JTA: This Jewish lawmaker wanted to keep Chinese immigrants out. Should a park be named after him?

Posted on May 9, 2018 by Luke Ford

From JTA:

The elder Kahn, a Republican from San Francisco who served 12 terms in Congress between 1899 and his death in 1924, championed an extension of the Chinese Exclusion Act in 1902 prohibiting immigration by Chinese laborers.

While doing so, he approvingly read to Congress excerpts from a travel writer’s 1853 journey to the Far East, describing the Chinese as “morally, the most debased people on the face of the [E]arth.” Kahn personally endorsed these views, stating they are “undoubtedly equally applicable to any Chinese community in our country.”

A tremendously influential legislator, Kahn was successful in getting the votes for the act’s extension, which made Chinese immigration permanently illegal and legally enshrined anti-Chinese sentiment until its repeal in 1943…

What is certainly true is that the anti-Chinese immigration stand was the party line of the day. And, say Bay Area Jewish historians, virulently anti-Chinese sentiment was also par for the course among Kahn’s fellow German Jewish gentry of San Francisco…

“They were a civilizing influence on a kind of boomtown of young men running wild,” said Fred Rosenbaum, the founder of Berkeley-based Lehrhaus Judaica and the author of many books about San Francisco Jewry. “But they did have a giant blind spot. And that had to do with anti-Asian racism. They really were leading participants in the persecution of the Chinese in California.”

Added historian and author Ava Kahn (no relation to Julius): “Julius Kahn was one of the few Congresspeople who was against a literacy test for immigrants. So he was not anti-immigrant. He was anti-Asian immigrant.”

So was Jacob Voorsanger, the famed rabbi of the city’s Congregation Emanu-El (and founder of the local Jewish newspaper that became J.), who described the Chinese as a “non-assimilative race” who were “unable to mix with caucasians” in the pages of J.’s predecessor, the Emanu-El.

Levi Strauss summarily dismissed 180 Chinese workers from his famous blue jeans factory after thugs targeted the Chinese in 1877 riots. Adolph Sutro, a social liberal, one of the city’s greatest industrialists and philanthropists, and, in 1894, the first Jew to be elected mayor of a major U.S. city, boasted about having never hired “a chinaman.” He wrote that “the very worst emigrants from Europe are a hundred times more desirable than these Asiatics.”

Rosenbaum’s research has revealed that Jewish communities on the East Coast and in the Midwest, where there were few Chinese, were confused and horrified at San Francisco Jews’ peculiar animus — which, to be fair, they shared with much of the city’s white establishment. Many worried that the fanatical drive to limit Asian immigration would eventually boomerang on Jews — and, with the Immigration Act of 1924, it did: Jews from much of Europe were barred from entry, intensifying the magnitude of the Holocaust.

Posted in China, Jews, San Francisco | Comments Off on JTA: This Jewish lawmaker wanted to keep Chinese immigrants out. Should a park be named after him?

Overcoming The Poverty Mindset

Posted on May 7, 2018 by Luke Ford

The disease of under-earning.

Posted in Addiction | Comments Off on Overcoming The Poverty Mindset

I Ran So Far Away, I Just Ran (5-7-18)

Posted on May 7, 2018 by Luke Ford

MP3

Comments:

* I’ve been thinking a lot about “the modern world.” It does seem to be inevitable IF you accept that every individual is clawing his way to the top of the reward pile… and that hyper literacy and hyper numeracy are most deserving of reward. On those premises, something like Dubai Healthcare City will eventually emerge… but what if we had a different sense of “merit?” Could we build other kinds of mature civilizations?

So yes Jews will dominate in this sort of world. But… why is this the world we build? Is this the world god wants us to build? Is this the kingdom of heaven? If Jews will dominate modern society, why do they never turn the corner and make something better…? Do you think of Los Angeles as the best of all possible worlds?

And then I’d also like this discussion: why do Jews oppose usury among other Jews? (Answer: something like: it’s bad cuz exploitative & unnatural) — but then why not oppose it among out-group? Answer: because fuck the out-group mwhaha…

You should try varying your titles to pull in new crowds. Loyal base established—they’ll stay. Try “What is the alt-Left” or “Social Justice and the Torah” LoL maybe idk

Also you should do some Torah Talks with Kaiter. His not distinguishing much between Christian monotheism and Jewish monotheism… we can’t let that go!

Do you feel a dynamic when you’re streaming where, if you give off “positive energy,” then the chat reciprocates? I’ve been feeling this, and I can’t tell if I dislike it or not…

Like when I listen to your self-help streams, they aren’t really my speed. I mean, I’m interested in your story & happy that things have been looking up for you, but it isn’t really hitting my sweet spot lately… but I just wonder if this is another element of the e-personality. Goes like this: if you give off negative vibes, then the chat will be negative to you, and that stings… as a result, streamers will tend to keep it positive, because they seek positive affirmation from the chat.

