Luke Ford

Here are some highlights from this book:

* We like our signal-callers handsome. The quarterback may not have existed before Camp and his contemporaries descended upon the Massasoit House 135 years ago, but his brainchild has since evolved into the most glamorous position in all of sports (North American jurisdiction, at least).

The storied lineage spans from Broadway Joe Namath to Joe Montana and Dan Marino to Brett Favre to Tom Brady, Aaron Rodgers, and Russell Wilson. The polarizing, short-lived cult of Tim Tebow? Even his biggest detractors must concede: not the worst-looking guy. As we write this, the attractiveness of Texas Tech coach Kliff Kingsbury is an Internet meme. (Hot Kliff Kingsbury Flirts with Moms of Recruits.) Naturally, Hot Kliff Kingsbury is a former college quarterback.*1

Pop culture has cemented this image. Name a leading man (Burt Reynolds, Kurt Russell, Warren Beatty, Keanu Reeves, Dennis Quaid, Jamie Foxx) and odds are good he has played the role of a quarterback. There are examples of the reverse, too. Before he was Special Agent Leroy Jethro Gibbs on NCIS, Mark Harmon was a quarterback at UCLA.

In fact, the allure of being an alluring QB can be enough to motivate a position change. Brad Grayson—father of Garrett Grayson, a Saints rookie as we write this—described his son’s decision several years ago to switch from running back to quarterback as a calculated one. “Gotta consider the ladies,” explained the elder Grayson with a smile.

The inevitable question, then: Why are quarterbacks so damned good-looking?

As he tends to do, radio host Colin Cowherd offers a theory that is based less on specific research studies and more on the effort to play provocateur. Cowherd reckons that quarterbacks are good-looking because of natural selection. As he once put it, “When boys growing up are picking teams and positions, they always pick a good-looking kid to be quarterback. They never pick an ugly kid. That…sets up the pattern.” In other words, the best-looking kids in the schoolyard are selected for the glamour position. They are put on a “quarterback track,” and by the time they begin playing organized football, they are experienced at the position. It’s akin to a self-fulfilling prophecy.

* researchers found that the more symmetrical a QB’s face was, the more money he made.

* VAN GILDER, the economist, nailed it when she said, “Socially, we’ve been trained to think that the quarterback is the most beautiful person on the team.”

* Quarterbacks are likely groomed for the job. Except this isn’t based on the perceptions of their attractiveness; it’s based on perceptions of leadership. When we, collectively, talk about how good-looking QBs are, we are probably, thanks in no small part to the halo effect, conflating looks with leadership.

* 1. We always think we’re the center of attention. We’re convinced that every slight variation in our appearance or performance is immediately noted by everyone around us. Researchers have dubbed this the spotlight effect, and it’s the reason many of us spent junior high convinced that that cafeteria table full of kids breaking up in laughter was doing so at our expense—that they must have noticed that giant pimple on our nose, our latest bad hair day, or the ridiculous new pants Mom made us wear. Even when, in fact, no one was actually paying us much attention at all.

In one clever study, researchers at Cornell put participating students in the unenviable position of reexperiencing those adolescent insecurities. Each subject was forced to march into a group of peers wearing something embarrassing: in this case a T-shirt with a gaudy Barry Manilow photo (as if there were any other kind) splashed across the front. The student then had to sit and complete a written survey while surrounded by conventionally clad peers. Afterward, the Manilow wearers were asked how many people around them had noticed what they had on. They wildly overestimated how noticeable and memorable the embarrassing shirt had been.

As the researchers concluded, “People tend to believe that the social spotlight shines more brightly on them than it really does.” Welterweight boxers and tyrannical rulers aren’t the only ones who think the world revolves around them. Most of us do—it’s a consequence of spending much of our day engaged in internal conversation but lacking insight into the monologues everyone else is producing.

2. We think we’re more powerful than we are. We regularly succumb to the illusion of control, overconfident in the role we play in outcomes around us.

