[PLEASUREMAN]

Graybeard, 22 January 2010 - 03:18 AM:

Pleasureman,

Are you a programmer? I'm not a programmer so I don't really understand why this Eric Raymond is supposed to be so great. What exactly has he done in the computer programming field? I don't believe he had a startup or anything like that.

Raymond is one of the leading lights of the open source world for reasons too obscure for me to remember...that is why he has some sort of feud with Richard Stallman, who is a gross, crazy open source evangelist incensed that any programmer would seek to develop software for monetary gain...it's not worth going into more detail about these people, they are just your typical badly socialized mentally awkward nerds.

Note, many programmers are pretty normal and sometimes cool people--a lot of the nerds you see online are just avid computer users with no friends. There is not a huge overlap between nerds and programmers at least above a certain income level, because nerds seldom rise from the bottom of any profession. They lack social skills, initiative, smarts, etc. People like Stallman only enjoy a modicum of status because the academic ecosystem offers a place for bitter malcontents (a pretty large place if you ask me). He would never be tolerated in a job with normal demands.

I am self-employed as a web developer.

edit: according to Wikipedia he wrote a book about open source and then became a "spokesman"...I wonder if he has ever actually done anything...these guys often act like commissars who find being productive terribly boring and inhibiting

[PLEASUREMAN]

ADL:

We continue to receive many complaints from C-SPAN viewers about the unchallenged anti-Semitism and bigotry aired by callers to your shows, and we believe those complaints are justified. Recognizing that we share with you a commitment to freedom of speech and the marketplace of ideas, we also believe that respectable journalistic organizations have a responsibility and an obligation, consistent with the First Amendment, to speak out when the forum they provide is used to disseminate hate and anti-Semitism....

While [callers] have a right to their views and to express those views, they have no constitutional right to airtime on C-Span's Washington Journal. We urge you to evaluate your policies and procedures on how to handle such offensive remarks by callers, as well as issue an apology for this particular segment.

http://www.adl.org/m...wish_010810.htm


Countdown until this site is taken down for talking about Kevin MacDonald without first running it by Abe Foxman. Over-under? Seven days after some ADL intern finds it on the 400th page of a Google search.

Don't you just love their argument? The Constitution doesn't require that you provide a venue for free speech...therefore you shouldn't. It is the most sickening corruption of the intent behind the first amendment imaginable, particularly as it makes a bad faith argument (the ADL will just hound every organization until the viewpoints are completely silenced).

What is legally permissible is morally permissible--that is the anti-morality behind this Talmudic reasoning.

[PRCalDude]

Quote

What is legally permissible is morally permissible--that is the anti-morality behind this Talmudic reasoning.

This statement is quite pregnant with meaning. Every time Jesus said, "You have heard it said to you...., but I say to you.....", he was addressing the various errors found in the Talmud.

[Bibles 'n Guns]

Quote

I thank God every day that Barack Obama is our President. He has the vision, values, intelligence, policies, temprament, world view, tolerance, and strength that we need in a leader. The comments on this site are hateful and petty. I am proud as a Jewish American that almost 80% of us voted for President Obama. Sarah Palin, Glen Beck, Rush Limbaugh, etc. want you to believe tht there is some mythical 'real' America out there and that everyone else including our President is some kind of alien. Well, I am here to tell you that we are made stronger by our diversity, and I have great fear that conservatives want to bring our country back to the dark ages of narrowness. I will do everything in my power to help re-elect President Obama and ensure that his legacy lasts even longer than 2017.

I found this gem in the comments of a usnews.com article and figured I'd post it here to let y'all admire it's sheer brazenness(chutzpah?). It might be a troll, but even if so it's still a masterful summary of the Jewish/Leftist take on American politics.

[PLEASUREMAN]

PRCalDude, 22 January 2010 - 09:44 PM:

Quote

What is legally permissible is morally permissible--that is the anti-morality behind this Talmudic reasoning.

This statement is quite pregnant with meaning. Every time Jesus said, "You have heard it said to you...., but I say to you.....", he was addressing the various errors found in the Talmud.

And yet one never hears this response to what might be termed "first amendment in absentia" demands by groups (including Jews) that opposing views be silenced "because you can". Upholding the spirit of free speech by allowing a wide-ranging and nonpunitive debate of ideas is supposed to be an Enlightment value, one taking us out of the dark ages of trials for heresy or forced tribute to the monarch. The ADL is the worst violator of this principle and would welcome actual heretical trials for violations of ADL-defined polical correctness. It is also mainly a left-liberal tactic, ironically most firmly rooted in academia where it can do the most damage to the pursuit of truth.

[PRCalDude]

PLEASUREMAN, 23 January 2010 - 01:11 PM:

PRCalDude, 22 January 2010 - 09:44 PM:

Quote

What is legally permissible is morally permissible--that is the anti-morality behind this Talmudic reasoning.

This statement is quite pregnant with meaning. Every time Jesus said, "You have heard it said to you...., but I say to you.....", he was addressing the various errors found in the Talmud.

And yet one never hears this response to what might be termed "first amendment in absentia" demands by groups (including Jews) that opposing views be silenced "because you can". Upholding the spirit of free speech by allowing a wide-ranging and nonpunitive debate of ideas is supposed to be an Enlightment value, one taking us out of the dark ages of trials for heresy or forced tribute to the monarch. The ADL is the worst violator of this principle and would welcome actual heretical trials for violations of ADL-defined polical correctness. It is also mainly a left-liberal tactic, ironically most firmly rooted in academia where it can do the most damage to the pursuit of truth.

Well, this is another tactic that will surely come back to bite them in the ass.

There are now roughly the same number of Muslims as Jews in this country. By limiting free speech for others, they will limit it for themselves when Qur'anically mandated antisemitism anti-Jewish violence starts becoming more common in this country. The Seattle Jewish center shooting and several other cases of jihad have targeted specifically Jews and the Jews will have no basis by which to oppose them publicly because of their attacks on the 1st amendment. It is already "Islamophobic" to point out that jihad against non-Muslims is advocated by Islam as it is understood by all of the 4 Schools of Sunni jurisprudence just as it is "antisemitic" to point out obvious things like, say, the Jews supported Roman Polanski or Israel-obsessed Jewish neoconservatives are in control of much of our foreign policy.

Once telling the truth has moved out of the bounds of legal discourse, there is no way to bring "awareness" (to use a SWPL term) to pet causes like Muslim antisemitism.

But the first rule of warfare is "Let you and him fight," so perhaps we should let these attacks on the 1st amendment run their course.

[pimpcane]

PLEASUREMAN, 22 January 2010 - 04:30 AM:

Raymond is one of the leading lights of the open source world for reasons too obscure for me to remember...

Give the man some credit. He's the author of the timeless dot-com classic Surprised By Wealth, wherein our hero looks at the value of his VA Linux stock, and decides that he's the next Andrew Carnegie (only smarter). He then proceeds to tell us how he'll deal with all the neurotypicals who come crawling to him begging for handouts. Good times.

[Graybeard]

It is annoying when nerds like Eric Raymond pontificate on things they haven't actually read, studied, or directly experienced.

Though when it comes to MacDonald's work, it's usually those who are criticizing or attacking MacDonald and his thesis in "debates" online that turn out to have never actually read his books. Usually it's a Jewish guy who'll admit that he's never read any of MacDonald's work and then proceed to set up the strawman of "MACDONALD IS SAYING THAT JEWS ARE GENETICALLY PROGRAMMED TO EXTERMINATE WHITES!"

[PLEASUREMAN]

Chapter 4 - Jewish Involvement in the Psychoanalytic Movement

That psychoanalysis is steeped in Jewish culture and bears the hallmarks of other Jewish-dominated social science and political movements should by now be relatively uncontroversial. It is authoritarian, dogmatic, and sharply critical of traditional Western values (hence "culture of critique"). But what is perhaps most remarkable about psychoanalysis is its longevity as a respectable branch of psychology and its influence upon Western culture, despite its lack of scientific method and its long record of therapeutic failure. One might even say that psychoanalysis attempts to find disease where there is none, and while it would be simple enough if these attempts were guided by the pecuniary concerns of psychoanalysts, it would be more accurate to say that the real cause lies in its very dark and lurid view of human nature.

