Quinn vs. Cole, Round 1
Paul Nehlen, the JQ, & the GOP

1,758 words

So David Cole over at Taki’s Magazine finally decided to take a swipe at Paul Nehlen, the ‘Alt-Right candidate’ who is challenging Speaker of the House Paul Ryan for his Congressional seat this summer. Nehlen, as many of us know, is a self-identifying white man who stands perhaps a little to the right of President Donald Trump as a proponent of what he calls ‘economic nationalism.’ He is a border hawk; he is pro-gun rights, pro-life, anti-Obamacare, and promises to stand tough on illegal immigration. He is also a serious Christian who isn’t afraid to mix it up with the chosen ones online, as he does quite often on Gab and Twitter. Since he is a self-identifying Jew with conservative tendencies and interests in an astonishingly wide array of cultural matters, I’m surprised it took David Cole this long to fire a shot across Nehlen’s bow.

Given that Cole has long been dismissive of white nationalism and stands by mainstream tenets of diversity despite harboring a soft race realism, it’s no surprise that his assessment of Nehlen is as negative as it is incomplete. For Cole, Paul Nehlen begins and ends with anti-Semitism. Like a one-issue voter, as soon as Cole sees a check in that box, the rest of Nehlen’s résumé becomes irrelevant.

Cole’s article can be summed up like so:

1. Paul Nehlen is a nobody who will lose to Paul Ryan by a landslide.
2. Here are some examples of Nehlen saying mean things about Jews.
3. Paul Nehlen is a Nazi.
4. Here, let me tell you about what I think of the Jewish Question.
5. Boy, I really do have a lot to say about the Jewish Question, don’t I?
6. Yeah, Jim Goad did write a positive piece on Nehlen. But whatever, I just wish Paul Nehlen could be an explicit race realist like Jared Taylor, then maybe he won’t lose to Paul Ryan by a landslide.

So let’s address Point 2 first, since we won’t know if Cole’s prediction in Point 1 is on the money until after the election. David Cole claims that Paul Nehlen is “obsessed with Jews.” But could it be that Jews are obsessed with him? It goes without saying in the Dissident Right that many liberal, diaspora Jews in the West get nervous when encountering race-conscious, race-realist, ethno-nationalist white people who dare to be this way in their own homelands. These Jews tend to be haunted by the Dreyfus Affair and the Leo Frank lynching and the 1881 Russian pogroms and a litany of other injustices, perceived or otherwise, that have always been directed at the Jews and the Jews alone. And this, of course, says nothing about the Holocaust, upon which any educated Jew can expound at length. So then here comes Paul Nehlen who represents pretty much everything these Jews hate in a white person, and Nehlen is the one who’s obsessed? People hit him constantly with threats and insults (he keeps tabs on it on his website), and Cole’s main beef with Nehlen is that he gives as good as he gets.

This is the Atlantic article Cole offers to show how full of hooey Nehlen is. In it, and in the Buzzfeed article about Nehlen linked therein, one can get a good feel for the revulsion that leftists, liberals, and mainstream conservatives have towards him. Nehlen basically says every unfashionable thing imaginable about Jews without advocating violence or law-breaking. For example:

• He uses the words “Jewish media” to describe how the media is dominated by Jews.
• He tweets pictures of prominent media executives with Stars of David superimposed over them.
• He claims that Jews who don’t believe that Christ is the Messiah will burn in Hell.
• He claims Christians have nothing to learn about Christ from Jews.
• He states that Jews are indeed not white, and then criticizes Jews who pretend that they are.
• He publishes the contact information and phone numbers of the individuals who send him hateful messages.
• He risks being called an anti-Semite simply because he points out that most of his online critics are Jewish.
• According to some, he leads an Alt Right troll army (some of whom are explicitly anti-Semitic) to create the memes that he uses to smear his attackers and enemies, Jewish or otherwise.

This is pretty much common knowledge on the Dissident Right. In one brilliant exchange, after advising Christians to conceal-carry firearms, a commenter asked why he addressed only Christians. Nehlen responded, “It’s my speech. I’ll advocate for whomever I want, and that will be my Christian brothers and sisters. If you want to advocate for Jews, who’s stopping you?”

Yes, it could be that Nehlen has Jews on the Mind. “Obsessed with Jews” might be taking it a bit too far, however, given that noted clinical psychologist David Cole has yet to psychoanalyze Nehlen on his couch and that Nehlen is a successful businessman and so far has run a dynamic and spirited campaign. It is true Nehlen is not nice to Jews and refuses to signal any kind of philo-Semitism. But I have three points I would like to impress David Cole and others like him regarding this.

