Jews Are Not “Hyper-ethnocentric”
By • 7/18/08 |
Kevin MacDonald is wrong about Jewish “hyper-ethnocentrism.” |
The central ingredient of Kevin MacDonald’s theory of Jewish culture is the postulate that Jews are intensely ethnocentric, indeed “hyperethnocentric.” Even by the standards of the highly tribalistic Middle Eastern peoples, Jews stand out for their clannishness, in MacDonald’s view. This trait has caused them historically to obey Jewish authorities unquestioningly and to be willing to fight and die for their group.1 To substantiate his claim, MacDonald quotes Jewish writers who “consider Jews and non-Jews as completely different species, with Jews absolutely superior to non-Jews” and who believe non-Jews have “Satanic souls.” Such hyperethnocentrism is rooted in the biological makeup of Jews rather than being a consequence of contingent historical conditions and thus “continues to pervade all segments of the Jewish community” today.2 MacDonald believes this hyperethnocentrism manifested itself in the Leftist, anti-racist “culture of critique” that Jews developed in the 20th century, which demonizes ethnocentrism among Gentiles while serving Jews’ ethnic self-interest. (For discussions of MacDonald’s work on the Jewish Left, see here and here.)
This theory, however, flies in the face of the fact that today’s Jewish Left is radically critical of Israel. Jewish academics like Noam Chomsky, Joel Kovel, and Jacqueline Rose vociferously accuse Israel of being a racist state that has brought only suffering to the world. Some of these intellectuals even call for the dissolution of the Jewish state and advocate a South Africa style boycott of Israel in order to force it to make concessions towards Palestinians. In sum, today’s Jewish Left subjects Israelis to the same treatment as it has historically given American whites.
The most famous and influential of these new self-hating Jews is Noam Chomsky. Like all of the intellectuals discussed here, he is plainly the descendant of the anti-racist Jewish Left. Like Frankfurt School and New Left intellectuals, Chomsky’s project is to link America, capitalism, and Nazism together as though there were no moral difference between them.
Yet Chomsky is no kinder to Israel. As Paul Bogdanor concludes in his review of Chomsky’s writings on the Jewish state:
In Noam Chomsky’s books, essays and public campaigns stretching back for decades, one theme is constant: his portrayal of the state of Israel as the focus of evil in the Middle East, a malevolent outlaw whose only redeeming feature is the readiness of its own left-wing intelligentsia to expose its uniquely horrifying depravity.
Chomsky is willing to falsify the historical evidence in his campaign to demonize Israel. Thus, he exaggerates the number of Arab civilians killed during wars in the region and misquotes Israeli leaders in order to make it look as though they ordered war crimes. Chomsky also ignores atrocities committed by the PLO, who are blameless freedom fighters in his works, against both Jews and Palestinians. And of course Chomsky says Israel has “points of similarity” with the Nazi regime—no one can stop this man when he’s on a roll.
Beyond this, Chomsky desires the dissolution of the Jewish state. Chomsky supports the formation of a bi-national Israel in which Palestinians and Jews would live side by side, despite the fact that such an amalgamation would end the Jewish character of the country and lead to ethnic violence on a massive scale.
Jewish leftist? Certainly. Hyperethnocentric? I don’t think so!
As is clear from Alvin H. Rosenfeld’s review article on Jewish anti-Zionists, there is a large community of Jewish academics and other intellectuals whose views of Israel are similar to Chomsky’s. The anguished laments of these self-hating Jews fills two recent collections of articles, Wrestling with Zion: Jewish-American Responses to the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict and Radicals, Rabbis, and Peacemakers: Conversations with Jewish Critics of Israel. For example, Joel Kovel, a professor at Bard College, calls Zionism “equivalent to a form of racism” and believes to be a true Jew, one must work to “annihilate the Jewish state.” Steve Quester asks if Israelis are “going to build gas chambers and kill [all Palestinians].” Rabbi David Weiss says that Zionists have been “worse than Hitler.”
Like Chomsky, these Jewish anti-Zionists exaggerate and even fabricate Israeli war crimes. Thus, Jacqueline Rose, a British academic who has called for a boycott of Israel, refers in her anti-Zionist tract The Question of Zion to “the razing [of] the [West Bank] town of Jenin” by the Israeli military. Jenin was, in fact, not razed. The source of Rose’s error was reports by the Palestinian Authority in 2002 that Israel had committed a “massacre” that killed more than 500 people in the town. Subsequent investigation revealed that 56 Palestinians in Jenin died, most of them combatants, along with 23 Israeli soldiers. Israel ordered the strike on the town because terrorist networks there had been responsible for dozens of suicide bomb attacks on Israel.
Other self-hating Jews are the so-called “New Historians,” a group of Israeli academics, including Benny Morris, Avi Schlaim, and Ilan Pappe, who have argued that Arabs were the victims of Jewish aggression in the 1948 Israeli War of Independence and that Israelis expelled Arabs according to a pre-meditated plan. Efraim Karsh of King’s College in London has demonstrated conclusively that many of the New Historians’ claims were based on distortions of historical records. The 1948 war was precipitated by Arab aggression against Israel, and there was no Israeli plan to expel Palestinians, who departed the territory of their own will due to fear-mongering by Arab leaders.
I don’t believe anyone has ever tabulated the percentage of Jewish intellectuals who are anti-Zionist, but it cannot be considered a trivial or peripheral movement in the Jewish community. After all, many Jewish anti-Zionists enjoy great prestige—Noam Chomsky is perhaps the world’s most famous political commentator, and many of the intellectuals discussed in Rosenfeld’s review write regularly for influential periodicals like Britain’s The Guardian and the The New York Review of Books.
Jewish anti-Zionism is influential enough to affect coverage of Israel by Jews in the mainstream media. As I pointed out last week, pro-Israeli groups have convincingly argued that the New York Times, which is owned and substantially administered by Jews, takes an anti-Israeli, pro-Palestinian slant.
The viewpoint of anti-Zionist Jewish intellectuals indicates that Jews are actually much less ethnocentric than other peoples are. After all, how many blacks, Mexicans, or Japanese fabricate reasons to hate their people, as Chomsky and Rose do by inventing or exaggerating Israeli acts of aggression? The intellectual classes of most races generally do as much as they can to portray their own in a positive light, rather than vilifying them. Only Gentile whites share with Jews the yen to slander their own people.
