Sometimes, "They're all the same and are different from us" is pretty much correct: We're told in sociology class that there is tremendous diversity within any minority group, and it is a serious error to believe otherwise. And when you calculate the mean, the average minority is going to turn out to be the same as the average majority individual. In fact, you don't need to collect data and calculate the mean: fervent faith is all that is needed.
Jews are an example of this. There are even well-known expressions like, "Two Jews, three opinions," and, "Jews are just like everyone else, only more so."
Well, it is better to take an empirical approach to the matter, because it turns out that on some questions, Jews aren't that diverse, nor are they like the average.
Here are the results (GSS data):
Percent in favor of abortion for any reason
Jews 77.8
Extreme liberals 62.0
Percent who agree that a person should get a police permit to own a gun
Jews 93.2
Extreme liberals 81.2
Percent who agree that the U.S. should take an active part in the world
Jews 85.9
All Americans 67.2
Percent who really like Israel
Jews 90.4
All Americans 34.0
Percent who agree that immigrants improve America by bringing new ideas and culture
Jews 90.6
All Americans 57.0
Are gun owners mentally ill?
Some anti-gun people think owning a gun is a sign of some kind of mental abnormality. According to General Social Survey data, gun owners ...
The immigration one disappoints me, but from a historical perspective, the "police permit to own a gun" is much sadder. I'd love to get a copy of some of the Weimar Republic's gun control laws and regulation and send them out to the ol' GSS for some opinions. Or better yet, send part of the winnings from my soon-to-be-found winning lottery ticket (right 'round the corner!) to Jews for the Preservation of Firearms Ownership for its education campaign.
ReplyDeleteI decided to cross-index GUNLAW (row) with ETH1 (column) did some sense of the culprits in the nationwide epidemic of support for draconian gun legislation.
ReplyDeleteI would also like to note that I am completely objective and neutral on this question and would not DREAM of having an opinion myself. :)
Rates of YES on "Would you favor or oppose a law which would require a person to obtain a police permit before he or she could buy a gun?"
Overall - 79.3%
The extreme liberals aren't much outside the mainstream here.
Selected countries (there were 37 countries and some more categories, so I'll just pick highlights):
Netherlands - 68.5% (the low)
American Indian - 70.2
England & Wales - 75.9
Germany - 76.1
Spain - 80.2
Africa - 83.1
American only - 83.7
Poland* - 84.4
Mexico - 85.2
Italy - 87.4
Lithuania* - 87.4
Russia* - 88.7
Romania - 96.7 (the high)
I starred the countries I believe most Jews arrived from, but take that with a grain of salt because it's a guess.
(I don't know what the "America only" column is for exactly - I suppose it is for caucasoid folks who can't or won't say where their folks are from. This is perfectly logical if, say, you have eight great grandparents each from a different European (or any) country. More likely, I suppose, it's when you don't know where you grandparents are from. But I suppose it could be chosen by anyone.)
Some analysis:
Indigenous Americans don't like the idea of having to jump through government hoops before they arm themselves. Can't say I'm surprised.
Folks from more Southern places like gun control better. This is because, of course, in the hot sun people who haven't gotten checked out by the cops will often go nuts and try to cool themselves down by shooting large bottles filled with water at close range. But seriously I have no idea.
Folks from the ol' Soviet bloc like gun control. Got no tale, nightingale.
People from Calvinist Scotland and the Netherlands, and Puritan England, and Lutheran Denmark and Sweden (basically the places modern leftism is supposed to have originated) don't like gun control. Yet again I have no explanation.
BUT, I also will rapidly concede that the gun control issue is very much urban / rural. When urban types think of someone who may own a gun they picture their lunatic neighbor who plays Wii at ear-splitting volumes ... also tends to drool and leave pizza boxes in the hall. Rural types know their neighbors by name and warn each other when they need a firearm to dispatch one of those raccoons what's always stealing the chickens.
So, what we're mainly seeing here is that cities have a much bigger proportion of recent(er) immigrants than the countryside does. Plausible?
(As far as the "Northern-descended folks don't like gun control as much" thesis goes, the HGUNLAW seems to back this up. There was even a group which, as a whole, opposed the new gun control measure - Dutch-Americans - though the N was very small.)
