Are Jews White?

Ari Ben Canaan writes:

For Brodkin, who considers herself both White and Jewish, does not appear to take into account that most American Whites do not consider themselves to be anything other than American Whites. When told that their identity is oppressive, shameful, and ought to be eliminated, most American Whites do not have any other identity toward which to turn. Brodkin’s attack on their identity, rather, is an attack on the only identity that they have. As such, its disingenuity is doubly vicious.

This is not to say, of course, that Ashkenazi Jews should never consider themselves partly White, or at least something approaching White. I have argued elsewhere that while Ashkenazi Jews may consider themselves either Jewish or White, but not both. Nevertheless, Brodkin and others are right to note that different racial groups can occasionally merge together, so let us grant on this basis that Ashkenazi Jews can indeed consider themselves both Jewish and White. Still, even if this supposition is true, what is White about Ashkenazim is not membership in any privileged social class, for what makes us partly White was apparent in us long before we attained to full social acceptance in the middle of the past century. As recent studies have shown, up to half of Ashkenazi ancestry is European rather than Levantine, and the culture of Europe is deeply imbued in Ashkenazi history and identity – to be sure of this, one need only look at the long list of Jewish classical musicians, scientists, philosophers and artists, or at the traditional central and eastern European dishes that we eat at our Shabbat tables. We maintain, to be sure, our own separate, Jewish identity, but there can be no doubt that Europe and European culture have left an indelible mark on our own culture and heritage, just as we have left our mark on them.

But should we choose to embrace this European heritage and consider ourselves partly White, it ought not be in order to acquire a mere guise behind which to criticize those other Whites from whom we are still, as Jews, apart. Should we choose to think of ourselves as White, we ought to consider other Whites as our friends and allies, as compatriots in a civilization that we have built together. We should not deny that gentile Whites have a robust identity as the descendants of a great European civilization whose culture, history, mythology and achievements belong to them just as the culture, history, mythology and achievements of East Asian civilizations belong to the East Asians and the culture, history, mythology and achievements of Jews belong to the Jews. All of this is, needless to say, consistent with a view that objects to racism and hatred against others: there is nothing about taking pride in the culture and heritage that produced Bach, Kant, Einstein and the Arthurian legends that commits one either to hatred of the cultures and heritages that produced Jazz and algebra or to the belief that non-Whites should be oppressed. For this reason, should we choose to identify ourselves as White, we should take no less pride in that which makes us White than we already do in that which makes us Jewish, and we should never deny the same pride to gentile Whites.

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JPOST: ‘Hacked Soros e-mails reveal plans to fight Israel’s ‘racist’ policies’

Jerusalem Post:

WASHINGTON— Hacked emails show that the Open Society Foundations, led by George Soros, has as an objective “challenging Israel’s racist and anti-democratic policies” in international forums, in part by questioning Israel’s reputation as a democracy.

The documents are available on a website, reportedly backed by Russia, that uses anti-Semitic stereotypes to attack Soros.

They reveal that Open Society, which was founded and is chaired by the hedge fund billionaire and philanthropist, gave close to $10 million since 2001 to groups advancing the rights of Arab Israelis, with an emphasis in recent years on countering what one document says are Israel’s “restrictive measures” against minorities.

“In recent years the radicalization of public opinion and consecutive Israeli right wing governments have resulted in more restrictive measures against Palestinians within Israel,” a Sept. 1, 2015 review of Open Society’s Arab Regional Office’s work said.

It cites as an example the Jewish Nation State bill, advanced by its sponsors to entrench Israel’s Jewish status, but decried by some Arab Israelis as further marginalizing non-Jewish minorities. The bill has yet to pass.

Among achievements listed in the Sept. 1 document, the Arab Regional Office includes increased advocacy by “Palestinian citizens of Israel,” or PCI, in international forums, challenging Israel’s “racist” policies in the face of its reputation as a democracy.

The document advocates the “development of a more organized and efficient PCI advocacy and presence in international forums (UN, EU, US) especially in light of the increasingly limited domestic avenues available for seeking justice.”