MacDonald certainly puts together a powerful case that the Jewish Left has historically been extremely hostile to white Gentile ethnocentrism. However, the existence of an anti-Zionist Jewish Left today suggests that Jewish ethnic self-interest was not the major source of the “culture of critique.” Rather, it seems more likely that Jewish Leftists are motivated by extreme anti-authoritarianism and anti-nationalism, which they apply consistently both to Jewish and Gentile nations. Moreover, the willingness of today’s Jewish Left to slander and call for the abolition of Israel renders MacDonald’s theory of a biological Jewish hyperethnocentrism highly doubtful.
It seems MacDonald’s portrait of the hypocritical Jew animated by a covert lust for ethnic power is an ugly and unjustified stereotype that ought to be repudiated.
- Kevin MacDonald, A People That Shall Dwell Alone: Judaism as a Group Evolutionary Strategy, with Diaspora Peoples (San Jose: Writers Club Press, 2002), p. 352. ↑
- Kevin MacDonald, The Culture of Critique: An Evolutionary Analysis of Jewish Involvement in Twentieth-Century Intellectual and Political Movements, First paperback edition (First Books, 2002), pp. xxx-xxxvii. ↑
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The problem with this is that jews are in fact guilty of playing a role in the deconstruction of our society and way of life. And have done this in many countries since at least the beginning of the 20th century. No, it is not all jews. But it is alot of jews. And they played a key role both in the rise of communism to become a nuclear threat to the very existence of all life on the planet and the civil rights movement in this country.
Are they the shadowy puppet masters behind these things? No. They are simply victims of a self-destructive set of memes infecting all white cultures….spreading out to engulf others. The problem with this is that the victims become the victimizers. Who was it that gave the bomb to the russians? Jewish traitors. Who ran the civil rights movement, the NAACP in particular? Jews. Who mostly runs the a rather obvious anti-white agenda throughout all media to the extent that we have a heavily censored press and movies that are little more than anti-white propaganda? Again…jews. They are a part of the problem. A very large part in fact. But, rather than playing a causative role, they are simply one domino in a chain. And whites, not jews are the majority of the problem at least in white countries. The jews are doing a fine job of creating a second holocaust in Israel by refusing to defend themselves in any meaningful way. The toxic elements of culture they help to spread here have poisoned their own far more seriously than us. If they don’t turn away from that course and soon, they are doomed.
In the final analysis, the jewish problem is not important. All we need to do to solve this is not cooperate. Mostly, this involves not swallowing the poison that liberal whites try to shove down our throats. But, it also means rejecting things like pornography (another industry run mostly by jews), maybe throw away your TV. The internet is an effective method to get news information through an uncontrollable, decentralized medium….a devastating counter to a jewish controlled press that distorts, censors and even fabricates the news. If you don’t buy newspapers, eventually they run out of money and fail. More to the point, if the real story gets out, nobody believes the papers anymore….lol.
The jewish question requires taking a balanced view. People like David Duke are nuts. They ignore far more important elements of white racial interest in order to chase windmills with regard to jews. Most jews have no real understanding of what is going on. That doesn’t mean you take crap from them any more than you would any other liberal. But, its not an effective screen for telling who you should avoid vs not avoid. For example, you wouldn’t avoid like the plague an area with a high jewish population, like you would one with a high population of blacks.
I guess what I am trying to say is that jews, as a group are not malevolent the way certain other groups are….blacks, mexicans, muslims etc. But don’t ignore certain behaviors from them that contribute to our societies problems. The black rapes, robs, murders and assaults us. But the jew tells us not to punish him harshly for it. You hang the black but simply tell the jew….no.
Jewish academics like Noam Chomsky, Joel Kovel, and Jacqueline Rose vociferously accuse Israel of being a racist state that has brought only suffering to the world. Some of these intellectuals even call for the dissolution of the Jewish state and advocate a South Africa style boycott of Israel in order to force it to make concessions towards Palestinians.
So some Jews are consistent… so what? Why aren’t they all?
The notion of Israel’s right to exist as a Jewish state has - what - 95% support among the world’s Jews? And yet the notion that other peoples have the same rights to ethnic-states devoted to their particular interests, which equivalence would include the right to discriminate against Jews, has essentially 0.0% support among the world’s Jews.
Yes, we see the 5%, why don’t you want to see the 95%?
Why aren’t they all?
For the same reason “bad people” can be found within any group. Why is the standard for Jews so high?
Secondly, Israel is NOT a Jewish racialist state. You can be an Arab citizen of Israel, with full rights. An Arab can even be a member of the Knesset. The second language withing Israel is Arabic. Anyone can become a citizen of Israel through the traditional process.
I know people may bring up the “law of return” as proof of the racialism, as it gives Jews easy citizenship. Do I have to point out that Germany, Poland, Greece and most other countries have their own version of the law of return.
Would you like me to prove this? The link is here : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rightofreturn
Based on the logic I’ve heard from the anti-zionists within the racialist movements, every state listed in the link I gave you would qualify as a racialist state, because it makes it easier for people to return. Israel is no more racialist than any country on this list.
I think people miss the point about Israel. That Israel was founded in order to be an ethnostate is a GOOD thing, not a bad thing. The fact that it is not, that it allows arabs full citizenship and accommodates them (lol…the arabs in the region are damn lucky dealing with them was not up to people like me) is a very, VERY bad thing.
The problem with the jews is not hypocrisy. The problem is that they are so attached to destroying the western world with marxism and its malevolent offspring, that they’ve come to believe this bullshit. Now, it’s destroying them. That’s sad and messed up but it’s their own business. For us, the goal is to get them to stop promoting that sickness in our own countries. Or, at least, to stop listening to them. They want to leap off a cliff, so be it. But we should not allow them to throw us over first.
Instead, we should embrace racism and create our own white only ethnostates. We should do to the US, britain, canada, etc. what was originally intended for israel. Quite frankly, we should encourage israel to be what everyone thinks they already are…..and to drive their enemies from the region once and for all. But, that’s their business, not ours.
Ours is dealing with the blacks and mexicans. And by dealing with, I mean getting rid of.
