September 27, 2016 On Spencer’s Herzlianism for the Current Year Luke Ford No sacred cows.

On Spencer’s Herzlianism for the Current Year

Posted on September 27, 2016 by Luke Ford

From Alt Zionism A Home for Dissident Jews:

If not Jew and White, then which?

It is a curious fact that in the Current Year, the Alt Right understands the Jews better than the Jews understand themselves. While legions of ersatz Larry Davids and Brooklyn-accented Californian soccer moms gather in the hallways of the ADL to issue hollow, self-abnegating proclamations that what it is to be a Jew is to be a refugee (1,2),it is only the purported anti-Semites who share the common sense of Herzl in recognizing that the Jews are “a people – one people” (3).

Richard Spencer took this point for granted when, at a recent press conference, he suggested that it would be an insult to call a Jew a European, for to call him a European would be to deny him his heritage (4). To call a Jew a European, on Spencer’s view, is to cut him off from his people, and to suggest that Jews will form a part of a future pan-European ethnostate is do an injustice to the destiny and struggle of the Jews as much as to the struggle and destiny of the Europeans.

Spencer’s view presupposes, of course, that Jewish identity cannot be an instance of European identity in the same way that French identity, for example, is. If this is right, then it must be the case that Jewish identity and European identity are in fact incompatible in such a way that to identify as a Jew is to link oneself to an entirely different people and history than the people and history to which one links oneself in identifying as a European. Read on.

Posted in Alt Right, Europe, Jews | Comments Off

The Past is a Real-Talking Country

Posted on September 27, 2016 by Luke Ford

From the blog Those Who Can See:

* We propose five categories of historical realtalk (some of which overlap in our quotes):
Banal my-group preference
The More Able remarking upon the Less Able
The Less Able remarking upon the More Able
Us remarking upon the otherness of Them
True bigotry

We focus on two out-groups with which ethnic Europeans have long been in contact: Sub-Saharan Africans and Jews.

I) They’re not us: In-group preference

‘Birds of a feather flock together.’ With the glaring exception of ethno-masochistic modern NW Euros, preferring to be with one’s own kind is the norm in all times and places. Even today, does anyone raise an eyebrow at Chinatown, Greektown, or Little Havana?

Harry Truman, while still a young man on the farm, often wrote letters to his sweetie. In one from 1911, he admits:

‘I think one man is just as good as another so long as he’s honest and decent and not a nigger or a Chinaman. Uncle Will says that the Lord made a white man from dust, a nigger from mud, then threw up what was left and it came down a Chinaman. He does hate Chinese and Japs. So do I. It is race prejudice I guess. But I am strongly of the opinion that negroes ought to be in Africa, yellow men in Asia, and white men in Europe and America.’

The evolution of this vignette is telling: It begins bigoted, with a slur against Blacks and Chinese; followed quickly by the avowal that this is lazy, ‘I-picked-it-up-from-my-uncle’ racism; then a more neutral ‘each to his own.’

Robert Schlesinger shares a tidbit about Dwight D. Eisenhower and his speechwriter:

During their summer 1956 [Civil Rights speech] drafting sessions, Eisenhower and Larson fought a tug-of-war about how to handle the issue of civil rights. … Ike explained that just as the Brown v. Board of Education case was based on the inner feelings of black children, so too must the inner feelings of southern whites also be considered. He wanted to make it clear that political and economic equality would not mean social equality—’or that a Negro should court my daughter.’

The idea that inter-racial romance just wasn’t done was common well into the civil rights era. No less than JFK held this view in private. From HBO’s Sinatra: All or Nothing At All documentary, quoting Nancy Sinatra:

‘The Kennedys had a very specific way of thinking and doing things. And at one point, dad’s friendship with Sammy Davis Jr., who was soon to marry May Britt, became a political rub for them. She was a beautiful white blonde actress and they didn’t like the idea of the inter-racial marriage. This is the Kennedys. You would have thought the reverse of them. Dad got a phone call and he was asked to dis-invite Sammy Davis to the inaugural gala. And he actually had to do it.’

A later anecdote about JFK from an interview with White House butler Gene Allen:

“In February 1963, Kennedy invited 800 blacks to the White House to commemorate the 100th anniversary of the Emancipation Proclamation. Louis Martin, a Democratic operative who helped plan the function, had placed the names of entertainer Sammy Davis Jr. and his wife, May Britt, on the guest list.
The White House scratched it off and Martin would put it back on. According to Martin, Kennedy was aghast when he saw the black and white couple stroll into the White House. His face reddened and he instructed photographers that no pictures of the interracial couple would be taken.”

Though it may ruffle our feathers today, we’d do well to remember that this type of in-group preference is hard-wired and universal–we (21st c. ethnic Anglo-Germanics) are the far-out oddities in this case, not any of the people cited above.

II) They’re Less Able than us

Ever since Herodotus traveled the known world scribbling down the habits of the diverse peoples he met, we’ve been hooked on difference. The Age of Discovery brought us into contact with peoples that to us (and we to them) may just as well have come from another planet.

If there is one thing discoverers of all races have agreed upon, it is the perplexingly low level of civilization attained by Sub-Saharan Africans.

Nevertheless, the ‘racist’ quotes so frequently dredged up by today’s Social Justice Warriors are often quite the opposite. While noting the low level of African progress, many learned men blamed the environment, and were hopeful that Blacks would soon break through and ‘join civilization’ as so many other groups had done.

The most learned men of their eras saw things this way. The 1911 edition of Encyclopedia Britannica, for example, in its article on ‘The Negro,’ states:

‘Mentally the negro is inferior to the white. The remark of F. Manetta, made after a long study of the negro in America, may be taken as generally true of the whole race: “The negro children [in the South] were sharp, intelligent, and full of vivacity, but on approaching the adult period a gradual change set in. The intellect seems to become clouded…’

‘But though the mental inferiority of the negro to the white or yellow races is a fact, it has often been exaggerated; the negro is largely the creature of his environment, and it is not fair to judge of his mental capacity by tests taken directly from the environment of the white man, as for instance tests in mental arithmetic; skill in reckoning is necessary to the white race, and it has cultivated this faculty; but it is not necessary to the negro.’