* We can’t help but see ourselves as the center of attention and as masters of our own fates, despite rational evidence to the contrary. These and a variety of other egocentric biases help us stay optimistic even when the going gets tough. In fact, some psychologists argue that illusions like these are essential components of mental health—that looking at life without such ego-friendly lenses is a recipe for despondency.

In much the same way, the athlete’s belief that “no one respects me” plays an adaptive psychological role. That’s why it persists: A false narrative must serve a function in order to perpetuate itself.

* I’m not as good as people say I am; our opponents are much better than you think they are—is another false narrative that serves a clear psychological function. Several functions, in fact. For one, it’s a close cousin of “nobody respects us” as a motivational ploy that competitors use to keep themselves sharp and that coaches employ to maintain their players’ focus. As Nadal explained, it’s a way to make sure you don’t drop your guard.

* THE false narrative told well is an invaluable tool for motivation and ego protection. It can help us ward off complacency as well as pressure. It can preempt disappointment and magnify success. The trick is figuring out for each scenario the right combination of psychological ingredients to produce the desired outcome.

* The better we get at a task, the worse we often become at articulating what we’re doing. So it is that the Great Ones are often beset by what is sometimes called the curse of expertise: They struggle to communicate what has always come naturally to them.

* human nature is surprisingly state-dependent. That is, depending on the circumstances, we think and act like very different people. (Or, to invoke the title of Sam’s previous book, Situations Matter.) For example, we operate in a “hot state” of mind (and body) when we’re angry, hungry, in pain, or generally aroused. Other times we’re in a “cold state.” Our thought processes and behavioral tendencies vary dramatically from one state to the other, often in ways that we don’t fully appreciate. Cold-state self has a hard time predicting how hot-state self will react, and vice versa.

* “Even the most brilliant and rational person, in the heat of passion, seems to be absolutely and completely divorced from the person he thought he was. Moreover, it is not just that people make wrong predictions about themselves—their predictions are wrong by a wide margin.”

* Asked what he would have been if not a soccer player, the British striker Peter Crouch paused for a moment. Then he replied memorably, “A virgin.” Jason Giambi, the baseball slugger, had a slightly less decorous take on the considerable overlap between sex and sports. While playing for the Oakland A’s, he wore a T-shirt underneath his No. 16 jersey that bore this bit of (horn)doggerel: Party Like a Rock Star. Hammer Like a Porn Star. Rake Like an All-Star. When Wilt Chamberlain famously boasted of having slept with 20,000 women, it triggered a round of guffaws—as well as a memorable Saturday Night Live sketch starring M.C. Hammer. (“I remember Cheryl. Number 13,906. But in my heart she was number 2,078. Cheryl was so full of life, love, and laughter.”)

* In 2012 [Timothy Olson] wrote a post for the site irunfar.com titled “My Path to Contentment: From Addict to Awakened Ultrarunner.” In it he told his deeply confessional story with bracing candor: “Running was my lifesaver. I first started back running to detox, clean out my body and pass that fun, pee-in-a-cup drug test. I ran to forget, I ran for peace, I ran because it was all I could do and it healed me. Running helped me look inside myself, forgive myself, trust myself, and learn from my past. Running let out all sorts of emotions; I found myself crying, laughing, screaming and puking through this road of recovery.”

* Spend only a few moments online going down the endurance-sports rabbit hole, and it’s hard not to be struck by the high incidence of recovering addicts. Blake Anderson of Chico, California, is a star on the Ironman triathlon circuit. He also speaks about his past, starting with experimentation with marijuana that led to experimentation with cocaine, which led to full-blown drug and alcohol addiction. He didn’t connect with a formal recovery program, but as he told his local newspaper, he found a different path to sobriety. He says, “My meetings are every time I lace up my running shoes; every time I clip my cleats into the pedals on my bike; every time I crush those laps in the pool.”