People from Calvinist Scotland and the Netherlands, and Puritan England, and Lutheran Denmark and Sweden (basically the places modern leftism is supposed to have originated) don't like gun control. Yet again I have no explanation.
ReplyDeleteExplanation: (1) Mencius Moldbug's suppositions have little connection to reality. Anyone with an objective frame of mind and at least a moderately firm grasp of history would notice that Karl Marx and others of like background loom rather larger than Cotton Mather in the genealogy of modern leftism.
(2) The contrast in Jewish attitudes toward gun control in Israel and the U.S. suggests that ethnic paranoaia is one attribute Jews aren't short on:
E) In America, American Jewry is in the vanguard in agitating for stricter gun control laws. Per Israel, American Jewry lobbies for more billions from the U.S. Government for the Israeli military: hence, more guns, more biological weapons, more nuclear bombs, and more Jews walking around with automatic rifles strapped around their shoulders when they go shopping.
Jewish support for gun control simply implies they fear the American people more than the American government. More:
Jewish Involvement in U.S. Gun Control Actions, 1968-Present
This information shows that, contrary to some claims, Jews have led the movement to ban guns in America. ----
1968: The Gun Control Act of 1968 comes from Jewish Rep. Emanuel Celler's House bill H.R. 17735. It expands legislation already attempted by non-Jew Sen. Thomas Dodd. America's biggest and most far-reaching gun law came from a Jew.
1988: Senate bill S. 1523 is sponsored by Jewish Senator Howard Metzenbaum. It proposes legislation turning every violation of the Gun Control Act of 1968 into a RICO predicate offense, allowing a gun owner to be charged with federal racketeering offenses.
1993: Senate Bill S.653 is sponsored by Sen. Howard Metzenbaum. It bans specific semiautomatic rifles, but also gives the Secretary of the Treasury the power to add any semiautomatic firearm to the list at a later date.
Feb. 1994: The Brady Law, which requires waiting periods to buy handguns, becomes effective. Senator Metzenbaum wrote the Brady Bill. Metzenbaum sponsored the bill in the Senate. The sponsor of the bill in the House was Jewish Rep. Charles Schumer.
September, 1994: The Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act of 1994 goes into effect, including a provision that bans the manufacture and possession of semiautomatic rifles described as "assault weapons." [Note: true assault weapons are fully automatic, not semiautomatic]. That gun-ban provision was authored in the Senate by Jewish Senator Dianne Feinstein and authored in the House by Senator Schumer.
Sept. 1996: The Lautenberg Domestic Confiscation provision becomes law. It is part of a larger ominibus apropriations bill. It was sponsored by Jewish Senator Frank Lautenberg. It bans people convicted of misdemeanor domestic violence from EVER owning a gun.
1997: Senate Bill S. 54, the Federal Gang Violence Act, proposes much harsher sentences for people violating minor gun laws, including mandatory prison sentences and forfeiture of property. It was introduced by Dianne Feinstein, among others. It returns the idea of turning every violation of the Gun Control Act of 1968 into a RICO predicate offense.
2000: While not a bill or law per se, the Bell Campaign sponsors the Million Mom March anti-gun rally/movement. The Bell Campaign was funded by the Goldman Fund, a Jewish philanthropy.
May, 2000: Senate Bill S. 2515, Firearm Licensing and Record of Sale Act of 2000, is submitted by Senators Feinstein, Jewish Senator Barbara Boxer, Sen. Lautenberg and Sen. Schumer. It was a plan for a national firearms licensing system.
January, 2001: Senate Bill S.25, Firearm Licensing and Record of Sale Act of 2001, is sponsored by Feinstein, Schumer, and Boxer. It is a nation-wide gun registration plan [apparently there were 2 versions of that Firearm Licensing and Record of Sale Act bill].
May, 2003: Senators Feinstein, Schumer, Boxer and others introduce legislation that would reauthorize the 1994 federal assault weapons ban, and, close a loophole in the law that allows large-capacity ammunition magazines to be imported into the U.S. The ban is scheduled to expire in September, 2004.