One, so what? I mean that. He doesn’t particularly care for Jewish people. So what? It’s his right not to like a group of people if he doesn’t want to. He can still be a good lawmaker, regardless. Teddy Roosevelt didn’t care for Italians and Woodrow Wilson famously disliked blacks. Are we going to say that such prejudices prevented these presidents from fulfilling their agendas and effectively leading? As for the Jews, it’s not like we live in a world of mandatory anti-Semitism, is it? If anything, philo-Semitism is as close to mandatory as you can get in today’s mainstream culture, and in many circles (as I am sure David Cole knows) that philo-Semitism is enforced. Anyone who can buck that trend and not crack under the pressure is a mensch. Sometimes going against the grain for the sake of going against the grain when the grain gets a little oppressive can be a good thing, no? Jewish lawmakers like Chuck Schumer shed crocodile tears over non-whites who get denied access to this country and then walk out on hearings when Americans tell Congress about illegal immigrant murder. Do you think this suggests that Chuck Schumer and other left-wing, liberal Jews particularly like white people? Does anyone call them out on their anti-gentilism? Or perhaps Paul Nehlen is fighting the culture wars the way the Jews have been fighting then for far too long now.

Second, Paul Nehlen is an American, and so far has not shown any inclination he’ll embarrass the Founding Fathers with the policies he proposes. He has never indicated he will curb anyone’s free speech (unlike the Anti-Defamation League, which recently crowed about how it helped Twitter expunge race-realists such as Jared Taylor). He has never promised to deport anyone who has a legal right to be here. He has never promised to limit freedom of religion or press. He has explicitly stated that his platform of economic nationalism does not discriminate on the basis of race. On all other issues, he is reliably, almost predictably, conservative. Seriously, taking away his thing about the Jews, there is little separating him from Sean Hannity or Rush Limbaugh. Further, his “Shall Not Censor” legislation is nothing short of excellent. I see no reason why Paul Nehlen could not be a first-rate Congressmen for all people on the Right, not just whites.

What’s the problem then? The problem is the many Jews and their goy allies are worried more about what Nehlen doesn’t say rather than what he does say. Paul Nehlen could wrap himself up with a copy of the Constitution, wave the American flag, and recite the Pledge of Allegiance at the top of his lungs, and they’d still call him a closet Nazi. David Cole stated that Paul Nehlen “wants to hand out yellow stars.” Whether he’s joking or not, that’s basically calling him a Nazi right there. And of course, Jews will point to history to justify such suspicions.

Okay, fine. But guess what, fellas? That goes both ways. Given Jewish complicity in the horrors of the Soviet Union in the first half of the twentieth century, whites can do the same thing. If Jews like David Cole have license to paint Hitler mustaches on Paul Nehlen, then whites have the same license to paint little Trotsky goatees on the vast majority of Jewish politicians, celebrities, academics, and media personalities who push leftist agendas. After all, Jews may claim to be egalitarians and say they sympathize with the plight of non-white underdogs. But, if we assume Cole’s suspicious mind, we can say that what’s really going on is that these Jews hate white people and are using all their influence and power to destroy their majorities, interfere with their folkways, crush their identities, delegitimize their religion, murder their unborn, and debase their culture. I can even say the same thing about Cole personally. He faults Paul Nehlen because he doesn’t like white people who get uppity. David Cole is the Man, you see. He may walk among conservatives and entertain them from time to time with colorful complaints about his co-religionists. But, deep down, he’s no different than Abraham Foxman. He wants to keep whitey down and Jews in charge. I can see him counting his shekels and cackling right now.

Of course, I don’t believe this. Yes, there are quite a few truly malevolent Jews out there, like George Soros, who wish harm towards whites and have enough Fuck You money to do something about it. Activists like Foxman and academics like Noam Chomksy fit the bill as well. There are many people like that. But are these Jews any more malevolent than traitorous gentiles like Angela Merkel or Hillary Clinton? Are they any more dangerous to whites than the thousands of useful goy idiots like Joe Biden and the late Ted Kennedy? Eh. That’s a judgment call. The point here is that in order to keep society civil we should give people more credit for what they say than what they don’t say as much as possible. So far, Paul Nehlen has remained disciplined with respect to the US Constitution. That alone should be enough to shield him from the racist abuse that gets heaped on him every day. Sadly, however, it isn’t.

To be concluded in ‘Quinn vs. Cole, Round 2’.

Spencer J. Quinn is a contributor to Counter-Currents and the author of the novel White Like You.