Rich Roll was a former college swimmer and a successful litigator at a prominent law firm in southern California—until he developed what he calls “a mean case of alcoholism.” His days began with a vodka tonic in the shower. “What started out as all fun and games,” he writes on his website, “morphed into scenes out of Leaving Las Vegas.” Why does he have a website? Because, after spending 100 days in an Oregon treatment center, he became one of the top endurance-sports athletes. A veteran of the Ultraman (a three-day event on the Big Island of Hawaii consisting of a 10K ocean swim, a bike ride of more than 260 miles, and a double-marathon run), he was named one of the “25 Fittest Men in the World” by Men’s Fitness…

It doesn’t take a licensed psychologist to suggest that many ultrarunners seem to be swapping one addiction for another (albeit far healthier) one. Here’s Timothy Olson’s take: “I’ll use this as an addiction instead of that wasn’t my [conscious] thought process, but subconsciously it felt good. I’d go for a big run and I’d come back feeling pretty damn high. It was natural. It was a good thing.”

* Confronted with tragic or painful events, we humans often cope well. Really well. Within days, even hours, of trauma, we can regain our equilibrium and baseline function. Grief is not always the paralyzing force it’s built up to be.
When we encounter an emotionally turbulent event such as a death in the family, a primitive set of brain and hormonal responses is activated. We get a surge of cortisol, the stress hormone. This can be disorienting; after a rush of cortisol, people describe a feeling akin to an altered state of consciousness, as the brain/body system kicks into emergency mode. This feeling subsides after a few hours, however, allowing us to continue with life as we know it fairly quickly. “There’s that emergency response state, and then it’s kind of done and we can think clearly again,” explains George Bonanno, a Columbia University professor who specializes in trauma and grief. “Durability is the norm, not the exception.”
How so? Bonanno has proposed and found evidence of four distinct trajectories of response in the wake of a potentially traumatic event (chart, below). There’s chronic distress, an immediately high level of dysfunction that never really goes away. There’s delayed reaction, whereby an individual initially experiences only a moderate level of grief and disruption but then gets worse rather than better as time goes by. There’s recovery, the gradual process of working through acute distress, in the “let nature run its course” manner. And, finally, there’s resilience, the absence of major symptoms or dysfunction. Those first three types of response—chronic, delayed, and recovery? None is as common as resilience. In fact, resilience is more common than the other three types combined. In the typical bereavement case, research indicates that no more than 15 percent of people experience chronically elevated states of grief that disrupt regular functioning.

* the vast majority of New York City residents showed no symptoms of trauma in the months after the [9-11] attacks. Even among those who lost loved ones, rates of resilience were high.

* Grief doesn’t move in a straight line or arc. It comes and goes. It oscillates. During bereavement it’s actually quite normal for people to smile or laugh as they talk about their loved one. In fact, this is one of the main reasons for the high rate of resilience: Grief usually isn’t static or relentless. If it were, it wouldn’t be as tolerable. Here’s Bonanno again: “Fluctuation is adaptive because it allows us to engage in contrasting activities. We can’t inhale and exhale at the same time, so we breathe in cycles.” So it is with grief. “We can’t reflect on the reality of a loss and engage with the world around us at the same time,” he writes. “So we do that in cycles too.”

* In one study, college students in dating relationships were asked to imagine how they would feel two months after the relationship ended. Their predictions overshot the mark dramatically: They thought they’d be far more miserable than they really would be. Which we know because the researchers compared their emotional forecasts to the reported happiness levels of other college students whose relationships had ended months earlier.

