David Brooks on the “Meritocratic Establishment”

Posted on September 27, 2017 by Luke Ford

Steve Sailer writes:

In the New York Times, David Brooks writes:


After World War II the Protestant establishment dominated the high ground of American culture and politics. That establishment eventually failed. It tolerated segregation and sexism, led the nation into war in Vietnam and became stultifying.

So in the late 1960s along came a group of provocateurs like Abbie Hoffman, Jerry Rubin and the rest of the counterculture to upend the Protestant establishment. People like Hoffman were buffoons, but also masters of political theater.

They never attracted majority support for their antics, but they didn’t have to. All they had to do was provoke, offend the crew-cut crowd, generate outrage and set off a cycle that ripped apart the cultural consensus.

The late 1960s were a time of intense cultural conflict, which left a lot of wreckage in its wake. But eventually a new establishment came into being, which we will call the meritocratic establishment.

David has long used “meritocratic” as a euphemism for, basically, “Jewish.”

Mr. Brooks’ notion is that the upheavals of the 1960s were largely about talented Jews elbowing their way into the top slots in our culture, which is exaggerated but pretty reasonable.

It hardly makes sense to talk of black and brown beneficiaries of affirmative action, such as Michelle Obama, as “meritocrats.”

Obviously, he’s talking about Jews with a few Asians thrown in and a vague appeal to Catholics, who probably lost more under the post-1968 dispensation than they gained.

But since you can’t mention Jewish numbers, almost nobody ever grasps what Brooks is talking about.

Ever since, you are not supposed to mention Jewish predominance. You are supposed to talk about, say, White Privilege in Hollywood, White Privilege on Wall Street, and White Privilege in the Press, but you are never ever supposed to speak of Jewish Privilege. It’s not even a thing.

And that explains a lot of the mania about the President. While Trump is clearly extremely pro-Semitic, his tendency to blurt out inconvenient truths has alarmed much of the “meritocratic establishment” that he will someday blurt out the most unmentionable fact of all: how over-represented Jews are in the best jobs.

It’s perfectly reasonable for Jews to want to have no quotas restricting their personal ambitions. But it’s not reasonable for Jews to insist upon quotas limiting whites, of whom Jews make up only 3% (so that affirmative action barely affects them), while simultaneously censoring all analogous discussion of their own over-representation.

An obvious bargain: Jews should knock it off with the White Privilege / Huddled Masses hate rhetoric. In return, fewer white gentiles would care about Jewish hypocrisy, because there would be less Jewish hypocrisy to care about.

I don’t think David Brooks would disagree all that much, he’d just object to specifying what he is talking about.

Commenter Welsh draws attention to this 2005 book review in the NYT by Brooks:


A woman came up to me after one of my book talks and said, “You realize what you’re talking about is the Jews taking over America.”

My eyes bugged out, but then I realized that she was Jewish and she knew I was, too, and between us we could acknowledge there’s a lot of truth in that statement. For the Jews were the vanguard of a social movement that over the course of the 20th century transformed the American university system and the nature of the American elite.

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Dennis Ross: “Memories of an Anti-Semitic State Department”

Posted on September 27, 2017 by Luke Ford

Steve Sailer writes:

A common theme in respectable discourse at present is that the selfish career ambitions of individual white men must often take a back seat to broader societal goals such as diversity, social justice, inclusion, fighting cultural appropriation, the war on whitewashing, and so forth.

On the other hand, a theme utterly unheard except in the most reprehensible hate speech is the idea that the career ambitions of individual Jews should sometimes take a back seat for any reason, even world peace.

Thus, in the New York Times today, Dennis Ross explains how Dennis Ross’s fabulous foreign policy career molding America’s stance toward Israel proves that the worst thing imaginable would have been if he’d been asked to have worked instead on, say, the South American desk at the State Department just because he’s profoundly biased in favor of Israel:


Memories of an Anti-Semitic State Department
By DENNIS B. ROSS SEPT. 26, 2017

The former C.I.A. officer Valerie Plame Wilson made news with her Twitter account last week when, on the first day of Rosh Hashana, she shared an article that said, “America’s Jews are driving America’s wars: Shouldn’t they recuse themselves when dealing with the Middle East?”

“Recusal” is a pretty common practice — the idea is that judges or government officials recuse themselves from a role over subjects in which they are not disinterested.


