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Let's show what we think of traitors who insult the uniform of members of our armed forces. |
Thursday 28 June 2012
Browned off?
Wednesday 27 June 2012
For printers read bankruptcy
I did not go to intimidate daughter of BNP leader, man tells Carlisle court
By Phil Coleman
27 June 2012
The boss of a Northern Irish printing firm has told a jury that he did not come to Cumbria to intimidate the daughter of British National Party leader Nick Griffin.
David Sloan, 33, made the statement as he testified in his trial at Carlisle Crown Court. Sloan has denied seven charges of blackmailing Mr Griffin – demanding money with menaces – as he tried to recover a £44,000 debt owed by the BNP for the printing of election leaflets.
The prosecution say that Sloan sent a series of threatening messages to Griffin, his elderly parents, and his daughter Jennifer Matthys, who lives in Wigton.
In his evidence, Sloan said he had always got on well with Mrs Matthys and her husband Angus, who collected leaflets.
Sloan’s firm Romac Press was commissioned by the BNP to print 15 million leaflets for the 2010 general election. The defendant’s barrister Adrian Davies asked what effect non-payment of the debt had.
Sloan said: “It’s put Romac out of business. Nine people have lost their jobs. I had a nervous breakdown in January of this year. I have lost my business – my family business. My father’s health has deteriorated and I am going through personal bankruptcy.”
He said he came over to see a football match – Rangers versus Celtic – but while here decided to drive to Wigton to see Mrs Matthys. He wanted to talk to her at the BNP’s offices in Wigton about why Romac was not paid, claiming the party left 17 businesses in Northern Ireland without payment.
“Did you go to Wigton with the intention to intimidate?” asked Mr Davies. Sloan replied: “Definitely not.”
He said he told police he sent some threatening text messages because his father was ill and he wanted to get him out of the police station. The defendant admitted to panicking while being interviewed and at times giving the wrong answer.
The trial continues.
News and Star
By Phil Coleman
27 June 2012
The boss of a Northern Irish printing firm has told a jury that he did not come to Cumbria to intimidate the daughter of British National Party leader Nick Griffin.
David Sloan, 33, made the statement as he testified in his trial at Carlisle Crown Court. Sloan has denied seven charges of blackmailing Mr Griffin – demanding money with menaces – as he tried to recover a £44,000 debt owed by the BNP for the printing of election leaflets.
The prosecution say that Sloan sent a series of threatening messages to Griffin, his elderly parents, and his daughter Jennifer Matthys, who lives in Wigton.
In his evidence, Sloan said he had always got on well with Mrs Matthys and her husband Angus, who collected leaflets.
Sloan’s firm Romac Press was commissioned by the BNP to print 15 million leaflets for the 2010 general election. The defendant’s barrister Adrian Davies asked what effect non-payment of the debt had.
Sloan said: “It’s put Romac out of business. Nine people have lost their jobs. I had a nervous breakdown in January of this year. I have lost my business – my family business. My father’s health has deteriorated and I am going through personal bankruptcy.”
He said he came over to see a football match – Rangers versus Celtic – but while here decided to drive to Wigton to see Mrs Matthys. He wanted to talk to her at the BNP’s offices in Wigton about why Romac was not paid, claiming the party left 17 businesses in Northern Ireland without payment.
“Did you go to Wigton with the intention to intimidate?” asked Mr Davies. Sloan replied: “Definitely not.”
He said he told police he sent some threatening text messages because his father was ill and he wanted to get him out of the police station. The defendant admitted to panicking while being interviewed and at times giving the wrong answer.
The trial continues.
News and Star
Sunday 24 June 2012
Let our own people's needs be met first
Jesus and the Syro-Phoenician woman
Mark 7: 24-30
24 And from thence he arose, and went into the borders of Tyre and Sidon, and entered into an house, and would have no man know it: but he could not be hid.
25 For a certain woman, whose young daughter had an unclean spirit, heard of him, and came and fell at his feet:
26 The woman was a Greek, a Syrophenician by nation; and she besought him that he would cast forth the devil out of her daughter.
27 But Jesus said unto her, Let the children first be filled: for it is not meet to take the children’s bread, and to cast it unto the dogs.
28 And she answered and said unto him, Yes, Lord: yet the dogs under the table eat of the children’s crumbs.
29 And he said unto her, For this saying go thy way; the devil is gone out of thy daughter.
30 And when she was come to her house, she found the devil gone out, and her daughter laid upon the bed.
Compare Matthew 15: 21-28
Jesus’ Exorcism of a Gentile Child
Jesus’ fame is spreading beyond the Jewish population and on to outsiders — even beyond the borders of Galilee. Tyre and Sidon were located to the north of Galilee (in what was then the Roman province of Syria) and were two of the most important cities of ancient Phoenicia. This was not a Jewish area, so why did Jesus travel here?
Perhaps he was attempting to find some private, anonymous time away from home but even there he couldn’t be kept secret. This story involves a Greek (thus a Gentile rather than a Jew), a woman from Syro-Phoenicia, who hoped Jesus would exorcise her daughter.
Jesus’ reaction here is odd and not entirely consistent with how Christians have traditionally portrayed him. Instead of immediately showing compassion and mercy towards her predicament, his first inclination is to send her away. Why? Because she isn’t Jewish — Jesus even likens non-Jews to dogs who should not be fed before his “children” (Jews) have had their fill.
It is interesting that Jesus’ miraculous healing is done at a distance. When he heals Jews, he does so personally and by touching; when he heals Gentiles, he does it at a distance and without touching. This suggests an early tradition whereby Jews were given direct access to Jesus while he was alive, but Gentiles are given access to the risen Jesus who helps and heals without physical presence.
Christian apologists defended Jesus’ actions by pointing out, first, that Jesus allowed for the possibility of Gentiles being helped eventually once the Jews had their fill, and second, that he did in the end help her because she made a good argument. Excuse me, but what sort of defense is that? Jesus’ attitude here is still haughty, treating the woman as unworthy of his attentions. Such Christians are, then, saying that it’s OK and consistent with their theology for God to consider certain people unworthy of grace, compassion, and assistance.
Here we have a woman begging at Jesus’ feet for a small favor — for Jesus to do something that he appears to have done dozens if not hundreds of times. It would be fair to assume that Jesus loses nothing personally from driving unclean spirits out of a person, so what would motivate his refusal to act? Does he simply not want any Gentiles to have their lot in life improved? Does he not want any Gentiles to be made aware of his presence and consequently be saved?
There isn’t even the issue of his needing the time and not wanting to make a trip to help the girl — when he does consent, he is able to help from from a distance. Arguably, he could instantly heal any person of whatever ailed them no matter where they were in relation to him. Does he do that? No. He only helps those who come to him and beg for it personally — sometimes he helps willingly, sometimes he only does so reluctantly.
Overall, it’s not a very positive picture of the Almighty God we are getting here. What we are seeing is a person who picks and chooses which people he helps based upon what their nationality or religion is. When combined with his “inability” to help people from his home area because of their unbelief, we find that Jesus doesn’t always behave in an unreservedly compassionate and helpful manner — even when he does finally deign to leave some crumbs and scraps for the otherwise “unworthy” among us.
[ENDS]
The foregoing is not my work. It comes from an Atheism web site, atheism.about.com. I post it here, though, despite being a Christian myself, because I believe it raises some interesting issues.
The 'atheistic' author's apparent belief that he is competent to take his Creator to task, over what he perceives to be unfairness in the scheme of things, is rather touchingly amusing. He says "It would be fair to assume that Jesus loses nothing personally from driving unclean spirits out of a person, so what would motivate his refusal to act?" But would it be fair to assume this? Elsewhere in the New Testament (Mark 5: 27-28 and Luke 8: 43-44) it is written that Jesus felt "virtue" (dunamis) go out of him when a woman secretly touched the hem of the robe he was wearing. We do not know what the psychic or spiritual cost of healing someone was to the Healer, we can only speculate. It might well have been considerable. Equally we, the created, are in no position to second guess the merit of the design or ultimate purpose of our Creator.
Particularly noteworthy also is that Jesus, in his human nature, as distinct from his divine nature, in common with the vast majority of the Jewish race, both then and now, was evidently a nationalist.
One might also point out that foremost amongst the unjust persecutors of Jesus and his disciples was the Jewish priesthood, the Establishment of its day. In some ways little has changed in two thousand years. The truth is still anathema to the ecclesiastical powers that be.
"But he answered and said, I am not sent but unto the lost sheep of the house of Israel."
Matthew 15:24
Here we see Jesus initially reluctant to heal the Syro-Phoenician woman's daughter, because she is not Jewish.
Jesus was here discriminating, as was his right, on the grounds of race.
Mark 7: 24-30
24 And from thence he arose, and went into the borders of Tyre and Sidon, and entered into an house, and would have no man know it: but he could not be hid.
25 For a certain woman, whose young daughter had an unclean spirit, heard of him, and came and fell at his feet:
26 The woman was a Greek, a Syrophenician by nation; and she besought him that he would cast forth the devil out of her daughter.
27 But Jesus said unto her, Let the children first be filled: for it is not meet to take the children’s bread, and to cast it unto the dogs.
28 And she answered and said unto him, Yes, Lord: yet the dogs under the table eat of the children’s crumbs.
29 And he said unto her, For this saying go thy way; the devil is gone out of thy daughter.
30 And when she was come to her house, she found the devil gone out, and her daughter laid upon the bed.
Compare Matthew 15: 21-28
Jesus’ Exorcism of a Gentile Child
Jesus’ fame is spreading beyond the Jewish population and on to outsiders — even beyond the borders of Galilee. Tyre and Sidon were located to the north of Galilee (in what was then the Roman province of Syria) and were two of the most important cities of ancient Phoenicia. This was not a Jewish area, so why did Jesus travel here?
Perhaps he was attempting to find some private, anonymous time away from home but even there he couldn’t be kept secret. This story involves a Greek (thus a Gentile rather than a Jew), a woman from Syro-Phoenicia, who hoped Jesus would exorcise her daughter.
Jesus’ reaction here is odd and not entirely consistent with how Christians have traditionally portrayed him. Instead of immediately showing compassion and mercy towards her predicament, his first inclination is to send her away. Why? Because she isn’t Jewish — Jesus even likens non-Jews to dogs who should not be fed before his “children” (Jews) have had their fill.
It is interesting that Jesus’ miraculous healing is done at a distance. When he heals Jews, he does so personally and by touching; when he heals Gentiles, he does it at a distance and without touching. This suggests an early tradition whereby Jews were given direct access to Jesus while he was alive, but Gentiles are given access to the risen Jesus who helps and heals without physical presence.