“In shifting to international advocacy, PCI’s [sic] are up against Israel and its image as a democratic state before the international community, therefore Palestinian civil society organizations in Israel feel the pressure of filling this gap by strengthening their relations with international actors and systems such as the European Union and United Nations to put their issue on the international agenda,” it says.

“There have been a number of successes in challenging Israel’s racist and anti-democratic policies in the international arena and influencing EU-Israel bilateral negotiations,” the document says.

The emails were posted in recent weeks by DC Leaks, a group Bloomberg News, in an Aug. 11 report, quoted security experts as saying is likely backed by Russia’s intelligence agencies.

Reactionary Jew tweets: “Soros tries to destroy Israel just as he does to Europe. He is an enemy of nationalist Jews and whites alike.”

Ari Ben Canaan: “Soros uses his ‘Jewish’ identity only as a mask for justifying pursuit of his true interests: international cosmopolitan bourgeois moralism.”

Gift of Gravity: “in that case, maybe policing yr own is good idea? Jewish orgs could be denouncing him, but arnt far as I’ve heard.”

Ari: “They’re run by people like Soros. We’re trying to change that.”

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‘Meet the Moscow Mouthpiece Married to a Racist Alt-Right Boss’

Comment: “I noticed they managed to shoe-horn in a photo of Richard Spencer Sieg Heiling. Except that he wasn’t; he was waving at jeering protesters in the back of the room. Not that I expected The Daily Beast to be honest.”

The Daily Beast:

Nina Kouprianova is not a member of the racist alt-right. At least, that’s what she’ll say when you ask her. “I am not a member of any movement,” Kouprianova, who was born in the Soviet Union, recently told The Daily Beast via email. She added that she was “sympathetic” toward movements that “challenge the dominant and globally oriented post-Liberal ideology,” but white nationalism—that fracturing of the U.S., resulting in a white ethno-state that would salve the wounds of American racists—is not for her.

Still, the track record, both personally and professionally, of Kouprianova—who also goes by the nom de plume Nina Byzantina—casts a pall over her denials. This is, after all, a woman who elected to marry Richard Spencer, the longtime lodestar of American white nationalism and progenitor of the term “alt-right.” While the two are currently separated—as Spencer told The Washington Post, his recent work has taken a “toll” on their relationship—Kouprianova hasn’t publicly distanced herself from the views of her husband, a man who has kept neo-Nazis enthralled with his views and who has expressed continued admiration for Vladimir Putin.

In fact, Kouprianova, who has a young daughter with Spencer, wrote a letter this week to the Flathead Beacon, one of their local papers in Montana. In it, Kouprianova compares the “witch hunts” surrounding her husband to Stalinist purges: “Threats and intimidation, which my current extended family continues to experience in Whitefish [Montana], remind me of the way my grandfather was forced to live [in the Soviet Union],” Kouprianova wrote. And to be fair, following Spencer’s rise to prominence, threats—veiled and otherwise—have risen alongside

Interestingly, Kouprianova’s presence in Spencer’s life has caused notable schisms within the white-nationalist community in the U.S. While ethnic Russians are, broadly, considered part of the broader “European identity” pushed by American white nationalists, Spencer told Mother Jones that his wife is part Georgian. For some members of Spencer’s racist community, that makes something other than white. For instance, prominent white nationalist Greg Johnson, who doesn’t view Georgia as part of Europe, wrote in 2014 that “Richard is basically being dominated by Nina Nogoodnik, his Russian-Georgian wife.”

Johnson, as it is, says Kouprianova is not a white nationalist. And yes, Kouprianova may not share outright her husband’s views on ethnic cleansing. But given Kouprianova’s work with Dugin, her writings for America’s most prominent white nationalist journal runs counter to those claims—and helps build one more bridge in the ongoing relationship between Russia and America’s white nationalists.