The greatest scientific minds were in agreement. Legendary historian Arnold Toynbee in his 12-volume Study of History, analyzed every civilization then known to man, declaring:
‘It will be seen that when we classify mankind by color, the only one of the primary races, given by this classification, which has not made a creative contribution to any one of our twenty-one civilizations is the Black Race.’ (Vol. I)
Even so, it being 1934, Toynbee feels the need to follow this observation with several pages of apologetics for Africans, explaining that they’re bound to create modern civilizations any day now…

Kenyan archaeologist L.S.B. Leakey, mentor to legends Jane Goodall and Dian Fossey and coiner of the species homo habilis, wrote in 1963:

‘As a social anthropologist, I naturally accept and even stress the fact that there are major differences, both mental and psychological, which separate the different races of mankind. Indeed, I would be inclined to suggest that however great may be the physical differences between such races as the European and the Negro, the mental and psychological differences are greater still.’

Lewis Terman

Psychometric pioneer, president of the American Psychological Association and of the National Academy for Sciences Lewis Terman devoted his life to studying intelligence in children.

His innovative wide-scale IQ testing exposed him to diverse groups of test-takers. Administering the tests to Spanish-speakers and unschooled African-Americans from the Southwest, he concluded in 1916:

‘High-grade or border-line deficiency… is very, very common among Spanish-Indian and Mexican families of the Southwest and also among negroes. Their dullness seems to be racial, or at least inherent in the family stocks from which they come… Children of this group should be segregated into separate classes… They cannot master abstractions but they can often be made into efficient workers… ‘

James Watson

None of these men took any special joy in pointing out inferiority; they merely considered it part and parcel of their scientific work. Some ethnies could jump higher, live longer, were taller or shorter, and yes, exhibited higher or lower intelligence. Nobel winner James Watson, giant of 20th century genetics and co-discoverer of DNA’s double helix, did not seem to realize times had changed when he said in 2006,

‘[I’m] inherently gloomy about the prospect of Africa’ because ‘all our social policies are based on the fact that their intelligence is the same as ours – whereas all the testing says not really.’

Pointing out such banalities was a commonplace in all times before our own. Watson forgot it was 2006, though, and thus saw himself stripped of posts and privileges and labeled a pariah…

Jewish over-achievement, for example, has been complained about for centuries. They were reputed to be extremely energetic, enterprising, smart, organized, ruthless towards out-groups, and champs at ethnic networking (in many ways the opposite of the African.)

Because of these traits, and their diaspora status, comments on their seeming to ‘take over’ were common.

1) In finance and business

Fyodor Dostoevsky

Russian literary giant Dostoevsky, in Diary of a Writer, 1877:

‘. . . I know that in the whole world there is certainly no other people who would be complaining as much about their lot, incessantly, after each step and word of theirs — about their humiliation, their suffering, their martyrdom. One might think it is not they who are reigning in Europe, who are directing there at least the stock exchanges and, therefore, politics, domestic affairs, the morality of the states.’

Mark Twain

Beloved American satirist Mark Twain comments on same (1899):
‘The Jew is being legislated out of Russia. The reason is not concealed. The movement was instituted because the Christian peasant and villager stood no chance against his commercial abilities. He was always ready to lend money on a crop, and sell vodka and other necessaries of life on credit while the crop was growing. When settlement day came he owned the crop; and next year or year after he owned the farm, like Joseph.’

‘In the dull and ignorant England of John’s time everybody got into debt to the Jew. He gathered all lucrative enterprises into his hands; he was the king of commerce; he was ready to be helpful in all profitable ways; he even financed crusades for the rescue of the Sepulchre. To wipe out his account with the nation and restore business to its natural and incompetent channels he had to be banished from the realm.’

George Sand

French novelist George Sand, in an 1857 letter to her friend the journalist Victor Borie:

‘I saw in “the wandering Jew” the personification of the Jewish people, exiled in the Middle Ages. Nevertheless, they are once again extremely rich, owing to their unfailing rude greediness and their indefatigable activity. … they are at the point of making themselves kings of the world. This people can thank its obstinacy that France will be Judaized within fifty years. Already some wise Jews prophesy this frankly.’

Ulysses S. Grant

Union general Ulysses S. Grant, vexed by their commercial prowess, tried to ban them from Civil War army camps in the South. While in Oxford, Mississippi, with the 13th Army Corps in 1862:

‘I have long since believed that in spite of all the vigilance that can be infused into post commanders, the special regulations of the Treasury Department have been violated, and that mostly by Jews and other unprincipled traders. So well satisfied have I been of this that I instructed the commanding officers at Columbus to refuse all permits to Jews to come South, and I have frequently had them expelled from the department, but they come in with their carpet-sacks in spite of all that can be done to prevent it.’

‘The Jews seem to be a privileged class that can travel anywhere. They will land at any woodyard on the river and make their way through the country. If not permitted to buy cotton themselves, they will act as agents for someone else, who will be at military post with a Treasury permit to receive cotton and pay for it in Treasury notes which the Jew will buy up at an agreed rate, paying gold.’

Legendary poet Ezra Pound made radio broadcasts from Italy during WWII, pointing out Jewish financial power. Like Charles Lindergh, he wanted the U.S. to stay out of the war:

‘I do not want my compatriots from the ages of 20 to 40 to go get slaughtered to keep up the [Jewish magnate] Sassoon and other British Jew rackets in Singapore and in Shanghai. That is not my idea of American patriotism.’

He spoke directly to the British, telling them Jews’ financial acumen was hurting them:
‘You let in the Jew and the Jew rotted your empire, … you stand for nothing but usury. And above metal usury; you have built up bank usury, 60% against 30 and 40%, and by that you will not be saved. … You have for years had cheap goods DUMPED in from Russia. … Your Jews have ruined your home manufactures.’