"Mencius Moldbug's suppositions have little connection to reality."
ReplyDeleteMoldbug is to a certain extent correct to assign the origins of modern leftism to the Northeast, though I wouldn't go so far back as to blame the Puritans.
Modern American leftism has its origins in the old progressive and New Deal eras, and these were for the most part WASP-New Englander dominated.
For example, the reason blank slate scientific theories such as Boasian anthropology and Watson-Skinner behaviourist psychology took off among social scientists living in the progressive and New Deal ereas was because blank slate ideology allowed progressives and New Dealers to justify all sorts of government interventions to mold a newer and better society of people.
Sam Francis also found the Progressives and New Dealers as key to getting the modern leftist state off the ground:
http://www.amren.com/ar/2003/07/
Sociologist and historian E. Digby Baltzell in his classic work, The Protestant Establishment, also discussed the importance of Boas as well as of John B. Watson, founder of behaviorist psychology, and his brother-in-law, New Deal Interior Secretary Harold C. Ickes, who was so solicitous of blacks that he was sometimes called the “Secretary for Negro Affairs.” “It is important to see,” Baltzell wrote (p. 271), “that the New Deal’s efforts to change the economic and cultural environment, largely through legislating greater equality of conditions between classes of men, were a reflection of the whole intellectual climate of opinion at the time. In almost every area of intellectual endeavor — in the theories of crime, in law, in religion, and in the arts — there was general agreement as to the sickness of the bourgeois society and the need for environmental reform.”
Prof. Farron describes the reforms of the Progressive and New Deal eras as consisting of “direct election of senators, referendum and recall at the state and municipal level” and “social security [and] the National Labor Relations Act.” These were certainly reforms of those eras, but much of their theoretical rationalization as well as that of the many other measures supported by reformers in these periods was grounded in the environmentalism advanced not only by Boas and Watson, but also by even earlier environmentalists such as Charles H. Cooley, Lester Frank Ward, John Dewey, and Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. As Baltzell also writes (p. 162), “All were opposed to racism, Social Darwinism, imperialism, and all forms of hereditary determinism; and all assumed the malleability of human nature which was capable of responding to improved social conditions,” and (quoting Dewey), “there must be a change in objective arrangements and institutions; we must work on the environment, not merely in the hearts of men.”
Samuel Francis, Arlington, Va.
It is correct to be skeptical of the "Puritanism became New Dealism became postmodern progressivism" thesis. I say skeptical rather than dismissive because I think the thesis should be ruminated on. In my estimation, the thesis is not mostly true - Puritanism is not as big an influence on modern leftism as is Marxism, internationalism, certain kinds of nationalism, etc. I would say, however, that the thesis is surprisingly true if you believe the leftist legend that leftists are everything good and true and pure, and Puritans are everything bad and nasty and crummy, and thus that leftism and Puritanism are opposites.
ReplyDeleteI used to believe that as a teenager but when I dug a little deeper, I found there were a whole lot of people who became leftists because their parents' universalist ideology didn't seem pure (read Pure) enough. They talk about sexual conservatism exactly the way Puritans used to talk about sex. So for me, the connection between Puritanism and leftism is more an amusing metaphor than anything else.
As far as actual history goes, I'm pretty ignorant of connections between, say, the Church of England and the Fabian Society or between the Evangelic (Lutheran) Churches and Scandinavian social democracy. My guess is that the vaguely or overtly Protestant flavor of leftism in NW Europe made it comparatively libertarian and less susceptible to Marxist influence. At some point I'll formulate some sort of question which could shed more light on that blob of vagueness. :) In any case, it's important to note that America, diverse as it is, will have a fairly diverse left wing, producing "left libertarian" states like Vermont (where they elect a socialist to Congress and don't require permits carry handguns concealed) and "centrist statist" states further South (where "socialist" is a dirty word but you have to get a permit to brush your teeth on Sundays).
Apropos of the Scandinavia thing, it pleases me greatly that Great Social Democracies of the north side of Europe tend to more pro-gun than the rest. I like to tell my lefty gunphobic acquaintances about Finnish moose rifles, and all the lodges filled with antlers I remember on a trip to Sweden I took as a kid. Guns all over the walls, the whole bit. I think American leftists tend to think northern Europe is like Greenwich Village with different accents; I think it's more like Alberta with a higher population density.