Today psychoanalysis is in a state of decline far from its peak, when Alfred Hitchcock had characters reciting chapter and verse in his appallingly bad (and ironically titled) Spellbound. However, for many years it did influence Western attitudes, especially among intellectuals, notably through its criticism of sexual restraint as a form of repression that leads to mental illness. Also worth noting is the role psychoanalytic theory played in delaying the recognition of pedophilia in bourgeois society, with its claim that infantile and childhood sexual fantasies are completely normal (in fact the history of psychoanalysis is pregnant with ironies of this kind).

Psychoanalysis has been attacked as a "Jewish science" since its inception. Most of its important figures have been Jews, including of course its founder, so it is not surprising that it bears similarities to other Jewish-dominated intellectual movements. The heavy influence of Jewish culture on psychoanalytic ideas has tended to attract philo-semitic gentiles, so that even as the number of gentile practitioners increased the movement remained steadfastly Jewish in nature. MacDonald cites a 1971 study which showed that 62.1 percent of American psychoanalysts had a "Jewish cultural affinity".

In interwar Germany, psychoanalysis was regarded as another in a line of Jewish-dominated radical movements intended to subvert German culture (Freud himself seemed to acknowledge that there was some truth to this), and ultimately Freud was forced to leave Austria.

Freud's own Jewish identity was pronounced, moreso in his private writings. MacDonald writes:

MacDonald:

In a 1931 letter he described himself as "a fanatical Jew," and on another occasion he wrote that he found "the attraction of Judaism and of Jews so irresistible, many dark emotional powers, all the mightier the less they let themselves be grasped in words, as well as the clear consciousness of inner identity, the secrecy of the same mental construction". On another occasion he wrote of "strange secret longings" related to his Jewish identity.

Freud's fascination with his Jewish ancestry is evidenced in his hero-worship of Moses--his book Moses and Monotheism purported to apply psychoanalytic thinking to historical events, but was mainly just an excuse to indulge his fascination with Moses. This book is possibly revealing of Freud's own fantasies in its claim that Moses led his followers to freedom and was then killed by them, leading to a guilt-formed prophecy of the return of Moses as the Messiah. (Freud believed this guilt was somehow a factor in Jewish culture.) One can almost detect the influence of this fantasy in Freud's behavior toward those who dared to replace him (or more often merely disagree with him) as the leader of psychoanalysis.

Freud believed Jews to be a superior race, noting their achievements in a variety of intellectual fields and claiming a Jewish superiority in spiritual and family life. MacDonald quotes Freud on one of his "disciples": "The racial mixture in our band is very interesting to me. He [Jones] is a Celt and hence not quite accessible to us, the Teuton [C. G. Jung] and the Mediterranean man [himself as a Jew]".

Contrary to the popular belief that racialism was the province of Aryan or Nordic racists, Jews of the period, including Freud, frequently spoke in such terms. Freud harbored racial suspicions about Jung before their break, centering on his Christian and "Teuton" background. He frequently characterized other Jews as having a racial kinship which furthered their comprehension of psychoanalysis. Because psychoanalysis was essentially an authoritarian ideology with Freud as its leader, these feelings often determined the status of those within the psychoanalytic intellectual hierarchy. MacDonald quotes a piquant assessment of this tendency in action:

MacDonald:

During the 1920s Jones was viewed as a gentile outsider even by the other members of the secret Committee of Freud's loyalists and even though he had married a Jewish woman. "In the eyes of all of [the Jewish members of the committee], Jones was a Gentile... [T]he others always seized every opportunity to make him aware that he could never belong. His fantasy of penetrating the inner circle by creating the Committee was an illusion, because he would forever be an unattractive little man with his ferret face pressed imploringly against the glass" (Grosskirth, 1991).

Nonetheless, Freud felt it expedient to promote some gentiles into highly visible positions, most notably Carl Jung. Freud explicitly framed Jung's advancement as essential to the acceptance by gentiles of pschoanalytic theory. "Jews must be content with the modest role of preparing the ground. It is absolutely essential that I should form ties in the world of science." On another occasion, "Our Aryan comrades are really completely indispensable to us, otherwise psychoanalysis would succumb to anti-Semitism."

As seen in previous chapters, Jewish crypsis proceeded from an acute perception of anti-Semitism, but with the ensuing risk that such disguises could lead to a reactionary purge in which affiliation was closely scrutinized (as with the McCarthyist purge of suspected communists). While crypsis has not been especially successful in the long run, it may provide a crucial delay in anti-Semitic response to Jewish-dominated movements, with the goal of eventually recruiting high status gentile intellectuals to the cause.

Freud's private attitudes to gentile society were marked by negative stereotyping, which MacDonald observes is one of the consequences of strong group identity:

MacDonald:

Freud's powerful sense of Jewish group identity resulted in negative stereotypical thinking regarding the gentile outgroup. Gentile society, and particularly the most salient institutions of gentile culture, were viewed stereotypically as evil. These institutions were not only viewed negatively, but the accentuation effect came into play and resulted in a general attribution of homogeneity to the outgroup, so that these institutions are seen as much less divided than they actually were.

True anti-Semitism also evinces this exaggeration, with Jews portrayed as a conspiring and scheming race. MacDonald frequently notes that this is plainly not the case--Jewish thinking has often been divided even when it is aimed at the same basic goals, such as tempering anti-Semitism. This tendency to "homogenize the outgroup" is not unique to Jews and is seen in other groups with pronounced social identities.

MacDonald notes that Freud's animosity toward Christianity and the Catholic Church in particular may have derived from a childhood incident in which his father behaved passively to anti-Semitic behavior. MacDonald does not recount the incident, which was related in The Interpretation of Dreams:

Freud:

"When I was a young man," he said, "I went for a walk one Saturday in the streets of your birthplace; I was well dressed, and had a new fur cap on my head. A Christian came up to me and with a single blow knocked off my cap into the mud and shouted: 'Jew! get off the pavement!'" "And what did you do?" I asked. "I went into the roadway and picked up my cap," was his quiet reply. This struck me as unheroic on the part of the big, strong man who was holding the little boy by the hand.

Freud connects this incident with his hero-worship of Hannibal, and less explicitly it can be seen to have motivated his desire to "take vengeance on the Romans", i.e. the Catholic Church. As is typical with Jews who express great anxiety about anti-Semitism, Freud believed that Jews were essentially blameless and that anti-Semitism was a pathological reaction to Jewish superiority. His childhood memory serves a twofold purpose.

As a science there is not much to say about psychoanalysis. Much of Freud's own published work was extremely thin on scientific argument and often strayed to uninteresting yet fanciful speculation. Civilization and Its Discontents, Moses and Monotheism, and The Future of an Illusion are among the most egregious examples. His case studies are filled with circular argument in which no possible response of the patient is capable of refuting theories literally formulated from dreams. And his papers on specific aspects of therapy and the human mind frequently evoke the overcaffeinated discussions of college students in their exuberant yet specious arguments.

Today psychology has completely shed its embarrassing connection to Freud, as MacDonald recounts:

MacDonald:

The theory of the Oedipal complex, childhood sexuality, and the sexual etiology of the neuroses--the three central doctrines that underlie Freud's radical critique of gentile culture--play absolutely no role in contemporary mainstream developmental psychology. From the standpoint of evolutionary theory, the idea that children would have a specifically sexual attraction to their opposite sex parent is highly implausible, since such an incestuous relationship would result in inbreeding depression and be more likely to result in disorders caused by recessive genes. The proposal that boys desire to kill their fathers conflicts with the general importance of paternal provisioning of resources in understanding the evolution of the family: Boys who had succeeded in killing their fathers and having sex with their mothers would not only be left with genetically inferior offspring, but also be deprived of paternal support and protection. Modern developmental studies indicate that many fathers and sons have very close, reciprocated affectional relationships beginning in infancy, and the normative pattern is for mothers and sons to have very intimate and affectionate, but decidedly nonsexual, relationships.

For decades Freud's outlandish theories were taken seriously by educated cosmopolitans. Yet there was never a serious attempt to pin down these ludicrous ideas; MacDonald observes, "Fundamentally, psychoanalysis has not inspired any significant research on the basis of these three basic Freudian constructs." Not even Freud's statements about his patients can be (or should have been) taken at face value, and there is reason to conclude that he falsified and exaggerated parts of their cases to strengthen the claims of psychoanalytic theory. Freud's pseudo-scientific output weighs against rather than in favor of the notion that Freud himself was a mentally stable individual with a happy family life. More to this point, Freud took the view that romantic love was a product of gentile culture, a veneer for amoral sexual instinct, a view which would play into his use of psychoanalysis as a social critique.