* The same goes for positive life events. That old yarn about people who win the lottery being no happier than the rest of us? It’s usually tied to a 1978 study of 22 lottery winners, who reported happiness levels that were no greater than those of a control group (and who rated a variety of ordinary daily activities as less pleasurable than did the comparison group). Recent research tells a more complicated story: Lottery winners are at least a bit happier than the rest of us, and people with higher incomes typically report better mood than those who make less, but the differences are much smaller than you’d expect. Even with a positive event such as winning money, we return to emotional equilibrium much sooner than conventional wisdom suggests. “Winning the lottery is a happy event,” writes Daniel Kahneman, author and Nobel Prize–winning behavioral economist. “But the elation does not last.”
That even our intuitions about what makes us happy are flawed is a sobering realization. After all, so many of the choices we make—what neighborhood to live in, whom to marry—are largely based on such assumptions. Similarly disconcerting is the idea that even the greatest of life’s spikes in happiness can be short-lived.

* The brain works backward from the finish line, calculating—and recalibrating on the fly—how hard to let the body work, depending on how much more work remains to be done.

* If you don’t know the finish line, you can’t allocate the physical resources to do the job effectively.

* “You hear about these teams of programmers…who end up pulling, say, five all-nighters in a row in order to get a new piece of software to ship on time. It’s knowing that the software has to ship on a certain date that allows them to draw on these previously unimagined reservoirs of effort, capacity, and talent.” On a regular basis, seemingly ordinary people pull off feats like these—it’s just that Al Michaels isn’t there to do the play-by-play.

* goals are powerful in small doses but have been dangerously overprescribed. In a paper titled “Goals Gone Wild” (that’s right, even academics have a sense of humor), researchers identify a litany of problematic side effects when organizations become too goal-happy. For example, goals narrow your focus and can promote risk-taking and even unethical behavior. The auto executive concerned about hitting a release date might overlook safety-test results in the rush to get a car to market.

* Our general sense of morality is, in a word, flexible. One of the clearest examples is that we cut ourselves a great deal of slack when evaluating our own morally ambiguous behavior.

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Defenders of the Race: Jewish Doctors and Race Science in Fin-de-Siècle Europe

Posted on June 7, 2020 by Luke Ford

Here are some highlights from this 1994 book:

* In Germany, for example, Jews went from being called and calling themselves Jews in the eighteenth century, to Israelites in the nineteenth, to German Citizens of the Mosaic Faith into the twentieth.

* In his justly famous Essay on the Physical, Moral, and Political Regeneration of the Jews (1788), the pro-emancipationist Abbe Gregoire argued that Jews possessed a number of unique characteristics that set them off from other Europeans. For example, despite his adherence to the Enlightenment concept that the environment has the power to change people, he believed this was not really the case with the Jews: “Climate has scarcely any effect on them, because their manner of life counteracts and weakens its influence. Difference of periods and country, has, therefore, often strengthened their character, instead of altering its original traits. In vain has their genius been fettered; it has never changed; and perhaps there is more resemblance between the Jews of Ethiopia and those of England, than between the inhabitants of Picardy and those of Provence.”

Citing Shaftesbury’s Characteristics (1711), Gregoire noted that the Jews appeared “naturally gloomy and melancholy.” On the basis of a report… Gregoire was assured that “the Jews in general had sallow complexions, hooked noses, hollow eyes, prominent chins, and that the constrictory muscles of the mouth were very apparent. There were sexual charges as well. The Jews were concupiscent because of the accumulation of many acrimonious particles in the mass of humours contained in their bodies. Moreover, Jewish women “would be very subject to nymphomania, did they not long pine in a state of celibacy,” and Jewish males were chronic masturbators.

* Cosmopolitan ideas of universal brotherhood and inherent equality had gone out of vogue, replaced by a biological determinism that saw differences in bodily forms as the key to the unfolding of human history.

* Despite great variations of interpretation about the meaning of such biological differences, few questioned the legitimacy of such distinctions.

* “Science? That is what one Jew cribs from another.” (Mayor Karl Lueger)

* [Gustav] Klemm posited that the active races were masculine, thriving in cold climates, while the passive ones, residing in warm climates, were effeminate.