But this worries me. It might be an incentive to white-wash the truth with happy slogans in an effort to elicit the happy feedback from the chat?

Anyway, man. I love how well your streams are doing! What you were saying last night about how a couple years ago you didn’t feel confident enough to put your face out there and do the video… but how now you’ve got better confidence. That’s huge!

One other thing: Kaiter’s claim that “people often hear the use of big words as ‘showing off,’ but listeners should simply say, ‘what does that word mean?’ ” — this could be interesting turf for talking about rhetoric and persuasion and messaging and optics. It reminds me of Hemingway’s reply to Faulkner: “Poor Faulkner. Does he really thing that big emotions come from big words?” Faulkner had accused Hemingway of never using words that would send a reader to a dictionary, but I think Hemingway’s reply is the winner.

Because if you frequently send your listener to a dictionary, they will start to *feel* their own lack of verbal acumen, and it becomes almost abusive at some point… it’s status jockeying to say “rebarbative” when you can say “prickly,” isn’t it? It’s not populist! I don’t like it! haha

But I do like Kaiter. Keep having him on.

* I never realized how fucked up I was till I started listening to Luke explaining all of his early and current life altering negative conditions. Thanks Luke.

* Hail Kaiter, the Luke Ford show’s very own “Le Chateau Autiste”…

* Can anyone give me a TL;DR regarding why Greg doesn’t feel comfortable around Richard? All I’ve seen here are his comments calling Richard a megalomaniac, etc. I’m sure there’s a back story here and/or a catalyst that I don’t know about. This was news to me.

* It seems risky to take as an assumption that we should place faith in full time scholars alone to engage in radical skepticism about publications for the highly intelligent general public. Especially for a text that has different practical utilities for different racial groups. CofC has many errors, but it also brings up crucial points that many people in the general public are unaware of whether they take interest in the alt-right or not. Factors that impact them in ways they were unaware of. CofC is an inherently racial text. The ethnicity of the reader does matter, because the text does have different racial implications for different people on the basis of race. Moreover, Cofnos’ Jewish ethnicity should not be regarded as irrelevant when considering the metaethics of his paper. It bares contextual significance due to the nature of the topic matter in CofC—Jewish intellectual movements and their influence on western culture. His race shouldn’t be seen as a purely determining factor, but it should be worth keeping in mind.

* The alt right fell for what I’m calling “the valor trap.” Manliness as a virtue is taken too far and becomes a vice. It’s taking the bait. It lost the ‘monkey zen’ part and became territorial and mirroring the left in purity spiraling.

* Proud of you luke. Really well conducted interview [with Greg Johnson]. I Think you actually are unique in that you actually know what the altright is all about. Which makes me wander why your are on such friendly terms with them. You really don’t have the excuse of ignorance! Is it masochism?

* You have a great thing on the show though. You’re fostering a really important atmosphere where alt right followers can be exposed to people and ideas they would never check out in their echo chamber and you are also really humanizing the alt right and showing their vulnerability, which is equally important. You should write a book on the subject. Would be a great way to counterpart the current discourse on both sides of the fence….

You have a knack of attracting really wise and uniquely and deeply wounded people. To be totally honest, even sitting in the chat, I feel a real sense of camaraderie amongst everyone, though perhaps I am projecting that?

I am looking forward to the frame game episode on Thursday. He’s great. I had dinner with a jewish friend last night. He’s totally based and we spent the evening railing against AIPAC and the ADL. I sent him to frame game’s channel. Gave me some hope!

Greg Cochran writes:

IN a recent conversation, Steven Pinker suggests that some students become radicalized when they find that there truths that are unsayable on campus. He gave some examples.

!. Capitalism is just plain better than communism

2. Men and women do not have identical life priorities, tastes and interests, or exactly the same sexuality.

3. Different ethnic groups have different crime rates

4. The great majority of suicidal terrorists are Islamic.

Deep stuff.

Seems to that this is an incomplete list. I call for suggestions from the audience: more such truths, more details, etc. With a little work we’ll provide one-stop shopping.

COMMENTS:

* Intelligence differences between ethnic groups have been repeatedly measured.

* We are not really on the cusp of ecological, resource depletion and malthusian catastrophes of at least 10 different flavours.

* Christianity is objectively more moral than Islam. First world countries, i.e., Christian countries are objectively more moral than the all others.

That’s why the immigration flow is overwhelmingly AWAY from non-Christian countries into Christian countries.