Taken together, the beliefs and practices that constitute Freudian psychoanalysis bear a close family resemblance to the cult of Scientology, with the slightest added veneer of intellectual argument and an equally slight restraint on fanciful theories regarding alien life. Post-Freud, matters are little improved, and psychoanalysis remains distant from mainstream science. It will presumably remain a small but busy pseudo-science franchise along with the other pathological enclaves of academia, at least until Western nations (and particularly America) stop wasting mountains of cash on mockingly useless liberal arts educations. (I must confess, every time I meet someone with a degree in English or, worse, Political Science, I come away depressed.)

Psychoanalysis has much in common with Leftist political movements as well, observed in the prevalence of schisms and the practice of "expelling" members who violate orthodoxy. Once again there is the appearance that Jewish-dominated movements are marked by very high levels of hostility against perceived enemies, including internal enemies, and, of course, character assassination.

MacDonald:

In the history of psychoanalysis, character assassination typically involves analyzing scientific disagreement as an indication of neurosis. Freud himself "never tired of repeating the now notorious contention that the opposition to psychoanalysis stemmed from 'resistances'" arising from emotional sources (Esterson 1992).

MacDonald notes the similarity to committing Soviet dissenters to mental hospitals, and cites an example which sets the standard for comical submissiveness:

MacDonald:

Perhaps the most astonishing case is Otto Rank's letter of 1924 in which he attributes his heretical actions to his own neurotic unconscious conflicts, promises to see things "more objectively after the removal of my affective resistance," and notes that Freud "found my explanations satisfactory and has forgiven me personally".

Freud appears to have attracted and maintained particularly submissive personalities. He was delighted by Ernest Jones' suggestion of a secret council to police the psychoanalytic ranks. Altogether the men who comprised the psychoanalytic movement were usually weak-egoed betas whose place within this often tragically stupid pseudo-science was all-important to them. As such, they defended its founder with fanatical unreason. MacDonald relates that when Sandar Ferenczi disputed what amount to Freud's denials of childhood sexual abuse, the ever groveling and scraping Jones called him a "homicidal maniac".

MacDonald attributes much of the health of Western society to its foundation on monogamy, noting that monogamy allowed for more egalitarian mating, higher status for women, and less pressure on resources because population tended to grow in a stable and sustainable manner, as compared to polygynous societies. He posits further that this arrangement provided a necessary condition for industrialization. Psychoanalysis, MacDonald asserts, undermined these critical aspects of Western culture:

MacDonald:

The psychoanalytic emphasis on legitimizing sexuality and premarital sex is therefore fundamentally a program that promotes low-investment parenting styles. Low-investment parenting is associated with precocious sexuality, early reproduction, lack of impulse control, and unstable pair bonds. Ecologically, high-investment parenting is associated with the need to produce competitive offspring, and we have seen that one aspect of Judaism as a group evolutionary strategy has been a strong emphasis on high-investment parenting. Applied to gentile culture, the subversive program of psychoanalysis would have the expected effect of resulting in less competitive children; in the long term, gentile culture would be increasingly characterized by low-investment parenting, and, as indicated below, there is evidence that the sexual revolution inaugurated, or at least greatly facilitiated, by psychoanalysis has indeed had this effect.

One flaw in this part of MacDonald's argument is that Jews themselves have been psychoanalysis' most avid clients (as he himself notes), therefore Jews more than anyone should have been harmed by the tendency of psychoanalysis to disrupt monogamous practices and lead to low-investment parenting. If this has in fact been the case, MacDonald does not show evidence for it. Instead he argues that Jews place lower priority on conjugal affection, and therefore can maintain monogamous bonds and high levels of parental investment despite psychoanalysis' subversion of conventional sexual morality. This theory, if true, remains to be proven. More convincingly, MacDonald points to higher Jewish IQ as a trait which may insulate Jews from the negative effects of sexual liberation.

There are also problems in connecting psychoanalysis to the later sexual revolution, which has more evident instigators such as rising materialism, urbanization, and the steadily increasing use of sexual cues in advertising. Furthermore, periods of relaxed sexual attitudes have been documented in earlier eras, which cannot be explained by the influence of psychoanalysis. Most importantly, MacDonald does not show that ordinary people ever truly accepted psychoanalysis' tenets, despite its popularity with a certain intellectual set.

Psychoanalysis did, in establishing the pretense for an examination of "repressed" impulses, provide a basis for innumerable radical critiques of Western society. It played a potentially important backup role to Leftist movements because it could appeal to those who rejected Marxist thinking and socialist politics. It may have also had an indirect effect by influencing Jewish thought and thereby influencing Western societies by second hand.

In conclusion, MacDonald depicts psychoanalysis as a Jewish science, providing evidence that it was a nearly homogenous product of Jewish identity and that it reflected Jewish concerns and attitudes regarding gentile society. Like other Jewish intellectual movements covered, psychoanalysis delivered a harsh critique of Western society, and may have played a role in then-evolving attitudes toward sexual restraint. It also influenced and encouraged other critical intellectual movements. There is a strong case to be made that it held back the field of psychology for decades, but only a rather weak case that it played a critical role in changing Western attitudes towards sexuality and marriage.

[miles]

psychoanalysis delivered a harsh critique of Western society, and may have played a role in then-evolving attitudes toward sexual restraint.


Ive said something elsewhere a few times that applies: If you control the criticism, you'll eventually have a huge influence on the art produced. Lefty movie critics endlessly praising movies with leftist-themes, and endlessly criticising movies with conservative themes, end up having an effect of getting sensitive artistic types to want to make more liberal-leaning movies to recieve praise and not insults. If modern "art" didn't have a amen corner in the pages of the New Yorker and the NYT, perhaps this populace wouldn't have been so abused with its presence. Any endless critique that is directed toward Western Civilization from a environmental, racial, sexual, and military (remember the cold war nuclear freeze movement?) standpoint is going to make people question themselves, espeically if that critique is "wordy" and has trappings of scholarly writing that sends the average reader looking for a thesaurus and thus doubting himself, despite his strong personal convictions that he is right.

Pauline Kael telling you that you are stupid for not liking "The Last Tango in Paris", but enjoying "The French Connection" might make you give mouth-honor to Brando's (f)artsy indulgence just to seem sophisticated, and thus influence those around you that one more person agrees with her. Ayn Rand (whom I didn't really like) kind of parodied this sort of thing in Atlas Shrugged at a party where wordy critics made no sense at all, and easily had their ideas debunked, yet some characters strove to appreciate (and apprehend) art they really didn't like because of the respect for critical opinon. She did it in the Fountainhead as well.

Getting to critique an entire civilization, always complaining that its not good if it remains pat and only praising it when it moves leftward, is something the establishment social critics have been doing for a long time. Lots of those critics have one unmentionable thing in common. I realize that noticing this makes me "an extremist" and a person non grata.

[PLEASUREMAN]

pimpcane, 23 January 2010 - 04:18 PM:

PLEASUREMAN, 22 January 2010 - 04:30 AM:

Raymond is one of the leading lights of the open source world for reasons too obscure for me to remember...

Give the man some credit. He's the author of the timeless dot-com classic Surprised By Wealth, wherein our hero looks at the value of his VA Linux stock, and decides that he's the next Andrew Carnegie (only smarter). He then proceeds to tell us how he'll deal with all the neurotypicals who come crawling to him begging for handouts. Good times.

I particularly like the part where he talks about setting an appearance fee so that he won't waste his time talking to people who aren't powerful--"where the hacker community would get less leverage from my presence".

lol

[PLEASUREMAN]

Chapter 5 - The Frankfurt School of Social Research and the Pathologization of Gentile Group Allegiances

The Frankfurt School represented yet another branch of social science dominated by Jews whose thinking seems entirely a product of their Jewish identity. Perhaps best remembered today for Adorno et al's The Authoritarian Personality, the Frankfurt School was an outrageously anti-empirical attempt to use sociology to further perceived Jewish interests in reaction to the Holocaust. As with Boasian anthropology and Freudian psychoanalysis, the Frankfurt School worked as an authoritarian ideology which had no legitimate scientific standards. It therefore operated as an intellectual cult (like so many leftist movements dominated by Jews).