‘Loans from the city of London, loans to the Orient, interest paid in cheap cotton goods, loans to the South American countries, interest paid in beef from the Argentine, and ruin of English grazing. … there is only one start you can make. And that is a start toward being England. A refusal to be a province of Israel, or an outpost of Yankee-Judaea.’

2) In culture

Charles Lindbergh

Iconic pilot Charles Lindbergh in his famous 1941 Des Moines speech urging the U.S. to stay out of the war, said

‘The three most important groups who have been pressing this country toward war are the British, the Jewish and the Roosevelt administration. … Their greatest danger to this country lies in [Jews’] large ownership and influence in our motion pictures, our press, our radio and our government.’

Upton Sinclair

Hollywood was widely seen as Jewish-controlled. Socialist novelist Upton Sinclair:

‘In olden times,’ Upton Sinclair once remarked, ‘Jewish traders sold Christian girls into concubinage and into prostitution, and even today they display the same activity in the same field in southern California where I live.’ Or as F. Scott Fitzgerald summed up the Hollywood scene of his era — ‘a Jewish holiday, a Gentile tragedy’.

Truman Capote

Their power was felt in the literary world as well. Novelist Truman Capote, in a 1968 Playboy interview:

‘Well, it has brought about the rise of what I call the Jewish Mafia in American letters. This is a clique of New York-oriented writers and critics who control much of the literary scene through the influence of the quarterlies and intellectual magazines.’

‘Bernard Malamud and Saul Bellow and Philip Roth and Isaac Bashevis Singer and Norman Mailer are all fine writers, but they’re not the only writers in the country, as the Jewish literary Mafia would have us believe.

‘I could give you a list of excellent writers, such as John Knowles and Vance Bourjaily and James Purdy and Donald Windham and Reynolds Price and James Leo Herlihy and Calder Willingham and John Hawkes and William Goyen; the odds are you haven’t heard of most of them, for the simple reason that the Jewish Mafia has systematically frozen them out of the literary scene.’

3) In political movements

Winston Churchill

The Bolshevik movement was widely seen as being fomented by powerful Jews. Winston Churchill, in a 1920 editorial, Zionism versus Bolshevism: A Struggle for the Soul of the Jewish People:

‘There is no need to exaggerate the part played in the creating of Bolshevism and in the actual bringing about of the Russian Revolution by these international and for the most part atheistic Jews. It is certainly the very great one; it probably outweighs all others. With the notable exception of Lenin, the majority of the leading figures are Jews.

‘Moreover, the principal inspiration and driving power comes from the Jewish leaders . . . In the Soviet institutions the predominance of Jews is even more astounding. And the prominent if not the principal part in the system of terrorism applied by the extraordinary Commissions for combating Counter Revolution has been take by Jews, and in some notable cases by Jewesses.’

Kaiser Wilhelm

Germany’s Kaiser Wilhelm, in a 1922 editorial in the Chicago Tribune, shared the same view:
‘A Jew cannot be a true patriot. He is something different, like a bad insect. He must be kept apart, out of a place where he can do mischief – even by pogroms, if necessary. The Jews are responsible for Bolshevism in Russia, and Germany too. I was far too indulgent with them during my reign, and I bitterly regret the favors I showed the prominent Jewish bankers.’

Just as with the Chinese in Malaysia or the Indians in Uganda, an over-performing out-group will not go unnoticed– or un-criticized. There may be a bit of envy or resentment in the above remarks, but we still do not qualify them as bigotry…

Complaints about Jews’ refusal to assimilate were common among leaders.

Richard Nixon

Nixon, quoted earlier, said this in a 1973 phone call with Henry Kissinger on an upcoming US-Soviet summit:

‘Let me say, Henry, it’s gonna be the worst thing that happened to Jews in American history,’ Nixon said. ‘If they torpedo this summit — and it might go down for other reasons — I’m gonna put the blame on them, and I’m going to do it publicly at 9 o’clock at night before 80 million people,’ he vowed. ‘I won’t mind one goddamn but to have a little anti-Semitism if it’s on that issue,’ adding: ‘They put the Jewish interest above America’s interest and it’s about goddamn time that the Jew in America realizes he’s an American first and a Jew second.’

..Truman too resented them pushing their own group interests. Henry Wallace, Sec. of Commerce, in his memoirs on 1946 negotiations over the new Jewish state:

Truman was ‘exasperated’ over Jewish pressure that he support Zionist rule over Palestine. Wallace added ‘Pres. Truman expressed himself as being very much ‘put out’ with the Jews. He said that ‘Jesus Christ couldn’t please them when he was here on Earth, so how could anyone expect that I would have any luck?’ Pres. Truman said he had no use for them and didn’t care what happened to them.

H.G. Wells

Author H.G. Wells pointed out the same:

‘Zionism is an expression of Jewish refusal to assimilate. If the Jews have suffered, it is because they have regarded themselves as a chosen people.’

‘A careful study of anti-Semitism prejudice and accusations might be of great value to many Jews, who do not adequately realize the irritations they inflict.’

Roald Dahl

Beloved writer Roald Dahl (of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory fame) said in a New Statesman interview:
‘There is a trait in the Jewish character that does provoke animosity, maybe it’s a kind of lack of generosity towards non-Jews. I mean, there’s always a reason why anti-anything crops up anywhere; even a stinker like Hitler didn’t just pick on them for no reason.’

3) Dishonesty with Out-groups

Jews have long been criticized for their perceived dishonesty towards out-groups.

Fyodor Dostoevsky

Dostoevsky, cited above in Diary of a Writer (1877), also says:

‘And, in truth, the whole activity of the Jews in these border regions of ours consisted of rendering the native population as much as possible inescapably dependent on them, taking advantage of the local laws. ….
‘In this respect the Jew preserves all his originality as compared with other Russian aliens, and of course, the reason therefore is that status of his, that spirit of which specifically breathes pitilessness for everything that is not Jew, with disrespect for any people and tribe, for every human creature who is not a Jew.’

