By Ian Jobling • 12/18/06
White America has now completed its first week, and a fascinating first week it’s been! In my first column, “Why I Started this Website,” I said I couldn’t support any of the existing white activist institutions because none of them stood up to the “theology of Jewish evil” that permeates the racial right in America. My column provoked strong opinions, both in support and in opposition, in dozens of commenters, not only here, but also at other websites, most notably Majority Rights.
This column will continue the theme of the first, but whereas that one was autobiographical and impressionistic, this one will be analytical. Here I will spell out clearly why I think the racial right in America is fundamentally insane. My example will be the worldview of David Duke, who is one of the racial right’s leading spokesman and its symbol in the mind of the American public.
Of course, I cannot take on all of Duke’s work in a single article. Rather, I will focus on his theory that Israel was complicit in the 9/11 attacks. This theory is very dear to Duke. He has stated it often and defended it with great passion (see, for example, here and here). Nor does he show any sign of abandoning this theory—he defended it again just last summer (see here). Duke’s statements go beyond the mere assertion that Israel had foreknowledge of the attack. Rather, he has used the actual term “complicity” here.
It would be easy to prove that this theory is merely wrong, but I am making a much stronger claim: that this theory is the product of a mind that has lost touch with the principles of reason, a mind that is so maddened by hatred of Jews that it obsessively and irrationally twists everything that it dislikes about the present and the past into evidence of Jewish evil. Because Duke is so popular with the racial right, his views are a good indication of those of the broader community.
This discussion of Duke’s views ought to be of interest not merely because it raises issues of concern for a political and intellectual movement, but also because it addresses a question of major philosophical importance: that is, what is the difference between sanity and insanity? What do we mean when we designate a person or a theory as “insane,” and under what circumstances is this designation appropriate? Not only is this discussion of inherent interest, but it is crucial to my broader intellectual goals, and I will often return to it.
The dividing line between sanity and insanity is this: sane people give conventional wisdom the benefit of the doubt unless there is overwhelming reason to distrust it; insane people, on the other hand, dismiss conventional wisdom even when there is no good reason to distrust it.
You won’t hear too many people praising conventional wisdom these days. Indeed, the term is generally used in a derogatory sense to designate views that are out of date and in need of revision. We think of defenders of conventional wisdom as reactionary sticks-in-the-mud and stuffed shirts.
This view of conventional wisdom is the product of a dogmatically liberal society that ridicules everything smacking of tradition and authority. In truth, conventional wisdom is our best friend. We learn very little of what we know from first-hand experience. Most of our knowledge is taken over second-hand from society at large—from television, school, the internet, newspapers, novels, and conversation. These sources transmit to us knowledge that is agreed on by a society as a whole. Conventional wisdom enables the members of a society to participate in a shared reality and enormously expands our knowledge of the world, teaching us things that we could never discover for ourselves.
If I ask you what temperature water boils at in degrees Fahrenheit, you would tell me 212. How did you find that out? Did you ever get out a thermometer and measure the temperature of boiling water? Probably not, and if you did, you didn’t need to, because you could have found it out more easily from a book. When did the Normans conquer England? 1066, you will answer confidently if you’re at all literate. How do you know that? Have you examined the historical records that prove the conquest happened in that year? Almost certainly not, but you can be confident this is true because it is the conventional wisdom.
Much of conventional wisdom, and especially that part that is likely to be true, is rooted in the teachings of expert communities. In a discussion of the “meaning of meaning,” the philosopher Hilary Putnam raised the following problem. I can’t tell the difference between an elm and a beech; I just know they’re both types of tree. How then do I know that the two words mean different things? Putnam then came up with this answer: I know the words “elm” and “beech” mean different things because botanists, the authorities on trees, assure me they do.1 Similarly, chemists and historians tell us the boiling point of water and the date of the Norman Conquest.
The teachings of expert communities become conventional wisdom because experts are generally highly intelligent people who devote their lives to finding about the truth about subjects in their fields and who pay a high price for shoddy research or falsification. We can be very confident that the teachings of experts represent either the truth or the closest that human beings can come to it. Consequently, conventional wisdom rooted in expert knowledge does not normally need to be defended against challenges. Suppose someone tells me that water doesn’t boil at 212 degrees. Do I need to get out my thermometer and boil some water to prove him wrong? No, it’s appropriate to just tell him, “Well, all the people who should know about this say it boils at 212 degrees, and why should they be lying?” Probably an even better answer is, “Go away and stop wasting my time, you crazy freak!” As this last answer indicates, we generally consider people who challenge conventional wisdom to be insane, and this is appropriate, because they usually are.
Conventional wisdom can, of course, be wrong. Because it is so likely to be right, however, a reasonable person must see absolutely overwhelming evidence that it’s wrong before he doubts it. What counts as overwhelming varies according to context, but generally three conditions must hold.
In the case of our debate, my view—that Israelis did not have foreknowledge of the 9/11 attacks—represents the conventional wisdom. Duke’s view is a challenge to the conventional wisdom. So, to persuade a rational person, Duke must present overwhelming evidence that meets the three conditions above that the conventional wisdom is wrong.
So is his evidence overwhelming? Hardly.