Ironically then, the Frankfurt School moved toward a theory that authoritarianism itself was the problem which most plagued Jews in Germany and Russia, and their task was to solve the problem of authoritarianism once and for all. From this starting point they developed a theory of authoritarianism as a product of family relations, which through repression established the premise of a society founded on domination and submission.

It was the view of Adorno and Max Horkheimer that authoritarianism naturally led to anti-Semitism as a form of projection--Jews were seen as always striving for power because the authoritarian himself had strong feelings of powerlessness stemming from his own childhood. This of course was yet another theory that conveniently excused Jews from playing any role themselves in the development of anti-Semitism, a view that can only be taken seriously by those whose thinking is completely dominated by moralistic arguments. Even setting aside the rivalries that would naturally ensue from competition for resources, cultural propagation is a strong subconscious and often conscious motivation behind human behavior in advanced societies (culture having by this point become a proxy for race and geography).

Their critique of family relations carries over into a critique of Christianity, also seen as bearing the hallmarks of subjugation and a rejection of nature. Christian self-denial and sexual restraint are identified as symptoms of the disease, as in psychoanalysis. Adorno in fact resorts to Freudian castration theory to explain the development of a repressed homosexual nature that serves as the motivation for authoritarian behavior.

In The Authoritarian Personality the authors also assert that high levels of social conformity are pathological, in effect attacking gentile cohesion as a sign of mental disorder brought about by a combination of capitalism and industrialism (while of course having nothing to say about Jewish cohesion). Naturally, this conformity produces unhappiness among its gentile victims, whose hostility is channeled against Jews because they represent an ideal: "Happiness without power, wages without work, a home without frontiers, religion without myth. These characteristics are hated by the rulers because the ruled secretly long to possess them." Here Jewish narcissism reaches the point of farcical delusion, but perhaps it is unfair to expect Jewish intellectuals to accurately assess their own culture and ethnicity, particularly with respect to anti-Semitic actions. Nonetheless the blamelessness assigned to Jews is remarkable.

MacDonald:

Similarly, another way of conceptualizing the Jewish advocacy of radical political movements consistent with the material in Chapter 3 is that these movements may be understood as simultaneously undermining gentile intrasocietal group affiliations, such as Christianity and nationalism, at the same time allowing for the continuation of Jewish identification. For example, Jewish Communists consistently opposed Polish nationalist aspirations, and after they cmae to power in the post-World War II era they liquidated Polish nationalists and undermined the role of the Catholic Church while simultaneously establishing secular Jewish economic and social structures.

A continuation of this can be seen today; the prevalence of Jewish references in popular culture despite the relative paucity of Christian references, or the explicit secularization of Christmas while promoting (on equal footing no less) Hanukkah on vague equality grounds both continue the tradition of Jewish double standard. The Jewish goal is to make the majority culture more comfortable for Jews while creating conflict for others.

To combat the evils of conformity and universality, the Frankfurt School advocated radical individualism, with of course the aim to fragment and disunite gentile society. In an individualist society, people would not feel a strong nationalistic bond or kinship with others and would therefore be less prone to adopt anti-Semitic views, particularly in response to Jewish success. This is diametrically opposed to the collectivist agenda of communism as well. MacDonald notes that in such a society, Jews who maintained their traditionally collectivist culture would likely retain negative views about gentiles as a result.

The Authoritarian Personality itself seems a masterpiece of projection, accusing anti-Semites of such "authoritarian" attitudes as resistance to intermarriage and strong group affiliations, attitudes that are obviously prevalent among Jews. More astonishingly, part II of The Authoritarian Personality presents an inverted portrait of psychological and family health, describing the positive attitudes of interview subjects towards parents, sex, and discipline as pathological and the result of "victimization". The only real criteria for negative assessment of subject appears to be their high scores on a scale of ethnocentrism. Meanwhile it depicts a low scoring girl who is abandoned by her father as exhibiting a healthy attachment to him while protesting his departure. This perversion reaches its extremity with examples of paternal affection, such as providing for their children, interpreted as signs of "ego dependence" and "opportunism". Most indications of high investment parenting are derided in this way, all being found in subjects who score highly on ethnocentrism.

Low scorers, meanwhile, appear marked by greater feelings of inadequacy, self-condemnation, and emotional detachment, but this is interpreted as showing frankness and realism. Even social success among high scorers is looked down on and termed "gang-sociability", whereas the isolated and less popular low scorers are again praised for their apparent difficulties in this area. In general, high scorers give ample evidence of being well-adjusted and happy, while low scorers appear to be anxious and dependent. Nevertheless, the book portrays them as exactly opposite.

One is left mystified at how the work of the Frankfurt School was ever influential. It decried meaningful standards of evidence, was overtly hypocritical in its criticism of gentile society, engaged in cultish authoritarianism within its own ranks, and its defining work of research (if such thin social science can be called that) is comical in its far-fetched and strained depictions of its subjects. Moreover the movement borrowed heavily from Freudian psychoanalysis, which while not yet discredited at that time was an equally impoverished pseudo-science.

But worse than all this (and as bad as it is), may be the fact that the Frankfurt School successfully stigmatized gentile ethnocentrism and cohesion as pathological and totalitarian, and gave birth to a dangerous form of individualism that, over the next few decades, poisoned Western intellectual and social life.

[PLEASUREMAN]

This excerpt from an interview with David Simon, creator of The Wire, gives an inside view of a "conservative" Jewish household:

Quote

Simon attended Hebrew school and had a bar mitzvah, but it wasn't so much his religious upbringing as what he calls "the tribal aspects of Judaism" that impacted him. By that he means his faith is "very inclusive and liberal. My family was very liberal. The arguments around the dinner table weren't liberal vs. moderate, but who would make a better president, Robert Kennedy or Eugene McCarthy. My father was all the way to the right — he supported Hubert Humphrey."

http://www.jweekly.c...s-of-baltimore/

About the portrayal of one particular Jewish character on the show, there is this:

Quote

Ironically, Simon has been accused of anti-Semitism. There are two regular characters with Jewish names: Rhonda Pearlman, a conscientious assistant state's attorney, is one of a handful of generally positive characters in the show. The other, Maurice Levy, is a venal, amoral drug lawyer.

"Why did we make this guy Jewish? Because when I was covering the drug trade for 13 years for the Sun, most of the major drug lawyers were Jewish. Some of them are now disbarred and others are not but came pretty close. Anyone who is anyone in law enforcement in Baltimore knows the three or four guys Maury Levy is patterned on.

"If I have people from every other tribe in Baltimore portrayed negatively, everyone is maligned in some way, how can I not do that to the Jewish guy? How can I pull that punch? At that point I'm just being hypercritical. Here are good people from my own tribe who say how can you do that, and my answer is how can I not?"

Ironically, Simon is pessimistic about us arriving at solutions to urban problems because the political system "is paralyzed by ideology and partisan rancor." Of course his show consistently portrayed Republicans (in absentia) as insensitive and racist, and by focusing on black neighborhoods he punted on the question of black behavior towards other races (one season featured white dock workers but they did not interact with blacks in any meaningful way).

I'm just baffled as to where the "partisan rancor" comes from, though.

[antistoic]

PLEASUREMAN, 29 January 2010 - 02:09 AM:

One is left mystified at how the work of the Frankfurt School was ever influential. It decried meaningful standards of evidence, was overtly hypocritical in its criticism of gentile society, engaged in cultish authoritarianism within its own ranks, and its defining work of research (if such thin social science can be called that) is comical in its far-fetched and strained depictions of its subjects. Moreover the movement borrowed heavily from Freudian psychoanalysis, which while not yet discredited at that time was an equally impoverished pseudo-science.

But worse than all this (and as bad as it is), may be the fact that the Frankfurt School successfully stigmatized gentile ethnocentrism and cohesion as pathological and totalitarian, and gave birth to a dangerous form of individualism that, over the next few decades, poisoned Western intellectual and social life.

While The Authoritarian Personality is thinly-disguised Marxo-Freudian propaganda, the Frankfurt School doesn't entirely deserve its portrayal in traditionalist circles as an intellectual factory of cultural poison. Much of their works - Greenberg's essay "Avant-garde and Kitsch", Adorno's Negative Dialectics, Benjamin's "The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction" - wrestled with Western civilization's growing enslavement to mass consumerism and socio-technological apparatuses like our stultifying educational bureaucracy and the dreaded 'military-industrial complex', made infamous by Eisenhower and C. Wright Mills.