Iceman, this is my only reply to you, as I’ve seen people like JWH waste hours debating with your ‘arguments’.
For the same reason “bad people” can be found within any group. Why is the standard for Jews so high?
Of course, you have it backwards, the standard for Jews is entirely different than for other peoples, but is a lower standard, as demonstrated:
They unanimously oppose the ethnic nationalisms of other peoples, while near-unanimously defending their own right to such. Which other people does this? You accept this double standard, and even defend it. Why?
We disagree on Israel’s domestic policies, but you seem not to realise that if you are correct about the limited advantages Jews stand to gain from Israel’s nominal Jewishness, then the devotion of diaspora Jews to a state which offers them comparatively little suggests higher, not lower, levels of ethnocentrism.
Nick,
If Jews were really hyperethnocentric, you would expect fewer than one percent of American Jews to be anti-Zionist. Furthermore, you would not see Jews inventing reasons to be hostile to Israel, as many of the anti-Zionist Jews I discuss in this article do when they rail about exaggerated or entirely fabricated atrocities committed by Israel. In fact, that there is a large and influential segment of Jewish opinion-makers who slander their own people proves Jews are much lower in ethnocentrism than other peoples are. After all, when do you see blacks, Mexicans, or Japanese inventing reasons to hate their homelands? The belief in Jewish hyperethnocentrism is an inversion of reality.
I just added this paragraph to the article to drive my point home:
The viewpoint of anti-Zionist Jewish intellectuals indicates that Jews are actually much less ethnocentric than other peoples are. After all, how many blacks, Mexicans, or Japanese fabricate reasons to hate their people, as Chomsky and Rose do by inventing or exaggerating Israeli acts of aggression? The intellectual classes of most races generally do as much as they can to portray their own in a positive light, rather than vilifying them. [Only Gentile whites](http://inverted-world.com/index.php/articles/articles/why_the_whites_as_cancer_myth/) share with Jews the yen to slander their own people.
Judgements of levels of ethnocentrism must be made relative to other groups. You haven’t done that or refuted my example.
Debates about Israel’s historic treatment of Palestinians are controversial, and irrelevant unless you compare with the same Jews’ tendencies of attitudes to other controversial ethnic conflicts.
It is not often a matter of debate that Jews are highly ethnocentric, Jews for centuries have admitted this, chuckled about it, and pondered it.
Judgements of levels of ethnocentrism must be made relative to other groups. You haven’t done that or refuted my example.
No, I just did that, Nick. See my last two comments.
It is not often a matter of debate that Jews are highly ethnocentric, Jews for centuries have admitted this, chuckled about it, and pondered it.
This may be true, but this ethnocentrism may be due to contingent historical factors rather than to an innate tendency to be highly ethnocentric. Also, before the 20th century, ALL peoples were highly ethnocentric, so it may be that Jews showed only a normal level of ethnocentrism that strikes us as extreme today.
Jews appear to be more in love with liberalism than ethnocentrism, though they are ethnocentric. In fact, according to the below article, liberal Jews such as Rahm Emanuel actually wanted - and still want - Israel to take in violent, and hopelessly low IQ Sudanese refugees from Darfur (The whole series of articles at Jewcy is worth reading, btw):
http://www.jewcy.com/post/rosnerlebor3a#
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The facts are indisputable: Jewish Americans were on the forefront of the battle to save Darfur. If you happened to attend the largest Washington demonstration for Darfur you couldn’t ignore the fact that although it wasn’t a “Jewish” rally, most of the participants happened to be Jewish. Jewish legislators (among them the late Tom Lantos) were vocal, Jewish activists were, well, very active, Jewish organizations were, and still are, making space for this issue on their agenda.
But what is the reason for all that?
One possible explanation should make all of us very proud: Jews, who suffered the most from genocide, feel compelled to raise their voices against it in every part of the world. They feel they have the moral authority and obligation to do so. And they’re right.
But there’s also a second possibility (which isn’t mutually exclusive from the first): For the past few decades, American Jews were spent most of their political capital on the just cause of securing Israel —- and then got tired of it. They got tired of being seen by some elite groups as particularistic and tribal. They got tired as the cause (Israel) has shifted from being David to being Goliath. And they were looking to prove that American Judaism is not a hostage of the Israel-first school of thought, that it has its own priorities.
This comes out in discussions of Darfur as well as other humanistarian causes. One expression of those sentiments the outrageous letter (former IDF civilian volunteer) Representative Rahm Emanuel (D-IL) sent to Israel’s Ambassador in Washington, demanding that Israel be more receptive to Sudanese refugees who reach Israel’s borders. Another expression was the denunciation (in which Jewcy played no small part) of the Anti Defamation League after its leader, Abe Foxman, came out in opposition to the Armenian Genocide bill presented to Congress by —- you guessed it —- a Jewish legislator. (The bill was defeated for the very reasons on which Foxman based his opposition, but you didn’t hear much criticism of its sponsors and of the leadership of the House when they failed to deliver on their unrealistic pledges).
So you see where I’m going with this —- and I hope the readers will spare me comments blaming me for not caring enough about genocide. I’m happy to see the Jewish community as active as it is in humanitarian causes. I do also think, however, that there’s some merit to this niggling question that keeps coming back: Will universalist causes eventually replace Israel as the great political cause of American Jewry?
One might suspect that domestic considerations are also in play here. American Jews were always at the forefront of fighting for the rights of African-Americans. They were marching alongside Reverend King in the high days of cooperation between the two communities, but sometimes along the way the bond between Jews and African Americans have soured. The Jewish community has been trying to prove, ever since, that it did not abandon African-Americans for racial reasons —- hence some of the appeal to Jews of Barack Obama, offers the community the intriguing hope of repairing those historic relations.
That’s why Israelis interpret the intense involvement of American Jews in shaping the policies toward Ethiopian Jews, as being motivated by domestic considerations. The same logic applies to the very active role Jews are playing in trying to help Darfurians. The Jews, arguably, were not as involved as a group during the crisis in the former Yugoslavia. (Interestingly, Ariel Sharon opposed international involvement in the crisis, fearing it would set a dangerous precedent. He anticipated an effort by the countries in control of international organizations hostile to Israel to influence the outcome of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict by the use of international force).