Mark Twain

Twain, whom we cited earlier, mounted a spirited defense of the Jew as a fine upstanding citizen and good businessman, yet still conceded that:

‘He has a reputation for various small forms of cheating, and for practising oppressive usury, and for burning himself out to get the insurance, and for arranging cunning contracts which leave him an exit but lock the other man in, and for smart evasions which find him safe and comfortable just within the strict letter of the law, when court and jury know very well that he has violated the spirit of it.’

Napoleon

No less than Napoleon accused them of exploiting outsiders. From an 1806 speech before the Council of State:

‘The Jews have practiced usury since the time of Moses, and oppressed the other peoples. Meanwhile, the Christians were only rarely usurers, falling into disgrace when they did so. We ought to ban the Jews from commerce because they abuse it . . . The evils of the Jews do not stem from individuals but from the fundamental nature of this people.’

Emmanuel Kant

Philosopher Emmanuel Kant, from an anthropology lecture he gave throughout the latter 1700s:

The Palestinians [Jews] living among us have, for the most part, earned a not unfounded reputation for being cheaters, because of their spirit of usury since their exile. Certainly, it seems strange to conceive of a nation of cheaters; but it is just as odd to think of a nation of merchants, the great majority of whom, bound by an ancient superstition that is recognized by the State they live in, seek no civil dignity and try to make up for this loss by the advantage of duping the people among whom they find refuge, and even one another.

Voltaire

French Enlightenment hero Voltaire made similar observations, worded somewhat more harshly:

‘We find in them only an ignorant and barbarous people, who have long united the most sordid avarice with the most detestable superstition and the most invincible hatred for every people by whom they are tolerated and enriched.’

4) Lacking Character

Outside observers often felt Jews showed a lack of character.

H.L. Mencken

Writer H.L. Mencken found them vain and cowardly:

‘The Jews could be put down very plausibly as the most unpleasant race ever heard of. As commonly encountered they lack any of the qualities that mark the civilized man: courage, dignity, incorruptibility, ease, confidence. They have vanity without pride, voluptuousness without taste, and learning without wisdom. Their fortitude, such as it is, is wasted upon puerile objects, and their charity is mainly a form of display.’

T.S. Eliot

Poet T.S. Eliot, in a 1925 personal letter, found them envious:

‘I am always inclined to suspect the racial envy and jealousy which makes that people [Jews] inclined to bolshevism in some form (not always political).’ Later, in a 1933 lecture, he talked about the importance of ‘unity of religious background…. Reasons of race and religion combine to make any large number of free-thinking Jews undesirable.’

Karl Marx

Karl Marx, himself of Jewish descent, accused his own group of being money-hungry:

‘What is the object of the Jew’s worship in this world? Usury. What is his worldly god? Money. . . . What is the foundation of the Jew in this world? Practical necessity, private advantage. . . . The bill of exchange is the Jew’s real God. His God is the illusory bill of exchange.’

Auguste Renoir

Auguste Renoir, in an 1898 conversation with Manet’s daughter Julie, described them as cowardly and money-hungry:

‘[The Jews] come to France to earn money, but if there is any fighting to be done they hide behind a tree… There are a lot of them in the army, because the Jew likes to walk about wearing a uniform.’ During the same discussion, Julie notes that Renoir also ‘let fly on the subject of Pissarro, ‘a Jew’, ‘whose sons are natives of no country and who do their military service nowhere.’

Differences in character– in future orientation, in out-group attitude, in patriotism– tend to kill multiculturalist dreams in the egg. Ethnic groups with vastly different characters simply do not live comfortably side-by-side. Our forebears, we now see, were not so squeamish about these prickly truths as we are.

Posted in Blacks, Diversity, HBD, Jews | Comments Off

Alt-Right Or Alt-White?

Posted on September 27, 2016 by Luke Ford

Comments at Vox Day:

* We’re indelibly tied to our phenotypic/ethnic/cultural identity by nature of our genetics, our inherited social legacy and the perceptions of others.

Realizing this is it really “selfish” or deplorable to wonder how a new school of political thought would affect those of your group identity?

We can work towards the preservation and revitalization of the West but the reality is that as long as various groups under the banner of ‘Alt-Right’ are vying for ideological and policy supremacy it would be foolish to not consider the consequences of their respective proposals.

Some like Jared Taylor, at least initially, would advocate for the cessation of reverse-discrimination laws and voluntary association enclaves.

Some like Steven Sailor would advocate for a return to meritocracy through a hyperactive civic nationalism where those who don’t perform to standard are rightfully sloughed off benefit from the whole.

Some like Brett Stevens would advocate exiling anyone who isn’t of particular North-Western European ethnicities — not just minorities, but those of Irish lineage and mixed-white backgrounds.

Some still farther to the periphery of the ‘Big Tent’ would advocate for more immediate and violent action as a necessary stopgap to what they see as the immenitized destruction of Western Civilization.

For some there are not enemies to the Right, but there are overt ambiguities that if ignored will coalesce into debilitating problems as this great drama unfolds.

* The various strands of the Alt Right need to talk with one another and focus on what they have in common to work as allies in the fight for the survival of the White race and Western Civilization.

* The issue of Race/Ethnicity may be of less concern to the Alt-West corner of the Alt-Right ‘Big Tent’ but the stark reality is that it is one of the prime issues if not THE defining issue of the Alt-Right as it currently stands.

Brett Stevens often states that any multi-ethnic society is doomed to internal conflict and eventual dissolution.

History bears this to be true but there are outliers — Most notably in the modern world, Singapore, which under a benign dictatorship with a free market is relatively stable for a multi-ethnic society with a sizable Muslim population to boot.

Since any effort to make the United States 90% white again within this century would would most likely include highly unsavory methods under both expanses of the current Overton Window, one wonders if there are any other methods to achieve the preservation of both the Occidental World and the White Race without leaving both in a scenario far worse as a result?