Althought the 'Frankfurters' were socialists by and large, they didn't cling to outdated Marxist materialism like many of their leftist confrères. They followed Berdyaev, an anti-modern ex-Marxist (like Alasdair MacIntyre, Jacques Ellul, James Burnham, and a host of others... interesting how often these terms coincide), in treating 'bourgeois' not as a term proper to a specific economic class, but as a temperament peculiar to Western society. This temperament, thus defined, is an insatiable addiction to safety, comfort, familiarity, and utility; and to this desire the bourgeois sacrificed courage, freedom, creativity, and - as Berdyaev insisted - spirituality. Bravery became the selfish domination of nature (that of human beings not excluded); freedom, the casting of ballots; creativity - or more precisely, its fruits - became inseparably yoked to economic value; and the religion of the Cross, of the suffering redeemer of mankind, who admonished his followers to likewise crucify themselves, was reduced to a pathetic teacher of 'family values' (and as some Protestants believe today, a shortcut to worldly prosperity). Berdyaev, in turn, was following Nietzsche, Blake, Kierkegaard and others in their respective critiques of decadent Western society.

Once you get past the daunting Hegelian-speak, you might discover that the Frankfurt School's critique of Western society holds some merit for traditionalists. What was it that Norman Mailer said once? "It may take an alchemy of left and right to confound the corporate center," or something along those lines. Leftists and traditionalists can certainly make common cause in opposing the more predatory and destabilizing aspects of global capitalism and technological society.

This post has been edited by mlad: 30 January 2010 - 11:45 PM

[PLEASUREMAN]

Chapter 6 - The Jewish Criticism of Gentile Culture: A Reprise

MacDonald begins this chapter by summarizing the common attributes of the intellectual movements covered in the previous four chapters:

• "top-down movements" where the ideas of an authoritative (if not authoritarian) leadership and are enforced as Party line
  
• an expressed moral and intellectual superiority and employment of moral indictments
  
• an attempt to ameliorate the perceived antipathy to outgroups (particularly Jews) by diagnosing and treating underlying social problems
  
• the acceptance of highly speculative theory in place of more rigorous scientific approaches, in accordance with "top-down" organization
  
• the retention of strong Jewish character, often to a degree necessitating disguise and recruitment of gentile figureheads
  
• the erosion of non-Jewish group identification through various means, including universalism and radical individualism

MacDonald also gives an example of how Jewish ethnic affinity may influence scientific research.

MacDonald:

Recently Greenwald and Schuh demonstrated a pattern of ethnic discrimination in scientific citations whereby Jewish authors were 40 percent more likely to cite Jewish authors than were non-Jewish authors. Jewish first authors of scientific papers were also approximately three times more likely to have Jewish coauthors than were non-Jewish first authors.

Jews have also been extremely dominant both in the running and writing of leftist political and literary journals, to such a degree that liberal and Jewish thought often seem to be reflections of each other. Jewish consciousness was high among the leading lights of these publications, and a peculiarly Jewish view of Western civilization dominated.

The New York Intellectuals forged the political and the literary into a consistent, over-arching cultural critique. Among them the tendency toward intellectual elitism was especially pronounced to a degree that middle class gentile life ("bourgeois society") was regarded as backwards and pathological, utterly devoid of virtue which belonged solely to the cosmopolitan members of their circle--cosmopolitan yet overwhelmingly and self-consciously Jewish. One might even say that "cosmopolitanism" came to be defined as having a spirit in accordance with intellectual Jewish culture.

Outgroup members are known to exhibit high levels of solidarity, even unconsciously, but Jewish solidarity is often unabashedly specific and exaggerated.

MacDonald:

They are exemplified by the following comments of Clinton administration Secretary of Labor, Robert Reich, on his first face-to-face meeting with Federal Reserve Board Chairman, Alan Greenspan: "We have never met before, but I instantly know him. One look, one phrase, and I know where he grew up, how he grew up, where he got his drive and his sense of humor. He is New York. He is Jewish. He looks like my uncle Louis, his voice is my uncle Sam. I feel we've been together at countless weddings, bar mitzvahs, and funerals. I know his genetic strucutre. I'm certain that within the last five hundred years--perhaps even more recently--we shared the same ancestor."

This recalls Freud's sense of racial affinity and seeming preoccupation with racial identity. Even where the feelings of solidarity are not this pronounced, Jewish identity is a regular variable in the intellectual interactions among Jews. Moreover, Jews tend to idealize other Jews.

This level of cohesion means that, as Jews have attained high positions in academic and political institutions, their gatekeeper role ensures that the gentiles who follow them will tend to exhibit deference toward Jewish ideas, as in any power hierarchy. Jewish cohesion effectively gives them the power to exalt Jewish figures and expel objectionable gentiles.

Intense group cohesion at a high level makes threat of expulsion all the more dire, and in the context of Jewish-dominated movements increases Jewish solidarity and also keeps gentile followers in line. Such expulsions and threats of expulsions have been common among leftist movements, always followed by vilification, which is of course useful in containing heterodoxy among remaining members. Such intellectual activity is a strong indicator of indoctrination.

Leftist dominance of academia has meant that virtually all of America's educated class (not to mention its powerful elite) has been influenced by Jewish intellectualism and cultural proclivities. The culture of critique, (politically) universalist ideology, and multiculturalism are nowhere more entrenched than in the university, while their Jewish content is little recognized.

MacDonald:

At a deeper level, I suppose, a fundamental aspect of Jewish intellectual history has been the realization that there is really no demonstrable difference between truth and consensus. Within traditional Jewish religious discourse, "truth" was the prerogative of a privileged interpretive elite that in traditional societies consisted of the scholarly class within the Jewish community. Within this community, "truth" and "reality" were nothing more (and were undoubtedly perceived as nothing more) than consensus within a sufficiently large portion of the interpretive community.

Jewish secular intellectualism thus closely followed Jewish religious belief. More to the point, MacDonald writes, "Acceptance of the Jewish canon, like membership in the intellectual movements reviewed here, was essentially an act of authoritarian submission." Within this system there is no limit to what adherents can be made to believe; it is the ideal perspective from which to enforce intellectual obedience, because it explicitly denigrates true independence of mind. It is in fact the subversion of Enlightenment values.

MacDonald observes that Western societies are especially susceptible to invasion by cohesive outgroups.

MacDonald:

Individualist societies develop republican political institutions and institutions of scientific inquiry that assume that groups are maximally permeable and highly subject to defection when individual needs are not being met. Individualists have little loyalty to ingroups and tend not to see the world in terms of ingroups and outgroups. There is a strong tendency to see others as individuals and evaluate them as individuals even when the others are acting as part of a collectivist group. [emphasis added]

Apart from describing Western interaction with Jews, this also describes the uniquely Western deference towards victim groups, allowing them to choose to be recognized as group members or as individuals, whichever is to most advantage.

MacDonald addresses the natural question of how the West has come to accept an ideology that is clearly not in its self-interest. One factor he gives is that these ideas have come from prestigious sources, namely intellectual movements dominated by high IQ Jews. As the status of academic Jews grew so did their influence over gentile thought. Jewish crypsis aided this process by disguising the ethnocentric nature of many Jewish ideas.

[PLEASUREMAN]

Chapter 7 - Jewish Involvement in Shaping U.S. Immigration Policy

The transformation of America from a republic founded by Northern Europeans to a managerial state divided into multicultural factions and governed by a political-corporate oligarchy is among the most important events in its history. Central to this transformation was the propagandistic campaign to embed the myth of an ethnic "melting pot" into American consciousness, a campaign so successful that today skepticism is treated as evidence of ethnic hostility and an indicator of low status. The importance of Jewish involvement in determining American immigration policy may be the most relevant point to MacDonald's theory of group evolutionary strategy.

As Macdonald states at the opening of the chapter,

MacDonald:

Immigration policy is the paradigmatic example of conflicts of interest between ethnic groups because immigration policy determines the future demographic composition of the nation. Ethnic groups unable to influence immigration policy in their own interests will eventually be displaced by groups able to accomplish this goal. Immigratoin policy is thus of fundamental interest to an evolutionist.

While immigration policy was the decisive battleground between Jews and gentiles, MacDonald traces the conflict back to the 19th century and familiar concerns over Jewish upward mobility and status. Jewish impermeability, cultural separatism, and economic success were joined by political radicalism as spurs to American anti-Semitism, evidenced by college admission quotas, anti-communist inquisitions, and populist anti-Semitic rhetoric.