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Slate: “Jewish Family Flees County After Fox News, Breitbart Falsely Blame It for Cancellation of Christmas Play”

Steve Sailer writes: And, sure enough, from the Anti-Defamation League:

ADL Calls Reports of Family Fleeing Lancaster County, PA “Untrue and Damaging”

Philadelphia, PA, December 22, 2016 … The Anti-Defamation League (ADL), like many, read many numerous local and national news stories reporting that a Jewish family allegedly “fled” Lancaster County, Pennsylvania. The reports claimed that the family feared retribution after being wrongfully blamed for the cancellation of the school production of A Christmas Carol. ADL investigated, and found that in actuality, the family left on vacation for winter break.

“News reports alleging that a Jewish family has ‘fled’ Lancaster County are untrue and damaging,” said Nancy Baron-Baer, ADL Regional Director. “We spoke with the family, who explained that they went on a previously-planned vacation for the holidays. Stories like this can sow fear in the Jewish community and beyond, and it is important to stop the spread of misinformation.

“There is no truth to the rumor that the school cancelled A Christmas Carol at the request of parents. The Hempfield School District released a FAQ clearly stating that the play was cancelled due to the inordinate amount of class time taken up by rehearsals. We commend the district for setting the record straight.”

When the ADL is the voice of calm reason, you know the corporate media’s Fake News mania has gotten out of control.

COMMENTS:

* Slate’s getting mighty ballsy. A photo caption in the linked article reads: “Steve Bannon, white nationalist and former Breitbart News head…” They’re not even bothering with half-hearted allegeds anymore.

* Yeah, a Jewish family chased out of town by Santa’s elves doesn’t sound plausible in our world.

But a Christian business ruined by homos… that is more like it.

* Slate is trying to start a Jew vs Christian war to deflect from Muslims behaving badly.

* So, a Jewish family leaves town, somebody speculates that they left because Cossacks, and this is enough to make the “news.” No need to get confirmation that they even have the supposed fears, never mind confirmation that their fears are valid, and not just a bunch of neurotic nonsense.

Let me put that another way: it would be bad enough, if Big Media simply took a Jewish family’s word for it, that they were leaving town because Cossacks. But it’s a whole ‘nother level of lying to not even get a quote from the family, before publishing.

It’s probably way past time to start reining these slanderous, lying hacks with some lawfare.

* To be fair, every Jew in history who has ever moved from one country to another has “fled”. There is no known case of emmigration for more mundane reasons.

* A Jewish woman and her three children were harassed today on an airplane. But since the Jewish woman was Trump’s daughter, and the harassers were two gay Jewish guys, the media wasn’t that interested…

* This play has been a tradition for more than 30 years. In September, the Jewish parents asked and received permission for their child not to participate. Then, all of a sudden, in November, the school system decides that they don’t want to spend the 15-20 hours of “instructional time” required to put on the play because that would “put them behind in preparing for 6th grade. The Philly Inquirer wrote:

“The Hempfield School District addressed the controversy last week, saying that the fifth-grade production of A Christmas Carol was canceled because the district could not afford the 15 to 20 hours of instructional time outside the classroom — and not because of complaints about the line “God bless us, every one!” PennLive reported.”

The elementary school principal was quoted directly by Fox News as saying, “The teachers agreed that they did not want our students to be put at a disadvantage relative to their peers from other schools in preparation for 6th grade; therefore, the play was cancelled. In addition to focusing on high quality instruction, our decision is rooted in the desire to be respectful of the many cultural and religious backgrounds represented by the students attending Centerville Elementary.”

So the principal is admitting that something other than the cost in instructional hours was part of the decision to cancel. Sounds to me like Jewish complaints did play some sort of role in this, and now everyone is scrambling to cover it up. I would guess that the Jews argued that the play should not take up instructional time or something like that. It’s also quite possible that the teachers of today are just not that motivated to carry on the tradition.

Interesting too that a reporter for Lancaster.com actually spoke to the Jewish parents and came away with the “fleeing” impression as well.

All in all, a typical example of feckless, craven behavior by all concerned. But since there is no media willing to dig into what actually happened, we’ll never know.