The article, which appeared on a fringe website, said that Jewish neoconservatives were pushing for a war with Iran. Ms. Wilson, whose identity as a covert operative was leaked in 2003 by members of the George W. Bush administration nettled by the opposition of her husband, Ambassador Joseph Wilson, to the Iraq war, repeated the well-worn narrative that Jewish neoconservatives promoted the invasion of Iraq — and are beating the drum for a conflict with Iran.


Of course, most Jews are not neoconservatives, and most neoconservatives are not Jewish. In any case, it was two influential non-Jews, Vice President Dick Cheney and Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, who played the central role with President Bush in deciding to invade Iraq in 2003. Ignoring the old saying about when you are in a hole you should stop digging, Ms. Wilson made some excuses and then mentioned that she is of Jewish descent. Finally, she apologized.

I have little interest in piling on Ms. Wilson. But the whole affair brought back some memories about how Jews were perceived within the national security apparatus for a long time. When I began working in the Pentagon during President Jimmy Carter’s administration, there was an unspoken but unmistakable assumption: If you were Jewish, you could not work on the Middle East because you would be biased.

However, if you knew about the Middle East because you came from a missionary family or from the oil industry, you were an expert. Never mind that having such a background might shape a particular view of the region, the United States’ interests in it, or Israel. People with these backgrounds were perceived to be unbiased, while Jews could not be objective and would be partial to Israel to the exclusion of American interests.

Sometimes, I would find this view expressed subtly. Other times it would be overt, including well after Secretary of State George Shultz tried to change the culture of the State Department during the early years of the Reagan’ administration. For Mr. Shultz, being Jewish was no longer a disqualification from working on Arab-Israeli issues. He was more interested in your knowledge than your identity. …

And yet, I remember well the time in 1990, when I was the head of the State Department’s policy planning staff, I was visited by a diplomatic security investigator who was doing a background check on someone who had listed me as a reference. This person was being considered for a senior position in the George H. W. Bush administration, not one directly involved with the Middle East.

At one point, the investigator asked me a question that is routine in these background checks: Was this person loyal to the United States? I answered yes, without a doubt. But his follow-up question was if this person had to choose between America’s interests and Israel’s, whose interests would he put first? There was nothing subtle about this presumption of dual loyalty.

“Why would you ask that question?” I asked, even though I realized I might not be helping the person using me as a reference. He answered, “Because he is Jewish.” So I went on: If he was Irish and had to work on problems related to Ireland or if he was Italian and had to work on Italy, would you ask that question? Initially, the investigator did not seem to know how to respond, but then I saw a look of recognition. He suddenly realized that I was Jewish. And, at that point, he changed the subject.

… Just like Ms. Wilson tweeting that Jews are pushing for a new war. It is the definition of prejudice. How can it not be when you label a whole group and ascribe to all those who are a part of it a particular negative trait or threatening behavior? It is the same today with those who single out all Muslims as dangerous extremists. It is just as unacceptable.

Today, surging nationalism and xenophobia promise to create even more prejudice. These attitudes foster an “us versus them” mentality. The “other” is a threat. And once you have singled out groups, the leap is small to imposing limits on them, quarantining them and rationalizing violence against them.

Rather than be worried about being mistrusted and accused of dual loyalties, Jewish American should feel proud. In uncertain times, identity can provide a source of security and comfort. And having a strong identity, being comfortable with who you are and whom you are connected to, need not come at the expense of others. As my rabbi, Jonathan Maltzman, pointed out in his Rosh Hashana sermon, the particular and the universal have always been embedded in Jewish identity.

Dennis Ross is the counselor at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy and the author, most recently, of “Doomed to Succeed: The U.S.-Israeli Relationship from Truman to Obama.”

From Wikipedia a few years ago, when I was researching the Israeli thinktank Jewish People Planning Institute, of which Ross had been Chairman:


Dennis B. Ross (born November 26, 1948) is an American diplomat and author. He has served as the Director of Policy Planning in the State Department under President George H. W. Bush, the special Middle East coordinator under President Bill Clinton, and is currently a special adviser for the Persian Gulf and Southwest Asia (which includes Iran) to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

Ross was born in San Francisco and grew up in Marin County. His Jewish mother and Catholic stepfather raised him in a non-religious atmosphere.[2]… He later became religiously Jewish after the Six Day War.[2] In 2002 he co-founded the Kol Shalom synagogue in Rockville, Maryland.[2]