Modern American leftism has its origins in the old progressive and New Deal eras, and these were for the most part WASP-New Englander dominated.
ReplyDeleteAre you on drugs? New England is the region where Roosevelt and the New Deal were least popular.
The 1932 election brought about major shifts in voting behavior, and became a permanent realignment, though some scholars point to the off-year election of 1934 as even more decisive in stabilizing the coalition. Roosevelt set up his New Deal forged a coalition of Big City machines, labor unions, liberals, ethnic and racial minorities (especially Catholics, Jews and African Americans,) and Southern whites.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Deal_coalition
This sort of basic ignorance of historical fact seems to be a prerequisite for being a follower of Moldbug.
Let's look at some of the names mentioned in your post.
Not Yankees:
- Franz Boas: German Jew
- John B. Watson: "Watson was raised in Greenville, South Carolina and attended Furman University. "
- Harold LeClair Ickes: "Born near Altoona, Pennsylvania. Ickes moved to Chicago at the age of 16 and attended Englewood High School there. After graduating, he worked his way through the University of Chicago, finishing with an B.A. in 1897."
Yankees:
- Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.: "It is better for all the world, if instead of waiting to execute degenerate offspring for crime or to let them starve for their imbecility, society can prevent those who are manifestly unfit from continuing their kind . . . three generations of imbeciles are enough." Not quite what I would call an "environmentalist".
- John Dewey: At last we come to a New Englander who shows noticeably in the firmament of modern leftism. Shockingly -- since New England is known to all 12 UR readers as the wellspring of all leftism -- Dewey, like Marx, happened to be greatly influenced by Hegel. Even more saddeningly, I am unable to think of any even half-plausible sophistry with which to blame Hegel on Calvinism.
Yankees not mentioned in your post:
Charles B. Davenport
Henry Fairfield Osborn
Francis Amasa Walker
William Z. Ripley
Lothrop Stoddard
Henry Goddard
David Starr Jordan
Calvin Coolidge
Henry Cabot Lodge
Carleton Coon
Carleton Putnam
William B. Shockley
etc.
"Are you on drugs? New England is the region where Roosevelt and the New Deal were least popular."
ReplyDeleteThat's because the Northeast and the WASP upper class was heavily Republican at the time.
What I meant wasn't that all Yankees were progressives but that the progressive movement leadership was strongly Yankee.
Furthermore, my main point (and I think Moldbug's point) is that the modern social/economic engineering state's foundations lies in the Progressive and New Deal eras.
This is why Keynesian economics, behaviourist psychology and Boasian cultural anthropology became so influential - all of these three and related academic fields allowed the progressives and New Dealers to justify heavy government intervention into the economy, culture and society.
The whole leftist experiment going back to the French Revolution has been built around the idea that mankind's nature can been be changed and the progressives and New Dealers picked up on any scientific field that justified human malleability.
And if you don't think Moldbug is correct in seeing heavy Protestant overtones in the Progressive movement then I suggest you start reading historians other than Kevin MacDonald.
See Murray Rothbard:
http://www.lewrockwell.com/rothbard/rothbard28.html
Progressivism was, to a great extent, the culmination of the pietist Protestant political impulse, the urge to regulate every aspect of American life, economic and moral – even the most intimate and crucial aspects of family life. But it was also a curious alliance of a technocratic drive for government regulation, the supposed expression of "value-free science," and the pietist religious impulse to save America – and the world – by state coercion. Often both pietistic and scientific arguments would be used, sometimes by the same people, to achieve the old pietist goals. Thus, prohibition would be argued for on religious as well as on alleged scientific or medicinal grounds. In many cases, leading progressive intellectuals at the turn of the twentieth century were former pietists who went to college and then transferred to the political arena, their zeal for making over mankind, as a "salvation by science." And then the Social Gospel movement managed to combine political collectivism and pietist Christianity in the same package. All of these were strongly interwoven elements in the progressive movement.
