Counter-Currents
1,946 words
Dear Z Man,
Like most of your articles, I thought your “Letter to the Antisemites” from March 11 was perfectly reasonable and well-put, yet I believe it missed a few crucial points. I actually share your negative opinion of anti-Semitism when you describe it not only as racism against Jews, but also as contempt for them. Contempt, as a real-world emotion directed towards others in real time, can make a person ugly. No sane person wants that unless absolutely necessary. Then, at the end of your letter you state that “Obsessing over Jews all the time seems like a waste of time.” Again, I agree. In fact, it’s impossible not to agree with such a statement. Obsessing over anything all the time will be a waste of time, no?
I think this says something about your argument that perhaps you didn’t intend. You are not arguing against anti-Semitism so much as the abuse of anti-Semitism. Such abuse leads to obsession. Such obsession leads to some pretty rotten times, since what the anti-Semite obsesses over is the very thing for which he has contempt. Obsession and contempt: that’s the double whammy right there, isn’t it?
In the middle of the letter, however, you bring up the reasoned and scholarly anti-Semitism (I prefer the more dignified and accurate term “counter-Semitism”) of Kevin MacDonald and his Culture of Critique. You give it a fair rundown, you highlight its strengths, you admit its plausibility, but you ultimately profess skepticism of MacDonald’s “Judaism as evolutionary strategy” thesis until more data comes in. Fair enough. But you seem to bring up MacDonald not so much to refute him but to prove that you are not ignorant of anti-Semitism and are open-minded enough to entertain arguments from the Grand Poobah of the field.
But this isn’t the real reason why you resist anti-Semitism, is it? It is because many of its proponents are obsessed with it, and you don’t want to be like them.
But here is a question: What if you missed something in MacDonald’s analysis that would shake your skepticism a little bit? What if you start to find yourself swayed somewhat, not just by MacDonald’s individual points, but by his general argument about the Jews? Would that make it any harder to resist anti-Semitism? I kind of doubt it. This resistance you have seems more tribal than intellectual. Not that this isn’t understandable, of course. Given how utterly vicious and single-minded some anti-Semites can be, I can’t say I blame you.
But the question I’m begging to ask you now is this: Is it possible to be completely swayed by all of MacDonald’s arguments and still not be an anti-Semite as you describe it? I think this is a fair question, since you yourself do not require acceptance or rejection of MacDonald in the calculus which leads you to reject anti-Semitism. Logically, it seems you view MacDonald’s ideas and anti-Semitism as two separate creeds arrived at along different avenues (reasoned analysis on the one hand, and obsession on the other). To simplify the question: can one be counter-Semitic and not anti-Semitic?
Here’s the quote from you which I found most revealing:
Well, I have read Kevin McDonald. I think he makes an excellent case against Boasian anthropology, Freudian psychoanalysis, and Frankfurt School critical theory. In fact, his arguments against these intellectual movements should be required reading for anyone trying to understand how things went so terribly wrong in the West. Further, there is no disputing his observation that these movements were dominated by Jews. In fact, all of the monstrous ideologies of the last era had an over representation of Jews.
The truth is though, Jews are over represented in everything that requires a high level of math and verbal skill. Every intellectual movement since Jewish emancipation, that was not explicitly anti-Semitic, saw an over representation of Jews. Intellectual movements tend to attract intellectuals. They also tend to be located in urban areas, especially urban capitals in Europe, where Jews have always lived. Therefore, no one should be surprised that Jews are over represented in left-wing political and cultural movements.
Well, not so fast. Why not Right-wing political and cultural movements? Why does it always have to be Left-wing political and cultural movements with the Jews? If Jewish dominance in all the fields MacDonald discusses in Culture of Critique were attributable to the reasons you ascribe, then eighty years ago there would have been nothing stopping the Jewish Madison Grant and his school of thought from taking on Franz Boas, or the Jewish Martin Heidegger and his academic minions jousting with the Frankfurt School. If it were all about aptitude and living in cities, as you say, then why has there never been Left-Right balance among the diaspora Jews and their works?
