Carl Spitzweg, "Mineralogist in the Grotto," c. 1880
953 words
Editor’s Note:
“White Awakenings” is a series of autobiographical reflections on the different paths individuals have taken to racial awareness, whether it was a single event that led to an epiphany or a long process of observation and study. Each author also strives to give us a sense of his or her personality, since the goal of this series is not merely to inform but also to allow readers to form personal connections with our authors.
This series is open to everyone: writers, activists, and spectators who might want to take their first steps toward a more active role. Each article can have a distinct title. Articles can range anywhere from 400 to 2,000 words, but most should come in under 1,500. I hope to publish the best of these articles as a book. Email me if you want to discuss an article.
Looking back, it is difficult to remember precisely how my awareness of the Jewish problem emerged. At the time, it was not clear to me that there was an evolution going on. Therefore, I was not taking mental notes of the changes taking place in my thinking, when they occurred, or why.
I started out extremely naïve about Jews and their role in society. True, my father was anti-Jewish, but for a variety of reasons this did not rub off on me. If anything, it had the opposite effect.
By the 1970s and early ’80s I was philo-Semitic. I was deeply impressed by Jewish literature, like Bernard Malamud’s Pulitzer Prize-winning anti-white novel The Fixer (1966). I invariably read every issue of the American Jewish Committee’s Commentary magazine (then edited by Norman Podhoretz) from cover to cover. And I even swallowed whoppers like “A land without a people for a people without a land” whole, without batting an eye.
Today I can only shake my head in wonder.
During those fogbound years, two small incidents made an impression on me, albeit without contributing directly to the formation of anti-Jewish sentiment. Indeed, one of them I did not associate with Jews at all, and only recognize it as such in hindsight.
Rather, they stuck in my mind as odd little incidents that did not quite “fit” for some reason.
A Jew for Jesus
The first incident involved a letter to the editor of the college newspaper from a member of Jews for Jesus. It must have been prompted by a dispute, but I no longer recall the circumstances.
Jewry and most Jews roundly hate Jews for Jesus because the organization proselytizes Jews in an attempt to convert them to its Judaized form of Christianity.
Part of the man’s letter asserted that Jews are taught, from childhood on, that they are superior to Gentiles. The writer went further—stating that Jews explicitly learn active hostility toward, perhaps even hatred of, non-Jews. It was a noteworthy statement, strong enough to make an impression on me at the time, and indeed ever after.
Curiously enough, it did not teach me a lesson. I did not exclaim “Ah hah!” No light came on. I lacked context. I could not attach the information to any larger empirical framework or world view. I had no knowledge of race, much less Jews. It simply stuck in my mind as an anomalous but somehow significant fact.
It was only in retrospect that I could say, “Well, duh!”
The Girl in the Library
The second incident, which occurred around the same time, took place in a city-owned library I patronized in a major urban setting.
One day I checked out a stack of books on a variety of nonfiction subjects. The girl at the counter was in a communicative mood, while I, as usual, was not.
She was young and attractive. Her hair and skin were dark. Although I was racially unconscious, I definitely did not see her as colored. You might say she had naturally “tan” skin. Her voice was soft and appealing.
In contrast, I was tall, blond, and blue-eyed.
The girl made a remark about the number of books I was checking out. When I didn’t respond, she followed up with a comment about the wide variety of topics.
Finally, feeling compelled to say something, I said, “Well, I have very catholic tastes.” “Catholic”—as in “broad and comprehensive.”
The impact of this innocuous remark upon her was extraordinary. She absolutely clammed up, refused to speak or even look me squarely in the eye as I attempted to make small talk. It’s difficult to put into words; you had to experience it. For the life of me I couldn’t figure out what the deal was.
Although I have no proof—or even evidence for that matter, apart from the nature of her job, the urban setting, and the girl’s dark hair and complexion—that she was Jewish, I honestly have no doubt that this was the case, and that the unexpected, casually-dropped word “catholic” is what tripped her wire. The possible double entendre, in conjunction with my racial appearance, freaked her out.