All these trends reached their apogee in the Progressive party and its national convention of 1912. The assemblage was a gathering of businessmen, intellectuals, academics, technocrats, efficiency experts and social engineers, writers, economists, social scientists, and leading representatives of the new profession of social work. The Progressive leaders were middle and upper class, almost all urban, highly educated, and almost all white Anglo-Saxon Protestants of either past or present pietist concerns.
From the social work leaders came upper-class ladies bringing the blessings of statism to the masses: Lillian D. Wald, Mary Kingsbury Simkhovitch, and above all, Jane Addams. Miss Addams, one of the great leaders of progressivism, was born in rural Illinois to a father, John, who was a state legislator and a devout nondenominational evangelical Protestant. Miss Addams was distressed at the southern and eastern European immigration, people who were "primitive" and "credulous," and who posed the danger of unrestrained individualism. Their different ethnic background disrupted the unity of American culture. However, the problem, according to Miss Addams, could be easily remedied. The public school could reshape the immigrant, strip him of his cultural foundations, and transform him into a building block of a new and greater American community.28
In addition to writers and professional technocrats at the Progressive party convention, there were professional pietists galore. Social Gospel leaders Lyman Abbott, the Reverend R. Heber Newton, and the Reverend Washington Gladden were Progressive party notables, and the Progressive candidate for governor of Vermont was the Reverend Fraser Metzger, leader of the Inter-Church Federation of Vermont. In fact, the Progressive party proclaimed itself as the "recrudescence of the religious spirit in American political life."
Many observers, indeed, reported in wonder at the strongly religious tone of the Progressive party convention. Theodore Roosevelt's acceptance address was significantly entitled, "A Confession of Faith," and his words were punctuated by "amens" and by a continual singing of Christian hymns by the assembled delegates. They sang "Onward, Christian Soldiers," "The Battle Hymn of the Republic," and finally the revivalist hymn, "Follow, Follow, We Will Follow Jesus," except that "Roosevelt" replaced the word "Jesus" at every turn.
Incidentally, blode, I don't disagree that one can find in Puritanism elements of "leftism". It is possible to find strains of "leftism" in practically any tradition. Moldbug's conception of leftism as a singular, mutating religious movement of recent origin is fundamentally retarded. Wipe out all memory of the politics and religion of the modern world, and new versions of "leftism" will arise again immediately. Human nature will remain the same.
ReplyDelete"Leftism" is not America's problem, as I see it. (I'd much rather be ruled by the progressives of a century ago than by the open-borders "conservatives" or libertarians of today.)
Ethnic conflict, in which the American majority has been unilaterally disarmed, is.
"Modern American leftism has its origins in the old progressive and New Deal eras, and these were for the most part WASP-New Englander dominated."
ReplyDelete"What I meant wasn't that all Yankees were progressives but that the progressive movement leadership was strongly Yankee."
Again, thinking like this requires ignorance of history on the most basic level.
Here are the names and backgrounds of members of FDR's Cabinet and his Supreme Court picks (known or probable New England Puritan descendants in bold):
Vice President
John Nance Garner - Texas
Henry A. Wallace - Iowa (of Scotch-Irish descent in paternal line at least)
Harry S. Truman - Missouri
State
Cordell Hull - Tennessee
Edward R. Stettinius, Jr. - "Stettinius was born in Chicago, the younger of two sons and third of four children of Edward Reilly and Judith (Carrington) Stettinius. His mother was a Virginian of colonial English ancestry. His father, of German descent, was a native of St. Louis;"
War
George H. Dern - Nebraska
Harry H. Woodring - Kansas
Henry L. Stimson - New York (Puritan ancestry)
Treasury
William H. Woodin - Pennsylvania
Henry Morgenthau, Jr. - Jew
Justice
Homer S. Cummings - Connecticuit (Puritan ancestry)
Frank Murphy - "Frank Murphy was born in Harbor Beach in 1890 to Irish parents, John T. Murphy and Mary Brennan,[1] who raised him as a devout Catholic."
Robert H. Jackson - Pennsylvania
Francis B. Biddle - "Biddle was one of four sons of Algernon Biddle, a law professor at the University of Pennsylvania. He was also a great-great-grandson of Edmund Randolph,[1] and a half second cousin four times removed of James Madison."