And again, this is not an indictment of the Jewish community for acting for the “wrong” reasons. Motivations that lead to the outcome of fighting genocide are all “good”. However, I think one should be able to have an honest discussion of such motivations, because other than implicating the just war against genocide, it also raises issues related to the relations between Israel and Diaspora Jews, especially in cases in which the interests of the communities come apart.
Such contradiction was visible in the case of Turkey and the Armenian genocide, when fighting to establish historical truth ran contrary to Israel national interests (and American interests, to judge by the coverage and the outcome). The case the Ethiopian Jews was a similar story of American Jews pressuring Israel to accept more immigrants than it wanted to.
So: we started with the UN and its inability to stop genocide, and we now turn to explore Jewish involvement with stopping genocide. Is there a special Jewish responsibility here? Does it also apply to Israel? And what happens when the preservation of the State of Israel contradict the cause of stopping genocide?
I’m looking forward to your answers.
So Rahm Emmanuel wants Israel to take in Sudanese refugees. That doesn’t sound very hyperethnocentric of him!
More:
Darfur is our problem, too
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/997299.html
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Unlike Israel’s policy toward other illegal immigrants - those who forget to leave after arriving here as tourists or with a temporary work permit - sending the African asylum seekers back could mean a death sentence. This issue is about saving lives in the simplest meaning of the phrase - at least in the case of the Darfur refugees, who constitute 25 percent of the people who arrive at our borders.
The difference between job seekers and asylum seekers isn’t always clear. To determine which is which, we have the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees. Those who are defined as refugees should be afforded protection from deportation and legal status. In Israel, merely being processed for recognition as an asylum seeker is difficult because of the long queue - which the government needs to shorten before it does anything else. That would be the first meaningful step.
The whole world is facing immigration problems, and a closed-gate policy is always cruel. At a time when the European Union is considering issuing a “Blue Card” for desirable immigrants like the American Green Card, it is, in fact, barring all the undesirables from entering. The distinction between job seekers and refugees is essential and humane, and it stems from our experience and commitment as the offspring of refugees who knocked in vain on the world’s door, to be delivered by no one. We cannot evade our responsibility for the refugees, and other countries do not evade theirs. Nor can we solve the refugee problem by giving the Egyptians a wink to do our dirty work for us. Refugees from Darfur need to find a home here.
Too soon we have forgotten the suffering that is the lot of the persecuted. Perhaps we have grown accustomed to concern ourselves only with our own plight after absorbing Jewish refugees since the founding of the state. Today, when we are more prosperous, when the reservoir of Jewish refugees has dried up, there is fortunately no reason to scan the globe for people who could be considered Jewish and coax them to come here. And there is no reason to remain indifferent to the suffering of non-Jews who could contribute to the State of Israel as much as any Jew.
Darfur and its refugees are like an alarm bell for the collective conscience, and that bell is supposed to ring also when non-Jews are suffering.
I think both sides miss the point. Jews are hyperethnocentric, just that in today’s 21st century West, especially the US, misplaced guilt and egalitarianism hold sway. Therefore, what Jews (falsely) perceive to be in their best interests is a internationalist policy. For examle, the AJC cares only for the Jews, but it promotes mass immigration solely because the mistaken belief that Jews will be better off in a more “diverse”, i.e. non-white, society.
Also, although many Jews are anti-Zionist, Zionist Jews are firm in their Zionism and well organized, perhaps more fervent than Chinese, Japanese or blacks in their nationalism. Noam Chomsky, Jacqueline Rose, Avi Shlaim and Ilan Pappe represent a minority opinion of Jews, although a vocal one. I also suspect a smaller percentage of self-hating Jews than self-hating gentile whites among each one’s population.
As for why Chomsky is the way he is, it could be a combination of subtle anti-white sentiment that pervades academia as well as extreme internationalism. Notice though that even Chomsky says the Iraq war is a war for oil, not a war for Israel. (The former claim is half true; the latter one is ridiculous.) So even an self-hating Jew won’t engage in outright anti-Semitism.
“I think both sides miss the point. Jews are hyperethnocentric, just that in today’s 21st century West, especially the US, misplaced guilt and egalitarianism hold sway. Therefore, what Jews (falsely) perceive to be in their best interests is a internationalist policy. For examle, the AJC cares only for the Jews, but it promotes mass immigration solely because the mistaken belief that Jews will be better off in a more “diverse”, i.e. non-white, society.”
But Jews push internationalist issues outside the US which have no import to Jewish ethnic interests whatsoever. Why do so many Jewish liberals care so deeply about, say, Burma, or Congo, or North Korea, or spreading democracy to China, etc?
The neocons are blamed for caring only about Israel, but why then do neocons want the US to defend Taiwan from Communist China so badly? What do the Jews have to gain?
As Ian has asked before, why assume elite leftist Jews don’t actually mean what they say; that they are liberal for idealistic reasons?
For some people (not you ajo), no matter what the Jews do, there is always some type of conscious or subconscious ulterior motive involved.
Ian Jobling,
I feel like it is unfair to make theories about groups but cite individuals as references for those ideas.
To put the above into context: You claimed that Jews - as an entire group - are not extremely ethnocentric. As a reference for this idea you cited just a few anti-Zionist Jews.
Do only three Jews represent the majority of American Jews’s opinions?
An anti-Semite (like Kevin MacDonald or David Duke) could just as easily write an article about Jews being extremely ethnocentric and cite Abraham Foxman and a couple other extremely liberal Jews who ironically support the very conservative state of Israel. It simply isn’t fair to reference a few individuals to support theories on entire groups.
It is not my intention to come across as anti-Semitic. Nor am I trying to imply that your theory is incorrect. Truthfully, I support your efforts in getting rid of anti-Semitism from the racialist/race-realist movement. My point in writing this is to suggest better ways of referencing your ideas on Jews as a group (like citing surveys on American Jews’s opinions on various political issues).
Nick wrote:
“Judgements of levels of ethnocentrism must be made relative to other groups.”
The Jewish American rate of intermarriage is 50 percent; the Japanese American rate of intermarriage is 15-20 percent.
