I’m watching this documentary made on Neal Gabler’s book about Jews in Hollywood and I’m asking — what if every one else acted like me and my group?
Neal Gabler says the American dream was born in Eastern Europe.
That’s absurd. America was created by Protestants, overwhelmingly descended from Britain. The American dream of a home of your own was not something that Jews invented.
The narrator from the Neal Gabler documentary says: “Among these immigrants were the future founders of the studios, but they brought with them a new vision of America. Hollywood was a dream dreamt by Jews.”
Expert: “I’m not sure there was an American dream before the Jews came to Hollywood and invented it. Today we have a popular culture that creates dreams.”
Narrator: “The moguls created the images, the icons, and the visual forms that we identify with the American way of life.
Neal Gabler: “They created their own America, an America which is not the real America, but it is their own version of the real America, but ultimately this shadow America becomes so popular that its images and values come to devour the real America. Americans come to define themselves by the shadow America created by Eastern European Jews.”
“Anyone anywhere could identify with so many of the themes of American movies, one of which was the identity of the outsiders. Jews being outsiders making movies about outsiders.”
Narrator: “Identification with the little guy, the prize fighters, the loner, and the gangsters.”
If I were a goy, I’m not sure I’d be thrilled to be told that the American dream was invented by Eastern European Jews. I understand Jews may regard themselves as a moral light to Gentiles, but as a goy, I’m not sure I would be thrilled with this attitude. The Jews who created Hollywood were far from moral exemplars. The Jews who run Hollywood today are not paragons of righteousness. They’re expert storytellers, but their values are not my values (speaking as an imaginary goy or as an imaginary Muslim or as an Orthodox Jew).
When the documentary describes the misery of Eastern European Jews, it does not mention that these Jews, in general, had life easier than did the goyim around them. The documentary does not mention that the loathing between Jews and Gentiles in Eastern Europe was mutual and that the goyish dislike for Jews had some basis in the reality of things Jews did (whether it was excelling the goy in open competition or in selling the goy cheap liquor or cheap credit and outdoing him in business, see the book Esau’s Tears by Albert S. Lindemann). Over the past 600 years in Europe, Ashkenazi Jews had more prosperous lives than their Gentile neighbors.
The documentary says that in Eastern Europe, the Jews “were permanent outsiders.” Yes, but wasn’t that in part because of Jewish choice? Jews have long conceived of themselves as a people who dwell alone. If Jews cease to be outsiders in a Gentile land, they start assimilating and stop being Jews. What’s to keep them apart from the goyim if they do not see themselves as a separate people?
Jewish separation has long been as much of a choice by Jews as it has been discrimination by gentiles. A gentile in Israel is always going to be an outsider. The Torah makes no provision for non-Jewish citizenship in the Jewish state. Maimonides forbids allowing a goy in Israel to even be in charge of water carriers. From a Torah perspective, in the Jewish state, no goy would be allowed any leadership role. So why should Jews expect that gentiles would operate differently towards them in gentile lands?
Expert in the documentary: “Most Jews had no positive feelings about the Old Country. Many Jews talked about their last moment in Russia when they would turn around and spit.”
Well, the Old Country felt the same way about them. As an American goy, I would not like the importation of millions of Jews who’ve lived for centuries with loathing for the goyim around them. I would fear that these Jewish immigrants would bring that same loathing for the goy with them to America. Why would America want to import that?
WASPs don’t tend to make as strong in-group vs out-group distinctions as the rest of the world. After the massive immigration of Jews into America, WASPs are at a competitive disadvantage competing with those who have strong in-group loyalties.
Since as far back as the Civil War, a solid majority of Americans have opposed more immigration but they’ve rarely had a chance to cast a meaningful vote in this direction. Immigration was imposed on America against the will of most of its citizens.
Narrator: “When Jews arrived in America, they thought they had found a place where the little guy could make it to the top. Instead they found a Protestant elite whose mission was to educate the immigrants and keep them in their place.”
I don’t see what’s so horrible about a country educating immigrants in the ways of the new land. I don’t see what’s so horrible about an elite trying to keep immigrants in their place. Jews tend to do the same thing with converts to Judaism. This is a universal phenomena. I can’t imagine a country that welcome immigrants and encourages them to take over. America has been as welcoming to immigrants as any country in history.
If the Protestant elite was bent on keeping Jews in their place, they did a lousy job of it because America’s new elites are more likely to be Jewish than WASP. Is America better for that? I am sure in some ways it is better and in some ways it is worse.
As Paul Gottfried wrote recently:
The Eastern European Jews (not the central European ones, as Goldberg incorrectly states) were far less well-disposed toward Gentiles. They came from societies where they had nothing much to do with non-Jews, and what few interactions took place were full of mutual loathing
Eastern European Jews formed alliances with others whom they viewed as marginalized. As Toronto social historian David Verbeeten demonstrates in a dissertation on Jewish philanthropies in the US, the rise to positions of authority by Eastern European Jews in Jewish organizations formerly run by Sephardic and German Jews resulted almost inevitably in moving these operations toward the Left.
This change in personnel also resulted in making Christian anti-Semitism and Zionism major focal points in American Jewish organizations. But the Leftist radicalization did not bring with it any alienation from Jewish national causes. Eastern European Jews who took over American Jewish philanthropies were usually both on the Left and committed to the creation of a Jewish state.