* …it was the mathematization of physical anthropology that assisted in the development of scientific racism and the reaffirmation of preexistent prejudices. For example, numbers that indicated lower brain weights or smaller cranial dimensions were cited as proof…

* The kind of threat the Jews posed [to Germany] varied according to the ideologies of the different power groups in society… To nationalists, Jews still formed a state with a state and therefore were a potentially traitorous enemy. To groups touting a volkisch ideology, lamenting the rapid and unprecedented changes that Germany was undergoing due to unification and industrialization, the Jews were charged with being responsible for…those changes. To many on the left, the Jew represented the interests of capital and therefore, exploitation. Conversely, the Jews were often denounced as the bearers of socialism, and promoters of revolution.

* Although they classified Jews as members of the white race, German medicine and anthropology also isolated Jews and referred to them as a group apart, thus reflecting the Jews’ dual position of being German but not being fully part of German society.

* Fritz Lens: “Jews do not transform themselves into Germans by writing books on Goethe.”

* Until the end of the nineteenth century, German anthropology unanimously regarded the Jews as racially pure.

* Lord Acton: “The most certain test by which we judge whether a country is really free is the amount of security enjoyed by minorities.”

* If England can be said to have had an antisemitic tradition, it is most clear in the image of the Jew in English literature. From Chaucer’s Prioress’s Tale and Shakespeare’s Shylock to Rebecca in Walter Scott’s Ivanhoe and Dicken’s Fagin, the Jew had been presented as an alien figure consumed by vengefulness, miserliness, and avarice.

* Nationalities, empires, and monarchies are plastic and ephemeral, “human contrivances often held together by fraud and violence.” Races, however, are stable and permanent. Any people can become members of a nation and display its national character, but they can never…become members of a race… This type of thinking was rare among German and French race scientists who hardly distinguished between race and nationality.

* [Joseph] Jacobs gave as the historical reasons for the prevalence of first-cousin marriage among Jews the absence of theological prescriptions against the practice (such as obtained in the Catholic church), “the existence of small communities scattered about, the rare communion between the sexes, and, above all, the absence of any ideal of pre-nuptial love.” He adduced several other reasons for its prevalence in England, whose room lay in the particular historical conditions under which English Jewry lived. These were the absence of a shadkhan (marriage broker), who would have brought people together from different parts of the country, the relative wealth of English Jews, which led the wealthier families to marry among themselves; and the practice of what he termed “shoolism” or limiting one’s circle of friends and acquaintances to one’s own synagogue.

* “The Jewish poor have never been a burden to the general population but have been entirely supported by the Jews themselves.”

* “Jews do not lead “dangerous” lives in the insurance sense (sailors, soldiers, firemen, miners, etc.). The trades which they do exercise, except that of tailoring, seem more long-lived. Further, the Jewish nature does not seem to require stimulants, and Jews are markedly free from alcoholism. The tranquilising effects of Jewish family life, the joyous tone and complete rest of the Sabbath and other festivals, the unworrying character of the Jewish religion, are all important in the difficult art of keeping alive. The greater care taken of Jewish women, who
more rarely take to manual labour, aids also in producing good results in the tables of mortality. I attribute much importance, too, to the strict regulation of the connubial relations current among Jews.”

* Samuel Weissenberg took pride in East European Jewry’s “high sense of family,” the extraordinarily low rate of illegitimate births, the minimal amount of sexually transmitted diseases, the low infant mortality rate, the moderate alcohol intake, and the apparent immunity to many infectious diseases, but asserted that none of this was due to any particular racial qualities. These features were not so apparent in the less traditional Jewish communities of Western Europe. This was proof, for Weissenberg, that any biological benefits the Jews might have enjoyed were solely founded in their religion.

* For the Zionists, Jewish life in Germany (and eventually the entire Diaspora) was threatened not only by the hostile mob but also by the prospects of “race suicide.”

* A significant proportion of German Jews by WWI had “gone beyond Judaism.”