The intermarriage rate of the American Negro is seven percent, whereas the Jewish intermarriage rate is 52 per cent.
http://findarticles.com/p/articles/miqa3761/is200506/ain14777516/pg4
http://www.simpletoremember.com/vitals/intermarriage-statistics.htm
Nick said:
The notion of Israel’s right to exist as a Jewish state has - what - 95% support among the world’s Jews? And yet the notion that other peoples have the same rights to ethnic-states devoted to their particular interests, which equivalence would include the right to discriminate against Jews, has essentially 0.0% support among the world’s Jews.
That’s a rather vague comment, and so typical of those who desperately want everything to be the Jews’ fault. I hope you won’t feel above answering specific questions regarding it.
What does it mean, for example, for Israel to be a “Jewish state”? Even Jews themselves are unsure of it. There is in Israel as wide a disparity of racial types as anywhere else in the western world, held together by not much more a commitment to a vague “Jewish proposition” similar to the “American proposition” that racialists, to our discredit, claim to be meaningless. It is a Jewish “proposition” on which there is precious little agreement and it seems it’s only the existence of (a) the precarious geopolitical situation and everpresent threat of war, and (b) a religio-nationalist core, that grants it any legitimacy or establishes a certain reality the proposition can point to. So vague is this proposition that even Jewish nationalists, who are in no way squeamish about taking a harsh stance towards the Palestinians, who bemoan the erosion of Jewish idenity and Jewish purpose and work day and night to resurrect it, cannot manage to find it within themselves to turn away African refuge-seekers and culturally incompatible economic migrants, applying to them a reasoning eerily similar to the justifications that Jews (and gentiles) in the west so often do. I recently read an editorial by a scholar at the Shalem Centre (Zionist, and dedicated to a Jewish Israel) contemplating almost Hamlet-like the proper role of his country and the necessity of allowing Sudanese refugees to settle in it. I urge you to read it, and while doing so, please bear in mind this is no weak-at-the-knees leftie — of which there is no shortage of in Israel — intent on lambasting his country for all manner of wrongs, real or imagined.
Treating the question of Jewish “hyperethnonationalism” now, I’ve read Dr. McDonald’s work and I’m inclined to agree with most of it. What is so often ignored by, let’s call it the “lay” readership, is that a great deal (most, even) of what is perceived as Jewish “aggression” is self-defence: if Jews appear more sensitive to criticism in America, if they appear to have done more harm than other ethnics to white America, it’s because they’ve faced far more, and far more bitter, assaults than other ethnics. In the highly fantastic world of antisemitic American WN, Jews are supposed to have tolerated every instance of — I’m only calling it what it was — discrimination or assault without making the slightest attempt to ward off or protect themselves against future incidents; only thus, it seems, could Jews escape the opprobrium of modern antisemites. Of course, if one is intent on persecuting Jews no matter what, considering them thoroughly incompatible from the outset, one need only state this and let it be, rather than interpret every historical or current event involving a Jew as all part of the great Sinister Talmudic Plot.
All that said, Jews should be criticized for what Jews do as Jews, just any group should. But that criticism needs to be placed in the context of a white America stumbling forward, gaining materially but groping spiritually, grappling with the race question during a time in which old standards everywhere were being turned upside down and discarded.
Tony Judt isn’t a hyperethnocentric Jew. He favors a binational state in Israel for the following reason:
In a world where nations and peoples increasingly intermingle and intermarry at will; where cultural and national impediments to communication have all but collapsed; where more and more of us have multiple elective identities and would feel falsely constrained if we had to answer to just one of them; in such a world Israel is truly an anachronism. And not just an anachronism but a dysfunctional one. In today’s “clash of cultures” between open, pluralist democracies and belligerently intolerant, faith-driven ethno-states, Israel actually risks falling into the wrong camp.
Opinionated makes a valie point; it is interesting to observe that there are Jewish intelligensia for whom liberalism runs at least neck and neck with ethnocentrism, often producing something obviously not in Jewish (or white) self-interest. Here’s a useful Auster post, with links, about Jewish apologists for Islam:
http://www.amnation.com/vfr/archives/011013.html
@ Ian Jobling
No, I just did that, Nick. See my last two comments.
Not so. I stated that judgements of levels of ethnocentrism must be made relative to other groups. You replied:
If Jews were really hyperethnocentric, you would expect fewer than one percent of American Jews to be anti-Zionist.
You pulled this number out of thin air: it is not a comparison with other peoples’ views about their right to an ethnic-state. You demonstrated your contempt for comparison when you wrote:
before the 20th century, ALL peoples were highly ethnocentric
Hmm.
The debates about Israel’s historical treatment of Palestinians are controversial, as I say, and I happen to think the knee jerk critics of Israel are more often correct than the knee jerk defenders. The relevant question for this debate, though, is why you think it so remarkable that some Jewish leftists are able to consistently apply their principles even to Israel?
I say again: so what? The vast majority of Jews are inconsistent on issues of race, ethnicity, and nationalism, but you attack the few who are even-handed with regard to your rights and theirs.
@ JRR
The Jewish American rate of intermarriage is 50 percent; the Japanese American rate of intermarriage is 15-20 percent.
I do not agree:
http://www.jewishsf.com/content…
Quoting JW Holliday:
Even if the outmarriage rate is 50% that is still indicative of a resistance to assimilation. I combined Dr. Alba’s intermarriage data for white gentile ethnic groups with census data for ethnic group percentages. Plotting rates of intermarriage (to someone of completely different ethnicity) of white gentile groups vs. percent of US population yields a trendline formula of:
Y = -2.4172x + 87.895
If the Irish are 10.8% of the US population, they would be expected to have an outmarriage rate of 61.9%. The measured rate, by Alba = 64.9%. That’s a good match and probably within statistical error of the predicted.
Jews? If Jews are 3% of the population, their predicted outmarriage rate would be 80.7% - a figure which can be compared to what is above, and which is obviously representative of a real, and wide, difference between predicted and actual.
Despite the recent rise in Jewish intermarriage – and the outcry this has caused – the fact remains that Jews, compared to other groups considered white are resisting intermarriage and assimilation. Further, the combination of the increase in the more Orthodox, as well as “interventions” to inhibit the growth of intermarriage among the others, means that this resistance to assimilation is likely to harden in coming decades.