I think you might have anticipated this question since you included the caveat “not explicitly anti-Semitic,” as in, “Every intellectual movement since Jewish emancipation, that was not explicitly anti-Semitic, saw an over representation of Jews.” Ah, but this kind of puts the cart before the horse, doesn’t it? This implies that anti-Semitism came out of nowhere, as if in the late nineteenth-century Jews flooded all academic and professional fields except for the one that was dominated by people who were already anti-Semites. This ignores the possibility that the so-called anti-Semite got that way in large part after being exposed to the unswerving Leftism of the Jews. It’s not like Henry Ford and Samuel Adams complained all the time about how Right-wing and patriotic those darn Jews were, right? I know, I know. Chicken and the egg. But as soon as you let go of the idea that anti-Semitism sprang out of nothing, you’ll realize that something is going on here. It’s under the surface and it makes only slight ripples, but it’s there and it’s powerful. And if you are a race-realist, then you can’t rule out biological causes. Kevin MacDonald offers a biological (well, evolutionary) cause. It may not be absolutely correct, but what theory is? Regardless, like Darwinian evolution, it remains the best scientific theory we have concerning this phenomenon.
Your idea that anti-Semitism has deterred Jews from entering certain fields in the past also does not hold up to historical scrutiny. According to Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn in his 200 Years Together, Jews in Czarist Russia faced all sorts of pressure from the government to stop exploiting peasants through usury and the sale of alcohol. Many Jews still consider such pressure to be anti-Semitic in nature: they had to live in the Pale, there were places they couldn’t go, they lacked certain rights, and so on. Yet did this stop them from lending money and selling alcohol to the uneducated masses of Russia? Did this stop them from being good at such activities?
Further, when the Soviets began to push the Jews out of positions of power and influence in the late 1940s, one of the thought-crimes of which they were accused was Zionism. Zionism was a big no-no in the Soviet Union for a long while. Yet did that stop the Jews from being Zionists in their hearts? Did that stop Jewish authors from producing Zionist samizdat literature?
If you’re good at something and you really want to do it, nothing short of slavery or violent oppression is going to stop you. That’s what history has shown. So your assumption that, upon emancipation, many Jews would have become conservative, race-realist scholars flooding the fields of craniology and criminal anthropology and eugenics if not for the anti-Jewish attitudes of the small number of men already active in those fields back then is basically weak tea. You say MacDonald is not terribly convincing, but frankly, your stated reasons for that are not terribly convincing, either.
No, diaspora Jews didn’t enter those fields because they weren’t into it, plain and simple. With their innate Left-wing sympathies, along with their intelligence and energy (or, in some cases, it must be said, cunning and malice), they crashed fields which were easily politicized (like the press), they politicized fields which shouldn’t be politicized (like anthropology), and they invented fields which they could then politicize (like psychology). Or they just went into politics to promote one of the many forms of socialism and to oppose the racial interests of white people. And the vast majority of Jews who didn’t do these things at the same time did very little to rock this boat. That is how it was 150 years ago, and it’s how it is now, from Europe to South Africa to South America to the United States, with little deviation. And if you ask Jews why this is, they will basically fart in your general direction and tell you that after thousands of years of suffering, Jews have become so moral and high-minded and concerned about social justice that they would never be associated with conservative meanie-pants like Cyril Burt or Cesare Lombroso, despite what the data says. But, please, don’t take my word for it. Take their word for it. From the Jewish Journal, September 2016:
As Jews we are commanded each year at the Passover to feel as if we were in Egypt as slaves. As slaves who were part of a liberation movement, we identify and support the cause of the oppressed . . .
Jews will always agitate for and support causes of the Left, because we are commanded to be a beacon unto others and to see social activism and seeking Justice, Tikkun Olam and Tzedaka, as part of the Jewish DNA. We are chosen to do so.
“Jewish DNA,” huh? My, that sounds pretty elitist. Racist, almost. Kevin MacDonald, of course, tells a different story, and I would be delighted if you would reconsider him based on some of the points I’ve made in this letter.
But your aversion to anti-Semitism, or, really, obsessive anti-Semitism, I hope you never change. It’s good that you’re not going there. I often view anti-Semitism to be a lot like Tolkien’s ring. It’s very powerful and very useful, but if you resort to it too often, it eats away at your soul from the inside. I’ve seen this happen and I feel the pull from counter-Semitism into anti-Semitism myself. People do end up losing perspective and “tasting Jews in their sandwich,” as you say. Bald anti-Semitism invites one to get lost in the swamp of hate, which is not good for you, makes you unpersuasive, and limits the chances of a peaceful resolution to our current troubles.
Yet, it’s not like the anti-Semite doesn’t have his reasons for wanting to drain the swamp to begin with. With untrammeled immigration threatening to destroy Europe and America, and with Jewish elites helping to enable this (with the mainstream of their people cheering them on), the stakes are higher than they have ever been – and they have always been high. Kevin MacDonald and Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn have shown us this much at least, and neither of these men are like the anti-Semites you characterize. MacDonald always maintains a scholarly discipline in his writings and appearances. And Solzhenitsyn often expressed tenderness and respect for Jews. Yet their two great works, Culture of Critique and 200 Years Together, are bedrocks of counter-Semitism.