While other groups have been involved in demands for relaxation of immigration controls, Jews had a special interest in providing an escape route for Eastern European and Russian Jews facing pogroms. Jews have also favored the concept of a pluralistic identity in keeping with the Jewish desire to remain distinct while at the same time removing the threat of majority oppression so commonly experienced elsewhere.

It is important to recognize, as MacDonald does, this defensive aspect of Jewish behavior. To whatever degree one assigns responsibility for anti-Semitism onto Jews themselves, one cannot understand Jewish behavior unless one understands the perspective of Jews as an outgroup that has encountered implacable hostility at numerous points in its history. Whether Jewish competitiveness, higher intelligence, or chauvinism are given precedence in this development is in some sense beside the point as this history has itself changed Jewish character and resulted in an aggressively pluralistic, heterogenous preference at odds with nationalistic and homogenous societies.

MacDonald notes that pluralism serves an obvious Jewish defensive interest by reducing the degree to which Jews stand out, particularly in a multicultural society (providing camouflage for Jewish exceptionalism). Anti-Semitism tends to result in the greatest conflict where Jews are faced with a homogenous majority.

MacDonald:

Writing in the 1970s, Isaacs describes the pervasive insecurity of American Jews and their hypersensitivity to anything that might be deemed anti-Semitic.... Isaacs, correctly in my view, attributes the intensity of Jewish involvement in politics to this fear of anti-Semitism. Jewish activism on immigration is merely one strand of a multipronged movement directed at preventing the development of a mass movement of anti-Semitism in Western societies.

Moreover Jewish thinkers such as Maurice Samuel regarded America as a deracinated political state, and efforts to preserve a homogenous racial character as deplorable if not evil. Jews have tended to state this view bluntly, in language consistent with the Jewish habit of cloaking ideological wishes in the garment of moral superiority and outrage:

Earl Raab:

The Census Bureau has just reported that about half of the American population will soon be non-white or non-European. And they will all be American citizens. We have tipped beyond the point where a Nazi-Aryan party will be able to prevail in this country.

We [Jews] have been nourishing the American climate of opposition to bigotry for about half a century. That climate has not yet been perfected, bu tthe heterogenous nature of our population tends to make it irreversible--and makes our constitutional constraints against bigotry more practical than ever.

Naturally this language excludes from possibility the idea that a homogenous society could ever be legitimately desirable by reason that homogenity would inform unity and cooperativeness--a seemingly obvious yet politically incorrect observation. In fact, with social science's belatedly reported findings that multi-ethnic societies experience much lower levels of trust and cooperation, the Jewish prescription seems guaranteed to produce an unruly and fractious society.

Long have advocates of multicultural, multi-ethnic immigration asserted that the increase in diversity was good for its own sake, however this appears to be yet another unchallenged assumption that will fare poorly when credibly tested. Nevertheless, Jewish support for liberal immigration policy has been near universal and crosses ideological boundaries (no other ethnic or religious group reports higher levels of support). For example, only a very small number of conservative Jews have joined in opposition to current levels of immigration; the majority have attempted, sometimes heatedly, to alter the general view of conservatives that this new ethnically heterogenous state is a danger to both tradition and liberty. That they have met with little success does not diminish the effort they have put into their rhetorical attacks on "nativists" and "yahoos".

MacDonald divides the Jewish effort to influence immigration policy into three categories:

1) Intellectual-academic efforts. Here the focus was on developing an ideology of the United states as "an ethnically and culturally pluralistic society". Jewish intellectuals created a romantic ideal in which ethnicities and cultures intermingled without notable between-group competition. Movements such as Boasian anthropology contributed to a decline in biological and racialist thinking in academia, which in turn influenced the debate over the desirability of maintaining an ethnic status quo.

Restrictionists foresaw as early as the 1920s immigration debates problems with a continuation of immigration from Mexico (and chiefly immigrants of Indian ancestry), already viewed as excessive. Waves of European immigrants also challenged notions of easy assimilation. Finally, restrictionists recognized that differences in reproductive rates could compound the effects of any level of immigration.

The role of Jewish intellectuals, and their unsurprising caliber of argument, is hinted by the reactions of restrictionists.

MacDonald:

Grant also believed that Jews were engaged in a campaign to discredit racial research. In the introduction to the 1921 edition of The Passing of the Great Race, Grant complained that "it is well-nigh impossible to publish in the American newspapers any reflection upon certain religions or races which are hysterically sensitive even when mentioned by name.

During the 1965 immigration debate things had gone as far backwards as Senator Jacob Javits' announcement that "we know better than to say that one man is better than another because of the color of his skin", an outburst typical of race-creationists.

2) Church-state relationships. MacDonald does not develop this idea, but briefly states that Jews promoted cultural pluralism to reduce the influence of Christianity. He cites the Scopes trial, in which Jews voiced support for separation of church and state, but adds little else here.

3) Organization of African Americans and the intergroup relations movement in the post-World War II era. Here the effect on immigration was an indirect effect of the promotion of a pluralist culture. Jewish participation in the Civil Rights movement and the political organization of blacks is well-known. Perhaps less well known is the role Jews played in funding and staffing black organizations such as the NAACP and the National Urban League. MacDonald documents the numerous Jewish benefactors whose collective effort tends not to receive its due acknowledgement (the Civil Rights movement has long since been refashioned as the Martin Luther King morality crusade).

MacDonald next discusses Jewish anti-restrictionist activity, which as MacDonald describes it tended to be opportunistic, that is Jews made alliances with whatever group showed an interest in higher levels of immigration, including industrial interests seeking cheap labor. Jews involved themselves in the immigration debates at an early stage and supported increased immigration even where Jews themselves were not the principal beneficiaries (in keeping with their pluralistic goals). Jews were aware that other groups lacked their enthusiasm for expansion of immigration, and in some cases did all the heavy lifting while allowing the other groups to take the credit.

The 1924 legislation actually allowed immigration from Southern and Eastern Europe to continue to grow beyond its then-current representation, but at a much slower rate than previous legislation. The 1924 law in effect corrected a large bias in favor of Southern and Eastern Europe, which had no justification other than the desire to de-homogenize America. During the Congressional debates which preceded the 1924 law, Jewish anti-restrictionists consistently raised the issue of supposed "Nordic superiority" (which is not the same as simply a preference to maintain Nordic custom and behavior) and race prejudice, which was seldom appealed to by the restrictionists themselves--again, an argumentative tactic typical of Jews has been the framing of policy issues as questions of moral purity, and the statement or more often misstatement of opposing views as representing entirely invidious viewpoints.

Competition for resources was a concern apart from any idea of racial superiority. For example, restrictionists noted that Japanese immigrants were quite as capable, resourceful, and hardworking, and that their competitiveness combined with their ethnic distinction carried obvious dangers for a democratic republic. Jews themselves boasted of their achievements and goaded "the so-called Nordics" with proofs of Jewish intellectual superiority. But the most common argument was that fairness was best served by maintaining the country's current ethnic composition.

As MacDonald notes, Jewish accusations of Nordic racialism were meretricious; Jews themselves were notably resistant to intermarriage and religious conversion, and as evidenced throughout MacDonald's book have always placed a high value on retaining Jewish identity even when deeply involved in universalist ideologies. It was simply convenient to accuse gentile restrictionists of the same.

In the post-war period, Jews continued to promote an idealized vision of America as a nation open to all races, religions, and nationalities, that is the myth of the American melting pot whereby pronounced differences in beliefs, customs, and inherited traits were without substance. Moreover, Jews argued that even selecting for immigrants who could be viewed as assets to the country was impermissible. MacDonald writes, "The opposition to needed skills as the basis of immigration was consistent with the prolonged Jewish attempt to delay the passage of a literacy test as a criterion for immigration beginning in the late nineteenth century until a literacy test was passed in 1917."

On the restrictionist side, anti-Semitism and anti-Communism played a role in their views on immigration, which naturally increased Jewish anti-restrictionist sentiment. Jews were seen as prominent figures among the Communist movement, as detailed in previous chapters. For their part Jews saw in American anti-Semitism the harbinger of "Hitler-like genocidal attacks against the Jewish people". But legislation unfavorable to the Jewish position on immigration continued to be passed, even over Truman's veto.