Note as well that of America’s “white” groups, only Jews have prominent mainstream individuals and organizations denouncing intermarriage and doing so with impunity, the example of Elliot Abrams being instructive in this regard.
—- —-
That’s a rather vague comment, and so typical of those who desperately want everything to be the Jews’ fault. I hope you won’t feel above answering specific questions regarding it.
I’ve heard a lot about these people who blame the Jews for everything, but I’ve never actually heard anyone doing it. Seeing as I haven’t blamed the Jews for even a single circumstance or event, may I ask how you came to know that I hold them responsible for Everything?
(Your questions about Israel were not related to my very clear statement re: Jewish double standards on nationalism.)
@ Ian Jobling:
Only Gentile whites share with Jews the yen to slander their own people.
Debatable. Ahmed Chalabi, ally of inconsistent Jewish leftists (Trotskyist neocons) springs immediately to mind.
However, the tendency of non-Jewish Whites to organize in defence of other peoples is disconcerting. You do it a lot Mr Jobling, evidently under the illusion that your efforts and open-ness will be reciprocated.
The reality is that more Blacks and Mexicans feel they have a lot in common with Whites than do Jews.
http://inductivist.blogspot.com/2008/03/do-minorities-feel-that-they-have-more.html
Ian,
The genetic evidence of overwhelming endogamy despite immersion in a European milieu for millennia is strong evidence of “hyperethnocentrism” which cannot be cast aside with a few contemporary exceptions to the rule. If a group which can successfully retain its ethnic identity across dozens of nations over thousands of years isn’t “hyperethnocentric” then I don’t know what would be…
I think a lot of the confusion arises from the fact that there are divergent strategies within the jewish community, arising from the absurd presumption that jews are all like-minded. I propose that they can be broadly considered in two categories, nationalists and internationalists - with the nationalists favoring the establishment and success of a traditional Israeli nation-state and the internationalists favoring a continuation of the diaspora. Netanyahu and the neocons vs. Soros and the Obamaniacs, etc…
The high rates of jewish intermarriage quoted by Jewish Race Realist have to be taken in the context of inclusion and exclusion. A group can have half of its members marrying outside the group and still remain 100% “pure” if that half which marries out is then excluded from the group. I’m not saying that’s what’s currently happening or that the jewish ethnic group isn’t facing unique challenges. If anything, I suspect that the group strategy only really works in hostile circumstances - and that America’s acceptance of jews poses an existential threat to their continuity.
While I am generally in agreement with Kevin MacDonald’s work, the question that came to my mind when I set down the book was not “how do we stop them from having a strategy?” but rather, “how do we get one?”
“I think a lot of the confusion arises from the fact that there are divergent strategies within the jewish community, arising from the absurd presumption that jews are all like-minded.”
Or maybe there is no genetic strategy and the Jews are mostly leftist because of historical/cultural reasons, and, because like many elite whites, they truly think leftism is a good idea.
I am mystified why the MacDonaldites keep insisiting Jewish leftism is explainable by genetics because it is impossible to prove.
If they can’t prove the Jews are genetically programmed to undermine white society, then from a purely strategic perspective, the MacDonaldites are wasting the time of real white American conservatives.
From a purely strategic perspective, it is much harder to convince whites that their Jewish family doctor, or Jewish golf buddy is genetically programmed to destroy Western civilization than it is to show blacks and Hispanics are less intelligent and more crime prone than whites. Whining about Jews is a great way to get whites not to listen to nationalist arguments because it sounds just as nutty as Dailykos style 911 “Trutherism”.
Look at the strongest nationalist parties and leaders in Europe (including the best nationalist leader of them all, Vladimir Putin). NONE of the successful nationalists waste their time by making opposition to so called Jewish ethnic interests a central political plank.
None of them do, not the French Front National, the Italian Northern League, the Austrian Freedom Party, etc. They attack third world immigration, especially Islamic immigrants, not Jews. Granted, sometimes somebody will make an impolite remark about the Holocaust, but they do not focus any serious energy towards criticising Jews.
In fact, many nationalist parties are actually pro-Israel despite the fact their electorates are not interested in the Israel-Palestine conflict. Many are even pro-Jewish, such as the Belgian Vlaams Belang, the Norwegian Progress Party, and the Danish People’s Party or the new mayor of Rome.
Meanwhile, what have the anti-Jewish racial right or anti-Jewish paleocons in the US accomplished politically? Nothing. The anti-Jewish racialists are powerless and the paleocons are mumbling and arguing in a small corner about obscure Catholic historical controversies no ordinary person cares about. What have Stormfront and Kevin MacDonald accomplished and done to save America compared to what the Northern League has done to save Italy? Am I supposed to believe Stormfront has a better understanding of nationalist politics than the Vlaams Belang?
Face it, MacDonaldism is a political dead end and a gigantic waste of energy.
Opinionated,
I never “insisted” that Jews are genetically programmed or inclined to destroy Western Civilization. I never argued for expanding the role of anti-Semitism in race realism. I never argued that the Stormfront “stuckment” is comparable to the Vlaams Belang movement.
I even conclude my post with an attempt to move the dialogue away from obsessing about jews and toward focusing on our ethnic interests and concerns. My post doesn’t even remotely resemble the strawman you just constructed to tear apart.
Now, I’m going to avoid a “gigantic waste of energy” by discussing issues with people who don’t scan through my post without reading it, project extreme positions on me, then drench me in spit and bile. For an anti-anti-Semite, you certainly have the rhetorical habits of an anti-Semite.
Wikitopian,
1) When you write that you believe Jews have a group strategy and you are generally in agreement with Kevin MacDonald, then I naturally assumed you agreed with MacDonald’s central thesis in Critique, which is, to the extent Jews are antagonistic against whites, it is because Jewish genes evolved to outcompete other ethnic groups. Because of this evolutionary strategy, MacDonald argues certain Jewish intellectual movements which are antagonistic to whites are to a large extent a natural byproduct of Jewish genetic traits:
“If anything, I suspect that the group strategy only really works in hostile circumstances - and that America’s acceptance of jews poses an existential threat to their continuity.
While I am generally in agreement with Kevin MacDonald’s work, the question that came to my mind when I set down the book was not “how do we stop them from having a strategy?” but rather, “how do we get one?”
