Perceptions of Jewish History Drive the War of the Hostile Elite Against the Trump Presidency
January 29, 2019
16 Comments/in Featured Articles, Jewish Support for Multiculturalism, Jews as
a Hostile Elite /
by Kevin MacDonald
I begin with a thumbnail sketch of Jewish perceptions of their own history as a prologue to thinking about why a long-term goal of the organized Jewish community has been to make alliances with other groups with grievances against the traditional American nation. Jewish perceptions of their own history reflect traditional Jewish fear and loathing of outgroups with power, particularly given their perceptions of their “lachrymose history” among Europeans as nothing but a vale of tears.
This lachrymose view has major implications for understanding contemporary Jewish political behavior in the Diaspora. It proposes that, beginning with an unfortunate theological belief (that Jews killed God), Jews have been passive, innocent victims of marauding non-Jews. The lesson that Jews learned from the Middle Ages carries down to today: [According to Norman Podhoretz,” the Jews
“emerged from the Middle Ages knowing for a certainty that — individual exceptions duly noted — the worst enemy they had in the world was Christianity: the churches in which it was embodied — whether Roman Catholic or Russian Orthodox or Protestant — and the people who prayed in and were shaped by them. It was a knowledge that Jewish experience in the ages to come would do very little, if indeed anything at all, to help future generations to forget” (Review of Norman Podhoretz’s Why Are Jews Liberals?, p. 29).
These perceptions are fundamental to Jewish education and to Jewish identity. Jews therefore—far more than non-Jewish Europeans—have an overwhelming sense of their own history. From far left to the neoconservative right, Jews socialized in the Jewish community imbibe a history of what they see as vicious persecution of blameless Jews in the West going back even prior to Christianity—to the Roman destruction of the Second Temple in 70 A.D.
Within this worldview, the Middle Ages were a period of completely unjustified expulsions from many areas on Western Europe, motivated not at all by Jewish behavior but by vicious, fundamentally anti-Semitic Christian theology. The Enlightenment resulted in “Jewish emancipation” in the sense that the paradigm had shifted from a corporate Christendom with its anti-Jewish theology to an individualist model of society where each citizen was to be stripped of group allegiances.
Jews were welcomed into these newly reconstructed Western societies, but the tensions remained. Jews were now accused of remaining Jews in societies of individualists—of remaining a “state within a state,” failing to shed their ethnic identities, and continuing to engage in ethnic networking, not only in business and professional relationships, but also establishing organizations in the West dedicated to helping Jews in foreign lands, at times against the perceived interests of the nations they were residing in.
Such trends would have been little commented on if, say, Jews had the same lower-class, uneducated social profile as gypsies. The problem was that with the rise of individualism and free markets in the West, concerns about Jewish group cohesion occurred in the context of an astonishingly rapid ascent of Jews to all of the elite institutions of society—media ownership and production, universities, the professions, and a wide range of businesses, the latter generating great personal wealth and the financial wherewithal to influence the political process and culture generally. All this generated resentment, particularly given perceptions that the Jewish influence on culture was negative and deleterious to the interests of the rest of the population.
This lachrymose view of Jewish history in the West is then seen to culminate in an attempted genocide perpetrated by a modern, technologically advanced European power that was nominally at least Christian. And in the U.S., there was the added resentment that the immigration restriction law of 1924 was motivated mainly by anti-Jewish attitudes—mainly that Jewish immigrants were imbued with radicalism and pro-communist sympathies in a period of deep concern about the Bolshevik revolution—a view that I find essentially accurate (here, p. 271ff).
Given that Jews have been only a tiny percentage of national populations throughout European history, anti-Semitism at the hands of an overwhelming majority would seem to be a chronic, intractable problem. However, the Jewish solution, beginning early in the twentieth century (when Jews organized and largely staffed the NAACP), was to make alliances with other aggrieved groups. Even during the Congressional debate over the 1924 immigration law (p. 244ff), Jews advocated immigration from all groups and promoted an image of America as a proposition nation with a much larger, ethnically diverse population dedicated to various abstractions rather than any ethnic identity rooted in Europeans.