During President Jimmy Carter‘s administration, Ross worked under Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz in the Pentagon. There, he co-authored a study recommending greater U.S. intervention in “the Persian Gulf Region because of our need for Persian Gulf oil and because events in the Persian Gulf affect the Arab-Israeli conflict.”[4] During the Reagan administration, Ross served as director of Near East and South Asian affairs in the National Security Council and Deputy Director of the Pentagon’s Office of Net Assessment (1982–84).[3]

… In the mid-1980s Ross co-founded with Martin Indyk the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC)-sponsored Washington Institute for Near East Policy (“WINEP”).[5] His first WINEP paper called for appointment of a “non-Arabist Special Middle East envoy” who would “not feel guilty about our relationship with Israel.” …

In the summer of 1993 President Bill Clinton named Ross Middle East envoy…. According to Aaron David Miller, a member of the Ross-led US negotiating team in 1999-2000, under Ross they frequently acted as “Israel’s lawyer”, and their policy of “no surprises” (meaning all US proposals were first reviewed by Israel), led to a lack of negotiating flexibility and independence.

But the point is that having Ross work on something other than Israel for the U.S. Government would have been anti-Semitism, which is the worst thing imaginable

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The Alt Right After Charlottesville

Posted on September 27, 2017 by Luke Ford

From Haaretz:

“There’s really no going back from Charlottesville,” she says. “As the movement moved offline, elements like trolling and the nihilistic culture of transgression have kind of dropped away.” The movement has shed its online persona to appear like its true self.
George Hawley, a political scientist at the University of Alabama, also spent years studying the alt-right and white-nationalist movements. His new book, “Making Sense of the Alt-Right,” studies the movement’s evolution and the differences – and similarities – to previous white-nationalist movements.
Unlike the white-nationalist movements of the 1980s and ’90s, which he says “were not known for attracting people who were particularly talented or bright,” the alt-right was youthful and tech savvy, totally different from previous white-supremacist movements like the KKK, which the alt-right viewed as ineffective and derisively called “white nationalism 1.0.” Uniquely, the alt-right was leaderless, not beset by “wannabe führers.” It offered anonymity and laughs.
“Although I think the people pushing the movement for the most part were all serious, part of its appeal with lots of young people was that there was a spirit of youthful rebellion about it,” Hawley says. “It was also offering something more attractive than William Pierce ever did,” he adds, referring to the American white nationalist who founded the National Alliance in 1974. As Hawley puts it, the alt-right presented itself as “something you can be a part of that’s fun and also safe. You get to laugh along the way. I don’t think anybody is going to join Aryan Nation with that in mind,” referring to the white supremacist religious organization.
Hawley agrees with Nagle that the ironic phase is over and that the movement is turning into a more typical white-nationalist movement. Starting earlier this year, Hawley says, people in the alt-right realized that “there are limits to what internet harassments and memes and trolling campaigns could accomplish,” so a push to take it off the internet and into the real world ensued.
But that gambit backfired with Charlottesville and the last month has seen a break between the movement and much of the online troll army that helped the alt-right explode onto the international stage. Many of the trolls simply broke with the movement.
“I think there’s a growing indication, especially after a big wave of doxxing, that this isn’t a game that people can just engage in and disengage from without potential for real consequences,” Hawley says.
Nagle says that in Charlottesville, “the alt-right wasn’t being ironic, for once.” It was very obvious that the movement believed in white nationalism. That, she says, forced a break between the more fervently ideological faction and people just along for the ride.
“All those guys who spent time in all these forums, now after Charlottesville, see they’re not willing to go through with what it would take to turn their flirtations with the far right into something real. They don’t have the serious political commitment to really be part of the movement that Richard Spencer is leading,” Nagle says.
“They’re not going to go and face down militarized riot police and Antifa [the anti-fascist movement at the forefront of the counterprotests], they’re not serious enough about their goals. In many cases, I think these were young people who enjoyed the fun of transgression, but hadn’t really seriously thought through the gravity of the ideas that they were flirting with.”
Still in the game
Part of the problem, Hawley says, is that once the alt-right stepped into the outside world, it looked less like its youthful, rebellious online persona and “a lot like the earlier white nationalism they had been trying to distinguish themselves from.”
Still, Hawley and Nagle don’t believe that the blows of the past month mean the alt-right is close to an end just yet, despite all the arrests and disavowals.
“There are people who were really enthusiastic about the alt-right’s message before – they probably still are. If somebody was committed to the creation of a new ethno-state, it’s unlikely that they’ve had a real change of heart,” Hawley says.
The problem for the alt-right, he argues, is that after Charlottesville, it’s unclear how to harness the youthful energy of online trolling and turn it into a unified, serious white-nationalist movement. “I’m not sure they really know how to move forward without going back and doing the things that were ineffectual before,” he says.
As for the near future, Hawley suggests that a model more akin to European far-right movements – groups that “don’t announce months in advance exactly what they’re going to do and where they’re going to do it” – seems likely: PR stunts like taking over mosques.
As Hawley puts it, “They can’t really have big rallies, but they can show up, make a show of force, take the pictures they want to take and then disperse. I’m thinking of the mosque occupation in France a few years ago. I wouldn’t be surprised if that might be a model that is more likely to be replicated in the U.S.”
But the alt-right is a leaderless movement, which means in-house opinions about its future vary widely. Some people, Hawley says, think the alt-right should lay low for a while and let Antifa “overstay their welcome,” while others want a “million Charlottesvilles.”
The most energized faction seems to be the so-called alt-tech, which aims to create the white-nationalist movement’s own technological infrastructure – things like social media, fundraising platforms and web-hosting services – now that so many web-service companies are banning it.
“We tend to think in terms of groups and organizations, but the alt-right still hasn’t achieved that yet,” Hawley says. “It’s still sort of a thousand monkeys on a thousand typewriters kind of movement.”
According to Nagle, the bigger problem is that the anger that sparked the movement hasn’t dissipated. The alt-right, she says, has lost a lot of activists who are afraid of the consequences, but still believe in the movement’s core messages. And though the alt-right finds itself diminished, she says, the threat of violence might be bigger now that the stalwarts don’t have to placate the more moderate wing, and now that the movement is linked to the far-right militia movement.
“I worry that there’s this group of particularly younger men who have not been convinced that they’re wrong,” Nagle says, adding that the anger still exists.
“It’s not that they’ve been convinced that any of their critiques of liberalism or feminism are wrong, because there is a real crisis in liberalism and its ability to defend its own ideas and inspire people,” she says. “That problem is not going to go away. It’s just going to continue festering and take different forms.”