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Debate Reacts

Posted on September 27, 2016 by Luke Ford

Peter Grant: “What did strike me was the contrast between the candidates’ approaches to the rest of the world. Donald Trump was emphatic about protecting American jobs and our national economy, if necessary by renegotiating international trade agreements, restricting immigration, etc. Hillary Clinton was much more globalist in orientation, looking to admit more refugees, work together with other nations (whatever that means), and so on. She basically saw the United States as just one nation among many, whereas Donald Trump saw it as the ‘first among equals’ with the right to put its own interests first.”

Charles Krauthammer: “It was not exactly the knock out fight that we thought. It was a spirited fight. I think in the end it was something like a draw. But I do believe that the draw goes to the challenger in the sense that Trump did not go over the line. And the very fact he could go 90 minutes on the same stage ultimately elevates the challenger, that’s just automatic for any debate of that support.

I think he did allow himself to get very defensive and she exploited that. She kept coming back for things where he wasted a lot of time on taxes, on some of the other issues he felt personally about, and, as a result, he missed a lot of opportunities. She presented herself as she always does. Solid, solid, knows her stuff, not terribly exciting but reliable. I think that is the best she can do. Likable, she couldn’t but that is not something within her reach.

He contained himself in the sense that I don’t think he committed any gaffes but he allowed himself — she could find out something personal about him that would make him down rabbit holes at a time when he had wide openings to go after her on e-mails and other items, and let them go.”

Comments at Steve Sailer:

* I swear, my son spent more time prepping this past week for his job interview at Ford this morning (entry level engineering job) than Donald Trump seems to have bothered to spend to become the leader of the free world and perhaps save Western Civilization.

* What did he lose? Did he lose the debate on points? Perhaps. Did he lose because he disqualified himself by fulfilling the MSM narrative that he is temperamentally unfit for office? No, he most certainly did not.

Trump’s main objective was to show the nation that he belongs on this stage and is not the buffoon they say he is. He did that. Do I wish he would have had more debating skills and wiped the floor with Hillary? Heck yes. But he did endure 90 minutes of attacks by Hillary and a moderator that was clearly on her side. And he came through without disqualifying himself with any showstopping gaffes.

All I can say now is let’s see how this plays out with the voters. Hillary supporters think it’s over. Trumpers like me think he pulled through. It’s now up to the 15 to 20 percent of the voters who don’t care too much one way or the other.

* The basics for a change election are obviously in place. Voters overwhelmingly see the country on the wrong track. We’ve had two terms of the Democratic Party in the WH, and the current Democratic candidate is the quintessential status quo candidate. Her opponent is the quintessential change candidate.

Hillary can win only if Trump can be made to look like a wild, risky, out-of-control man. Whether Trump “won” the debate is mostly irrelevant if he managed to come across as a rational character. And in this debate I think he did. FWIW, I watched the debate with two people who, beforehand, regarded Trump as simply a “clown”, but who declared afterwards that he came across as a lot more reasonable than they had expected.

I think that if Trump manages a similar performance in the final two debates, and generally sticks to the knitting, it’s going to be very difficult for Hillary to win.

* Trump could use what Jane Austen called “command of countenance.” Too much smirking, pursuing of lips, head shaking, eye rolling.

Overall, though, I think Trump did fine. Not as well as I might have dreamed, but that would have required someone who is not Trump. He rambled incoherently a few times and failed to make a few strong points when the opportunity arose, but he didn’t shoot himself in the foot.

Thinking about it a few hours later, the point that remains with me is, “Hillary may talk a good game, but she’s not going to deliver. People like her have been running Washington for 30 years, making lot of promises, and nothing ever changes.”

That’s what it really boils down to, not the birther issue or tax forms.

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Trump’s African-American Reframing

Posted on September 27, 2016 by Luke Ford

Scott Adams writes:

So Trump flipped the frame. He said life in the big cities is worse-than-ever for African-Americans, thereby forcing his opponents and the fact-checkers to explain in detail how much better things have gotten since slavery. And the civil rights movement. And on and on. That changes your perspective. Now you see 2016 as the best year – probably ever – for African-Americans, albeit with plenty of work left to do. And that’s the sort of reframing that diffuses racial tension. I think it helped.

But it gets better.

Trump’s absurd claim that things are worse-than-ever isn’t true in a factual sense. But it is emotionally compatible with the feelings of African-Americans who feel victimized by police and the system in general. This is one of those cases where being totally wrong is the most sensible approach. Emotions matter in the real world because they drive behavior. Facts, not so much.

Trump doesn’t ignore facts because he is dumb. He does it because facts don’t matter. Every trained persuader knows that.

In the 2D world, where people think that facts and reason matter, Trump’s claim that life is worse than ever for African-Americans is an absurd lie. But in the third-dimension of persuasion – where Trump operates – it was brilliant.

Posted in America, Blacks | Comments Off

Scott Adams Scores The Debate

Posted on September 27, 2016 by Luke Ford

Scott Adams writes:

Clinton looked (to my eyes) as if she was drugged, tired, sick, or generally unhealthy, even though she was mentally alert and spoke well. But her eyes were telling a different story. She had the look of someone whose doctors had engineered 90 minutes of alertness for her just for the event. If she continues with a light campaign schedule, you should assume my observation is valid, and she wasn’t at 100%.

Some will say Clinton outperformed expectations because she didn’t cough, collapse, or die right on stage. That would be true if she also looked healthy in general, and her campaign schedule from here on out is full. We’ll know more this week, based on her schedule.

Clinton’s smile seemed forced, artificial, and frankly creepy. I’m already hearing on Twitter that mentioning a woman’s smile is sexist. I understand the point. But when someone goes full Joker-face and tests the uncanny valley hypothesis at the same time, that’s a bit different from telling a woman to “smile more.” My neighbor Kristina hypothesized that Botox was making her smile look unnatural. Science tells us that when a person’s mouth smiles, but their eyes don’t match the smile, they look disingenuous if not creepy. Botox on your crow’s feet lines around your eyes can give that effect. But whatever the reason, something looked off to me.