You danced around this dichotomy in your “Letter to the Antisemites” but never addressed it directly. And that’s too bad, because this dichotomy is one reason why the Jewish Question is such a fascinating topic. And I’d be lying if I told you it will be easy to answer.
I hope to hear more from you on this issue.
Regards,
Spencer J. Quinn
Spencer J. Quinn is a frequent contributor to Counter-Currents and the author of the novel White Like You.
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10 comments
Left to themselves most Jews really are traditionally minded and therefore what we might call Right-wing. What has happened is that in many cases their natural intelligence has led to personality disorders. In turn such neurotic and paranoid tendencis have been exploited by an evil clique both within and without the Jewish community for political ends.
Of all the mendacious dissembling in Zman’s article, perhaps the worst is this:
“Once Jews were allowed to participate in Western society …”
Jews were always allowed to participate in Western society. Even during the height of Catholic Europe, when anti-Judaism was a powerful social force, all anyone had to do is to renounce the Jewish religion – which is an anti-European and anti-Christian religion – and join the rest of their neighbors by becoming a Christian.
What he really means is, “those who held to an anti-European, anti-Christian subversive and hateful religion, one that claimed racial and moral superiority and the right to oppress their neighbors, were not allowed to participate fully in European society.”
It reminds me of the self-serving line Jews give about “how they became bankers.” You see, poor oppressed Jews weren’t “allowed to own property” so they became wealthy bankers instead – they outsmarted all the evil Christian anti-semites by turning their oppression into an advantage.
Of course, the vast majority of people in Europe “couldn’t own property.” Most people were serfs, or in a similar situation. Jews were granted, by the ruling powers, a monopoly on finance. In most times and most places, they lived far better than the majority of Europeans.
So the “oppression” of Jews in Europe was the fact that Jews weren’t allowed to be the top 1% ruling class, they were relegated to the top, say, 4 or 5% of the ruling class.
The kind of “oppression” most people would love to experience.
Zman’s main arguments are just a simplistic rehash of the paper than came out a few weeks ago attempting to “debunk” MacDonald.
well roger that (for me, it´s as dialectical a problem as it gets, Jews playing, or performing, the eternal anti-thesis with all that that involves… among others, excellence… ) …
… but on a practical level, seems to me as easy as it gets… with KMac´s terms of ingroup – outgroup leading the way: Jews are outgroup and that´s it: get out! Doesn´t get much simpler than that, no?
Obsessive antisemetism can be a post red-pilling symptom. When you realise how much you need a factual image of the world to make effective decisions in your life, once a lie is exposed it is likely to cause anger over the delusion to which one was subjected and regret for the illusion one was living in. Yes, it is a drag and somewhat of a waste of energy but you just have to go thru it.
Pay no attention to the ‘Semites’ behind that curtain that are in charge of the FED, the US Treasury, Hollywood, the MSM, have pretty much taken over State and Tubby the Grifter’s WH.
Pay no attention that the ones cheering for the complete destruction of Syria, then on to Iran, are mostly neo-CON Jews.
Pay no attention that the ones cheering on the Muslim invasion of Europe and demanding that more be let in are Jews.
Yes, pay no attention to those FACTS, because that would be anti-Semitic and by golly, we can’t have those GOYIM thinking for themselves.
From an April 2003 Haaretz article.
The war in Iraq was conceived by 25 neoconservative intellectuals, most of them Jewish, who are pushing President Bush to change the course of history. Two of them, journalists William Kristol and Charles Krauthammer, say it’s possible.
This is a war of an elite. [Tom] Friedman laughs: I could give you the names of 25 people (all of whom are at this moment within a five-block radius of this office) who, if you had exiled them to a desert island a year and a half ago, the Iraq war would not have happened.
http://www.haaretz.com/news/features/white-man-s-burden-1.14110
impressive review of facts about the Jesus hating Synagogue of Satan
Psychopaths…”Proselytes” to Talmudic Judaism…kool-aid drinking
cult members of the Bad Faith “Jewish” terrorists narrative “Agenda”….
curiously, the modern day so-called “Jews” are not actually the descendents
of the Children of Israel in the Old Testament, as there were in fact never any
so-called “Jews” in Egypt….when Moses {NOT A JEW}…led the Children of Israel
into the circular wilderness for forty years so Joshua could get his bearings
on the PROMISED LAND….!
https://israelect.com/reference/WillieMartin/ISAAC-13.htm
The most sensible and only working solution is just as Jesus declares in
Matthew 13:39-43….ROUND UP TIME !!!