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LAT: ‘How Hitler’s fascism almost took hold in Los Angeles’

Posted on September 27, 2017 by Luke Ford

Pat Morrison writes:

Hiler didn’t have to set foot out of Germany for his malign plans to be felt beyond the Reich’s borders — even here in Los Angeles. Through the depths of the Depression right into World War II, Nazi Germany was ginning up support in Southern California, where its agents plotted everything from attacks on National Guard armories to murdering Hollywood’s Jewish moguls and filmmakers.

USC history professor Steven J. Ross has unearthed the story of sunshine Nazism, from picnic rallies in a La Crescenta park to a compound planned for Pacific Palisades as Hitler’s White House on the Pacific. Ross’ book, “Hitler in Los Angeles, How Jews Foiled Nazi Plots against Hollywood and America,” is part thriller and all chiller, about how close the California Reich came to succeeding.

Why was Los Angeles, way out here on the West Coast, so important to the Nazis in the 1930s?

Because everyone sees New York as kind of the center of Jewish activity, and so did the Nazis. But they also understood that the mayor of New York, Fiorello LaGuardia, was a very vehement anti-Nazi. As many people may not know, he was half-Jewish. And he had the ports of New York, which the Nazis referred to as “Jew York,” very closely guarded.

In L.A., however, we had a long history of anti-Semitism, racism, Ku Klux Klan activities and right-wing demagogues. And the port was never monitored. And so the Nazis were able to send their ships to L.A., and on every ship there always a Gestapo officer. When they would dock in L.A., the head of the [German-American group] Bund here would go down to the docks and receive money, propaganda and secret orders from Germany.

The hero of your story is a man named Leon Lewis. He was a World War I veteran. He was co-founder of the Anti-Defamation League. Who was he, and how did he fall into this work?

He moved to L.A. around 1931. Hitler becomes chancellor, Reich chancellor of Germany, in January 1933, and this idea that Jews didn’t do anything is totally wrong. What I discovered is that Jews did a lot.

For months they were debating between the American Jewish Congress and the American Jewish Committee: wouldn’t we be more effective in getting in Hitler’s face? The other side of the debate argued if you got in Hitler’s face it would only force him to double down, that he was never going to back down, and it would increase the persecution of Jews.

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Cowboys Fan No More

Posted on September 25, 2017 by Luke Ford

Watching the Dallas Cowboys kneel before the national anthem tonight, my team became my enemy. They disrespect me and I loathe them.

I’ve been a Cowboys fan since 1978. No more. The NFL can go to hell.

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