Christian apologists defended Jesus’ actions by pointing out, first, that Jesus allowed for the possibility of Gentiles being helped eventually once the Jews had their fill, and second, that he did in the end help her because she made a good argument. Excuse me, but what sort of defense is that? Jesus’ attitude here is still haughty, treating the woman as unworthy of his attentions. Such Christians are, then, saying that it’s OK and consistent with their theology for God to consider certain people unworthy of grace, compassion, and assistance.
Here we have a woman begging at Jesus’ feet for a small favor — for Jesus to do something that he appears to have done dozens if not hundreds of times. It would be fair to assume that Jesus loses nothing personally from driving unclean spirits out of a person, so what would motivate his refusal to act? Does he simply not want any Gentiles to have their lot in life improved? Does he not want any Gentiles to be made aware of his presence and consequently be saved?
There isn’t even the issue of his needing the time and not wanting to make a trip to help the girl — when he does consent, he is able to help from from a distance. Arguably, he could instantly heal any person of whatever ailed them no matter where they were in relation to him. Does he do that? No. He only helps those who come to him and beg for it personally — sometimes he helps willingly, sometimes he only does so reluctantly.
Overall, it’s not a very positive picture of the Almighty God we are getting here. What we are seeing is a person who picks and chooses which people he helps based upon what their nationality or religion is. When combined with his “inability” to help people from his home area because of their unbelief, we find that Jesus doesn’t always behave in an unreservedly compassionate and helpful manner — even when he does finally deign to leave some crumbs and scraps for the otherwise “unworthy” among us.
[ENDS]
The foregoing is not my work. It comes from an Atheism web site, atheism.about.com. I post it here, though, despite being a Christian myself, because I believe it raises some interesting issues.
The 'atheistic' author's apparent belief that he is competent to take his Creator to task, over what he perceives to be unfairness in the scheme of things, is rather touchingly amusing. He says "It would be fair to assume that Jesus loses nothing personally from driving unclean spirits out of a person, so what would motivate his refusal to act?" But would it be fair to assume this? Elsewhere in the New Testament (Mark 5: 27-28 and Luke 8: 43-44) it is written that Jesus felt "virtue" (dunamis) go out of him when a woman secretly touched the hem of the robe he was wearing. We do not know what the psychic or spiritual cost of healing someone was to the Healer, we can only speculate. It might well have been considerable. Equally we, the created, are in no position to second guess the merit of the design or ultimate purpose of our Creator.
Particularly noteworthy also is that Jesus, in his human nature, as distinct from his divine nature, in common with the vast majority of the Jewish race, both then and now, was evidently a nationalist.
One might also point out that foremost amongst the unjust persecutors of Jesus and his disciples was the Jewish priesthood, the Establishment of its day. In some ways little has changed in two thousand years. The truth is still anathema to the ecclesiastical powers that be.
"But he answered and said, I am not sent but unto the lost sheep of the house of Israel."
Matthew 15:24
Here we see Jesus initially reluctant to heal the Syro-Phoenician woman's daughter, because she is not Jewish.
Jesus was here discriminating, as was his right, on the grounds of race.
Friday 22 June 2012
The Jewish Agenda
"This is a great review of The Culture of Critique. It shows a deep understanding of the issues and arguments" – Kevin MacDonald
The Culture of Critique, reviewed by Stanley Hornbeck
In The Culture of Critique, Kevin MacDonald advances a carefully researched but extremely controversial thesis: that certain 20th century intellectual movements – largely established and led by Jews – have changed European societies in fundamental ways and destroyed the confidence of Western man. He claims that these movements were designed, consciously or unconsciously, to advance Jewish interests even though they were presented to non-Jews as universalistic and even utopian. He concludes that the increasing dominance of these ideas has had profound political and social consequences that benefited Jews but caused great harm to gentile societies. This analysis, which he makes with considerable force, is an unusual indictment of a people generally thought to be more sinned against than sinning.
The Culture of Critique is the final title in Prof. MacDonald's massive, three-volume study of Jews and their role in history. The two previous volumes are A People That Shall Dwell Alone and Separation and its Discontents, published by Praeger in 1994 and 1998. The series is written from a sociobiological perspective that views Judaism as a unique survival strategy that helps Jews compete with other ethnic groups. Prof. MacDonald, who is a psychologist at the University of California at Long Beach, explains this perspective in the first volume, which describes Jews as having a very powerful sense of uniqueness that has kept them socially and genetically separate from other peoples. The second volume traces the history of Jewish-gentile relations, and finds the causes of anti-Semitism primarily in the almost invariable commercial and intellectual dominance of gentile societies by Jews and in their refusal to assimilate. The Culture of Critique brings his analysis into the present century, with an account of the Jewish role in the radical critique of traditional culture.
The intellectual movements Prof. MacDonald discusses in this volume are Marxism, Freudian psychoanalysis, the Frankfurt school of sociology, and Boasian anthropology. Perhaps most relevant from a racial perspective, he also traces the role of Jews in promoting multi-culturalism and Third World immigration. Throughout his analysis Prof. MacDonald reiterates his view that Jews have promoted these movements as Jews and in the interests of Jews, though they have often tried to give the impression that they had no distinctive interests of their own. Therefore Prof. MacDonald's most profound charge against Jews is not ethnocentrism but dishonesty – that while claiming to be working for the good of mankind they have often worked for their own good and to the detriment of others. While attempting to promote the brotherhood of man by dissolving the ethnic identification of gentiles, Jews have maintained precisely the kind of intense group solidarity they decry as immoral in others.
Celebrating Diversity
Prof. MacDonald claims that one of the most consistent ways in which Jews have advanced their interests has been to promote pluralism and diversity – but only for others. Ever since the 19th century, they have led movements that tried to discredit the traditional foundations of gentile society: patriotism, racial loyalty, the Christian basis for morality, social homogeneity, and sexual restraint. At the same time, within their own communities, and with regard to the state of Israel, they have often supported the very institutions they attack in gentile society.
Why is this in the interests of Jews? Because the parochial group loyalty characteristic of Jews attracts far less attention in a society that does not have a cohesive racial and cultural core. The Jewish determination not to assimilate fully, which accounts for their survival as a people for thousands for years – even without a country – has invariably attracted unpleasant and even murderous scrutiny in nations with well -defined national identities. In Prof. MacDonald's view it is therefore in the interest of Jews to dilute and weaken the identity of any people among whom they live. Jewish identity can flower in safety only when gentile identity is weak.
Prof. MacDonald quotes a remarkable passage from Charles Silberman: "American Jews are committed to cultural tolerance because of their belief – one firmly rooted in history – that Jews are safe only in a society acceptant of a wide range of attitudes and behaviors, as well as a diversity of religious and ethnic groups. It is this belief, for example, not approval of homosexuality, that leads an overwhelming majority of American Jews to endorse 'gay rights' and to take a liberal stance on most other so-called 'social' issues."
He is saying, in effect, that when Jews make the diversity-is-our-strength argument it is in support of their real goal of diluting a society's homogeneity so that Jews will feel safe. They are couching a Jewish agenda in terms they think gentiles will accept. Likewise, as the second part of the Silberman quotation suggests, Jews may support deviant movements, not because they think it is good for the country but because it is good for the Jews.
Prof. Silberman also provides an illuminating quote from a Jewish economist who thought that republicans had more sensible economic policies but who voted for the Democratic presidential candidate anyway. His reason? "I'd rather live in a country governed by the faces I saw at the Democratic convention than those I saw at the Republican convention." This man apparently distrusts white gentiles and voted for a racially mixed party even if its economic policies were wrong. What is good for Jews appears to come before what is good for the country.
Earl Raab, former president of heavily Jewish Brandeis University makes the diversity argument in a slightly different way. Expressing his satisfaction with the prediction that by the middle of the next century whites will become a minority, he writes, "We have tipped beyond the point where a Nazi-Aryan party will be able to prevail in this country." He is apparently prepared to displace the people and culture of the founding stock in order to prevent the theoretical rise of an anti-Jewish regime. Prof. Raab appears to see whites mainly as potential Nazis, and is willing to sacrifice their culture and national continuity in order to defuse an imagined threat to Jews. This passage takes for granted the continued future existence of Jews as a distinct community even as gentile whites decline in numbers and influence.
In the same passage, Prof. Raab continues by noting that, "We [Jews] have been nourishing the American climate of opposition to bigotry for about half a century. That climate has not yet been perfected, but the heterogeneous nature of our population tends to make it irreversible..." – just as it tends to make the ultimate displacement of European culture also irreversible.
Prof. MacDonald traces the development of this diversity strategy to several sources. It is widely recognized that the German-Jewish immigrant Franz Boas (1858-1942) almost single-handedly established the current contours of anthropology, ridding it of all biological explanations for differences in human culture or behavior. Prof. MacDonald reports that he and his followers – with the notable exceptions of Margaret Mead and Ruth Benedict – were all Jews with strong Jewish identities: "Jewish identification and the pursuit of perceived Jewish interests, particularly in advocating an ideology of cultural pluralism as a model for Western societies, has been the 'invisible subject' of American anthropology."
By 1915, Boas and his students controlled the American Anthropological Association and by 1926 they headed every major American university anthropology department. From this position of dominance they promoted the idea that race and biology are trivial matters, and that environment counts for everything. They completely recast anthropology so as to provide intellectual support for open immigration, integration, and miscegenation. They also laid the foundation for the idea that because all races have the same potential, the failures of non-whites must be blamed exclusively on white oppression. The ultimate conclusion of Boasian anthropology was that since environment accounts for all human differences, every inequality in achievement can be eliminated by changing the environment. This has been the justification for enormous and wasteful government intervention programs.
The entire "civil rights" movement can be seen as a natural consequence of the triumph of Boasian thinking. Since all races were equivalent, separation was immoral. The color line also sharpened white self-consciousness in ways that might make whites more aware of Jewish parochialism. Thus it was, according to Prof. MacDonald, that Jews almost single-handedly launched the desegregation movement. Without the leadership of Jews, the NAACP might never have been established, and until 1975 every one of its presidents was a Jew. Prof. MacDonald reports that in 1917, when the black separatist Marcus Garvey visited NAACP headquarters, he saw so many white faces that he stormed out, complaining that it was a white organization.
Prof. MacDonald concludes that the efforts of Jews were crucial to the "civil rights" transformation of America. He quotes a lawyer for the American Jewish Congress who claims that "many of these [civil rights] laws were actually written in the offices of Jewish agencies by Jewish staff people, introduced by Jewish legislators and pressured into being by Jewish voters."
While the Boas school was promoting integration and racial equivalence, it was also critical of, in Prof. MacDonald's words, "American culture as overly homogeneous, hypocritical, emotionally and aesthetically repressive (especially with regard to sexuality). Central to this program was creating ethnographies of idyllic [Third-World] cultures that were free of the negatively perceived traits that were attributed to Western culture."