The 1965 legislation changed American immigration decisively. MacDonald writes:

MacDonald:

The 1965 law is having the effect that it seems reasonable to suppose had been intended by its Jewish advocates all along: The Census Bureau projects that by the year 2050, European-derived peoples will no longer be a majority of the population of the United States. Moreover, multiculturalism has already become a powerful ideological and political reality. Although the proponents of the 1965 legislation continued to insist that the bill would not affect the ethnic balance of the United States or even impact its culture, it is difficult to believe that at least some proponents were unware of the eventual implications.

Indeed, America today looks very much like the idealized America described by Jewish anti-restrictionists between 1924 and 1965, one in which traditional American culture is consistently denigrated in favor of the shallow novelty of multiculturalism (which is ever-devolving in intelligence and sophistication). Unfortunately, it is also an America that is more fractious, divided, uncivil, and dysfunctional to the point of bankruptcy. That this was a part of the Jewish vision is highly doubtful, but a fair description of America today.

[PLEASUREMAN]

Chapter 8 - Conclusion: Whither Judaism and the West?

An important story of the 20th century is the rise of Jewish influence in America. From the turn of the century, Jews worked to change immigration laws to foster a pluralistic society and to allow a greater level of immigration of Jews from Eastern Europe, where they faced anti-Semitism and pogroms. Jews were an integral part of revolutionary new social sciences that greatly changed public perceptions about community, sexuality, and politics. The new public perceptions also furthered a pluralistic society in which Jews felt safer from ingroup persecution.

Jews also enjoyed remarkable success in the competition for resources with other ethnic groups. While Jews have used their wealth to influence politics, a more significant resource has been the high Jewish IQ, which has resulted in remarkable Jewish dominance over the media and cultural institutions. Jews have won for Israel a special consideration in American foreign policy, and Jewish population is now roughly balanced between America and Israel.

While Jews are overrepresented in many high status and highly remunerative professions, they have not been subject to quotas like those which restricted their admittance into prestigious universities in the early part of the century. In effect they have been allowed to opt out of the affirmative action system that suppresses white male representation in order to inflate the representation of traditionally poorly performing ethnic groups (blacks, Mexicans, Puerto Ricans).

Jews have also employed Jewish organizations to advance Jewish interests, while Jewish dominated organizatons such as the SPLC have been strident in their opposition to organizations created for the benefit of the shrinking European American population (dubious as most of these organizations are, Jewish demonization may be a factor in the lack of healthy institutions of this type).

Jewish control of resources is a classic example of successful evolutionary strategy. Of course such strategies can be successful in the short term but deleterious to the group in the long term, as is implied by much of the history of anti-Semitism and as would be expected with any outgroup that is prolifically successful at the expense of the ingroup.

The pluralistic society that Jews have significantly argued in favor of has led to a sharp decline in assimilationist behavior and an increase in ethnic separatism. As MacDonald notes, ethnic separatism and high impermeability have been important factors in the history of anti-Semitic conflict. This separatism promises a future of greater conflict in our vastly more interconnected world.

MacDonald:

Indeed, my review of the research on contact between more or less impermeable groups in historical societies strongly suggests a general rule that between-group competition and monitoring of ingroup and outgroup success are the norm. These results are highly consistent with psychological research on social identity processes reviewed in SAID. From an evolutionary perspective, these results confirm the expectation that ethnic self-interest is indeed important in human affairs, and obviously ethnicity remains a common source of group identity in the contemporary world. People appear to be aware of group membership and have a general tendency to devalue and compete with outgroups. Individuals are also keenly aware of the relative standing of their own group in terms of resource control and relative reproductive success. They are also willing to take extraordinary steps to achieve and retain economic and political power in defense of these group imperatives.

The prevailing "diversity is our strength" orthodoxy obscures the issue of ethnic conflict despite its omnipresence in current American politics. Tensions among ethnic groups are as pronounced as ever and necessitate an elaborate and costly monitoring system in order to comply with the goals of what is effectively a racial spoils system.

In looking at how a society made up of impermeable ethnic groups might maintain standards of civility and productive interaction, the only plausible solution is a system of proportionate equality, which with the adoption of methods like the four-fifths rule (despite its mathematical and sociological absurdity) is the de facto goal of our current civil rights system. But as a factual matter, cultural, genetic, and class differences make such a goal unattainable. The mere existence of the goal increases mutural suspicion due to the nature of group sensitivities to the impartiality of the monitoring and beliefs about pre-existing biases. Yet proportionate equality remains the primary means by which ethnic conflicts are expected to be resolved.

In the case of Jews, proportionate equality would require extensive discrimination and quotas to reduce Jewish overrepresentation--even, in the most complete implementation, confiscatory levels of taxation to reduce the advantages of Jewish wealth. Of course, Jews have denounced such measures in the past, as with university quotas on Jewish admittance. It is unlikely that an impermeable ethnic group with a history of aggressive competition for resources would ever seriously consider measures that reduce its overall power and wealth.

Western societies based on individualism and democracy are ill-suited to the extreme form of ethnic diversity seen in America and advancing rapidly in Europe. Individualism is only workable when the communal bond is strong enough to inhibit the most aggressive forms of competition and sustain ingroup altruism. In a pluralistic environment universal values devolve into legalistic systems that encourage adversarial relationships between groups. Ultimately group strategies undermine the institutions and values essential to this form of society.

An individualistic society may therefore degenerate into "collectivist, authoritarian, and racialist enclaves". But such a change among European-derived societies is inimical to their individualistic and altruistic values, meaning that such a development is essentially self-extinguishing--it is no more tied to the Western tradition but has become something lower.

Western societies have aspired to what MacDonald calls a "hierarchic harmony", that is to say a society that is meritocratic but culturally and ethnically cohesive so that the effects of ingroup altruism function at an optimal level.

MacDonald:

A very central feature of this prototypical Western hierarchical harmony has been the social imposition of monogamy as a form of reproductive leveling that dampens the association between wealth and reproductive success. From an evolutionary perspective, Western societies achieve their cohesion because hierarchical social relationships are significantly divorced from reproductive consequences.

This world is attacked from three directions: an atomized cognitive elite which feels little responsibility to "lower-status individuals", chronic competition among and within groups which damages social cohesion, and an underclass of the lowest status and most disruptive groups that destroys altruistic systems and imposes large costs on society.

Such a world is inherently unstable, according to MacDonald, as evidenced by the West's dynamic history. Its relative success in recent centuries may well be a temporary development doomed to failure once technology reaches a stage where it becomes impossible to contain these various assaults (i.e. resource hoarding by the cognitive elite, competition marked by low levels of trust, and immigrant invasions and offshoring of labor).

MacDonald also notes that social changes that were a part of the counterculture revolution of the 1960s have had an adverse impact on gentiles, who have relied on a particular form of sexual morality and romantic ideal in order to safeguard high-investment parenting, whereas Jews have tended to maintain their high-investment parenting in the absence of these reinforcements (most likely as a result of cultural practices reinforced by high intelligence). Western societies have generally lacked skepticism here, and have taken the new cultural mores to be reasonable despite their impact on the lower IQ segments of society (seen perhaps most notoriously in the push for drug legalization, which disproportionately afflicts those with low impulse control and fewer social supports).

MacDonald finds that many aspects of Western culture derive from its uniquely individualistic outlook, and one must consider the possibility that a highly interconnected world may be incompatible with these values. This prospect cannot be dismissed just because it is too alarming or depressing to take into account.

In closing, MacDonald expects that European-derived peoples will have no choice but to adopt the collectivist strategies of Judaism and become more ethnically conscious; the final outcome of this is of course impossible to predict. Presently we see in Europe the growing influence of anti-immigration parties. In America, where immigration has progressed to a level where it is already too late to take serious remedial action, we have begun seeing the results of extreme ethnic diversity and separatism on Western society.

In a subsequent post I will add my own final thoughts on MacDonald's book.

[PLEASUREMAN]

I want to draw closer attention to two points from the last post. First:

Quote

In a pluralistic environment universal values devolve into legalistic systems that encourage adversarial relationships between groups. Ultimately group strategies undermine the institutions and values essential to this form of society.

One of the first big changes that Jewish influence brought about in America was the rise of trade unionism, which is inherently adversarial. Of course one of the reasons trade unionism found a hospitable environment was exploitation of labor by business, particularly in hard economic times. This suggests a link between the devolution of values into legalistic systems and adversarial behavior; one might also take note that Jewish culture is steeped in Talmudic legalism.