Post
James A. Farley - "Farley was born in Grassy Point, New York, one of five sons whose grandparents were Irish Catholic immigrants."
Frank C. Walker - Pennsylvania
Navy
Claude A. Swanson - Virginia
Charles Edison - New Jersey (his father considered himself of Dutch ancestry)
Frank Knox - Massachusetts
James V. Forrestal - "Forrestal was born in Matteawan, now Beacon, New York, the youngest son of James Forrestal, an Irish immigrant"
Interior
Harold L. Ickes - Pennsylvania
Agriculture
Henry A. Wallace - Iowa
Claude R. Wickard - Indiana
Commerce
Daniel C. Roper - South Carolina
Harry L. Hopkins - Iowa (Puritan [plus Scottish-Canadian] ancestry)
Jesse H. Jones - Texas
Henry A. Wallace - Iowa
Labor
Frances C. Perkins - Massachusetts
Supreme Court appointees
* Hugo Black - Alabama
* Stanley Forman Reed - Kentucky
* Felix Frankfurter - Jew
* William O. Douglas - "Douglas was born in Maine Township, Minnesota, the son of an itinerant Scots Presbyterian minister from Pictou County, Nova Scotia."
* Frank Murphy - "Frank Murphy was born in Harbor Beach in 1890 to Irish parents, John T. Murphy and Mary Brennan,[1] who raised him as a devout Catholic."
* Harlan Fiske Stone (Chief Justice) - New Hampshire
* James Francis Byrnes - South Carolina
* Robert H. Jackson - Pennsylvania
* Wiley Blount Rutledge - Kentucky
Not seeing an overrepresentation of New Englanders, particularly considering that New Englanders and Puritan descendants were disproportionately well-educated and civic-minded. I see healthy (and probably over-) representation of Jews, Irish Catholics, Pennsylvanians, and Southerners.
And if you don't think Moldbug is correct in seeing heavy Protestant overtones in the Progressive movement then I suggest you start reading historians other than Kevin MacDonald.
I suggest you start reading historians, period.
America was a Protestant country. Of course America's homegrown leftists were mostly Protestant. Strangely, for the UR-initiate, Protestant-infused American strains of leftism were quite a bit less radical than those circulating in Central and Eastern Europe and among Jews.
I think the Progressive reaction to the flood of non-traditional immigrants was entirely understandable -- and very much preferable to toxic modern leftist stances.
"America was a Protestant country. Of course America's homegrown leftists were mostly Protestant. Strangely, for the UR-initiate, Protestant-infused American strains of leftism were quite a bit less radical than those circulating in Central and Eastern Europe and among Jews."
ReplyDeleteBut modern American leftism isn't Marxist in origin. Modern American leftism is the heir of the New Deal and the Progressive era. Those political ages are, as I have shown and you have sort of conceded, to a certain extent Protestant influenced.
Which sort of proves Moldbug's point, modern Anglo-American leftism is warped/deformed Protestantism.
But modern American leftism isn't Marxist in origin.
ReplyDeleteYes. It. Is.
How could the Frankfurt School possibly be the origin of the modern American left?
ReplyDeleteThe Progressives and New Dealers predate the Frankfurt School's peak influence in the United States.
And the Frankfurt School itself was just one of many, many, different strands of intellectual thought that influenced American leftism from the 40's to the 60's.
Do you really think the American left would today be much different if the Frankfurt School had never existed in the first place?
Jean Paul Sartre was even more influential with American leftists than the Frankfurt School was. But nobody would say Sartre was the origin of modern American leftism.
Oh, and nobody American liberal considers neoconservatism to have had anything to do with the origin of modern American leftism.
ReplyDeleteYou are completely missing the point. "Leftism" has no single origin.
ReplyDeleteBut modern leftism would be totally unrecognizable in the absence of Marxism (and Boasianism, for that matter). Modern American leftism is not simply an organic outgrowth of 19th-century American leftism, and many of what I consider the more objectionable aspects may be traced directly to Jewish influence.
Marxist influence in the left (and "right") of today is not up for debate. I simply provided a few concrete illustrations for what is an incontrovertible fact that you wish to deny for some reason. Neoconservatism is one manifestation. Political Correctness / cultural Marxism is another. Sartre is of course himself a Marxist Jew.