…. put ’em in the ovens of truth !!
https://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/Flash.aspx/413289
Jewtopia has a very warm and dry climate year round…
try really really hard to find a “Yiddish” speaking “JEW” {{{ASHKENAZIM}}}
PROSELYTE to Talmudic Judaism….in the 1st five books of the Bible.
https://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/243258
100 million in gold to the first one with proof that the story of the
Children of Israel “IN THE BIBLE”…is a story about being a
“JEWISH” = Jesus hating = {{{TALMUD}}} =
Truth hating economic terrorists…who also hate Justice….
as a global crime syndicate “RELIGION”…in complete oppostition
to the 9th Commandment…..
no one on Earth Has to stay in the stool sculpture deity cult compound
and worship the “JEWS” as stool sculptures….that’s as illogical as it is
disgusting…
FREE PALESTINE…know the truth about the “JEWISH” narrative
@ John 8:44
Antisemitism (to be exact anti-jewish sentiment) is not blindly ethnocentric, some kind of expression of irrational and obsessive hate of “others”.
It is based on centuries of subversion and exploitation of host countries:
– usury in Europe
– alcohol sale in Eastern Europe
– design and execution of tax systems on behalf of Islamists in Spain or other countries where they
were allowed to settle and acquire/buy rights like in Poland
– financing, leading and executioning of the most murderous political system like communism in
Eastern Europe, administrator of gulag lagers in communist Russia
– once jews became endangered in Europe, they moved en mass to America … and subverted it in every
way imaginable
– on behalf of their western masters and for their own ambitions they tried to “rape post-communist
Russia” again by cornering its vast natural resources (when Putin & Co. stopped it, the jewish
criminals fled to Israel and UK with whatever stolen funds they managed to transfer abroad)
No other ethnic group in the history of mankind has been so malicious.
While doing it, they have served every master, to this very day.
That’s why it is said that antisemitism is acquired with mother’s milk.
So strong it is.
It can not be so that people all of the world harbor these feelings for no reason.
In the words of the recently deceased Ernst Zuendel: “Anti-semitism exists because Semitism first exists”.
I like to point out that when the Enlightenment came along, and jews were emancipated and given equal civil rights in western nations, it was noticed that during all those centuries in the ghettos the jews produced no math/science advances for the world. There were no jew art museums. No jew musical symphonies, no jew literature (religious tests do not count). Hmmm????
European man needed no gov’t or collective funding for math/science advancements; he just did them, pursued them single-mindedly and resolutely.
It wasn’t like the jew community didn’t have any wealth to do such things. Hell, every monarch and nobleman went to jew money lenders for loans to wage war and live high on the hog.
If jews did have any significant math/science accomplishment, I would bet it was the Aryan DNA in them (many had it; Niels Bohr looked as Nordic as one could get).
KM’s thesis largely rests upon foundations of social identity theory and the related dynamic of group evolutionary strategy (GES), both being pre-existing concepts in social psychology. Insofar as KM’s thesis rests upon the concept of GES, it is on sound footing. Hence, various critics of KM find the need to base their critique on a second-order critique of GES itself (e.g., is the notion of GES unfalsifiable? Etc.) It’s unclear if Z is also skeptical of evolutionary biology or evolutionary theory (e.g., group selection) itself. This is no small matter. It is what leads him to say things like: “I’m a bit skeptical of group evolutionary strategy. It could be a real thing or it could be nonsense.”
I’m reminded here of 70s-era protests against E.O. Wilson and other founders of sociobiology. With respect to the JQ, it seems at this stage of the game we ought to be firmly staking a position for or against the idea of GES as an coherent explanatory model well beforehand, and not use this particular moment (a pointed discussion of KM’s work taking place qua Cofnas) to be debating the latter.
GES does not imply inexorable biological causation (a crude biological determinism.) It implies largely emotional predispositions (and post-hoc rationalizations thereof), selected for by the trials and associated pressures of group competition for limited resources. GES is not comprised of 100% conscious and rational choice decision making. It’s not like intelligent design. There’s no hand-wringing & plotting going on here. In point of fact, as a phenomenon GES represents the compounded effects of countless micro-level, game theoretic, social interactions largely fueled and guided by unconscious forces (instinct), much as life itself is. IOW, both conscious and unconscious in-group preferences (social identity theory; crypsis) are a function of GES, not GES itself.