The role of the anthropologist became one of criticizing everything about Western society while glorifying everything primitive. Prof. MacDonald notes that Boasian portrayals of non-Western peoples deliberately ignored barbarism and cruelty or simply attributed it to contamination from the West. He sees this as a deliberate attempt to undermine the confidence of Western societies and to make them permeable to Third World influences and people. Today, this view is enshrined in the dogma that America must remain open to immigration because immigrants bring spirit and energy that natives somehow lack.
Authoritarian Personalities
In order to open European-derived societies to the immigration that would transform them, it was necessary to discredit racial solidarity and commitment to tradition. Prof. MacDonald argues that this was the basic purpose of a group of intellectuals known as the Frankfurt School. What is properly known as the Institute of Social Research was founded in Frankfurt, Germany, during the Weimar period by a Jewish millionaire but was closed down by the Nazis shortly after they took power. Most of its staff emigrated to the United States and the institute reconstituted itself at UC Berkeley. The organization was headed by Max Horkheimer, and its most influential members were T.W. Adorno, Erich Fromm, and Herbert Marcuse, all of whom had strong Jewish identities. Horkheimer made no secret of the partisan nature of the institute's activities: "Research would be able here to transform itself directly into propaganda," he wrote. (Italics in the original.)
Prof. MacDonald devotes many pages to an analysis of The Authoritarian Personality, which was written by Adorno and appeared in 1950. It was part of a series called Studies in Prejudice, produced by the Frankfurt school, which included titles like Anti-Semitism and Emotional Disorder. The Authoritarian Personality was particularly influential because, according to Prof. MacDonald, the American Jewish Committee heavily funded its promotion and because Jewish academics took up its message so enthusiastically.
The book's purpose is to make every group affiliation sound as if it were a sign of mental disorder. Everything from patriotism to religion to family – and race – loyalty are signs of a dangerous and defective "authoritarian personality." Because drawing distinctions between different groups is illegitimate, all group loyalties – even close family ties! – are "prejudice." As Christopher Lasch has written, the book leads to the conclusion that prejudice "could be eradicated only by subjecting the American people to what amounted to collective psychotherapy – by treating them as inmates of an insane asylum."
But according to Prof. MacDonald it is precisely the kind of group loyalty, respect for tradition, and consciousness of differences central to Jewish identity that Horkheimer and Adorno described as mental illness in gentiles. These writers adopted what eventually became a favorite Soviet tactic against dissidents: Anyone whose political views were different from theirs was insane. As Prof. MacDonald explains, the Frankfurt school never criticized or even described Jewish group identity – only that of gentiles: "behavior that is critical to Judaism as a successful group evolutionary strategy is conceptualized as pathological in gentiles."
For these Jewish intellectuals, anti-Semitism was also a sign of mental illness: They concluded that Christian self-denial and especially sexual repression caused hatred of Jews. The Frankfurt school was enthusiastic about psycho-analysis, according to which "Oedipal ambivalence toward the father and anal-sadistic relations in early childhood are the anti-Semite's irrevocable inheritance."
In addition to ridiculing patriotism and racial identity, the Frankfurt school glorified promiscuity and Bohemian poverty. Prof. MacDonald sees the school as a seminal influence: "Certainly many of the central attitudes of the largely successful 1960s countercultural revolution find expression in The Authoritarian Personality, including idealizing rebellion against parents, low-investment sexual relationships, and scorn for upward social mobility, social status, family pride, the Christian religion, and patriotism."
Of the interest here, however, is the movement's success in branding ancient loyalties to nation and race as mental illnesses. Although he came later, the French-Jewish "deconstructionist" Jacques Derrida was in the same tradition when he wrote:
"The idea behind deconstruction is to deconstruct the workings of strong nation-states with powerful immigration policies, to deconstruct the rhetoric of nationalism, the politics of place, the metaphysics of native land and native tongue... The idea is to disarm the bombs... of identity that nation-states build to defend themselves against the stranger, against Jews and Arabs and immigrants..."
As Prof. MacDonald puts it, "Viewed at its most abstract level, a fundamental agenda is thus to influence the European-derived peoples of the United States to view concern about their own demographic and cultural eclipse as irrational and as an indication of psychopathology." Needless to say, this project has been successful; anyone opposed to the displacement of whites is routinely treated as a mentally unhinged "hate-monger," and whenever whites defend their group interests they are described as psychologically inadequate. The irony has not escaped Prof. MacDonald: "The ideology that ethnocentrism was a form of psychopathology was promulgated by a group that over its long history had arguably been the most ethnocentric group among all the cultures of the world."
Immigration
Prof. MacDonald argues that it is entirely natural for Jews to promote open immigration. It brings about the "diversity" Jews find comforting and it keeps America open to persecuted co-religionists throughout the world. He says Jews are the only group that has always fought for mass immigration; a few European ethnic organizations have made sporadic efforts to make it easier for their own people to come, but only Jews have consistently promoted open borders for all comers. Moreover, whatever disagreements they may have had on other issues, Jews of every political persuasion have favored high immigration.
This, too, goes back many years, and Prof. MacDonald traces in considerable detail the sustained Jewish pro-immigration effort. Israel Zangwill, author of the eponymous 1908 play The Melting Pot, was of the view that "there is only one way to World Peace, and that is the absolute abolition of passports, visas, frontiers, custom houses..." He was nevertheless an ardent Zionist and disapproved of Jewish intermarriage.
Although the statue of liberty, properly known as Liberty Enlightening the World, was a gift to the United States from France as a tribute to American political traditions, the sonnet by the Jewish Emma Lazarus helped change it into a symbol of immigration. Affixed to the base of the statue several decades after its construction, the poem welcomes to America "huddled masses yearning to breath free/The wretched refuse of your teeming shore."
Prof. MacDonald has discovered that implausible arguments about diversity being a quintessentially American strength have been made by Jews for a long time. He reports that in 1948 the American Jewish Committee was urging Congress to believe that "Americanism is the spirit behind the welcome that America has traditionally extended to people of all races, all religions, all nationalities." Of course, there had never been such a tradition. In 1952, the American Jewish Congress argued in hearings on immigration that "our national experience has confirmed beyond a doubt that our very strength lies in the diversity of our peoples." This, too, was at a time when U.S. immigration law was still explicitly designed to maintain a white majority.
It is often said that when the old immigration policy was scrapped in 1965, scarcely anyone knew, and no one predicted, that the new law would change the racial makeup of the country. Prof. MacDonald disputes this, arguing that this had been the objective of Jewish groups from the beginning.
Prof. MacDonald finds that Jews have been the foremost advocates of immigration in England, France, and Canada, and that Jewish groups were the most vocal opponents of independence for Quebec. Australian Jews led the effort to dismantle the "white Australia" policy, one reason for which was cited in an editorial in the Australian Jewish Democrat: "The strengthening of multi-cultural or diverse Australia is also our most effective insurance policy against anti-Semitism. The day Australia has a Chinese Australian Governor General I would feel more confident of my freedom to live as a Jewish Australian." Like Earl Raab writing about the United States, this Australian Jew is prepared to sacrifice the traditional culture, people, and identity of Australia to specifically Jewish interests. It would not be surprising if such an openly expressed objective did not have the opposite effect from the intended, and increase anti-Jewish sentiment.
Jews and the Left
It is well known that Jews have been traditionally associated with the left, and Prof. MacDonald investigates this connection in some detail. Historically it was understandable that Jews should support movements that advocated overthrowing the existing order. After emancipation, Jews met resistance from gentile elites who did not want to lose ground to competitors, and outsiders easily become revolutionaries. However, in Prof. MacDonald's view, Jewish commitment to leftist causes has often been motivated by the hope that communism, especially, would be a tool for combating anti-Semitism, and by expectation that universalist social solutions would be yet another way to dissolve gentile loyalties that might exclude Jews. The appeal of univeralist ideologies is tied to the implicit understanding that Jewish particularism will be exempt: "At the extreme, acceptance of a universalist ideology by gentiles would result in gentiles not perceiving Jews as in a different social category at all, while nonetheless Jews would be able to maintain a strong personal identity as Jews."
Prof. MacDonald argues that Jews had specifically Jewish reasons for supporting the Bolshevik revolution. Czarist Russia was notorious for its anti-Semitic policies and, during its early years, the Soviet Union seemed to be the promised land for Jews: it ended state anti-Semitism, tried to eradicate Christianity, opened opportunities to individual Jews, and preached a "classless" society in which Jewishness would presumably attract no negative attention. Moreover, since Marxism taught that all conflict was economic rather than ethnic, many Jews believed it heralded the end of anti-Semitism.
Prof. MacDonald emphasizes that although Jewish Communists preached both atheism and the solidarity of the world's working people, they took pains to preserve a distinct, secular Jewish identity. He reports that Lenin himself (who had one Jewish grandparent) approved the continuation of an explicitly Jewish identity under Communism, and in 1946 the Communist Party of the United States voted a resolution also supporting Jewish peoplehood in Communist countries. Thus, although Communism was supposed to be without borders or religion, Jews were confident that it would make a place for their own group identity. He writes that despite the official view that all men were to be brothers, "very few Jews lost their Jewish identity during the entire soviet era."
Jewish Communists sometimes betrayed remarkable particularism. Prof. MacDonald quotes Charles Rappoport, the French Communist leader: "The Jewish people [are] the bearer of all the great ideas of unity and human community in history... The disappearance of the Jewish people would signify the death of humankind, the final transformation of man into a wild beast." This seems to attribute to Jews an elite position incompatible with "unity and human community."
Prof. MacDonald argues that many Jews began to fall away from Communism only after Stalin showed himself to be anti-Semitic. And just as Jews had been the leading revolutionaries in anti-Semitic pre-Revolutionary Russia, Jews became the leading dissidents in an anti-Semitic Soviet Union. A similar pattern can be found in the imposed Communist governments of Eastern Europe, which were largely dominated by Jews. The majority of the leaders of the Polish Communist Party, for example, spoke better Yiddish than Polish, and they too maintained a strong Jewish identity. After the fall of Communism many stopped being Polish and emigrated to Israel.
Prof. MacDonald writes that in Bela Kun's short-lived 1919 Communist government of Hungary, 95 percent of the leaders were Jews, and that at the time of the 1956 uprising Communism was so closely associated with Jews that the rioting had almost the flavor of a pogrom. He argues that in the United States as well, the hard core among Communists and members of Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) was mainly Jewish. Here, too, a revolutionary, atheist, and universalist world-view was fully compatible with strong identification as Jews. Prof. MacDonald quotes from a study of American leftists:
"Many Communists, for example, state that they could never have married a spouse who was not a leftist. When Jews were asked if they could have married Gentiles, many hesitated, surprised by the question, and found it difficult to answer. Upon reflection, many concluded that they had always taken marriage to someone Jewish for granted." Their commitment as Jews was even more fundamental and unexamined than their commitment to the left.