Posted in Gregory Cochran | Comments Off on I Ran So Far Away, I Just Ran (5-7-18)

How the white power movement uses cell-style terrorism

Posted on May 7, 2018 by Luke Ford

Amazon: Bring the War Home: The White Power Movement and Paramilitary America

The white power movement in America wants a revolution. It has declared all-out war against the federal government and its agents, and has carried out—with military precision—an escalating campaign of terror against the American public. Its soldiers are not lone wolves but are highly organized cadres motivated by a coherent and deeply troubling worldview of white supremacy, anticommunism, and apocalypse. In Bring the War Home, Kathleen Belew gives us the first full history of the movement that consolidated in the 1970s and 1980s around a potent sense of betrayal in the Vietnam War and made tragic headlines in the 1995 bombing of the Oklahoma City federal building.

Returning to an America ripped apart by a war that, in their view, they were not allowed to win, a small but driven group of veterans, active-duty personnel, and civilian supporters concluded that waging war on their own country was justified. They unified people from a variety of militant groups, including Klansmen, neo-Nazis, skinheads, radical tax protestors, and white separatists. The white power movement operated with discipline and clarity, undertaking assassinations, mercenary soldiering, armed robbery, counterfeiting, and weapons trafficking. Its command structure gave women a prominent place in brokering intergroup alliances and giving birth to future recruits.

Belew’s disturbing history reveals how war cannot be contained in time and space. In its wake, grievances intensify and violence becomes a logical course of action for some. Bring the War Home argues for awareness of the heightened potential for paramilitarism in a present defined by ongoing war.

Excerpts:

* Duke advanced a new public image of the Klan, one that was better-educated and genteel. He gave witty talk-show interviews wearing a suit and tie, claiming to be not racist but “racialist,” and advocating separatism rather than violence. His Klan advocated not for the denial of minority rights, he explained, but for the right of Klansmen to associate only with whites. Duke explained that people of color weren’t the enemy but merely childlike dupes of Jews and, especially, communists. Racism, although still a major motivating force of KKKK members, slipped behind the veil of Duke’s softened language. He and his associates attempted to appeal to the mainstream in the New Right, where libertarian ideas of choice and coercion had found traction. They also spoke to a centrist silent majority that mobilized around contemporary issues such as busing and housing segregation. Although this group discussed such issues through ideas of consumerism and meritocracy—for instance, arguing that their hard work and success should allow them to maintain their property values through neighborhood segregation and opposing school integration through busing—they accorded with white supremacist political goals.11 Public interviews, mainstream outreach, and political campaigns represented only one arena of Klan strategy. Even as they presented a softened public front, the same activists built an underground of violent, overtly racist activity utterly at odds with many of their public statements. They constructed a paramilitary infrastructure and expanded their membership through violent training and action.

* Klan paramilitary camps attempted to duplicate both the indoctrination and the violence of the experience of army boot camp…

Posted in Nationalism | Comments Off on How the white power movement uses cell-style terrorism

Signal To Noise

Posted on May 7, 2018 by Luke Ford

Gregory Cochran writes:

Can you dismiss an argument because the originator is a bad person? Obviously not. But if the originator lies a lot, or simply doesn’t know jack about anything, the probability that the argument is worth anything can be low, so that it might not be among the first 100,000 things on your must-read list.

I mean, it’s perfectly possible to have a valid mathematical theorem emerge from Johnson noise, but what are the odds?

Comments:

* Pinker’s old article on Kevin MacDonald makes this argument. Basically “I have limited time and don’t owe anyone a hearing, and MacDonald gives many indications of not being worth my time.” Nathan Cofnas revisited that argument recently and said Pinker might have been right then, but that MacDonald is still being talked about so maybe now is worth giving a hearing to.

* Greg’s (and all ours really) time is the constraint. Every minute he spends listening to a nut (even a brilliant nut) is a minute he didn’t spend listening to a brilliant non-nut.

* Dismissing the opinions of a liar or evil person is prudent. It is not that they are incapable of saying something useful. It is that their dishonestly and evilness makes the search for truth more difficult in the generality. Whatever they can add to the stock of human knowledge or your stock of knowledge, is outweighed by the cost.

* Vox Day on Greg Cochran: I looked at it. I also read his paper “Natural History of Ashkenazi Intelligence”. He is better informed than I am concerning the genetic details. I am without question smarter than he is and would easily destroy him on the subject.

* Greg Cochran: The neat thing is that if you look at the correlates, stuff like income and college graduation rates and Nobel prizes etc, everything else you can think fits an average IQ of about 112. Perhaps they’re faking it – if so, doing a good job.

I’ve looked at all the IQ studies. I have no reason to think it’s any lower for actual Ashkenazi Jews in Israel.

I don’t think Flynn-effect changes are real. Math abilities aren’t changing much.