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NYT: ‘How Social Isolation Is Killing Us’

Dhruv Khullar writes in the New York Times:

Social isolation is a growing epidemic — one that’s increasingly recognized as having dire physical, mental and emotional consequences. Since the 1980s, the percentage of American adults who say they’re lonely has doubled from 20 percent to 40 percent.

About one-third of Americans older than 65 now live alone, and half of those over 85 do. People in poorer health — especially those with mood disorders like anxiety and depression — are more likely to feel lonely. Those without a college education are the least likely to have someone they can talk to about important personal matters.

A wave of new research suggests social separation is bad for us. Individuals with less social connection have disrupted sleep patterns, altered immune systems, more inflammation and higher levels of stress hormones. One recent study found that isolation increases the risk of heart disease by 29 percent and stroke by 32 percent.

Another analysis that pooled data from 70 studies and 3.4 million people found that socially isolated individuals had a 30 percent higher risk of dying in the next seven years, and that this effect was largest in middle age.

Loneliness can accelerate cognitive decline in older adults, and isolated individuals are twice as likely to die prematurely as those with more robust social interactions. These effects start early: Socially isolated children have significantly poorer health 20 years later, even after controlling for other factors. All told, loneliness is as important a risk factor for early death as obesity and smoking.

Gee, why is this happening now? What has changed in America over the past 50 years that makes it harder for people to form bonds?

Jason Richwine writes for the American Enterprise Institute:

Science is telling us that ethnic diversity causes significant problems by diminishing valuable social capital. What then should we do about it?

It was not the kind of message a Harvard seminar expects to hear. Ethnic diversity causes a lot of problems, our guest speaker told us. It reduces interpersonal trust, civic engagement, and charitable giving. It causes us to disengage from society, like turtles shrinking into their shells, reducing our overall quality of life. The more diversity we experience in our lives, the less happy we are.

I came to Harvard to study public policy in the fall of 2004. All of the first-years like me had to take a special seminar class where we would discuss the philosophy of science and the nature of good research. The best class days featured established scholars who would come to present their own papers, which were real-life examples of good research.

The guest speaker who came to discuss diversity was political scientist Robert Putnam, who is something of a celebrity in academic circles. With the publication of his 1995 article “Bowling Alone,” Putnam helped bring the issues of social trust and civic participation to the forefront of social science. His article became a popular book, also called Bowling Alone, in 2000. Written for a general audience, the book chronicled the rapid decline in civic engagement that had taken place in the United States since 1950, and argued that communities without strong social ties are less happy and less successful. The article and the book garnered Putnam numerous media appearances and spawned reams of response articles in academia.

Putnam began by telling us about one result he encountered that was thoroughly upsetting to him—the more ethnically diverse a community is, the less social capital it possesses. When a person lives in a diverse community, he trusts everyone less, including those of his own ethnic group.

So how did Putnam come to conclude that ethnic diversity is so problematic? The answer begins with the notion of “social capital,” which Putnam defines in simple terms—“social networks and the associated norms of reciprocity and trustworthiness.” Social capital turns out to be an exceptionally valuable commodity. Building complex networks of friends and associates, trusting others to keep their word, and maintaining social norms and expectations all grease the wheels of business by enabling cooperation.

But the value of social capital goes well beyond economics. Many of the activities from which people draw the most deep and lasting satisfactions are stronger and more prevalent in areas with high social capital. People living in these places tend to have more friends, care more about their community, and participate more in civic causes. Where social capital is greater, Putnam says, “children grow up healthier, safer, and better educated; people live longer, happier lives; and democracy and the economy work better.”

After Bowling Alone, Putnam’s next step was to determine why some communities have more social capital than others. To find out, he helped organize a large nationwide survey of social capital indicators that sampled about 30,000 people from a broad array of cities, towns, and rural areas. By collecting demographic information about the individuals and the places they lived, Putnam hoped to gain insight into what makes for a trusting and neighborly community.