Prof. MacDonald reports that many American Jews also abandoned Communism as it became increasingly anti-Semitic. For a large number, the Soviet Union's severing of diplomatic ties with Israel during the 1967 war was the last straw. A former SDS activist no doubt spoke for many when he explained, "If I must choose between the Jewish cause and a 'progressive' anti-Israel SDS, I shall choose the Jewish cause. If barricades are erected, I will fight as a Jew." According to Prof. MacDonald, American neoconservatism can also be described as a surface shift in external politics that leaves the more fundamental commitment to Jewish identity unchanged. Thus, former leftists abandoned an ideology that had turned against Israel and refashioned American conservatism into a different movement, the one unshakable theme of which was support for Israel. Neoconservatives also support high levels of immigration and were active in excluding white racial identification from the "respectable" right.
Objections
There are many possible objections to Prof. MacDonald's thesis. The first is that it is largely built on the assumption that Jews are dishonest. It is always risky to assume one understands the motives of others better than they do themselves. Jews have traditionally thought of themselves as a benevolent presence, even as a "light unto the nations" or a "chosen people." This is echoed today in the Jewish self image as champions of the excluded and the oppressed. Most of the time what passes for "social justice" has the effect of undermining the traditions and loyalties of gentile society, but are Jews deliberately undermining these things rather than righting what they perceive to be wrongs?
Prof. MacDonald concedes that many Jews are sincere in their support for liberal causes, but then escalates his indictment by arguing that "the best deceivers are those who deceive themselves." In other words, many Jews who are actually working for Jewish interests have first convinced themselves otherwise. A Jew who mainly wants America to become less white may also have convinced himself that America benefits from a multitude of cultures. Having convinced himself he can more effectively convince others.
Many Jews, Prof. MacDonald argues, are not even conscious of the extent to which their Jewishness is central to their identities or their political views. He quotes Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel on his surprise at how passionately he embraced the Israeli side during the 1967 war: "I had not known how Jewish I was." This is an arresting statement from a man who was thought to be perhaps the greatest Jewish spiritual leader of his time. And whether or not it affects their politics, Jews certainly appear to have a very vivid sense of peoplehood. Prof. MacDonald quotes theologian Eugene Borowitz as saying,"most Jews claim to be equipped with an interpersonal friend-or-foe sensing device that enables them to detect the presence of another Jew, despite heavy camouflage." Always to think in terms of "friends or foe" is no insignificant matter.
Prof. MacDonald is therefore skeptical of Jewish disavowals: "Surface declarations of a lack of Jewish identity may be highly misleading." He notes that Jewish publications write about the power and influence of American Jews in language Jews would immediately denounce as "anti-Semitic" if used by gentiles. He agrees with Joseph Sobran, who has said "they want to be Jews among themselves but resent being seen as Jews by Gentiles. They want to pursue their own distinct interests while pretending that they have no such interests..."
Prof. MacDonald argues that the success of Jewish-led intellectual movements has been possible only because their Jewish character was hidden. If multi-culturalism or mass immigration or The Authoritarian Personality had been promoted by Orthodox Jews in black coats the Jewish element would have been clear. Prof. MacDonald writes that in fact, "the Jewish political agenda was not an aspect of the theory and the theories themselves had no overt Jewish content. Gentile intellectuals approaching these theories were therefore unlikely to view them as aspects of Jewish-gentile cultural competition or as an aspect of a specifically Jewish political agenda." Prof. MacDonald also claims that Jews have often tried to conceal the Jewish character of an intellectual movement by recruiting token gentiles for visible positions as spokesmen. He writes that this tactic was so common in the American Communist Party that gentiles often saw through it and resigned.
But how can motives ever be completely known? Prof. MacDonald sets a difficult test: "The best evidence that individuals have really ceased to have a Jewish identity is if they choose a political option that they perceive as clearly not in the interest of Jews as a group. In the absence of a clearly perceived conflict with Jewish interests, it remains possible that different political choices among ethnic Jews are only differences in tactics for how best to achieve Jewish interests."
This standard may seem unduly harsh – until it is applied to white gentiles. Third-World immigration, affirmative action, anti-discrimination laws, and forced integration are clearly not in the interests of whites, yet many whites embrace them, thus demonstrating how completely they have abandoned their racial identity.
Finally, Prof. MacDonald raises the disturbing possibility that some Jews, because of centuries of conflict with gentiles, actively hate gentile society and consciously wish to destroy it: "a fundamental motivation of Jewish intellectuals involved in social criticism has simply been hatred of the gentile-dominated power structure perceived as anti-Semitic." He describes the 19th century German-Jewish poet Heinrich Heine as "using his skill, reputation and popularity to undermine the intellectual confidence of the established order."
In defense of this highly provocative view, Prof. MacDonald quotes Benjamin Disraeli on the effects of centuries of Jewish-gentile relations on Jews: "They may have become so odious and so hostile to mankind as to merit for their present conduct, no matter how occasioned, the obloquy and ill-treatment of the communities in which they dwell and with which they are scarcely permitted to mingle."
Apart from any questions of motives, however, is the question of numbers. Jews are a tiny minority in the United States and within that minority there is disagreement even on matters that clearly affect Jews. How can Jews possibly be responsible for dramatic changes in the intellectual landscape? In Prof. MacDonald's view, the explanation lies in the intelligence, energy, dedication, and cohesiveness of Jews. He attributes a great deal to the average IQ of Jews – at 115, a full standard deviation above the white gentile average – and to "their hard work and dedication, their desire to make a mark on the world, and their desire to rise in the world, engage in personal promotion, and achieve public acclaim..." He also believes Jews have worked together unfailingly on any question they consider necessary for survival: "Intellectual activity is like any other human endeavor: Cohesive groups outcompete individual strategies." He notes that there has never been a time when large numbers of white Americans favored non-white immigration; it was a cohesive, determined minority that beat down the disorganized resistance of the majority.
Prof. MacDonald believes that because of the effectiveness of some Jews, it was not even necessary that most Jews actively support anti-majoritarian movements, but that Jewish activity was still decisive. As he puts it, "Jewish-dominated intellectual movements were a critical factor (necessary condition) for the triumph of the intellectual left in late twentieth-century Western societies." This, of course, can never be tested, but there can be no doubt that American Jews have had a disproportionate effect on the American intellect. Prof. MacDonald quotes Walter Kerr, writing in 1968, to the effect that "what has happened since World War II is that the American sensibility has become part Jewish, perhaps as much Jewish as it is anything else... The literate American mind has come in some measure to think Jewishly."
Aside from the question of whether Prof. MacDonald is right is the further question of what difference it makes if he is right. If correct, his thesis certainly sheds light on the rapidity with which whites lost their will. Just a few decades ago whites were a confident race, proud of their achievements, convinced of their fitness to dominate the globe. Today they are a declining, apologetic people, ashamed of their history and not sure even of their claim to lands they have occupied for centuries. It is very rare for fundamental concepts to be stood on their heads in the course of just a generation or two, as has happened with thinking about race. Such speed suggests there has been something more than natural change.
Originally appeared in American Renaissance, June 1999, issue 54, entitled 'Cherchez le Juif.' Stanley Hornbeck is the pen name of a Washington, DC area businessman. Kevin MacDonald, The Culture of Critique: An Evolutionary Analysis of Jewish Involvement in Twentieth-Century Intellectual and Political Movements, Praeger (1998) $65.00, 379 pp.
Credit: The Heretical Press
The Culture of Critique, reviewed by Stanley Hornbeck
In The Culture of Critique, Kevin MacDonald advances a carefully researched but extremely controversial thesis: that certain 20th century intellectual movements – largely established and led by Jews – have changed European societies in fundamental ways and destroyed the confidence of Western man. He claims that these movements were designed, consciously or unconsciously, to advance Jewish interests even though they were presented to non-Jews as universalistic and even utopian. He concludes that the increasing dominance of these ideas has had profound political and social consequences that benefited Jews but caused great harm to gentile societies. This analysis, which he makes with considerable force, is an unusual indictment of a people generally thought to be more sinned against than sinning.
The Culture of Critique is the final title in Prof. MacDonald's massive, three-volume study of Jews and their role in history. The two previous volumes are A People That Shall Dwell Alone and Separation and its Discontents, published by Praeger in 1994 and 1998. The series is written from a sociobiological perspective that views Judaism as a unique survival strategy that helps Jews compete with other ethnic groups. Prof. MacDonald, who is a psychologist at the University of California at Long Beach, explains this perspective in the first volume, which describes Jews as having a very powerful sense of uniqueness that has kept them socially and genetically separate from other peoples. The second volume traces the history of Jewish-gentile relations, and finds the causes of anti-Semitism primarily in the almost invariable commercial and intellectual dominance of gentile societies by Jews and in their refusal to assimilate. The Culture of Critique brings his analysis into the present century, with an account of the Jewish role in the radical critique of traditional culture.
The intellectual movements Prof. MacDonald discusses in this volume are Marxism, Freudian psychoanalysis, the Frankfurt school of sociology, and Boasian anthropology. Perhaps most relevant from a racial perspective, he also traces the role of Jews in promoting multi-culturalism and Third World immigration. Throughout his analysis Prof. MacDonald reiterates his view that Jews have promoted these movements as Jews and in the interests of Jews, though they have often tried to give the impression that they had no distinctive interests of their own. Therefore Prof. MacDonald's most profound charge against Jews is not ethnocentrism but dishonesty – that while claiming to be working for the good of mankind they have often worked for their own good and to the detriment of others. While attempting to promote the brotherhood of man by dissolving the ethnic identification of gentiles, Jews have maintained precisely the kind of intense group solidarity they decry as immoral in others.
Celebrating Diversity
Prof. MacDonald claims that one of the most consistent ways in which Jews have advanced their interests has been to promote pluralism and diversity – but only for others. Ever since the 19th century, they have led movements that tried to discredit the traditional foundations of gentile society: patriotism, racial loyalty, the Christian basis for morality, social homogeneity, and sexual restraint. At the same time, within their own communities, and with regard to the state of Israel, they have often supported the very institutions they attack in gentile society.
Why is this in the interests of Jews? Because the parochial group loyalty characteristic of Jews attracts far less attention in a society that does not have a cohesive racial and cultural core. The Jewish determination not to assimilate fully, which accounts for their survival as a people for thousands for years – even without a country – has invariably attracted unpleasant and even murderous scrutiny in nations with well -defined national identities. In Prof. MacDonald's view it is therefore in the interest of Jews to dilute and weaken the identity of any people among whom they live. Jewish identity can flower in safety only when gentile identity is weak.
Prof. MacDonald quotes a remarkable passage from Charles Silberman: "American Jews are committed to cultural tolerance because of their belief – one firmly rooted in history – that Jews are safe only in a society acceptant of a wide range of attitudes and behaviors, as well as a diversity of religious and ethnic groups. It is this belief, for example, not approval of homosexuality, that leads an overwhelming majority of American Jews to endorse 'gay rights' and to take a liberal stance on most other so-called 'social' issues."