The documentary says that America initially tried to exclude or limit Jews from honorable professions, but this did not last past the 1960s. This view is presented without the context of Eastern European Jews needing to learn the American way. Paying bribes, for example, was a common practice in Eastern Europe but is regarded as dishonorable in WASP lands. German Jews and Sephardim had similar critiques to the Protestants of Eastern Europeans Jews, which is why German Jews and Sephardim have tended to vote along similar lines to the Protestants (just to the left of them). Most of the critiques of Jews by non-Jews in the West have been echoed by Jews (see the book Esau’s Tears).
Documentary: “Hollywood’s future founders quickly distinguished themselves as risk-takers and innovators.”
This “risk-taking” is praised in the documentary but it has a dark side. When Jews have taken big risks in finance and Wall Street, for instance, it has not only been Jews who have paid the price for their buccaneering. When Hollywood has been risky with its glorification of excess, it has not only been Jews who have paid the price.
It is easier to take risks with money and land that is not your own, with alien cultures rather than with your own culture. Judaism has a conservative risk-averse approach to life and yet Jews have often take the opposite approach outside of the Torah world. Similarly, Jewish organizations push for unlimited immigration into America but not to Israel and not into the Jewish people (conversion standards are getting stricter).
Blacks are shockingly portrayed in early Hollywood as dancing in saloons and fighting over women, behavior that is entirely unknown to blacks. This is the most vicious bigotry.
Expert: “Until the immigrants and and learn to be old stock, they’re not really in it yet.”
This is the worst thing ever! Luckily, Jews will teach America how to be multicultural as Judaism is all about celebrating diversity!
The 1916 movie Birth of a Nation is the crowning glory of pre-Jewish cinema. The explicitly racist story is about blacks raping white women (a behavior unknown among blacks) until the blacks are driven off by the KKK (an organization that is the embodiment of evil because it stands up for WASPs).
One of the horrible things about this movie is that it “played upon white America’s fears of racial intermixing.” Judaism, by contrast, is much more enlightened and is all about going to be with out-groups.
Forgive my sarcasm. I have no doubt that there are Jews and there are parts of Judaism that outshine some of the gentile world but just because Jews do something does not mean that they are automatically a light unto the nations. This widespread attitude in much of Jewish life that Jews are automatically superior to the Gentiles is a universal trait among all strongly identifying in-groups but not necessarily true.
Jewish Hollywood has long promoted out-marriage because (1) it makes for good stories and (2) it has been perceived as good for Jews. If Jews could marry into the elite, that meant nothing in America was denied to them.
Documentary: “Hollywood Jews might have wanted to marry into White America, but when it came to music, Hollywood composers looked to Black America.”
Hasia Diner: “Jews served as messengers of black culture. They took it, consumed it, integrated it into their own cultural repetoir and then introduced it to White America that was willing to listen to Jews and partake of what Jews had to offer in a way they would not from blacks.”
I see many wonderful things in introducing black culture into white America, but I also see some downsides. This, however, is not explored in the documentary. Have whites, for example, been influenced by Hollywood to imitate black levels of promiscuity and spontaneity?
If I were a white goy unhappy with the decline of the white race, I might have some resentment towards Hollywood Jews.
“In writing lyrics, Jews turned to immigrant concerns…”
So when Gentiles made movies, they made them with a gentile perspective attuned to gentile concerns, while when Jews made movies, they made them from a Jewish perspective attuned to Jewish concerns.
“The Jewish moguls took a different attitude to African-Americans than did the pre-Jewish filmmakers.”
Is America better or worse for that? Jews funded the Civil Rights war, raising the rights of minorities at the cost of the majority. Is America better off that Americans have lost control of their country to aggrieved minority groups?
“In Hollywood, Jews trying to pass as Gentiles made films about blacks trying to pass as whites.”
I’m imagining now that I am a Jewish Israeli and I have watched immigrant non-Jews come to Israel and dominate the entertainment industry, producing shows attuned to their concerns. As an Israeli Jew, I would not be happy about immigrant goyim coming to the Holy Land and writing songs and movies integrating the perspectives of Palestinians and other downtrodden goyim. So why would a white goy who strongly identifies as a white goy be thrilled with alien groups taking over his culture? Jewish-American political scientist Paul Gottfried argues that Jews have made American culture and politics worse with their left-wing radical Eastern European ethos.
The documentary notes how wonderful it is that Jews wrote many Christmas songs. As goy Steve Sailer wrote: “The Christmas songs that Jews wrote seldom involved religion…” If I were a believing Christian, I would not be thrilled with this subversion of my sacred holiday.
Different groups have different interests. What is good for Jews is not identical to what is good for non-Jewish whites, for blacks, Muslims, Chinese, etc. So when Jews rise in power and come to dominate industries, that has repercussions for everyone else. One group never rises in power without some other group falling in power. Losing power for a group eventually becomes a matter of life and death. In nature, gorillas either expand their territory against rival tribes, killing the males and raping the women, or their territory is invaded, their males are killed and their women raped. So too with people. The powerless get decimated while the powerful get more of what they want.
When Jews or blacks or WASPs or any group grow in power and wealth, they get more sexual access to what they want, which comes at a price to other groups.
In an even fight, Jews are going to dominate many areas of life because they have Jewish gifts such as superior intelligence, drive and in-group solidarity. Different groups have different gifts.
“American musicals were based on classic stories reinterpreted from a Jewish perspective.”
If I were a goy, I’m not sure I would be thrilled with this. If I were an Israeli Jew, I would not be thrilled by an entertainment industry that was dominated by Gentiles who reinterpreted Jewish stories with a Gentile perspective.
“None of them are overtly about Jews but they’re all about Jewish concerns.”
“Irving Berlin did more than any composer to Americanize Jewish aspirations. To understand Berlin is to understand the Hollywood moguls.”