* German socialist leader Karl Kautsky: “There is rising within Judaism, as a reaction against anti-Semitism, a similar tendency to accept and use the theory of race. It is a natural application of the principle: If this theory permits Christian-Teutonic patriots to declare themselves demi-gods, why should Zionist patriots not use it in order to stamp the people chosen by God as a chosen race of nature, a noble race that must be carefully guarded from any deterioration and contamination by foreign elements?”

* For many Zionists who redefined Jewishness in nationalistic terms, the concept of race was an alluring device.

* At the turn of the century, Europeans of all political and cultural backgrounds believed in the concept of race.

* …a Jewish racial instinct whose effectiveness had ensured racial exclusiveness and therefore Jewish racial purity, was reminiscent of much of the German volkisch literature being disseminated by nationalist (and often antisemitic) groups.

* the campaign of Jewish doctors such as [Felix] Theilhaber and [Magnus] Hirschfeld for the rights of homosexuals and women as well as those suffering from venereal diseases — all groups who at the turn of the century were labeled as outsiders — was related to their Jewishness. These men also felt themselves to be outsiders — professionally, because as Jews they were pushed to the periphery of medical science, and individually, Theilhaber because of his Jewishness, Hirschfield because of that and his declared homosexuality.

* Theilhaber maintained that the Jews of Germany were confronted with the inexorability of their own demise due to “low fertility, conversion, intermarriage, the increase in celibacy, venereal diseases, mental illnesses, the movement from the country to the big cities, and the entrance into free and commercial professions at the expense of artisanal work.”

* When involved in criminal activity [in 19th Century Germany], Jews were generally found to be most frequently guilty of non-violent crimes such as defamation, embezzlement, the receipt of stolen property, perjury, and the forgery of documents.

* Zionist race scientists would not, indeed could not, be too harsh on their people’s past, especially its biological past. This meant perforce that they would take a decidedly environmentalist view. If a Jewish anthropologist had detected a “flaw” in the race and had been a biological determinist, then what was the point to the entire Zionist enterprise?

* The origins of modern racial thinking are to be found in the eighteenth century. Continuing encounters between Europeans and aboriginals, colonialism, and the slave trade served to diminish the avowed Enlightenment commitment to human equality.

* …in the United States [after WWI], the rejection of scientific racism proceeded more slowly [than in Britain].

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Hot New Comic Pete Drysdale

Posted on June 7, 2020 by Luke Ford

When the covid-19 pandemic hit, I wondered how it would affect Westfield Shopping malls which I thought were operated by the Lowy family. Turns out they sold out last year.

From the Australian Financial Review March 1, 2020:

Another Australian-American billionaire, Westfield heir Peter Lowy, lived in Beverly Hills for many years (and hosted fundraisers for presidential candidate Hillary Clinton) – though now resides in Malibu and is building a home in the “bird streets” of the Hollywood Hills next door to Friends star Matthew Perry.

As Sydney’s Daily Telegraph revealed in 2018, Lowy is now having a downright ball pursuing his second act as a stand-up comedian. His stage name is Peter Drysdale.

Ring any bells? The Beverly Hillbillies’ banker was Mr Drysdale. Sure, his first name was Milburn, but we’re still calling it uncanny.

The Australian tendency would be to trash Peter Lowy for these efforts as Aussies love to cut down tall poppies. I think Yanks will give him a fair go.

Peter Lowy has attracted a little press in America.

According to the first result on Google:

Peter Lowy is a principal of The Lowy Family Group (LFG) a private investment business with offices in New York, Los Angeles and Sydney.

Peter Lowy is a principal of The Lowy Family Group (LFG) a private investment business with offices in New York, Los Angeles and Sydney. With a long-term focus on listed equities, real estate and technology, LFG also collaborates with select external firms to augment its direct investment activities.