The implication of what you wrote indicated you agree with MacDonald that Jewish hostility to whites is based largely because of evolutionary psychology. IF you do not actually agree with MacDonald’s points on evolutionary psychology then I apologize.
But the rest of my post was not directed against you at all…
2) When I wrote:
“I am mystified why the MacDonaldites keep insisiting Jewish leftism is explainable by genetics because it is impossible to prove.”
and explained how anti-Jewish ideology is a losers strategy when compared to European nationalist political strategy, I was making a much more broader point, not against you - or even against Stormfront in particular - but against the anti-Jewish racialist right in the US in its totality, which largely buys into MacDonald’s evolutionary psychology theories.
At this point I was not arguing with YOU. Instead I was expressing my frustration with American the broader anti-Jewish racialists and anti-Jewish paleos in general and I compared those movements with the much more influential European nationalist parties in order to prove anti-Jewish ideology is going to get racialists nowhere in America.
Jobling, while I disagree with most of your racial views, I’m impressed by your work on the jews. You should also highlight other little aspects of modern jews such as their staggering levels of outmarriage among other whites in the US and how openness to experience, a personality dimension that often lends itself to liberal political views, is usually in direct contrast to feelings of ethnocentrism.
Basically saying that one would support such liberal political ideologies because it’s in tune with their personality- not so much in the way of the idea of jews only supporting these things because they really, really hate white people, who are supposedly so vastly different from them genetically.
By the way Jobling, do you think you could look up as to something along the lines of which percentage of the worlds jews support Israel? I think it’s abit lower than Nick’s 95% that he spewed off earlier.
Opinionated says:
I am mystified why the MacDonaldites keep insisiting Jewish leftism is explainable by genetics because it is impossible to prove.
If they can’t prove the Jews are genetically programmed to undermine white society, then from a purely strategic perspective, the MacDonaldites are wasting the time of real white American conservatives.
I do not know if Macdonaldites insist that Jewish leftist (or ethnocentric) tendencies can be explained using evolutionary theory, but I know the question is perfectly within E.T’s usual remit. Is it evolutionary theory or its application to Jewish issues you object to?
If you cannot prove that the Jews collectively are us, will soon start to think they are us, will soon start to defend us as keenly as they defend themselves, you are wasting time defending them that would better be spent defending us. Same goes for Ian Jobling.
fgddgf says:
You should also highlight other little aspects of modern jews such as their staggering levels of outmarriage among other whites in the US…
Once again we see the perversely low standards Jews are held to. Even if they mythical 52% of Jews outmarried, the JW Holliday quote above demonstrates that this shows a strong aversion among American Jews to intermarriage.
American Jews also overwhelmingly support Israeli measures aimed at protecting its particularist Jewish status – including barriers to intermarriage. Given that Israel is home to approx. 45% of the world’s Jews, and the intermarriage rate there is approx. 0%, one marvels at the gullibility of those who believed the hype about impending demographic disaster for Jews. Did you read the debunking of the UJC propaganda by Goldberg, fgddgf?
I think it’s abit lower than Nick’s 95% that he spewed off earlier.
90%? In contrast, I predict that not a single Jew will be identified who says other peoples have a right to ethnic-states wherein they may reasonably discriminate against Jews – ie. should have equal rights with the Jewish people.
This is why it’s so wrong to attack the few consistent Jews – who say no dedicated homelands for any people – and attempt to ally with the overwhelming majority of inconsistent Jews who don’t consider us equals, much less their fellows.
Let our advocates speak for us – Jews don’t suffer for lack of advocates.
@ Nick:
Where exactly does this quote by JW Holliday come from, along with this Dr. Alba? It’s kind of hard to follow any of those figures when you don’t provide any actual links.
So the jewish outmarriage rate is 28%. That’s nearly a third of them. That’s pretty sizable. Why do you think the other 2/3rds aren’t outmarrying? Are you just attributing that to ethnocentrism and nothing else?
“Given that Israel is home to approx. 45% of the world’s Jews, and the intermarriage rate there is approx. 0%, one marvels at the gullibility of those who believed the hype about impending demographic disaster for Jews.”
….Where do you get this figure now? Is this about jews intermarrying with palestinians, or other groups?
“90%? In contrast, I predict that not a single Jew will be identified who says other peoples have a right to ethnic-states wherein they may reasonably discriminate against Jews – ie. should have equal rights with the Jewish people.”
Stop talking BS. Where’s the figures saying that jews opposed to Israel are in minority?
By the way, to anybody who’s read Macdonald’s work, does he devote any attention to the Talmud? Those quotes about jews who think non-jews aren’t human and have satanic souls remind me alot of propaganda I’ve heard of the Talmud.
There’s a very interesting thread on Stormfront where a swedish theologist spends dozens upon dozens of pages destroying the idea of the Talmud being so unholy, racial supremacist tome. I’ll post a link if anyone’s interested.
I don’t know, I just find it abit far-fetched to think the Talmud is vastly worse than the qu’ran. If the Talmud is so horrible, where’s the masses of regular jews committing the atrocities listed in there, such as in the case of muslims listed here www.thereligionofpeace.com?
“Is it evolutionary theory or its application to Jewish issues you object to?”
I object to so much of the racialist right in the United States diverting a large amount of energy and focus on the “Jewish Question” because it is such obviously losing strategy.
As I pointed out before, the major European nationalist parties either do not care much at all about Jewish “evolutionary psychology” or Jewish influence or those parties are actually pro-Jewish/Israel. They zero in on third world immigration instead, and their method has worked vastly better than the anti-Jewish racial right and the anti-Jewish “strategy” of trying to “expose” the Jews.
Even IF MacDonald is 100% correct about the Jews, the anti-Jewish American racial right is getting nowhere really fast, whereas, the Jewish-neutral/pro-Jewish European nationalists are making gains left and right and putting political points on the board.
Umberto Bossi, the leader of the Italian Northern League does not care about Jews, and he is now very influential in the Italian government.
On the other hand, the “MacDonald strategy” of targeting Jews as the main problem has done, uh, err, what tangible to advance race realism in America?
Nothing.
I ask you again, why should race realists in the US get worked up over Jews - even if MacDonald is right - if the major Europeans nationalists, for the most part, do not? Because I think it is pretty clear the European strategy of avoiding the “Jewish Question” has scored victories, while the Stormfront/MacDonald strategy has not.