Years later, this remembered experience drove home to me that Jews are always hyper-aware that they are Jews—and that you and I are not. They’re hyper-alert to anything that remotely suggests you’re onto them. It became obvious to me that whites must learn to recognize the Jew, become sensitive to the presence of the Jew, see the Jew, as clearly as they see us. We must never think that they are white. Ultimately, both peoples, not just one, must have this worldview.
Jews never lose sight, even for a moment, of the radical difference between our two races. It is uppermost in their minds at all times. Whites who labor under the delusion that Jews are remotely like anyone else they interact with are seriously mistaken.
3 comments
A very interesting entreprise which should be extended the world over, I look forward to reading the texts.
It’s a good idea to collect a lot of these stories and look for similarities. We need to get scientific about the psychology of how people develop racialist and Judeo-critical attitudes, so that we can optimize recruitment effort.
I think this is probably the most critical step: just getting people to make the distinction between Jews and Whites. To pay attention to who is Jewish and who is not, and consider it an important and relevant thing to know. If you can get people to do that, eventually they will start noticing things on their own, and will then seek out more information about Jews and be receptive to it.
Generally, I have always gotten along very well with Jews. They tend to be intelligent and non-violent and that is the foundation of pleasant social discourse. In business dealings I have found the need for alertness but I believe in free enterprise and caveat emptor and so I do not begrudge them or any man the right to bargain aggressively and shrewdly.
My “awakening” came when in mid-life I started work in a large New York state agency. Previously, when I was a young man I was a construction worker and worked in a large mine in northern Appalachia. In the mine we ran a lot of diesel engines for various things; lights, welding, pumping, etc. Of course there was ventilation in the mine, but it was rather slow moving and often the mine would be so filled with diesel smoke that you couldn’t see 30 feet. Some of the new hires would complain about the health risks of diesel smoke but the safety officers would explain that diesel smoke was essentially harmless and since the money was good, everyone accepted the explanation. I think the safety officers were correct, because no one suffered any immediate or as far as I know any long term ill effects from breathing this fairly concentrated diesel smoke for eight to twelve hours a day for years on end.
Well the first day I went to work for the state agency, my co-workers asked me about my background. I told them I had worked in a mine. They asked me what it was like and I described it. In the course of this description I mentioned it was smoky from all the diesel engines. They said, “Oh, they must have been gasoline engines.” I said no they were diesel engines, that gasoline engines produce carbon monoxide that is deadly poisonous, but that diesel engines are relatively safe. Several of my co-workers insisted that I was mistaken, that the engines could not have been diesel. I told them that sometimes I refueled some of the engines. I actually poured the diesel fuel into the engines and that everyone knew you couldn’t have a gasoline engine in the mine. Several of my co-workers said that I was lying and angrily walked away. One of my co-workers told me I was in trouble. I asked why and he said the people who had stomped away were Jewish and they believed the Nazis used diesel fumes to kill millions of Jews during WWII. I said that was strange, I wasn’t talking about Nazis or Jews or the Holocaust, that I was just relating my personal experience that I knew to be true. My co-worker said it didn’t make any difference and that he too knew that diesel engines were perfectly safe, because he had been in the navy and he had been below deck many times in diesel smoke filled work areas and had suffered no ill-effects. Still he said I should never mention it again or my life would be in danger. I didn’t last too long as a New York state employee.
I suppose all peoples have their myths and legends. It just seems strange to hold onto a belief that is so obviously untrue. Yet somewhere I read that 40% of the U.S. population does not believe in evolution and that man was created some 10,000 years ago. However that’s kind of a larger more distant issue. The characteristics of diesel smoke are so mundane and common place. People walk by diesel trucks everyday. To have gross misconceptions about common events in our direct view indicates to me a type of irrationality that gives me some hesitancy to accept the basic rationality of those so grossly deluded. And so since that time, while I still interact and generally enjoy the company of Jews, I know that they are capable of tremendous self-delusion. As with any “insane” person, I know that I must be somewhat cautious.
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