When he spoke to my class in 2004, Putnam had started to analyze the survey data, but he had not yet published any findings. He began by telling us about one result he encountered that was thoroughly upsetting to him—the more ethnically diverse a community is, the less social capital it possesses. When a person lives in a diverse community, he trusts everyone less, including those of his own ethnic group. In describing the behavior of people in diverse areas, Putnam told us to imagine turtles hiding in their shells.

Putnam told us that ethnic diversity is not merely correlated with certain community problems—it causes them.
Putnam walked us through how he came to his conclusion. At first, it was just a simple correlation. Looking at his list of the most trusting places, Putnam found whole states such as New Hampshire and Montana, rural areas in West Virginia and East Tennessee, and cities such as Bismarck, North Dakota and Fremont, Michigan. Among the least trusting places were the cities of Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Houston. The most trusting places tended to be homogenously white, while the least trusting places were highly diverse.

Putnam told us he had been fairly certain the correlation would go away once other factors were taken into account. But it didn’t. He entered a long list of control variables into regression analyses that predict elements of social capital such as neighborly trust and civic participation. Many factors—especially younger age, less education, and higher poverty and crime rates—seem to damage community relations. But none of these factors could explain the robust, negative relationship between ethnic diversity and social capital. Sounding almost defeated, Putnam told us that ethnic diversity is not merely correlated with certain community problems—it causes them.

After finishing his presentation of the data, Putnam began a class discussion. He asked us whether we thought that all relevant scientific findings, no matter how disagreeable, deserve a public airing. Perhaps he was just trying to get us to think about difficult issues, but Putnam seemed genuinely conflicted himself. His concerns were rooted, understandably, in his personal politics. A man of the Left, he told us that he was deeply worried about being seen as advocating some form of “ethnic cleansing,” or being associated with the far Right in general.

It is clear that smarter people tend to value and participate in the political process more.
Whether he really valued our advice or not, I remember stating my own view, which is that democracy and freedom are built on the assumption that ordinary people can and will process important information. Self-censorship reminds me of Plato’s philosopher-kings telling “noble lies” to the unwise masses. If we take self-government seriously, then important information should be made available to all.

I’m not sure whether Putnam agrees with me, but he did finally publish some of his findings in a 2007 article. Though he began the article with some questionable reassurances that diversity offers long-run benefits, he pulled no punches in regard to its many “short-run” costs. He warned in particular that immigration makes the United States and Europe more diverse every year, and that incorporating immigrants into our communities would be one of the central challenges of the 21st century.

The public reaction to this was surprisingly quiet. Some reporters summarized the findings, but the issue quickly disappeared from the pages of newspapers and magazines. Among academics already familiar with Putnam’s work, there was perfunctory agreement that our society needed to work harder to foster community, but few new ideas were ever offered. Anecdotally, most scholars outside of Putnam’s field, not to mention the general public, have never even heard of his most recent findings.

Higher IQ people appear to be more morally sophisticated, altruistic, and forward-looking. They exhibit higher levels of civic participation, more strongly adhere to middle-class behavioral standards, and cooperate more readily.

Consider how surprising this is. Achieving diversity, especially ethnic diversity, is an explicit goal of virtually all major corporations, universities, and government agencies. The U.S. Supreme Court has declared that diversity is a “compelling state interest” that overrides legal prohibitions on race-based school admissions. Top politicians routinely utter some version of the phrase “diversity is our strength” in speeches. Our immigration policy even features a “diversity lottery” that randomly offers green cards to foreign nationals whose primary qualification is that they come from exotic countries. Two years after Putnam wrote publicly about diversity’s problems, and at least five years since he has been presenting his findings informally, nothing has changed. We still treat diversity as an unqualified good.

The sensitivity of the topic probably discourages an honest conversation about the problems of diversity, but it is difficult to come up with solutions when we do not talk about the problem. So let’s have the discussion, considering all the evidence. Eventually, we should work toward an objective accounting of diversity’s strengths and weaknesses. The results could tell us how much (if any) further ethnic diversity is worth pursuing.