To be fair, Trump’s physical appearance won’t win him any votes either. But his makeup looked better than I have seen it (no orange), his haircut was as good as it gets for him, and he was otherwise his normal self that some voters hate and some like.

But the most interesting question has to do with what problem both of them were trying to solve with the debate. Clinton tried to look healthy, and as I mentioned, I don’t think she completely succeeded. But Trump needed to solve exactly one problem: Look less scary. Trump needed to counter Clinton’s successful branding of him as having a bad temperament to the point of being dangerous to the country. Trump accomplished exactly that…by…losing the debate.

Trump was defensive, and debated poorly at points, but he did not look crazy. And pundits noticed that he intentionally avoided using his strongest attacks regarding Bill Clinton’s scandals. In other words, he showed control. He stayed in the presidential zone under pressure. And in so doing, he solved for his only remaining problem. He looked safer.

By tomorrow, no one will remember what either of them said during the debate. But we will remember how they made us feel.

Clinton won the debate last night. And while she was doing it, Trump won the election. He had one thing to accomplish – being less scary – and he did it.

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Dear Trump Supporters

Posted on September 27, 2016 by Luke Ford

Tom: “Dear Red America. Having lived in many of your regions — geographical, psychological and economic — I used to have a lot of respect for your wisdom and fortitude. I thought I understood you, and that you often endured a lot of unfair and even prejudicial scorn. That you cannot now see through this huge tub of flaming horseshit and are willing to play dangerous games with the country’s existence is a mystery to me.”

Luke: “Come on, Tom, you can do better than this. Do you think one person who disagrees with you will be persuaded by that? Or are you only virtue signaling? People not only see the world differently, but more importantly, they experience it differently because of differing biology. How much do you believe in free will? I don’t think most people can choose their politics. It springs from their genes. I think Jonathan Haidt’s perspectives of understanding where the different sides come from is more fruitful. Why do people react differently to the same stimuli, such as Trump? It’s more important to understand than to get angry.”

Tom: “This is an expression of how disappointed I am in my countrymen, that they would let this dismal spectacle get this far.”

Luke: “Well, why have they done this? How do you understand that?”

Tom: “I confess it’s a mystery to me, because I don’t think it’s rooted in anything having to do with actual policies, as Trump has nothing coherent to say. I suspect darker motives: latent bigotry, sexism and freewheeling frustration without a clear target. It’s not a good look.”

Luke: “Come on, Tom. You can do better. Use your ability to empathize. People have different politics because they experience life differently. Outside of religious faith, there are no good guys or bad guys in the universe. There are just different forms of life competing for survival and to propagate and they use different evolutionary strategies. Here is a good liberal academic [Jonathan Haidt] who always votes Democratic expending some effort to empathize with those who view the world differently from him.”

David: “You can be an atheist utilitarian and still find room for Good and evil. Go reread Cicero.”

Luke: “Yes, but it is subjective, unless you ascribe it to a transcendent source, which requires faith, and there is no point arguing over faith.”

Tom: “That’s charitable of you, Luke, and I agree that facts are processed differently by everyone, but these kinds of awful and self-defeating political decisions need to be called out.”

Luke: “How much time have you spent in real life listening to people voting for Trump without arguing back against them, but only trying to understand? I find there is nothing human that is alien to me. With some effort, I can see where anyone is coming from and why they act and think the way they do and I can describe what they see and feel without using any negative words.”

Tom: “Luke, tons. I listened to reams of it without saying a peep while working as a reporter in Wyoming, Georgia, Utah and Arizona. I have never seen the vox populi go so wrong or ugly as this year.”

Greg: “Facts are processed by rational people. The irrational, the ones who make up the nationalist base, do not process facts but feelings. The problem begins when they demand that those feelings be given parity with facts in any kind of argument. Vox populi, indeed..”

Luke: “Nobody processes facts without regard to their genetic make-up. We all have instinctual pre-rational reactions that determine our politics. We then rationalize our instincts. Nobody just looks at the facts from a blank slate and idealistically pursues the true and the good.”

“Forgive me, Tom, if you have written this up already, but can you describe the reasons people are voting for Trump using only objective language? No slurs such as racist, bigoted, etc.”

Tom: “Luke, I can’t. I feel like I am living in a parallel reality, because Trump is such an obvious liar and sociopath that I just can’t see why a rational person would want to give him the most precious office this planet can offer.”

Luke: “Of course you can, you just don’t want to expend the effort of empathy. There is no POV on politics that I can’t articulate in objective language.”

Tom: “I have tried many times over the last 12 months and it still doesn’t make sense in the final analysis. Since you seem to have the advantage on me here, can you do it in a few sentences?”

Luke: “People with a strong disgust reflex (it is stronger on the right than on the left) have a stronger reaction against diversity.”

Tom: “So it comes down to the GI tract? Not sure about that.”

Luke: Wikipedia notes: “There is evidence that conservatives are more sensitive to disgust [7] and the insula is involved in the feeling of disgust [8] On the other hand, more ‘liberal’ students tended to have a larger volume of grey matter in the anterior cingulate cortex,[5] a structure of the brain associated with monitoring uncertainty and handling conflicting information.[5][6] It is consistent with previous research suggesting that individuals with a larger ACC have a higher capacity to tolerate uncertainty and conflicts, allowing them to accept more liberal views [9] The authors concluded that, “Although our data do not determine whether these regions play a causal role in the formation of political attitudes, they converge with previous work to suggest a possible link between brain structure and psychological mechanisms that mediate political attitudes.”

Tom: “I’ve read some biological determinalism studies on this — and keep meaning to look at the work of John Alford at Rice U. but it still doesn’t explain the gullibility. Otherwise tough-minded businesspersons in the heartland are willing to take the nation to Trump University because they have a gag reflex? WHY?”