Even more provocatively, I would like to suggest that such legalism is the product of high IQ influencing moral thought, in conjunction perhaps with a high level of competiveness. This is to say that as society developed more meritocratic mechanisms, adversarial behavior was bound to escalate with the aid of increasingly legalistic conflict management.

Second, I want to note the importance of technology as a factor in exposing the West's vulnerability to increased ethnic conflict in opposition to its assimilationist, universalist value system. It is not simply that technology increases complexity and scale of society (a concept I've addressed elsewhere), but that it tends to quickly expose weaknesses in altruistic behaviors. (By technology I mean the whole set of advances in communications, mechanization, and transport which have created a more interconnected world.)

Consider the difference between a small hamlet where the local church provides food for the indigent, and the government office that provides welfare checks to the poor. In the former case the altruism is protected by the lack of anonymity and the existence of strong community relations among the residents. Threats to the community are readily identified and isolated or driven out. In the latter case, potential free riders quickly become aware of the benefits available to them and the volume of transactions severely limits the ability of government to effectively distribute benefits only to those in need of them. Such is the plight of Western altruism.

[PLEASUREMAN]

A response to The Culture of Critique

I was going to canvass some of the responses to MacDonald's book, but why not just quote from the SLPC's considered, measured review:

SPLC:

Kevin MacDonald is the neo-Nazi movement's favorite academic. A psychology professor at California State University, Long Beach, MacDonald, who also is a board member of the white supremacist Charles Martel Society, published a trilogy that supposedly "proves" that Jews are genetically driven to destroy Western societies. MacDonald also argues that anti-Semitism, far from being an irrational hatred for Jews, is a logical reaction to Jewish success in societies controlled by other ethnic or racial groups. After the publication of a 2007 Intelligence Report exposé detailing MacDonald's anti-Semitism, his teaching duties were reduced and many of his colleagues publicly condemned his racist research.

This is, as you have seen in my summary of MacDonald's book, wholly malicious, tendentious, and dishonest. But we expect nothing less from the SPLC, a Jewish dominated organization that carefully manages its Wikipedia page to remove any hint of criticism. The SPLC is fixated on white supremacist groups but has of late broadened its scope to include any right-wing rhetoric that is more arousing than David Brooks after a bong hit. It doesn't have any serious charter to pursue hatred as such, or else it would have to monitor itself for its flamboyant belligerance and crude bullying and coercion.

It may as well be said that this type of aggressive, moralistic posturing is a signature of Jewish rhetoric. It has such a long tradition that it must be recognized by everyone today as the sort of thing Jews often do--it is a hallmark, for example, of arguments in favor of Israel's right to do everything, and was used extensively by neocons to justify the Iraq War.

This manner of argument is in keeping with Judaism's aggressive competitive tendencies, high Jewish IQ, and legalistic morality. I add the last item because legalistic moral systems must of necessity be rigid. They are based on the idea that goodness is not arrived at by communal judgement (favored in altruistic societies), but by command of authority--and here the difference with Christianity could not be more striking. As I have noted in another context, much of the behavior we see today is premised on the notion that what is legally permissable is morally permissable--a statement very pregnant with meaning, and very much an inheritance from Jewish thinking, whether we realize it or not.

And what about The Culture of Critique? MacDonald chose his title well--Jewish culture is very tied up in the idea that argument, even tendentious argument, is good. I am not sure I follow him in his belief that Jewish behavior is an evolutionary adaptation--but let me qualify this. The idea of group evolutionary behavior remains controversial. There is some question as to how it operates through natural selection; I am not expert enough to present either side of this question. But then I suspect that the interaction between culture and natural selection is rather murky and difficult to quantify, much as most mixed nature-nurture traits are.

It is quite possible that characteristic Jewish culture was formed by happenstance--that is, it was shaped by the unique series of events and struggles it found itself in due to its place and time of origin and adjacent cultures. As a firm believer in the role that randomness plays in all life, I am not convinced that an explanation of cultural thinking must be any less arbitrary than this.

This remains an academic question because we can never develop a rigorous and falsifiable theory--we are left to believe what we will. But however it came to be, Jewish culture as it is today is a compelling force that has dramatically changed Western culture.

Perhaps a more interesting line of argument is that Jewish culture is a byproduct of high IQ. The pursuit of pluralism, for example, can be seen as Jewish defensiveness given its competitive nature--but it is also the mark of high IQ novelty seekers. Similarly, many of the ideological movements that MacDonald surveys had little trouble attracting gentiles of a certain type, however dominated their upper ranks may have been by Jews. And by "certain type" I am referring to the cognitive elite--the class of person who is readily won over to abstract theories and is disdainful of traditional practices. That Jews dominate may have less to do with Jewish culture and more to do with Jewish IQ. One omission MacDonald makes is in comparing Jewish achievement and wealth without controlling for IQ.

However this book is an impressive survey of Jewish involvement in the great changes of the 20th century. Wherever one comes down on this subject, it deserves better than the SPLC's malicious and disingenuous treatment, or the cool oblviousness of most of the rest of Western society. It opens the door to many fascinating questions, not only to Jewish culture but to the whole nature of Western civlization and its potential downfall, to the study of group interaction, to the contrast between impermeable and assimilationist societies. It is a serious and manifestly well-intentioned academic work.

And for that reason, the reception of MacDonald's work should be considered scandalous. We do not live in a freely thinking society if this careful and conscientious exploration of group behavior is beyond the pale. But then, looking around, one can readily see that we in fact live in a society governed by frivolity, snark, and clownishness--clownishness much like the SPLC's ridiculous summary of MacDonald's study of Jewish culture. Such is our intellectual world.

I do not agree with MacDonald that ethnic separatism offers European-derived culture anything more than devolution. I think ethnic separatism within a diverse nation will alter what we think of as Western culture and turn it into something no better than the self-interested ethnic enclaves that have exploited it. Universalism is simply a hallmark of the West; if it loses this trait, it loses itself.

The question of what to do is far too complicated to explore briefly, but a return to assimilationism and a renewal of Western values must be the only plausible course. All of our politics should be subordinate to this issue.

[antistoic]

PLEASUREMAN, 17 April 2010 - 10:12 PM:

SPLC:

Kevin MacDonald is the neo-Nazi movement's favorite academic. A psychology professor at California State University, Long Beach, MacDonald, who also is a board member of the white supremacist Charles Martel Society, published a trilogy that supposedly "proves" that Jews are genetically driven to destroy Western societies. MacDonald also argues that anti-Semitism, far from being an irrational hatred for Jews, is a logical reaction to Jewish success in societies controlled by other ethnic or racial groups. After the publication of a 2007 Intelligence Report exposé detailing MacDonald's anti-Semitism, his teaching duties were reduced and many of his colleagues publicly condemned his racist research.

As you mentioned, the SPLC's report fits the established patterns of Jewish criticism to a tee -- smother your opponent's arguments with aspersions and disreputable associations, never attempting to confront the argument itself except to assign it an 'extremist' typology (all the better for dismissing it). They take it as axiomatic that anti-semitism is wrong, you see, so as long as they can demonstrate that anti-semitism (or 'racial extremism') is a motivation behind your arguments then good luck getting a fair audience.

From the description, it's apparent that nobody in the SPLC bothered to read any of MacDonald's books, much less the whole trilogy. His first book (A People That Shall Dwell Alone), as MacDonald himself will tell you, was markedly different in tone and subject than his subsequent two books; by and large it was satisfied with discussing the 'safer' aspects of Jewish identity like high intelligence, educational values, and endogamy without veering into a critique of Jewish political involvement like he would in Culture of Critique.

MacDonald also never openly advocates for racial separatism or anti-semitism in any of his books; all of his claims are based in biological realism and not in any kind of racist ideology, regardless of his personal political advocacy. 'Hate watch' groups like the SPLC don't want to admit it, but this fact is precisely why MacDonald has become so respected in many far right circles. He is not simply another foaming-at-the-mouth racist peon. He refocuses the lens of academic critique on the very group that has been its greatest and most loyal benefactor. In other words, he is not a simple-minded advocate who hides behind disingenuous ideological smokescreens, like the frauds at the SPLC.

Of course, this isn't to say that there are no complaints that could be legitimately lodged against MacDonald and his thesis, but these complaints must address his historical, scientific, and psychological methodology. They hold little merit if they merely dispute the character of his assertions, as the SPLC's attacks prove.