Jewish power expanded greatly after World War II and there was a drastic decline in negative attitudes about Jews. Within the Jewish community, the post-World War II intellectual scene changed also with the influence of the Frankfurt School which revolutionized Marxist ideology that had been dominant among Jewish intellectuals. Leftist intellectuals had been enthralled by orthodox, class struggle Marxism, but the Frankfurt School jettisoned the centrality of class struggle in favor of thinking in terms of race and ethnicity. This was because orthodox Marxist ideology couldn’t explain the rise of National Socialism given that the working class voted for Hitler. Within the new perspective, the enemy was homogeneously White societies—societies that may seem benevolent to Jews at particular times but that may turn on them at any time.
It wasn’t long before Jewish activism at all levels, from intellectual magazines to popular culture, became imbued with messages aimed at pathologizing White identification, delegitimizing White interests, and portraying immigration of non-Whites as a moral imperative. A watershed event in this trajectory, of course, was the 1965 immigration act which overturned the ethnic status quo mandated by the 1924 law in favor of admitting people from all over the world. Jewish activists played a critical role in the passage of this law, both in Congress and the Executive branch (as also noted by historians Hugh Davis Graham and Otis Graham). The law by itself would not have rapidly changed the ethnic balance of America—and indeed it was advertised as not changing the ethnic balance—because the numbers of immigrants allowed was quite small. However, in subsequent years activists have gradually upped the numbers so that we now have well over 1 million non-White legal immigrants per year pouring into the country. Needless to say, the ethnic balance of the U.S. has been dramatically affected by these developments.
In conjunction with promoting immigration, Jewish groups have cultivated alliances with other identifiable groups of Americans that have (and are encouraged to have) grievances against traditional American culture. This in effect has created a “coalition of the aggrieved” with ever increasing political and cultural power. This coalition includes not only the myriad ethnic identities of post-1965 America, but also includes sexual non-conformists—LBBTxyz. Heterosexual women have also been targeted with an ideology that traditional American culture was sexist and misogynist.
This coalition of the aggrieved has become a prominent part of universities, particularly departments of social sciences and humanities. Historically departments of ethnic and gender studies, and diversity recruits in other departments—all of which are firmly on the left—proliferated after the rise of Jews to positions of power and influence in elite universities. Since the academic world operates in a top-down manner, Jewish concerns and interests were soon felt in all areas of the university.
The results of this sea change are affecting every facet of American life, beginning with projections that Whites will be a minority with a couple decades. But already we see the effects in the dramatic upsurge in political polarization brought about by the proliferation of different racial/ethnic and gender-based identity groups that now form the basis of the Democratic Party.
The parties have been dividing along racial lines for decades—the racialization of American politics. But Trump’s election seems have put people over the edge, resulting in widespread Trump Derangement Syndrome. This political polarization—fundamentally racial/ethnic and gender identity groups—has greatly accelerated since Donald Trump’s election.
Trump’s election was mightily opposed by the entire Jewish intellectual spectrum, from far left to neoconservative right fundamentally because of his comments and proposed policies on diversity issues. For left-leaning Jews (the great majority), this is no surprise, but it was also a mainstay of the neocon #NeverTrump movement and their “angst about a fascist America.”
A commitment to immigration and ethnic, religious, and gender diversity has been a bedrock of Jewish political and intellectual activism for decades. But right from the beginning, Trump’s comments and proposed policies were potent triggers for anyone with such commitments, beginning with his comments on illegal immigrant criminals and his proposed immigration policy—which Ann Coulter called “the greatest document since the Magna Carta,” and which included cuts in legal immigration and ending birthright citizenship.
Trump was quickly (and accurately) branded as a populist in the media, and comparisons with Hitler were rife. As I noted previously,
If there has been one constant threat of Jewish intellectual and political activity since World War II, it has been to oppose populism. Obviously, they much prefer an oligarchy of the wealthy able to dominate media messages and playing an indispensable component of the donor class of both Republicans and Democrats.
And oligarchy is what they have gotten: The idea that Western societies are democracies is an illusion. In fact, an oligarchic model fits U.S. politics much better than a democratic model (see Martin Gilens and Benjamin Page in Perspectives on Politics, Sept. 2014, “Testing Theories of American Politics: Elites, Interest Groups, and Average Citizens“).The Trump candidacy is the most hopeful sign that the present oligarchy could be circumvented at the presidential level.