* Looking at the correlates as a reality check is sensible, but the same correlates do not reflect all that well upon Israeli born Jews. Israel is a pretty good chess country overall, but this is almost entirely due to Soviet immigrants. The top Israeli born Ashkenazi player is Avital Boruchovsky, who is 467th globally. They’ve got four native born science Nobelists (all in chemistry) and one Fields Medalist, which is very good but not overwhelmingly so.

This is all of a way of saying that Israelis seem to have a level of achievement in line with their mediocre PISA results. I don’t think Lynn’s estimate of a 103 IQ is too far off for Israeli Ashkenazi, which makes it more likely that American Jews are 0.5 standard deviations above the mean as opposed to 1. This is about what you’d expect from the GSS surveys that show their vocabulary scores to be roughly equal with that of Episcopalians, although their incomes are much higher.

Kevin MacDonald once estimated that Jewish Verbal IQ was 125, which was so stupid that I didn’t bother to read him any further. It is possible to overpraise these people.

* Detecting BS in yourself is definitely harder and less fun than detecting it in others.

I think a really good first step to that is to ask yourself, when you’re just sure something must be true because it just has to be, how you’d know if it were false. How would the world look different? What evidence would you expect to see? What observations or experiments would disprove it.

Just as with some one else’s dumbass innumerate story or moral panic, if you just try looking for some numbers and engaging System 2 instead of System 1 (thinking things through logically, writing down logical statements and arguments and equations), you can often find fuzzy thinking that you were accepting.

The other thing I can recommend is to try to find smart people with intellectual integrity who disagree with your basic worldview, and read what they have to say. Even when they’re wrong, they’re likely to teach you something.

PODCASTS:

* There are quite a few YouTubers with decent subscriber counts (10k to 50k) who openly engage in wrongthink but never appear on camera and manage not to get doxxed. The guys from the very popular The Right Stuff podcast only got identified when they pissed off a guy in their own circle – someone trusted who’d known their identities from the beginning – who doxxed them as revenge.

The guy who was alleged to have doxed the others were Ghoul. A panel member who got doxed himself after showing his face in videos. When that happened one of the leftie sites that published his info also published emails alleging he had offered the others’ info in exchange for taking his own down. Which is probably how that rumor got started

The version that seems most plausible to me is that, the TRS people got doxed through having really poor operational security and that the allegations of one of their own betraying them were antifa disinfo to cause infighting.

They were all friends on public facebook accounts (doing cheeky stuff like listing standard poolco as employer), had one of their own show his face in youtube videos, pseudonyms with identifiable info (mike enoch being pretty similar to mike peinovich), prior history writing under their real name in the libertarian sphere, having personal email on early archived versions of their web page for paypal donations, some of them having usernames that were connected with their IRL identity on other boards. And having poorly screened meetups and going to conferences. So them being exposed really was inevitable once they got popular.

* Listen to Cochran and Company, watch disasters. Avalanches, flash floods, tidal waves, planes crashing into explosions, sprinkle in idiots painfully hurting themselves, be eclectic. Brain salad for the ears, youtube junk food for the eyes.

* Seriously though multitasking is what bright folks on the internet are doing all the time. Listening to music, reading, whatever. For years I was accused of being impatient when listening to people present ideas. What was really happening was reading spoiled me. I can read the same information 5 times as fast as I can listen to it. I thought blogging heads was a good idea but they screwed it up by have dolts explain science and having bar room bullshitters babble on about politics from their ideological standpoint. Find interesting people and talk way. The listeners will decide what if anything they multitask on. Might I suggest providing links to more detailed information if the listener is so interested.

* The podcast haters gonna hate but I am lucky enough to be able to work and listen which is much more efficient than work and read. In fact it’s not possible to read a transcript and do my work they are mutually exclusive. I’m not alone here either. I know several manual labor guys out there that consume large quantities of audio books while driving a forklift or something else. You can pretty easily get a transcript but it’s much harder to get good quality audio. I smell some new killer app in this domain. You’re welcome.

* I use a silly name on twitter, Facebook and other sites as my place of employment is a ‘political organization’ that isn’t supposed to be a political organization. I found out the hard way when I was told by my supervisor that my posts on Facebook were not appropriate for an employee even though nowhere in my profile does it say where I work. I ‘unfriended’ everyone I work with, but my wife has an ‘open page’ and so I don’t say or do anything there. My nom de guerre is easy to figure out with a quick search, but few bother. It’s funny to see right-wing people flip because I use the word ‘comrade’ and progressives follow me because of my twitter ‘profile’. It’s an interesting window into personal bias and shows that everyone has one, even me. Hey, I only have a few more years to work and then I can say what I want.

Posted in Gregory Cochran, IQ, Jews | Comments Off on Signal To Noise