Quinn writes: “You are not arguing against anti-Semitism so much as the abuse of anti-Semitism.” This is a very important distinction. Speaking for myself, while none of us puts 100% certitude into any given theory, given the evidence I have digested, I find KM’s thesis quite convincing. Does this then make me a Radical Anti-Semite (RAS), the type who LARPs, trades in gas chamber memes and uses Pepe@1488 handles? Z seems to conflate what Quinn aptly calls ‘counter-semitism’ with RAS. For reasons having to do with both the dominant liberal Culture we operate within (the so-called Overton Window), and for reasons having to do with the infighting and purity-spiraling we currently experience within the Dissident Right, this is an extraordinarily important distinction to make.
As an academic field, sociology (at least sociology worth its weight) is composed of multivariate analysis. Nonetheless, certain variables will inevitably play bigger or smaller roles in the equation. Some will take KM’s theory and, unfortunately, essentialize it into a reductionist Anti-semitism, using it as an all-purpose explanans for everything gone wrong in the world. Such is the aforementioned RAS. But the careful reader of KM’s theory, as demonstrated by KM himself, does not necessarily lead to RAS.
Furthermore, as someone who tries to adhere to the precepts of the scientific method (a continuous process of conjectures & refutations), the fact that I currently find KM’s thesis convincing is no guarantee I’ll necessarily find it convincing tomorrow, given some new piece of evidence or competing theory. But such is the nature of the scientific method (and the formation of ‘knowledge’) itself. Taking a small-S skepticism towards KM’s thesis is no different (and just as healthy) as taking a small-S skepticism towards any number of other theses: the idea that ‘democracy’ is good; the idea that there exist ‘natural rights’; the idea that the ‘Non-Aggression Principle’ is the theoretical end-all and be-all; the idea that the universe is expanding, etc. The point here is that it is rather odd for Z to highlight his second order, small-S skepticism towards the GES behind KM’s theory, but not broach similar second order concerns to other auxiliary ‘race realism’-related theories (or any number of other theories in other domains of knowledge) that he presumably espouses.
It is especially unfortunate to take this position towards a theory that is, within the range of ideas of mainstream Culture, clearly on the margins. Don’t get me wrong: all theories deserve scrutiny. But, in our current academic climate, KM’s theory is essentially not even allowed on the stage, and is the subject of gross mischaracterizations (if not outright caricatures) as well as the most infantile of ad hominem attacks. As such, it risks being confined to the most extreme margins of the Dissident Right, relegated to being sanctified by LARP-ers as a holy relic. Were KM’s theory a generally accepted truth in the epicenter of respectable Cultural Discussion, however, I could then see the practical utility of punching right, so to speak, challenging and testing KM’s theory to a continuous and rigorous stream of first-order critiques as well as even second-order doubts about the coherence of GES, etc.
To a position central to both Z and Cofnas, Quinn writes: “If it were all about aptitude and living in cities… then why has there never been Left-Right balance among the diaspora Jews and their works?” This bears the importance of carefully assembling the data. On the conservative side of the political spectrum, it is true that Jews have had a significant role in both libertarianism and neoconservatism and this makes sense, insofar as both strands of political thought are good for the Jews: the former due to a purely market-based meritocracy for which Jews are notably suited (e.g., Slezkine’s The Jewish Century) and the latter for the obvious reasons widely discussed in the aftermath of the Iraq War. Jews have not, however, had a comparable degree of representation in what we might call the ‘blood and soil’ nationalisms (ethnonationalisms) of Central and Western Europe. And it is this empirical fact which begs the question: Why is this the case?
At a minimum, the question of ‘What causes anti-Semtism?’ is a chicken or egg situation. However, anti-Semitism does not occur in a vacuum, nor can its long history in Europe and elsewhere be plausibly explained away as a series of spontaneous eruptions of mass hysteria and collective irrationality, taking place in a variety of different host cultures. As KM and others have documented so well, epochs of anti-Semitism can arguably best be explained as coalescent reactions to extreme displays of Jewish ethnocentrism. Jewish hyper-ethnocentrism and its in-group effects (both in terms of creating in-group advantages & in giving shape and form to gentile reactions to such emergent advantages) may be a better explanation for Jews being kicked out of hundreds of societies than, say, spontaneous irrationalism.
Orban had some very counter-semitic comments in his latest speech (from 16:15). And before that timestamp there were other good remarks about Europe, immigration, Brussels. But this is the closest to naming the jew as I’ve seen from him sofar.
https://youtu.be/qnvhw4797Yc
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