Prior to the completion of its sale to Unibail-Rodamco in June, 2018, Mr Lowy served as Co-Chief Executive Officer of Westfield Corporation, the global leader in design, development and operation of iconic retail destinations in major world cities. Valued at $34.5 billion at the time of the transaction, the company held a portfolio of 35 shopping centres in the United States and United Kingdom, along with a seminal development site in Milan, Italy.

Mr Lowy has more than three decades of international investment and executive leadership experience in the REIT industry. Prior to his 35-year tenure with Westfield, he worked in investment banking in both London and New York. He holds a Bachelor of Commerce degree from the University of New South Wales, Australia.

Additionally, Mr Lowy serves as Chairman of the Homeland Security Advisory Council for Los Angeles County, is a Director of the Lowy Institute for International Policy, and is on the Supervisory Board of the recently combined Unibail-Rodamco-Westfield.

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Compulsive Viewing: The Inside Story Of Packer’s Nine Network

Posted on June 4, 2020 by Luke Ford

Here are some highlights from this 2000 book by Gerald Stone about Australia’s leading TV network of the time:

* What does it take to become a television star? Performers may look like they are speaking directly to you — their eyes aglow with empathetic smiles and their voices bubbling over with bonhomie — but they’re merely addressing [a camera]. Some on-camera people never manage to get past this mechanical barrier. Though they are highly professional in every other way, they can’t bring themselves to pretend friendship with an unblinking eye. Their hesitancy is quickly detected by the audience radar, leaving viewers, too, feeling unconsciously ill at ease.

TV cameras…impose a distorting filter on human personality. Minor defects that would pass unnoticed in normal conversation are sometimes magnified on the home screen into a major distraction… Even widely admired characteristics are vulnerable to misinterpretation by the time they are electronically pulverised, blasted through space in a swarm of tiny dots… A voice that commands attention from a stage may sound too fruity or contrived in the cosy confines of a living room. Extraordinary intelligence can come across as just plain smugness… Performing on television often requires longish periods of delivering straight to camera, to give the effect of looking directly into the eyes of the person watching.

* Television can’t make individuals do what they would otherwise never dream of doing. But it can cause a very large number of people to express their feelings in a certain way. Similarly, when it comes to social trends, television doesn’t invent them but it certainly has the power to accelerate them.

* [60 Minutes] is living drama dressed up as current affairs, designed to cut through the mystique and jargon of traditional news gathering and uncover the human essence of any issue or event.

* Journalists tend to see the most important accolade as recognition by their peers rather than the public…

* Television doesn’t produce stars as much as personalities. The ultimate star — in the form of a great movie idol — is generally seen as distant and unapproachable, living apart in an enchanted world. TV celebrities, by contrast, draw their popularity from their ability to come across on the home screen as friendly and accessible, people like their viewers but with the special talent to articulate their audience’s expectations.

* All current affair programs seek to make theater out of real life, highlighting the drama, excitement or intrigue so often hidden away in everyday occurrences.

* The secret to capturing a mass audience is to focus on the gut issues that interest almost everybody.

* It didn’t take long after my arrival in Sydney in 1962 to learn the difference between Australians and Americans. My moment of truth dawned during an after-work drinking session with a group of journalists… I was listening to my colleagues complain about almost every aspect of their culture — from its steak-and-eggs provincialism to its she’ll be right unionists and bureaucrats. Americans are brought up to be very patriotic and I was starting to feel increasingly uneasy about the drift of the conversation. This was my new home, where I had chosen to settle as a migrant, and I genuinely loved everything I had seen so far — it seemed a safe, healthy environment populated by friendly, resourceful people you felt you could rely on.

“You know the trouble with you Aussies,” I interrupted, “you’re always knocking your own country.”

The chatter came to a dead stop… Finally, someone snapped, “If you don’t like it mate, why don’t you piss off?”

…Australians [are] more irreverent than most other English-speaking people…

There is something about life in hot, bright sunshine that chases away inner shadows, burns off the dewdrops of nuance. Aussies are known around the world as being refreshingly unsubtle and direct…

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