He is saying, in effect, that when Jews make the diversity-is-our-strength argument it is in support of their real goal of diluting a society's homogeneity so that Jews will feel safe. They are couching a Jewish agenda in terms they think gentiles will accept. Likewise, as the second part of the Silberman quotation suggests, Jews may support deviant movements, not because they think it is good for the country but because it is good for the Jews.
Prof. Silberman also provides an illuminating quote from a Jewish economist who thought that republicans had more sensible economic policies but who voted for the Democratic presidential candidate anyway. His reason? "I'd rather live in a country governed by the faces I saw at the Democratic convention than those I saw at the Republican convention." This man apparently distrusts white gentiles and voted for a racially mixed party even if its economic policies were wrong. What is good for Jews appears to come before what is good for the country.
Earl Raab, former president of heavily Jewish Brandeis University makes the diversity argument in a slightly different way. Expressing his satisfaction with the prediction that by the middle of the next century whites will become a minority, he writes, "We have tipped beyond the point where a Nazi-Aryan party will be able to prevail in this country." He is apparently prepared to displace the people and culture of the founding stock in order to prevent the theoretical rise of an anti-Jewish regime. Prof. Raab appears to see whites mainly as potential Nazis, and is willing to sacrifice their culture and national continuity in order to defuse an imagined threat to Jews. This passage takes for granted the continued future existence of Jews as a distinct community even as gentile whites decline in numbers and influence.
In the same passage, Prof. Raab continues by noting that, "We [Jews] have been nourishing the American climate of opposition to bigotry for about half a century. That climate has not yet been perfected, but the heterogeneous nature of our population tends to make it irreversible..." – just as it tends to make the ultimate displacement of European culture also irreversible.
Prof. MacDonald traces the development of this diversity strategy to several sources. It is widely recognized that the German-Jewish immigrant Franz Boas (1858-1942) almost single-handedly established the current contours of anthropology, ridding it of all biological explanations for differences in human culture or behavior. Prof. MacDonald reports that he and his followers – with the notable exceptions of Margaret Mead and Ruth Benedict – were all Jews with strong Jewish identities: "Jewish identification and the pursuit of perceived Jewish interests, particularly in advocating an ideology of cultural pluralism as a model for Western societies, has been the 'invisible subject' of American anthropology."
By 1915, Boas and his students controlled the American Anthropological Association and by 1926 they headed every major American university anthropology department. From this position of dominance they promoted the idea that race and biology are trivial matters, and that environment counts for everything. They completely recast anthropology so as to provide intellectual support for open immigration, integration, and miscegenation. They also laid the foundation for the idea that because all races have the same potential, the failures of non-whites must be blamed exclusively on white oppression. The ultimate conclusion of Boasian anthropology was that since environment accounts for all human differences, every inequality in achievement can be eliminated by changing the environment. This has been the justification for enormous and wasteful government intervention programs.
The entire "civil rights" movement can be seen as a natural consequence of the triumph of Boasian thinking. Since all races were equivalent, separation was immoral. The color line also sharpened white self-consciousness in ways that might make whites more aware of Jewish parochialism. Thus it was, according to Prof. MacDonald, that Jews almost single-handedly launched the desegregation movement. Without the leadership of Jews, the NAACP might never have been established, and until 1975 every one of its presidents was a Jew. Prof. MacDonald reports that in 1917, when the black separatist Marcus Garvey visited NAACP headquarters, he saw so many white faces that he stormed out, complaining that it was a white organization.
Prof. MacDonald concludes that the efforts of Jews were crucial to the "civil rights" transformation of America. He quotes a lawyer for the American Jewish Congress who claims that "many of these [civil rights] laws were actually written in the offices of Jewish agencies by Jewish staff people, introduced by Jewish legislators and pressured into being by Jewish voters."
While the Boas school was promoting integration and racial equivalence, it was also critical of, in Prof. MacDonald's words, "American culture as overly homogeneous, hypocritical, emotionally and aesthetically repressive (especially with regard to sexuality). Central to this program was creating ethnographies of idyllic [Third-World] cultures that were free of the negatively perceived traits that were attributed to Western culture."
The role of the anthropologist became one of criticizing everything about Western society while glorifying everything primitive. Prof. MacDonald notes that Boasian portrayals of non-Western peoples deliberately ignored barbarism and cruelty or simply attributed it to contamination from the West. He sees this as a deliberate attempt to undermine the confidence of Western societies and to make them permeable to Third World influences and people. Today, this view is enshrined in the dogma that America must remain open to immigration because immigrants bring spirit and energy that natives somehow lack.
Authoritarian Personalities
In order to open European-derived societies to the immigration that would transform them, it was necessary to discredit racial solidarity and commitment to tradition. Prof. MacDonald argues that this was the basic purpose of a group of intellectuals known as the Frankfurt School. What is properly known as the Institute of Social Research was founded in Frankfurt, Germany, during the Weimar period by a Jewish millionaire but was closed down by the Nazis shortly after they took power. Most of its staff emigrated to the United States and the institute reconstituted itself at UC Berkeley. The organization was headed by Max Horkheimer, and its most influential members were T.W. Adorno, Erich Fromm, and Herbert Marcuse, all of whom had strong Jewish identities. Horkheimer made no secret of the partisan nature of the institute's activities: "Research would be able here to transform itself directly into propaganda," he wrote. (Italics in the original.)
Prof. MacDonald devotes many pages to an analysis of The Authoritarian Personality, which was written by Adorno and appeared in 1950. It was part of a series called Studies in Prejudice, produced by the Frankfurt school, which included titles like Anti-Semitism and Emotional Disorder. The Authoritarian Personality was particularly influential because, according to Prof. MacDonald, the American Jewish Committee heavily funded its promotion and because Jewish academics took up its message so enthusiastically.
The book's purpose is to make every group affiliation sound as if it were a sign of mental disorder. Everything from patriotism to religion to family – and race – loyalty are signs of a dangerous and defective "authoritarian personality." Because drawing distinctions between different groups is illegitimate, all group loyalties – even close family ties! – are "prejudice." As Christopher Lasch has written, the book leads to the conclusion that prejudice "could be eradicated only by subjecting the American people to what amounted to collective psychotherapy – by treating them as inmates of an insane asylum."
But according to Prof. MacDonald it is precisely the kind of group loyalty, respect for tradition, and consciousness of differences central to Jewish identity that Horkheimer and Adorno described as mental illness in gentiles. These writers adopted what eventually became a favorite Soviet tactic against dissidents: Anyone whose political views were different from theirs was insane. As Prof. MacDonald explains, the Frankfurt school never criticized or even described Jewish group identity – only that of gentiles: "behavior that is critical to Judaism as a successful group evolutionary strategy is conceptualized as pathological in gentiles."
For these Jewish intellectuals, anti-Semitism was also a sign of mental illness: They concluded that Christian self-denial and especially sexual repression caused hatred of Jews. The Frankfurt school was enthusiastic about psycho-analysis, according to which "Oedipal ambivalence toward the father and anal-sadistic relations in early childhood are the anti-Semite's irrevocable inheritance."
In addition to ridiculing patriotism and racial identity, the Frankfurt school glorified promiscuity and Bohemian poverty. Prof. MacDonald sees the school as a seminal influence: "Certainly many of the central attitudes of the largely successful 1960s countercultural revolution find expression in The Authoritarian Personality, including idealizing rebellion against parents, low-investment sexual relationships, and scorn for upward social mobility, social status, family pride, the Christian religion, and patriotism."
Of the interest here, however, is the movement's success in branding ancient loyalties to nation and race as mental illnesses. Although he came later, the French-Jewish "deconstructionist" Jacques Derrida was in the same tradition when he wrote:
"The idea behind deconstruction is to deconstruct the workings of strong nation-states with powerful immigration policies, to deconstruct the rhetoric of nationalism, the politics of place, the metaphysics of native land and native tongue... The idea is to disarm the bombs... of identity that nation-states build to defend themselves against the stranger, against Jews and Arabs and immigrants..."
As Prof. MacDonald puts it, "Viewed at its most abstract level, a fundamental agenda is thus to influence the European-derived peoples of the United States to view concern about their own demographic and cultural eclipse as irrational and as an indication of psychopathology." Needless to say, this project has been successful; anyone opposed to the displacement of whites is routinely treated as a mentally unhinged "hate-monger," and whenever whites defend their group interests they are described as psychologically inadequate. The irony has not escaped Prof. MacDonald: "The ideology that ethnocentrism was a form of psychopathology was promulgated by a group that over its long history had arguably been the most ethnocentric group among all the cultures of the world."
Immigration
Prof. MacDonald argues that it is entirely natural for Jews to promote open immigration. It brings about the "diversity" Jews find comforting and it keeps America open to persecuted co-religionists throughout the world. He says Jews are the only group that has always fought for mass immigration; a few European ethnic organizations have made sporadic efforts to make it easier for their own people to come, but only Jews have consistently promoted open borders for all comers. Moreover, whatever disagreements they may have had on other issues, Jews of every political persuasion have favored high immigration.
This, too, goes back many years, and Prof. MacDonald traces in considerable detail the sustained Jewish pro-immigration effort. Israel Zangwill, author of the eponymous 1908 play The Melting Pot, was of the view that "there is only one way to World Peace, and that is the absolute abolition of passports, visas, frontiers, custom houses..." He was nevertheless an ardent Zionist and disapproved of Jewish intermarriage.
Although the statue of liberty, properly known as Liberty Enlightening the World, was a gift to the United States from France as a tribute to American political traditions, the sonnet by the Jewish Emma Lazarus helped change it into a symbol of immigration. Affixed to the base of the statue several decades after its construction, the poem welcomes to America "huddled masses yearning to breath free/The wretched refuse of your teeming shore."
Prof. MacDonald has discovered that implausible arguments about diversity being a quintessentially American strength have been made by Jews for a long time. He reports that in 1948 the American Jewish Committee was urging Congress to believe that "Americanism is the spirit behind the welcome that America has traditionally extended to people of all races, all religions, all nationalities." Of course, there had never been such a tradition. In 1952, the American Jewish Congress argued in hearings on immigration that "our national experience has confirmed beyond a doubt that our very strength lies in the diversity of our peoples." This, too, was at a time when U.S. immigration law was still explicitly designed to maintain a white majority.
It is often said that when the old immigration policy was scrapped in 1965, scarcely anyone knew, and no one predicted, that the new law would change the racial makeup of the country. Prof. MacDonald disputes this, arguing that this had been the objective of Jewish groups from the beginning.