Sartre's father was a Protestant and Sartre's mother was a Roman Catholic.
ReplyDeleteMoldbug doesn't deny that Marxism - along with many other intellectual trends - had *influence*
ReplyDeletewith the American left. His point is that the *origin* of leftism as an intellectual and political entity comes from the Progressive and New Deal eras when it started to assume its modern form.
"Modern American leftism is not simply an organic outgrowth of 19th-century American leftism, and many of what I consider the more objectionable aspects may be traced directly to Jewish influence."
Antonio Gramsci was not Jewish.
I also don't see how Marxism is Jewish created.
Marx co-developed Marxism with Engels, and Engels of course was not Jewish.
Furthermore, the crucial intellectual foundation of Marxism, dialectical materialism, was invented by Joseph Dietzgen who was German and not Jewish.
Marx himself never identified as a Jew and was raised Protestant by his parents.
So it is quite unfair for antisemites to assign COLLECTIVE BLAME for the initial creation of Marxism on all ethnic Jews. The blame should go to the INDIVIDUALS who created Marxism, not the ethnic groups of those individuals.
By the logic of the antisemites, I could just as easily say that Marxism is ethnically GERMAN in origin because Dietzgen and Engels were ethnic Germans, correct?
You appear to be correct that Sartre is not ethnically Jewish (though you seem to have his parents' religions reversed). But definitely a Marxist and apparently sufficiently Judaized that:
ReplyDeleteIn March 1980, about a month before Sartre's death, he was interviewed by an assistant of his, Benny Lévy, and within these interviews he expressed interest in Messianic Judaism. Some people apparently took this to indicate a religious conversion, however the text of the interviews makes it clear that he did not consider himself a Jew, and was interested in the ethical and "metaphysical character" of the Jewish religion, while continuing to reject the idea of an existing God.
"His point is that the *origin* of leftism as an intellectual and political entity comes from the Progressive and New Deal eras when it started to assume its modern form."
THERE IS NO "THE" ORIGIN OF LEFTISM!
And that's the main point I'm concerned with here -- "leftism = Calvinism" is utter fucking rubbish. The Jewish question is secondary in this particular argument (though important if one aims to understand history rather than engage in nerd wankery).
But, very briefly: I think the ratio of Germans to Jews in 19th-century Germany was a bit higher than 1:1. Jews have been greatly overrepresented in radical leftist movements and frequently viewed their involvement in these movements as advancing Jewish interests.
Note also that Jews are extremely free in assigning collective blame to Germans, whites, or whatever other non-Jewish group they deem appropriate.
n/a said: ... many of what I consider the more objectionable aspects may be traced directly to Jewish influence.
ReplyDeleteI don't agree with either of your positions completely, but I really don't see how this particular statement of n/a's is so terribly wrong. Surely "many" doesn't mean "all". I don't like it when people blame whole groups for individual wrongs but I haven't seen n/a doing it here (although I am not an expert).
If we don't accept the meme theory (or maybe it's a metaphor?) then we don't need to find where the "DNA" came from in a particular idea. Thus we can accept that their are tons of antecedents in a particular idea.
Go back to the progressive era. See how much support there is that era for progressive income taxation (there was a lot). Then see how much support there was for prog inc tax at modern levels (there was none that I have seen). See how much support there was for wealth redistribution in the progressive era. AFAIK the progressives were generally railing against concentrations of wealth - the money trust and all that - and wanted to find ways to unravel it not including throwing money at the poor.
Progressives of the late Victorian / early 20th Century shared the socialists' distrust of corporate power but their platforms had little else in common. As Christopher Lasch would put it, in the old days, social reformers didn't care about poverty so much as slavery - in the broad sense.
And, more importantly, the Socialist platforms of these eras had lots in common with both the Ten Points at the end of The Communist Manifesto and with modern Dem and Rep platforms. The Greenback, Bull Moose, and similar parties were extreme laissez faire cold-hearted righties by comparison.