My goal here is a more modest one, which is to explore how we can use immigration policy to make future diversity, whatever level we choose, more manageable. I am going to assume that some amount of immigrant diversity is valuable or inevitable, or both. Given that assumption, our goal should be to carefully select diverse immigrants who do the least harm to social capital. If immigrants could possess certain characteristics that tend to increase social capital, then the impact of ethnic diversity could be at least partially mitigated.

People in less intelligent populations will be less willing to set up networks for potential long-term payoffs, make personal investments in the community, and follow basic norms of behavior with the expectation of future reciprocity.

I intend to focus on one such important characteristic—how smart the immigrants are. Intuitively, it is not a stretch to believe that smarter people are better at organizing networks and understanding the long-term benefits of cooperation, and a burgeoning academic literature confirms that intuition. IQ, a construct that psychologists use to estimate general intelligence, has been separately linked to elements of social capital, such as sophisticated ethical thinking, altruism, planning for the future, political awareness, adherence to informal community standards of behavior, and cooperation for the greater good. Despite this research, the direct link between intelligence and social capital has been drawn only in a handful of technical articles. It is time to bring the IQ-social capital link out of the academic journals and into the policy debate. Doing so could help us deal realistically with the problems Putnam has identified.

The social attitudes of citizens are the building blocks of social capital, and IQ plays a role in shaping many of them. For example, psychologists have developed measures of moral reasoning that overlap substantially with IQ. When confronted with a moral dilemma, a person operating at the lowest level of moral reasoning would consider only his own self-interest. As moral reasoning becomes more sophisticated, people tend to give more consideration to community welfare, and to apply abstract principles to resolve moral dilemmas. Because of the cognitive demands of such reasoning, smarter people are much more likely to transcend simple self-interest in their ethical thinking. People who do so are likely to be better neighbors and better citizens.

Intelligent people are also likely to be more altruistic, which could help form tighter bonds within communities. In one recent study, researchers presented a group of undergraduates with a series of situations in which they get one amount of money and a stranger gets another amount. Then they had the undergraduates rank their order of preference for each situation as the amounts of money change. Altruistic people were defined as those who preferred less money for themselves in order for a stranger to receive a higher amount. The most altruistic people scored nearly 8 points higher on an IQ test than the least altruistic people.

Skill selection is a desirable way of addressing the problem of ethnic diversity because it is already a policy option on the table.

Another trait important for maintaining social networks is the willingness to plan for the future rather than live for the moment. Last year, two Yale psychologists systematically reviewed the best studies of the relationship between IQ and “delay discounting,” which means acting impulsively. The typical experiments surveyed by the authors involved a series of hypothetical offers of cash (or some other reward) made to participants with known IQ scores. Each offer would consist of a lesser reward in the present versus a larger reward at some future date. The authors of the survey concluded that higher IQ people are almost always found to be less impulsive.

It makes intuitive sense that smarter people should be able to internalize future rewards more easily. They are probably more future-oriented because they can better manipulate their surroundings, whereas incompetent people exert less control on their future, making it murky and unknown. Whatever the cause, the impulsivity of low-IQ people has serious implications for social capital. People in less intelligent populations will be less willing to set up networks for potential long-term payoffs, make personal investments in the community, and follow basic norms of behavior with the expectation of future reciprocity.

We have seen that smarter people tend to be more ethically sophisticated, altruistic, and future-oriented. All of these traits are theoretically useful for creating social capital, but are smart people actually better citizens and neighbors in practice? For real-world evidence, we should turn first to civic participation, a major component of social capital. Various survey data indicate that IQ is an important and independent predictor of voting, membership in various social organizations, daily newspaper reading, and tolerance of free speech rights. It is clear that smarter people tend to value and participate in the political process more.

Outside of politics, a revealing behavioral link between IQ and social capital comes from The Bell Curve. Many people remember Richard Herrnstein and Charles Murray’s controversial bestseller for its discussion of racial differences in IQ, but the book was mainly about the ways in which a person’s intelligence helps to shape his attitudes and behaviors.

Posted in America, Diversity, Health | Comments Off on NYT: ‘How Social Isolation Is Killing Us’