Prof. MacDonald finds that Jews have been the foremost advocates of immigration in England, France, and Canada, and that Jewish groups were the most vocal opponents of independence for Quebec. Australian Jews led the effort to dismantle the "white Australia" policy, one reason for which was cited in an editorial in the Australian Jewish Democrat: "The strengthening of multi-cultural or diverse Australia is also our most effective insurance policy against anti-Semitism. The day Australia has a Chinese Australian Governor General I would feel more confident of my freedom to live as a Jewish Australian." Like Earl Raab writing about the United States, this Australian Jew is prepared to sacrifice the traditional culture, people, and identity of Australia to specifically Jewish interests. It would not be surprising if such an openly expressed objective did not have the opposite effect from the intended, and increase anti-Jewish sentiment.
Jews and the Left
It is well known that Jews have been traditionally associated with the left, and Prof. MacDonald investigates this connection in some detail. Historically it was understandable that Jews should support movements that advocated overthrowing the existing order. After emancipation, Jews met resistance from gentile elites who did not want to lose ground to competitors, and outsiders easily become revolutionaries. However, in Prof. MacDonald's view, Jewish commitment to leftist causes has often been motivated by the hope that communism, especially, would be a tool for combating anti-Semitism, and by expectation that universalist social solutions would be yet another way to dissolve gentile loyalties that might exclude Jews. The appeal of univeralist ideologies is tied to the implicit understanding that Jewish particularism will be exempt: "At the extreme, acceptance of a universalist ideology by gentiles would result in gentiles not perceiving Jews as in a different social category at all, while nonetheless Jews would be able to maintain a strong personal identity as Jews."
Prof. MacDonald argues that Jews had specifically Jewish reasons for supporting the Bolshevik revolution. Czarist Russia was notorious for its anti-Semitic policies and, during its early years, the Soviet Union seemed to be the promised land for Jews: it ended state anti-Semitism, tried to eradicate Christianity, opened opportunities to individual Jews, and preached a "classless" society in which Jewishness would presumably attract no negative attention. Moreover, since Marxism taught that all conflict was economic rather than ethnic, many Jews believed it heralded the end of anti-Semitism.
Prof. MacDonald emphasizes that although Jewish Communists preached both atheism and the solidarity of the world's working people, they took pains to preserve a distinct, secular Jewish identity. He reports that Lenin himself (who had one Jewish grandparent) approved the continuation of an explicitly Jewish identity under Communism, and in 1946 the Communist Party of the United States voted a resolution also supporting Jewish peoplehood in Communist countries. Thus, although Communism was supposed to be without borders or religion, Jews were confident that it would make a place for their own group identity. He writes that despite the official view that all men were to be brothers, "very few Jews lost their Jewish identity during the entire soviet era."
Jewish Communists sometimes betrayed remarkable particularism. Prof. MacDonald quotes Charles Rappoport, the French Communist leader: "The Jewish people [are] the bearer of all the great ideas of unity and human community in history... The disappearance of the Jewish people would signify the death of humankind, the final transformation of man into a wild beast." This seems to attribute to Jews an elite position incompatible with "unity and human community."
Prof. MacDonald argues that many Jews began to fall away from Communism only after Stalin showed himself to be anti-Semitic. And just as Jews had been the leading revolutionaries in anti-Semitic pre-Revolutionary Russia, Jews became the leading dissidents in an anti-Semitic Soviet Union. A similar pattern can be found in the imposed Communist governments of Eastern Europe, which were largely dominated by Jews. The majority of the leaders of the Polish Communist Party, for example, spoke better Yiddish than Polish, and they too maintained a strong Jewish identity. After the fall of Communism many stopped being Polish and emigrated to Israel.
Prof. MacDonald writes that in Bela Kun's short-lived 1919 Communist government of Hungary, 95 percent of the leaders were Jews, and that at the time of the 1956 uprising Communism was so closely associated with Jews that the rioting had almost the flavor of a pogrom. He argues that in the United States as well, the hard core among Communists and members of Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) was mainly Jewish. Here, too, a revolutionary, atheist, and universalist world-view was fully compatible with strong identification as Jews. Prof. MacDonald quotes from a study of American leftists:
"Many Communists, for example, state that they could never have married a spouse who was not a leftist. When Jews were asked if they could have married Gentiles, many hesitated, surprised by the question, and found it difficult to answer. Upon reflection, many concluded that they had always taken marriage to someone Jewish for granted." Their commitment as Jews was even more fundamental and unexamined than their commitment to the left.
Prof. MacDonald reports that many American Jews also abandoned Communism as it became increasingly anti-Semitic. For a large number, the Soviet Union's severing of diplomatic ties with Israel during the 1967 war was the last straw. A former SDS activist no doubt spoke for many when he explained, "If I must choose between the Jewish cause and a 'progressive' anti-Israel SDS, I shall choose the Jewish cause. If barricades are erected, I will fight as a Jew." According to Prof. MacDonald, American neoconservatism can also be described as a surface shift in external politics that leaves the more fundamental commitment to Jewish identity unchanged. Thus, former leftists abandoned an ideology that had turned against Israel and refashioned American conservatism into a different movement, the one unshakable theme of which was support for Israel. Neoconservatives also support high levels of immigration and were active in excluding white racial identification from the "respectable" right.
Objections
There are many possible objections to Prof. MacDonald's thesis. The first is that it is largely built on the assumption that Jews are dishonest. It is always risky to assume one understands the motives of others better than they do themselves. Jews have traditionally thought of themselves as a benevolent presence, even as a "light unto the nations" or a "chosen people." This is echoed today in the Jewish self image as champions of the excluded and the oppressed. Most of the time what passes for "social justice" has the effect of undermining the traditions and loyalties of gentile society, but are Jews deliberately undermining these things rather than righting what they perceive to be wrongs?
Prof. MacDonald concedes that many Jews are sincere in their support for liberal causes, but then escalates his indictment by arguing that "the best deceivers are those who deceive themselves." In other words, many Jews who are actually working for Jewish interests have first convinced themselves otherwise. A Jew who mainly wants America to become less white may also have convinced himself that America benefits from a multitude of cultures. Having convinced himself he can more effectively convince others.
Many Jews, Prof. MacDonald argues, are not even conscious of the extent to which their Jewishness is central to their identities or their political views. He quotes Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel on his surprise at how passionately he embraced the Israeli side during the 1967 war: "I had not known how Jewish I was." This is an arresting statement from a man who was thought to be perhaps the greatest Jewish spiritual leader of his time. And whether or not it affects their politics, Jews certainly appear to have a very vivid sense of peoplehood. Prof. MacDonald quotes theologian Eugene Borowitz as saying,"most Jews claim to be equipped with an interpersonal friend-or-foe sensing device that enables them to detect the presence of another Jew, despite heavy camouflage." Always to think in terms of "friends or foe" is no insignificant matter.
Prof. MacDonald is therefore skeptical of Jewish disavowals: "Surface declarations of a lack of Jewish identity may be highly misleading." He notes that Jewish publications write about the power and influence of American Jews in language Jews would immediately denounce as "anti-Semitic" if used by gentiles. He agrees with Joseph Sobran, who has said "they want to be Jews among themselves but resent being seen as Jews by Gentiles. They want to pursue their own distinct interests while pretending that they have no such interests..."
Prof. MacDonald argues that the success of Jewish-led intellectual movements has been possible only because their Jewish character was hidden. If multi-culturalism or mass immigration or The Authoritarian Personality had been promoted by Orthodox Jews in black coats the Jewish element would have been clear. Prof. MacDonald writes that in fact, "the Jewish political agenda was not an aspect of the theory and the theories themselves had no overt Jewish content. Gentile intellectuals approaching these theories were therefore unlikely to view them as aspects of Jewish-gentile cultural competition or as an aspect of a specifically Jewish political agenda." Prof. MacDonald also claims that Jews have often tried to conceal the Jewish character of an intellectual movement by recruiting token gentiles for visible positions as spokesmen. He writes that this tactic was so common in the American Communist Party that gentiles often saw through it and resigned.
But how can motives ever be completely known? Prof. MacDonald sets a difficult test: "The best evidence that individuals have really ceased to have a Jewish identity is if they choose a political option that they perceive as clearly not in the interest of Jews as a group. In the absence of a clearly perceived conflict with Jewish interests, it remains possible that different political choices among ethnic Jews are only differences in tactics for how best to achieve Jewish interests."
This standard may seem unduly harsh – until it is applied to white gentiles. Third-World immigration, affirmative action, anti-discrimination laws, and forced integration are clearly not in the interests of whites, yet many whites embrace them, thus demonstrating how completely they have abandoned their racial identity.
Finally, Prof. MacDonald raises the disturbing possibility that some Jews, because of centuries of conflict with gentiles, actively hate gentile society and consciously wish to destroy it: "a fundamental motivation of Jewish intellectuals involved in social criticism has simply been hatred of the gentile-dominated power structure perceived as anti-Semitic." He describes the 19th century German-Jewish poet Heinrich Heine as "using his skill, reputation and popularity to undermine the intellectual confidence of the established order."
In defense of this highly provocative view, Prof. MacDonald quotes Benjamin Disraeli on the effects of centuries of Jewish-gentile relations on Jews: "They may have become so odious and so hostile to mankind as to merit for their present conduct, no matter how occasioned, the obloquy and ill-treatment of the communities in which they dwell and with which they are scarcely permitted to mingle."
Apart from any questions of motives, however, is the question of numbers. Jews are a tiny minority in the United States and within that minority there is disagreement even on matters that clearly affect Jews. How can Jews possibly be responsible for dramatic changes in the intellectual landscape? In Prof. MacDonald's view, the explanation lies in the intelligence, energy, dedication, and cohesiveness of Jews. He attributes a great deal to the average IQ of Jews – at 115, a full standard deviation above the white gentile average – and to "their hard work and dedication, their desire to make a mark on the world, and their desire to rise in the world, engage in personal promotion, and achieve public acclaim..." He also believes Jews have worked together unfailingly on any question they consider necessary for survival: "Intellectual activity is like any other human endeavor: Cohesive groups outcompete individual strategies." He notes that there has never been a time when large numbers of white Americans favored non-white immigration; it was a cohesive, determined minority that beat down the disorganized resistance of the majority.
Prof. MacDonald believes that because of the effectiveness of some Jews, it was not even necessary that most Jews actively support anti-majoritarian movements, but that Jewish activity was still decisive. As he puts it, "Jewish-dominated intellectual movements were a critical factor (necessary condition) for the triumph of the intellectual left in late twentieth-century Western societies." This, of course, can never be tested, but there can be no doubt that American Jews have had a disproportionate effect on the American intellect. Prof. MacDonald quotes Walter Kerr, writing in 1968, to the effect that "what has happened since World War II is that the American sensibility has become part Jewish, perhaps as much Jewish as it is anything else... The literate American mind has come in some measure to think Jewishly."