Even if the Talmud does indeed say these very unflattering things about Gentiles, who at that time did some very wicked and naughty things in the eyes of 2nd and 3rd century Jews, the overwhelming majority of Jews are smart enough to put these writings in the proper context. Besides Jews are too busy working and supporting their families to take up the Talmudist terrorist life. On the other hand, I have found it is primarily unmarried and underemployed young Muslim men who gravitate to the Jihadist life. A Muslim man, who must support a wife and children, is far less likely to have time on his hands to plot the death and destruction of us infidels and our nations. There are unfortunately not enough fully employed and occupied Muslim men, but rather tens of millions of underemployed who are easy prey for the imams.
“I’ll post a link if anyone’s interested.”
Yes, please post a link. I am interested.
Nick wrote:
However, the tendency of non-Jewish Whites to organize in defence of other peoples is disconcerting. You do it a lot Mr Jobling, evidently under the illusion that your efforts and open-ness will be reciprocated.
Does the idea of the disinterested pursuit of the truth exist for you? Why do you assume everything I do has some calculated political goal behind it? I think that Jewish hyperethnocentrism is a myth and that we would all be better off founding our beliefs on fact rather than fiction. If I were interested in being popular, I would probably be an anti-Semite, as there is always a large audience for that sort of thing, especially among the racially conscious whites that are my natural audience.
It’s probably a bad idea to explain things over again to people who are always going to refuse to see your point, but here goes. I don’t think Jews are hyperethnocentric because there’s a substantial community of Jews who are not only critical of their own people, but excessively and unjustifiably so. Such communities exist among no other race except white except white non-Jews. That’s what I meant when I said I had already made the comparison among ethnic groups that you demanded of me.
And, in response to another commenter, I didn’t refer to just three self-critical Jews, but to a whole community whose existence is attested to by the Rosenfeld article that I linked to. If you want to see more examples, go to that link.
By the way, do any of the people who are against me have any evidence for the Jewish hyperethnocentrism hypothesis other than rates of intermarriage, which are only tangentially related to questions of ethnocentrism and can be interpreted in different ways, as the comments on this thread make clear? What about giving us some solid scientific evidence of your theory? Pretty much all of the evidence that MacDonald gives is anecdotal.
@ Constantin:
http://www.stormfront.org/forum/showthread.php/mud-talmud-333426p2.html?
Scroll down to the post by Lionaxe. I’ve spoken with him a number of times on jews and their involvement with racial politics in general. He’s an amazing resource.
Here’s another example of him in action with the Talmud, though the context is a bit more lowbrow with this WFhermans character: http://www.thephora.net/forum/showthread.php?t=9724
Though he’s banned, I’ve still yet to figure out if what he says about jews is a gimmick or not.
@ Jobling:
“By the way, do any of the people who are against me have any evidence for the Jewish hyperethnocentrism hypothesis other than rates of intermarriage, which are only tangentially related to questions of ethnocentrism and can be interpreted in different ways, as the comments on this thread make clear?”
Are you saying that the intermarriage rates work for or against Macdonald’s fans and work?
fgddgf,
Well, even if the MacDonald fans are right that Jews have relatively low rates of exogamy, would that prove they were hyperethnocentric? If that’s the only statistic they can cite for their side, their case is pretty weak.
Jobling, there’s also another group of intellectual trends I often see anti-semites try to pin on jews as another of cultural malice that’s actually completely contradictory for them.
But what would those be?
Sexual liberalism and the LGBT movement. The most common line you’ll see from them is that jews promote sexual liberalism in western societies, via things like pornography and promoting sexual promiscuity, to weaken the conservative aspects of western culture, and LGBT acceptance to promote homosexuality and the like among whites, to once again weaken us genetically.
It can’t be denied that many of the early pioneers in the american porn industry were jews, and still are. And it can’t be denied that many people in the LGBT movement are jews.
But here’s where it falls apart- if sexual liberalism is a jewish ploy, why would jews be heavily participating in something that’s completely frowned on by the jewish religion? Why would jews who are working for their cultural dominance be handling, distributing, producing, and even working in something that’s of such a pariah status among their culture?
It even gets better with the case of the LGBT culture. Why would so many jews engage in a movement that’s promoting something that’s completely opposed to any sort of common genetic prowess? Maybe all of the jews in the LGBT movement are pretending to be gay? Maybe all of the gay jews are adopting jewish children and indoctrinating them with a hatred of white gentiles?
Anyone who thinks sexual liberalism and the LGBT movement are jewish plots really needs to explain that to me.
Interesting … Audacious Epigone shows that, according to the General Social Survey, Jews rate Jews as being less intelligent than the general public does. The difference isn’t great, but it’s certainly not compatible with hyper-ethnocentrism.
It is a misconception to say that Jews are hyper-ethnocentric because they do not approve of Israeli politics. Most US American Jews, like me and many of the Jews I know, are neither Zionist or anti-Zionist. We are not concerned with Israel very much. The press spouts the opinions of the Zionists far more than the opinion of the ordinary obedient Jew who works, raises a family and doesn’t concern themselves with Israel.
The ethcocentrism of the jewish people are relatively high compared with other ethnic-groups ethnocentrism. For example, in Israel, there is a law in place that prevents people from marry each other. This law concerns people with the surnmame Cohen, they are prevented by law to marry a non-Cohen Jew. This law improves the notion that, the jews are a very ethnocentric race (nothing bad with that), and the reason is that they dont want to dismantle the “Cohen-gene”, which, in fact is one of the most “purer” jewish genes that exist. This gene can be traced back several tousand years, acorrding to some jewish sources.
Link to the article: Not Jewish Enough to Marry a Cohen; http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/pages/ShArt.jhtml?itemNo=541829
I’m basically in agreement with what was written here. As a stated before, the Jews before the common era (2000 years ago) may have been hyper-ethnocentric but the Jews of 2008 are not. Jews have converted from Judaism to leftism. We need to convert them (and all others) to racial realism aka sanity!
And just to re-emphasize, in my opinion, all of mainstream society, including the Republican Party, is basically a result of the same liberal American tradition. We need to change the way Americans think, and in the process, also change the way American Jews think.