Doug: “Luke Ford, how’s your empathy level with folks like ISIS followers who adhere to an ideology that justifies cold blooded murder in the name of their religion? Surely they have many justifications for their existential conclusions. Do you give them the same benefit of the doubt, “describing what they see and feel without using any negative words?” It seems to me that there is sometimes a manifestation of evil within the human experience that transcends our desire for tolerance and attempts at mutual understanding.”

Luke: “Evil is a statement of religious faith, which is fine. Otherwise, ISIS are just following their group interest.”

“Tom, what percentage of people do you think have free will in their political choices? I’d say almost none. We all have instinctive reactions that the more intelligent try to rationalize. Do you think half the population has free will with their political choices? Tom, do you think you have free will with your political choices?”

Tom: “I sort of see Luke’s point about group interest, though. Last night watching the debate, this quote from Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein came to mind. “No man chooses evil because it is evil; he only mistakes it for happiness, the good he seeks.””

Luke: “Exactly. ISIS has many reasons to believe it is doing the will of Allah. If Hitler had allowed his generals to go for Moscow in August of 1941, Germany would have won WWII and Nazism would be the dominant ideology of the West.”

“When I look back on my life, I don’t I could have ever chosen otherwise based on who I was at the time. Given who you were at the time and your level of understanding? Could you really have chosen differently?”

AR: “This is circular logic, Luke. We all could have made different choices in the past. The fact that we didn’t doesn’t obviate free will. And we’re living in the present, not the past.”

Luke: “We may think we’re living in the present, but the past is never past. I suspect that most of us most of the time have less freedom than we imagine and that we are more in the grip of our genes, our history, our social setting than we would like to admit. Freedom of choice is a faith statement, like good and evil.”

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Forward: Hollywood Makes Its Case Against ‘Denial’ — Will It Matter?

Posted on September 27, 2016 by Luke Ford

I hope the side with unlimited funds gets portrayed as the plucky underdog.

David Irving could only afford to represent himself as he went up against Deborah Lipstadt’s generously funded legal team.

Wikipedia: “Lipstadt hired the British solicitor Anthony Julius to present her case, while Penguin Books hired Kevin Bays and Mark Bateman, libel specialist from media firm Davenport Lyons. They briefed the libel barrister Richard Rampton QC and Penguin also briefed junior barrister Heather Rogers. The defendants (with Penguin’s insurers paying the fee) also retained Professor Richard J. Evans, historian and Professor of Modern History at Cambridge University, as an expert witness. Also working as expert witnesses were the American Holocaust historian Christopher Browning, the German historian Peter Longerich and the Dutch architectural expert Robert Jan van Pelt. The latter wrote a report attesting to the fact that the death camps were designed, built and used for the purpose of mass murder, while Browning testified for the reality of the Holocaust.”

Forward Editor Jane Eisner writes:

The role of memory, and its fraught relationship to fact and truth, is threaded through Lipstadt’s legal battle with Irving, and so through “Denial,” the new film dramatizing that epic British courtroom struggle. The film debuted at the Toronto Film Festival and will open in select cities in the United States on September 30. Starring Rachel Weisz as Lipstadt, it’s based on Lipstadt’s book recounting her ordeal, “History on Trial: My Day in Court With a Holocaust Denier.”
Though in the end victorious, Lipstadt faced a legal saga that was filled with uncertainty and marked by intense loneliness. In the United Kingdom, the burden of proof in a libel case is on the accused, so it was up to Lipstadt and her British legal team to prove that Irving was wrong; that the Holocaust had, indeed, occurred, and that Jews were its intended victims. Lipstadt, then and today still a professor at Emory University, had put everything on the line to defend herself against the claims of a man who was driven by prejudice and anti-Semitism but also knew how to construct a cunning and cynical argument.
“History on Trial” was published in 2005, and it eerily resonates today. The rise of anti-Semitism in Europe and the surge of derogatory Holocaust-related tropes on social media perpetrated by extremists in this country raise a similar quandary: How do you deal with those who deny history, who disregard factual evidence, who seem to care little for the truth? And can this one film — a solid, interesting, at times gripping film, but one not destined for blockbuster status — help counter an ugly narrative?
The contemporary echoes were one reason that Weisz, whose parents fled from the Nazis, wanted the part. “Obviously, the Holocaust being on trial is just a very outlandish notion to me,” the British-born actress said during an interview in a Manhattan hotel. “But the idea that there are objective truths, and there is a difference between opinion and fact — in the current climate of relativism, people just spout opinions as if they are facts! There doesn’t seem to be much respect for the difference of the two things. So I thought it was fascinating to put something on trial and prove it was irrefutably a fact and that someone’s opinion didn’t stand up.”

David Irving is a complicated chap. There’s an excellent five-part British miniseries “Selling Hitler” about the Hitler Diaries. Apparently, Irving lead the way in denouncing the diaries as fraudulent after first calling them genuine.

From Wikipedia:

In 1983, Stern, a weekly German news magazine, purchased for 9 million marks the Hitler Diaries of 61 volumes and published excerpts from them. Irving played the major role in uncovering the Hitler Diaries as a hoax. In October 1982 Irving purchased, from the same source as Stern’s 1983 purchase, 800 pages of documents relating to Hitler, only to discover that many of the documents were forgeries.[52] Irving was amongst the first to identify the diaries as forgeries, and to draw media attention. He went so far as to crash the press conference held by Hugh Trevor-Roper at the Hamburg offices of Stern magazine on 25 April 1983 to denounce the diaries as a forgery and Trevor-Roper for endorsing the diaries as genuine.[53] Irving’s performance at the Stern press conference where he violently harangued Trevor-Roper until ejected by security led him to be featured prominently on the news; the next day, Irving appeared on the Today television show as a featured guest.[54] Irving had concluded that the alleged Hitler diaries were a forgery because they had come from the same dealer in Nazi memorabilia from whom Irving had purchased his collection in 1982.[52] At the press conference in Hamburg, Irving announced, “I know the collection from which these diaries come. It is an old collection, full of forgeries. I have some here”.[52] Irving was proud to have detected and announced the hoax material and of the “trail of chaos” he had created at the Hamburg press conference and the attendant publicity it had brought him, and took pride in his humiliation of Trevor-Roper, whom Irving strongly disliked for his sloppy work (not detecting the hoax) and criticism of Irving’s methods and conclusions.[55] Irving also noted internal inconsistencies in the supposed Hitler diaries, such as a diary entry for 20 July 1944, which would have been unlikely given that Hitler’s right hand had been badly burned by the bomb planted in his headquarters by Colonel Claus von Stauffenberg earlier that day.[56]
A week later on 2 May, Irving asserted that many of the diary documents appear to be genuine; at the same press conference, Irving took the opportunity to promote his translation of the memoirs of Hitler’s physician Dr. Theodor Morell.[55] Robert Harris, in his book Selling Hitler, suggested that an additional reason for Irving’s change of mind over the authenticity of the alleged Hitler diaries was that the fake diaries contain no reference to the Holocaust, thereby buttressing Irving’s claim in Hitler’s War that Hitler had no knowledge of it.[57] Subsequently Irving conformed when the diaries were declared as a forgery by consensus. At a press conference held to withdraw his endorsement of the diaries, Irving proudly claimed that he was the first to call them a forgery, to which a reporter replied that he was also the last to call them genuine.

David Irving is the subject of a great Wikipedia profile. He lost his libel lawsuit against Deborah Lipstadt. Here is David’s side.

Jack the Jew* emails:

David Duke of course came to his views on race through the KKK. It is easy to think of David Duke as a clown, but his views on Jews largely parallel Kevin MacDonald’s.
David Irving is a different case. He was a respected amateur historian and popular author about military matters. He is educated guy and a really talented writer. Because he speaks and reads German fluently, he has used original source material for his works. He is more responsible than anyone, other than Kurt Vonnegut, for publicizing British firebomb raid on Dresden (for fans of Pynchon’s Gravity’s Rainbow, it plays a significant part in that book as well). What happened with Irving is that in all of his original research, he was unable to come up with anything linking Hitler with direct orders to exterminate the Jews. He also minimized the number of Jews who were deliberately killed. (The numbers, even from established historians of the Holocaust, are all over the map. Arno Mayer, who wrote, Why did the Heavens not darken, in that book said that more Jews died of disease and other causes than were put to death in gas chambers in Auschwitz.)
Deborah Lipstadt wrote a book in which she called Irving a Holocaust Denier, lumping him with people who were explicit Holocaust deniers. Irving sued her in England for libel and lost. In the process Irving’s historical research was shredded by Richard Evans, another British historian of WWII and the Nazis, because Evans said that Irving had deliberately shaped his books and opinions by ignoring some facts and stressing others to reach a desired result.
This result of the trial pretty much ruined Irving’s reputation among serious historians. However, there are a number of points that really have to be made in Irving’s defense: Irving foolishly represented himself at trial whereas Libstadt’s team consisted of the best barristers in England paid millions of pounds by wealthy Jews including Spielberg. Evans was paid hundreds of thousands of pounds to testify as an expert witness, and in subsequent events, has been criticized by neutral sources as someone who has made serious errors in his own works. Irving made all of his source materials available to the defense and Lipstadt refused to turn over much of what she had that she based her claim in the book on.
Irving is probably the English speaking historian who knows the most about the Nazi leadership having read and translated Goebbels diaries, written a book on Goebels and on Himmler as well as on other aspects. Irving has also changed his views on the extent of the Holocaust. He still doesn’t think it can be attributed to Hitler, but does think that others in the leadership were involved, and he now concedes that there were extermination camps and that at least hundreds of thousands of Jews were killed.
Christopher Hitchens strongly supported Irving’s right to his opinions and his books. The question is always one of whether histories should be refuted by calling its author a racist or an anti-Semite or refuted with facts. Irving was not some crank pounding out tracts. He may have had an agenda as Evans testified, but if that is the case, identify the agenda as Evans did and show how Irving distorted the facts. However, that may be true for some of the parts of Irving’s works, its certainly not true for most of them.

Posted in David Irving, Holocaust | Comments Off

Why Donald Trump Won Last Night’s Debate

Posted on September 27, 2016 by Luke Ford

From the Forward:

Joshua Seidel is a Trump supporter and a Jew on the alt right.

Right from the start Trump was aggressive and focused on Clinton’s documented shortcomings. His strategy was a smart one: keep the attacks coming while discussing his policy ideas with broad brush strokes. Trump took every question from Holt and turned it into the discussion HE wanted to have. Holt asked about the economy and how to make it better: Trump responded by talking about everything from trade policy to his own business success, while attacking Hillary’s record on NAFTA. His responses were so dense, so filled with asides and potential tangents, than Clinton couldn’t possibly respond to every assertion Trump was making. Instead, she had to lamely refer people to her own website for “fact checking.” Trump’s strategy here was brilliant: attack Clinton on specific issues, make her defend herself while presenting his own policies more broadly, and making it difficult for her to counter him on specifics. Clinton was on defense virtually the entire debate. By making his attacks early, Trump made it seem as though Clinton was merely responding, rather than coming up with unique attacks on her own, as she hit his tax and business records.

Trump used Holt’s rather hands-off moderating to his advantage. Holt wouldn’t press Trump to answer questions directly and with specifics, and Trump used this to answer in the way he wished. He used old sales tricks to let Holt keep him talking, such as responding to a question with a question. “You asked me a question, didn’t you Lester?” he said at one point as Holt tries to ask a follow-up. “Let me answer.” Reminded me of my cold-calling days.

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I wonder what Hitler would have thought about medical marijuana

Posted on September 27, 2016 by Luke Ford

Gerard J. Perry: Hitler was anti-pot but pro-meth.

Miriam: “What would Hitler think”, is that your equivalent of Christian’s “WWJD?”

Joshua Pitterman: I always ask myself what would Hitler think before I do anything important, I feel hashem loves Irony.

Miriam: Ha! This made my day. Thank you.

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