Aside from the question of whether Prof. MacDonald is right is the further question of what difference it makes if he is right. If correct, his thesis certainly sheds light on the rapidity with which whites lost their will. Just a few decades ago whites were a confident race, proud of their achievements, convinced of their fitness to dominate the globe. Today they are a declining, apologetic people, ashamed of their history and not sure even of their claim to lands they have occupied for centuries. It is very rare for fundamental concepts to be stood on their heads in the course of just a generation or two, as has happened with thinking about race. Such speed suggests there has been something more than natural change.
Originally appeared in American Renaissance, June 1999, issue 54, entitled 'Cherchez le Juif.' Stanley Hornbeck is the pen name of a Washington, DC area businessman. Kevin MacDonald, The Culture of Critique: An Evolutionary Analysis of Jewish Involvement in Twentieth-Century Intellectual and Political Movements, Praeger (1998) $65.00, 379 pp.
Credit: The Heretical Press
Thursday 21 June 2012
The transience of opinion
It is never too late to give up our prejudices. No way of thinking or doing, however ancient, can be trusted without proof. What every body echoes or in silence passes by as true to-day may turn out to be falsehood to-morrow, mere smoke of opinion, which some had trusted for a cloud that would sprinkle fertilizing rain on their fields. What old people say you cannot do you try and find that you can. Old deeds for old people and new deeds for new...The greater part of what my neighbours call good I believe in my soul to be bad, and if I repent of any thing, it is very likely to be my good behavior. What demon possessed me that I behaved so well?
Henry David Thoreau
Henry David Thoreau
Tuesday 19 June 2012
Greece resents loss of independence
Divided Greece risks social explosion
Reuters report
18 June, 2012
ATHENS: Pro-bailout party New Democracy may have come first in Sunday's Greek election but the radical left anti-austerity SYRIZA bloc was celebrating like the real winner well into the warm Athens night.
The election exposed a struggling nation deeply divided over whether to implement a harsh austerity package, the price for receiving a total of 240 billion Euros in bailout money from the European Union and IMF to save its near-bankrupt economy.
"My biggest fear is of a social explosion," said a senior adviser to the country's likely next prime minister, New Democracy leader Antonis Samaras.
"If there is no change in the policy mix, we're going to have a social explosion even if you bring Jesus Christ to govern this country."
According to official figures with 99.9 per cent of the votes counted, Samaras' conservative New Democracy party won just 29.7 per cent of the vote, only 2.7 per centage points more than SYRIZA, which almost doubled its support from the previous election held on 6 May.
When the votes for Greece's other anti-bailout parties, ranging from the 'neo-nazi' Golden Dawn to the Marxist-Leninist KKE, are added to SYRIZA's tally, up to 52 per cent of Greeks cast ballots against the terms of the international deal.
New Democracy supporters had initially slumped despairing in their seats at the party's plush new headquarters as exit polls showed less than half a per centage point separating them from SYRIZA, only to cheer up as official results showing a better performance trickled in.
Even then, celebrations were muted. "What is there for us to celebrate?" a member of Samaras' inner circle said. "Our country is in such a deep crisis."
The streets of central Athens are scarred with repeated waves of protests, some hospitals are running short of vital medicines, thousands of businesses have closed, beggars and rough sleepers are multiplying and suicides are rising.
New Democracy's Samaras now faces the awkward task of convincing the centre-left PASOK movement to join a coalition charged with implementing highly unpopular spending cuts and privatisations, while the economy nosedives.
Under the terms of the international bailout, the new government must fire up to 150,000 civil servants, slash spending by 11 billion euros this month, sell off a swathe of state-owned companies, improve tax collection and open closed professions to competition.
Once Greece's ruling party, PASOK's support collapsed to just 12.3 per cent in Sunday's vote, giving the two pro-bailout parties just 40 per cent of the popular vote, not a strong mandate for austerity.
PASOK-New Democracy coalition is guaranteed a parliamentary majority thanks to a quirk of Greek electoral law which gives the winning party a bonus of 50 extra seats. But that will not win it the argument on Greece's streets.
The Greek economy is expected to shrink by 5 per cent this year after contracting 7 per cent last year and unemployment is running at almost 23 per cent. Many economists believe that the harsh austerity measures will only make matters worse in the short term.
Ominously, PASOK's first reaction to the results was to say it would support a new Samaras administration but not formally join it, hardly a recipe for stable government in a country which has had two elections in less than two months.
PASOK leader Evangelos Venizelos has previously said he would only formally join a coalition if SYRIZA did so as well, something which is politically impossible, given the radical left bloc's unstinting opposition to the austerity measures.
Greek analysts noted that SYRIZA's charismatic 37-year-old leader, former student communist Alexis Tsipras, conceded defeat quickly in a phone call to Samaras, apparently relieved he was free of the pressure to form a government and make compromises.
"From Monday we will continue the fight," Tsipras told cheering supporters in an open-air square outside Athens university. "...the next government after this one will be a left government."
"We will fight to topple these policies," the youthful crowd chanted back as loudspeakers played World War Two Greek Communist resistance songs.
Filippos Nikolopoulos, a sociology professor at Crete University and SYRIZA supporter, said that Tsipras' fans were jubilant because they had won new force and authority by increasing their share of the vote so much on Sunday.
"We want Europe, we want to cooperate," he said. "But we do not want to be subjugated by (German Chancellor) Mrs Merkel."
Stathis Stavropoulos, a newspaper cartoonist famous for his drawings depicting German officials preaching austerity at Greece as Nazi taskmasters, said the new conservative government would have the people of Greece against it from the outset.
"Our dream of European union was very different," he told Reuters. "It was a union of countries and peoples, not a union to serve banks and not a Fourth German Reich."
Using the term for a Nazi regional leader under Hitler's Reich, Stavropoulos added: "Our country is under occupation. How would you feel if they sent a Gauleiter to run your country and tell you what to do ?"
The cartoonist said he had nothing against the German people or other European nations. Indeed, he had never visited Berlin, Paris or London -- but was familiar with Moscow, Beijing and Nicaragua from his Communist activities. "The Soviet Union may have ended but not the dream of democratic communism," he sighed wistfully.
Economic Times
Reuters report
18 June, 2012
ATHENS: Pro-bailout party New Democracy may have come first in Sunday's Greek election but the radical left anti-austerity SYRIZA bloc was celebrating like the real winner well into the warm Athens night.
The election exposed a struggling nation deeply divided over whether to implement a harsh austerity package, the price for receiving a total of 240 billion Euros in bailout money from the European Union and IMF to save its near-bankrupt economy.
"My biggest fear is of a social explosion," said a senior adviser to the country's likely next prime minister, New Democracy leader Antonis Samaras.
"If there is no change in the policy mix, we're going to have a social explosion even if you bring Jesus Christ to govern this country."
According to official figures with 99.9 per cent of the votes counted, Samaras' conservative New Democracy party won just 29.7 per cent of the vote, only 2.7 per centage points more than SYRIZA, which almost doubled its support from the previous election held on 6 May.
When the votes for Greece's other anti-bailout parties, ranging from the 'neo-nazi' Golden Dawn to the Marxist-Leninist KKE, are added to SYRIZA's tally, up to 52 per cent of Greeks cast ballots against the terms of the international deal.
New Democracy supporters had initially slumped despairing in their seats at the party's plush new headquarters as exit polls showed less than half a per centage point separating them from SYRIZA, only to cheer up as official results showing a better performance trickled in.
Even then, celebrations were muted. "What is there for us to celebrate?" a member of Samaras' inner circle said. "Our country is in such a deep crisis."
The streets of central Athens are scarred with repeated waves of protests, some hospitals are running short of vital medicines, thousands of businesses have closed, beggars and rough sleepers are multiplying and suicides are rising.
New Democracy's Samaras now faces the awkward task of convincing the centre-left PASOK movement to join a coalition charged with implementing highly unpopular spending cuts and privatisations, while the economy nosedives.
Under the terms of the international bailout, the new government must fire up to 150,000 civil servants, slash spending by 11 billion euros this month, sell off a swathe of state-owned companies, improve tax collection and open closed professions to competition.
Once Greece's ruling party, PASOK's support collapsed to just 12.3 per cent in Sunday's vote, giving the two pro-bailout parties just 40 per cent of the popular vote, not a strong mandate for austerity.
PASOK-New Democracy coalition is guaranteed a parliamentary majority thanks to a quirk of Greek electoral law which gives the winning party a bonus of 50 extra seats. But that will not win it the argument on Greece's streets.
The Greek economy is expected to shrink by 5 per cent this year after contracting 7 per cent last year and unemployment is running at almost 23 per cent. Many economists believe that the harsh austerity measures will only make matters worse in the short term.
Ominously, PASOK's first reaction to the results was to say it would support a new Samaras administration but not formally join it, hardly a recipe for stable government in a country which has had two elections in less than two months.
PASOK leader Evangelos Venizelos has previously said he would only formally join a coalition if SYRIZA did so as well, something which is politically impossible, given the radical left bloc's unstinting opposition to the austerity measures.
Greek analysts noted that SYRIZA's charismatic 37-year-old leader, former student communist Alexis Tsipras, conceded defeat quickly in a phone call to Samaras, apparently relieved he was free of the pressure to form a government and make compromises.
"From Monday we will continue the fight," Tsipras told cheering supporters in an open-air square outside Athens university. "...the next government after this one will be a left government."
"We will fight to topple these policies," the youthful crowd chanted back as loudspeakers played World War Two Greek Communist resistance songs.
Filippos Nikolopoulos, a sociology professor at Crete University and SYRIZA supporter, said that Tsipras' fans were jubilant because they had won new force and authority by increasing their share of the vote so much on Sunday.
"We want Europe, we want to cooperate," he said. "But we do not want to be subjugated by (German Chancellor) Mrs Merkel."
Stathis Stavropoulos, a newspaper cartoonist famous for his drawings depicting German officials preaching austerity at Greece as Nazi taskmasters, said the new conservative government would have the people of Greece against it from the outset.
"Our dream of European union was very different," he told Reuters. "It was a union of countries and peoples, not a union to serve banks and not a Fourth German Reich."
Using the term for a Nazi regional leader under Hitler's Reich, Stavropoulos added: "Our country is under occupation. How would you feel if they sent a Gauleiter to run your country and tell you what to do ?"
The cartoonist said he had nothing against the German people or other European nations. Indeed, he had never visited Berlin, Paris or London -- but was familiar with Moscow, Beijing and Nicaragua from his Communist activities. "The Soviet Union may have ended but not the dream of democratic communism," he sighed wistfully.
Economic Times
Monday 18 June 2012
Sunday 17 June 2012
Over the Hills and Far Away (Traditional)
Hark now the drums beat up again
For all true soldier gentlemen
Then let us list and march I say
Over the hills and far away
Chorus:
Over the hills and o'er the main
To Flanders, Portugal and Spain
Queen Anne commands and we obey
Over the hills and far away
All gentlemen that have a mind
To serve a queen that's good and kind
Come list and enter into pay
Over the hills and far away
Here's forty shillings on the drum
For those who volunteer to come
With shirts and clothes and present pay
When o'er the hills and far away
Hear that brave boys, and let us go
Or else we shall be pressed you know
Then list and enter into pay
And o'er the hills and far away
The constables they search about
To find such brisk young fellows out
Then let's be volunteers I say
Over the hills and far away
Since now the French so low are brought
And wealth and honour's to be got
Who then behind would skulking stay?