There is no respected school among the community of experts that thinks the Israeli government was complicit in the 9/11 attacks and failed to warn us of them. The relevant expert communities are academic specialists dealing with Middle Eastern affairs and commentators on the Middle East in the news media. Although there is a group called Scholars for 9/11 Truth, which espouses 9/11 revisionism, few of these people are experts in relevant fields, and they are not respected by other experts. As we shall see below, in 2001 and 2002, there were a flurry of stories in the news media about an Israeli spy ring, but these quickly died down because there was no real evidence for the story.
What about the second criterion? Do expert communities have a motive to deny the truth about Israeli complicity in 9/11? Duke maintains that they do. One of his constant themes is that the news media and the academy are filled with “Zionists” who have a strong pro-Israeli bias. However, there is much better reason to believe that the news media are biased against Israel than in favor of it. Time and time again, the press has shown that it is inclined to slant the news to put Israel in the worst possible light. Consider the BBC, for example. Between 2000 and 2004, the British network aired 17 documentaries about the Israel/Palestinian conflict, all but one of which portrayed Israel as the villain. The Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America has compiled dozens of examples of the BBC’s anti-Israeli bias. There is no reason to think that the BBC wouldn’t expose Israeli complicity in the 9/11 attacks if there were any real evidence for it. Indeed, there is every reason to believe the network would regard this as a dream come true. But even the BBC calls 9/11 revisionism conspiracy theories.
Finally, the actual evidence Duke gives to support his theory of Israeli complicity is very weak. Given the absence of other reasons to believe in his theory, I will address only two of his points. Duke has repeatedly claimed that only one Israeli died in the World Trade Center attacks; this supposedly counts as evidence that Israelis were warned to stay away. In fact, it’s been known for years that five Israelis died, but Duke has yet to update this figure even in his most recent article on the subject. This indicates that Duke is either ignorant of the relevant facts or playing fast and loose with them.
The strongest card that Duke has to play is reports in 2001 and 2002 by respected news agencies like Fox News and France’s Le Monde newspaper that US authorities had uncovered an Israeli spy ring that might have had foreknowledge of the 9/11 attacks—the Fox News reports are available here. According to Fox News, some of these so-called spies had penetrated law enforcement and Department of Defense offices by posing as art students. Other Israeli spies had assumed the cover of toy vendors at kiosks in malls. Fox News suggested there was good reason to believe these spies, and consequently the Israeli government, had foreknowledge of the 9/11 attacks.
If the evidence for these spy rings had been solid, this would have been a story of earth-shaking significance that news agencies would have continued to cover until they had wrung some confession out of the Israeli government. In fact, the only established facts behind the reports of Fox News are these. In 2001, US federal authorities detained and investigated a number of Israelis in the US; some of them were deported on immigration violations, but none were found guilty of terrorism or espionage. Among those investigated were young Israelis in the US on tourist visas who were illegally working at mall kiosks—tourist visas do not entitle the holders to hold employment. The government found no evidence they were doing anything illegal.
The source of the Israeli spy ring story was a document by a Drug Enforcement Administration employee. This was not an official DEA report. Rather, it was the statement of one official’s theories that had no sanction from the DEA or any other US government agency. In March of 2002, US officials held a press conference in which they dismissed reports of an Israeli art student spy ring as an “urban myth” put about by a disgruntled DEA agent. Although speculation about the Israeli art students continued after this, respectable news agencies reasonably decided that there was not enough solid evidence here to conclude the Israeli government had foreknowledge of the attacks. (For more information about this and other 9/11 conspiracy theories, see here). Only David Duke and his ilk go on trotting out this canard year after year.
In challenging the conventional wisdom without legitimate cause, Duke resembles the person who tells us water doesn’t boil at 212 degrees or that the Norman Conquest didn’t happen in 1066, and if we consider these last two insane, so we must consider Duke as well. But there is a key difference. Whereas these first two lunatics have no recognizably human motivation, Duke has one that is all too familiar: hatred, a hatred so powerful that it overrides his sanity and causes him to see Jewish malevolence behind everything wrong with the world.
A few words in conclusion. Once someone has espoused and vigorously defended a conspiracy theory like this, it discredits all of his work. No one is obligated to take seriously what he says about anything ever again. He can only hope to regain the trust of reasonable people by publicly admitting and apologizing for his insanity.
Many people have said that Michael Hart acted unreasonably when, at the last American Renaissance conference, he shouted at Duke: “You’re a fucking Nazi, and you’re a disgrace to this conference!” However, that response was perfectly reasonable. As we saw above, conventional wisdom is not obligated to defend itself against illegitimate challenges from the insane, and insults are a perfectly valid response. It is arguing rationally with lunatics that is unreasonable.
The distinction I have made between sanity and insanity will be the basis of the comment moderation policy on this website in the future. In the first week, I approved more or less all comments that readers sent in—and later regretted it. From now on, I will not let comments that I judge to be insane according to the criteria above appear on the site. I may make exceptions, however, because insanity can occasionally be amusing and instructive, but this will be the general rule. Since this article is about Duke, I will let his supporters comment on it, although I don’t promise to approve everything.
Race realists today face a clear choice. Either continue in the failed ways of the past and labor under the well-deserved scorn of reasonable people, or work to create a new, mature, and, above all, sane race realist movement. If you choose the latter, I look forward to your company.