Racial demographics indicate that without drastic changes, America will be minority White in the coming decades However, the political racial tipping point is likely to occur long before a White minority is achieved because of the racial polarization noted above. Indeed, the tipping point may already have occurred. As Peter Brimelow notes,
Despite Hillary Clinton’s visible failure to be Barack Obama, her Presidential vote was a record 45.8% non-white—continuing a dramatic and unbroken non-white surge that goes back now for 30 years. Less well known: factoring in the share of the Democratic vote that was Jewish (we estimate 4.4%) and homosexual (3.4%), 2016 was the first election in which a majority (52.7%) of the Democrat vote was not made up what might be called, for want of a better term, normal American whites.
And this coalition of aggrieved racial/ethnic and gender non-conformists does not include groups such as Middle Easterners who are counted in the census as white. This coalition can only expand in the future as a million plus legal non-White immigrants continue to crowd our shores.
Now imagine yourself as part of the mainstream Jewish left—the 80% of Jews who voted for Hillary Clinton. This new majority of the Democrat Party is indeed the coalition of the aggrieved, the creation of which, as noted above, has been the centerpiece of Jewish activism for over a century.
Imagine the frustration. All the polls were predicting a huge win for Clinton and likely Democrat control of Congress. With a Clinton victory, Democrats, along with the many pro-immigration Republicans, could pass an immigration amnesty/surge bill along the lines of the notorious “Gang of Eight” bill from 2013. Such a bill would accelerate the replacement of White America—it would likely more than double legal immigration and amnesty millions of illegals.
A Clinton victory would also have resulted in at least one Supreme Court appointment—for Antonin Scalia’s seat—that would tip the balance to the left and likely result in gutting the First Amendment. Intellectual rationales for curtailing First Amendment freedoms, and in particular speech critical of the multicultural ideal, are already common in liberal academic circles (see Jared Taylor’s review of Jeremy Waldron’s The Harm in Hate Speech), awaiting only a liberal majority on the Supreme Court.
The architects of coalition of the aggrieved had victory in sight.
But it was not to be—at least not yet. Trump’s hostile hijacking of the GOP nomination and his victory in November meant that Republicans controlled the presidency and both Houses of Congress. The frustration among the architects of the coalition of the aggrieved went through the roof.
The organized Jewish community, Jewish-owned media, and Jewish producers of media content had consciously determined that immigration policy (as well as the impending minority status of white Americans) be kept out of public debate had very real concerns. What if, rather than immigration policy remaining on autopilot (as it would have with a Jeb vs. Hillary election), it became the most important issue for a solid majority of white Americans as they were exposed to constant news stories about building the wall, immigrant crime, drugs pouring over the southern border, travel bans from terrorism-exporting countries, and proposals to end birthright citizenship? (We already see an increase among White voters in the importance they attach to immigration.) The current elite consensus on immigration might have been threatened beyond repair.
And what if Trump managed to make good on his campaign promises—promises that in effect would have placed a major damper on the ascendancy of the coalition by severely limiting legal immigration, ending birthright citizenship, and deporting illegals? Who knows what might happen if such policies were enacted? White America may come to accept—far more than they already have—the idea that the immigration onslaught is indeed a threat. And would an immigration-conscious white America desert the Democrats? Indeed, Brimelow asks, whether whites would “suddenly stampede for the exit [of the Democrat Party], a phenomenon well-documented in neighborhoods and schools?”
The massive frustration engendered by Trump’s election has led to two years of unprecedented hostility to a sitting president. Everything possible had to be done to prevent the worst fears of the Jewish intellectual and political activists from becoming reality—a fascist America dominated by Trump-Hitler (as recounted in my VDARE series on the 2016 election). As I noted in the last of these articles (August, 2016):
Obviously, this has not relented.
https://www.theoccidentalobserver.ne...ump-presidency
Originally Posted by Horn
Posting Permissions
![[Most Recent Quotes from www.kitco.com]](http://www.kitconet.com/images/sp_en_6.gif)
Reply With Quote