Let's o'er the hills and far away
No more from sound of drum retreat
When Marlborough and Galway beat
The French and Spaniards every day
Over the hills and far away
He that is forced to go and fight
Will never get true honour by't
Whilst volunteers shall win the day
When o'er the hills and far away
What tho' our friends our absence mourn?
We all with honours shall return
And then we'll sing both night and day
Over the hills and far away
Prentice Tom may well refuse
To clean his angry master's shoes
For now he's free to sing and play
Over the hills and far away
Over rivers, bogs and springs
We all shall live as great as kings
And plunder get both night and day
Over the hills and far away
For if we go 'tis one to ten
That we return all gentlemen
Our fortune made but not from pay
Over the hills and far away
Friday 15 June 2012
The individual dies but the folk lives on for ever
One of the great mistakes made by some people in the stagnant situation that I have described is to vent their frustration at the slowness of progress by blaming the common multitude, saying of that multitude that because it is not prepared, so far, to listen to the message of its salvation it is in fact "not worth saving". The assumption here is that all we have been doing is merely for the benefit of that multitude - seen as an aggregate of individuals. This is a fundamental error. The great majority of people, of any nation and in any era, are not especially good or bad, not especially heroic or unheroic. That they may not be moved by the vision of a great ideal is something we must attribute essentially to the fact that there are not mobilized, in the presentation of that ideal, the great resources of propaganda that are necessary to promote it. When we say that what we are doing is "for the British people", what we mean is that we are working for the British people as a national entity, as a strictly impersonal concept - and one which is timeless; that is to say we are working for the British people of the past and of the future as much as of the present: we are working for an ethnic group rather than just for so many millions of individuals who happen to be living in the same country at the present moment. Here the English language is a little deficient; whereas in German there are two distinct words, in one case the word volk - meaning an ethnic, racial and national group, and in the other case leute - meaning people as in any collection of individuals, in English we talk of 'people' in both contexts, which can be confusing. Perhaps we should revive the old English word folk, as a term synonymous with nation.
But, more than this, we are working for an ideal and a vision which far transcend 'people', taken at the level of the average individual. That ideal and vision, because of their greatness, are always worthy of our highest dedication and sacrifice, quite regardless of how 'people', at any one juncture of time or place, may measure up to them. Such ideals and visions are, in this world, only ever truly understood by a few. It is for those few to acquire the machinery whereby an ideal and vision can be communicated down to the ordinary masses in language by which they can understand them in terms of those things that affect their own ordinary lives. Before this task is accomplished, it is futile to expect the masses to respond to any great message.
As long as we begin our mission by taking the ordinary man or woman in the street exactly for what they are, not expecting from them any more than they are able to give, and recognizing that they will only ever be moved by the mighty currents of affairs set in motion by active minorities, we will not be despondent when they fail to heed our call, and we will not take this as a signal to give up the struggle.
Tyndall J, The Eleventh Hour, Third Edition 1998, Welling: Albion Press, pp 489-90
But, more than this, we are working for an ideal and a vision which far transcend 'people', taken at the level of the average individual. That ideal and vision, because of their greatness, are always worthy of our highest dedication and sacrifice, quite regardless of how 'people', at any one juncture of time or place, may measure up to them. Such ideals and visions are, in this world, only ever truly understood by a few. It is for those few to acquire the machinery whereby an ideal and vision can be communicated down to the ordinary masses in language by which they can understand them in terms of those things that affect their own ordinary lives. Before this task is accomplished, it is futile to expect the masses to respond to any great message.
As long as we begin our mission by taking the ordinary man or woman in the street exactly for what they are, not expecting from them any more than they are able to give, and recognizing that they will only ever be moved by the mighty currents of affairs set in motion by active minorities, we will not be despondent when they fail to heed our call, and we will not take this as a signal to give up the struggle.
Tyndall J, The Eleventh Hour, Third Edition 1998, Welling: Albion Press, pp 489-90
Wednesday 13 June 2012
Only the brand name remains, gone is the winning product
Our first task after forming the new movement in 1982 was to establish its name. Up till then the name of the National Front had been the one synonymous with our politics nationwide. There were some who believed that because of these factors the surviving remnant of the NF would be bound to emerge again as the dominant force in British Nationalism. These people mistook shadow for substance: they imagined that it was the Front's well-known name that had created its former strength, and that therefore that name would for ever remain a source of such strength. In fact they had got things entirely the wrong way round. The fame attached to the name of the National Front in the 1970s was wholly the result of the public impact made at the time by its growth and success, and that growth and success were above all the work of certain people, that is to say a team of capable and energetic individuals who had put the party on the map. The name had been made by the party's progress, not the reverse.
Now that the people who had been the architects of the Front's success in the 1970s had, for the most part, severed their connections with it, the idea that its impetus could be revived and then sustained just by its name was a sad illusion. Only the brand name remained; the winning product had gone.
Gradually, we started to succeed in winning recognition for the name of the British National Party by forcing our way into the public eye by a series of bold activities. Our first chance to do this came with the general election of 1983.
When this election was called, the BNP was barely more than a year old, and considerably smaller in membership and resources than the National Front had been when it took on the (up till then) unprecedented challenge of fighting 50-plus seats in the election of February 1974. We decided nevertheless that this somehow had to be done. Our reward would be to qualify for broadcasting time, and this, more than anything else, would help to make the name of the new party known to the British public. It was done - by a miracle of determination, effort and sacrifice. As expected, our votes in the election were not high, but we had made the first important move towards putting the British National Party on the map.
Tyndall J, The Eleventh Hour, Third Edition, 1998, Albion Press: Welling, p 490
Now that the people who had been the architects of the Front's success in the 1970s had, for the most part, severed their connections with it, the idea that its impetus could be revived and then sustained just by its name was a sad illusion. Only the brand name remained; the winning product had gone.
Gradually, we started to succeed in winning recognition for the name of the British National Party by forcing our way into the public eye by a series of bold activities. Our first chance to do this came with the general election of 1983.
When this election was called, the BNP was barely more than a year old, and considerably smaller in membership and resources than the National Front had been when it took on the (up till then) unprecedented challenge of fighting 50-plus seats in the election of February 1974. We decided nevertheless that this somehow had to be done. Our reward would be to qualify for broadcasting time, and this, more than anything else, would help to make the name of the new party known to the British public. It was done - by a miracle of determination, effort and sacrifice. As expected, our votes in the election were not high, but we had made the first important move towards putting the British National Party on the map.
Tyndall J, The Eleventh Hour, Third Edition, 1998, Albion Press: Welling, p 490
Sixty seconds to save Marriage
Dear Marriage Supporter
There are just four days left to tell the Government that you oppose the redefinition of marriage. At midnight on Thursday (June 14) the public consultation on rewriting the meaning of marriage will close.
Please act now.
Tell the Government not to redefine marriage.
Use our quick, simple response form.
Don’t let time run out. Sending a response only takes 60 seconds using our fast and easy web form. Your response could save marriage for generations to come.
What will marriage mean when your children or grandchildren walk down the aisle? Will it mean what it means today, or will it mean something different?
Tell the Government not to meddle with marriage.
Yours sincerely
Colin Hart
Campaign Director
Coalition for Marriage
There are just four days left to tell the Government that you oppose the redefinition of marriage. At midnight on Thursday (June 14) the public consultation on rewriting the meaning of marriage will close.
Please act now.
Tell the Government not to redefine marriage.
Use our quick, simple response form.
Don’t let time run out. Sending a response only takes 60 seconds using our fast and easy web form. Your response could save marriage for generations to come.
What will marriage mean when your children or grandchildren walk down the aisle? Will it mean what it means today, or will it mean something different?
Tell the Government not to meddle with marriage.
Yours sincerely
Colin Hart
Campaign Director
Coalition for Marriage
Saturday 9 June 2012
Elizabeth addresses her troops at Tilbury
My loving people, we have been persuaded by some that are careful of our safety, to take heed how we commit ourselves to armed multitudes for fear of treachery; but I assure you, I do not desire to live to distrust my faithful and loving people. Let tyrants fear! I have always so behaved myself, that, under God, I have placed my chiefest strength and safeguard in the loyal hearts and good will of my subjects; and, therefore, I am come amongst you, as you see, at this time, not for my recreation and disport, but being resolved, in the midst and heat of the battle, to live or die amongst you all, to lay down for my God, for my kingdom, and for my people, my honour and my blood, even in the dust. I know I have the body but of a weak and feeble woman, but I have the heart and stomach of a king, and of a king of England too; and think it foul scorn that Parma, or Spain, or any prince of Europe, should dare to invade the borders of my realm; to which, rather than any dishonour shall grow by me, I myself will take up arms, I myself will be your general, judge, and rewarder of every one of your virtues in the field. I know already for your forwardness you have deserved rewards and crowns; and we do assure you, on the word of a prince, they shall be duly paid you. In the meantime, my lieutenant-general shall be in my stead, than whom never prince commanded a more noble or worthy subject, not doubting but by your obedience to my general, by your concord in the camp, and your valour in the field, we shall shortly have a famous victory over those enemies of my God, of my kingdom, and of my people.
Sir ES Creasy, Fifteen Decisive Battles Of The World, Forty-Fourth Edition, London: Simpkin, Marshall, Hamilton, Kent & Co, pp 249-50
Friday 1 June 2012
You could Lerna lot at this meeting
The Kent Club
An informal Club that meets regularly – open to all Patriots and Independent Thinkers
West Kent Meeting
Saturday, 16th June, 1pm
Admission: £5
Several speakers including:
Peter Rushton
‘The many-headed Hydra: Our Nation under Threat’
Peter Rushton is a formidable speaker who frequently appears as a political affairs expert on Satellite and Cable TV stations including ‘ Russia Today’. He will be talking about the multi-faceted threats that face our Nation today.
For more details
Tel : Jez on 07732 485021
Email: jezenglish@yahoo.co.uk
An informal Club that meets regularly – open to all Patriots and Independent Thinkers
West Kent Meeting
Saturday, 16th June, 1pm
Admission: £5
Several speakers including:
Peter Rushton
‘The many-headed Hydra: Our Nation under Threat’
Peter Rushton is a formidable speaker who frequently appears as a political affairs expert on Satellite and Cable TV stations including ‘ Russia Today’. He will be talking about the multi-faceted threats that face our Nation today.
For more details
Tel : Jez on 07732 485021
Email: jezenglish@yahoo.co.uk
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