Is this a fair comparison? I don't know. But the point is, there was a momentum that drove us past the sort of reforms that were supposed to make working families free and autonomous to the sort of reforms that are supposed to make us all affluent. Momentum is another metaphor - it likens the "ship of state" to a real ship. So we are supposed to blame pre-socialist progressives for having set us on the course to socialism?
But we're not a ship. We drink too deeply of the metaphor if we think late-Victorian progressives are responsible for the New Deal. New Dealers are responsible, because while they paid lip service to their antecedents they also danced with the Marxian devil.
(That said, let me note that a lot of pre-New Deal reforms seem like terrible policy to me, like free silver and all that, but I'm no expert. Also I think political reforms like direct election of senators were a very bad idea.)
As to the Frankfurt School, they seem strikingly influential to me. Making sex political seems very original (and again a terrible idea) and it seems to have sunk deeply into the modern left.
"n/a said: ... many of what I consider the more objectionable aspects may be traced directly to Jewish influence.
ReplyDeleteI don't agree with either of your positions completely, but I really don't see how this particular statement of n/a's is so terribly wrong. Surely "many" doesn't mean "all". I don't like it when people blame whole groups for individual wrongs but I haven't seen n/a doing it here (although I am not an expert)."
n/a's website appears to be inspired by the Kevin MacDonald view of Jews.
MacDonald's position, which I think n/a is at least sympathetic to, is that leftwing Jewish intellectuals are advancing their leftwing ideas and acting as a collective genetic group to undermine white gentile society through destructive ideas.
In other words, MacDonald is saying that Jews are *collectively* guilty for the bad ideas of some their leftwing intellectuals.
But this makes no sense to blame any ethnic group collectively for the actions of individual intellectuals.
I could just as easily say, under MacDonald's own logic, that since many of the French leftist existentialists like Fouccault, Sartre and Lacan were ethnically French that this proves all ethnic French are psychologically wired to undermine white European society.
Or a leftwing antisemite using MacDonald's logic could say that since Hans Eysenck and Richard Hernstein were Jewish that Jews are acting as a pyschological collective to advance "scientific racism."
To followup, a leftist economist operating from MacDonald's own logic could also say that since so many free market-libertarian intellectuals like Murray Rothbard, von Mises, Ayn Rand, Milton Friedman, and Martin Feldstein are Jewish that this proves Jews are psychologically programmed to undermine leftist economics.
ReplyDeleteOkay, you may be right, Undiscovered. I don't like the idea of collectively blaming any group for individual acts - certainly not any group that people are born into. On the other hand, I don't have time to visit all the blogs I find from visiting blogs - that would lead to a whole lot of websurfing....
ReplyDeletePlease read MacDonald if you want to debate his work. You can start here:
ReplyDeleteThere have been complaints that I am viewing Judaism in a monolithic manner. This is definitely not the case. Rather, in each movement that I discuss, my methodology has been:
(1.) Find influential movements dominated by Jews, with no implication that all or most Jews are involved in these movements and no restrictions on what the movements are. For example, I touch on Jewish neo-conservatism which is a departure in some ways from the other movements I discuss. In general, relatively few Jews were involved in most of these movements and significant numbers of Jews may have been unaware of their existence. Even Jewish leftist radicalism — surely the most widespread and influential Jewish subculture of the 20th century — may have been a minority movement within Jewish communities in the United States and other Western societies for most periods. As a result, when I criticize these movements I am not necessarily criticizing most Jews. Nevertheless, these movements were influential and they were Jewishly motivated.
(2.) Determine whether the Jewish participants in those movements identified as Jews AND thought of their involvement in the movement as advancing specific Jewish interests. Involvement may be unconscious or involve self-deception, but for the most part it was quite easy and straightforward to find evidence for these propositions. If I thought that self-deception was important (as in the case of many Jewish radicals), I provided evidence that in fact they did identify as Jews and were deeply concerned about Jewish issues despite surface appearances to the contrary. (See also Ch. 1 of CofC.)
(3.) Try to gauge the influence of these movements on non-Jewish society. Keep in mind that the influence of an intellectual or political movement dominated by Jews is independent of the percentage of the Jewish community that is involved in the movement or supports the movement.
(4.) Try to show how non-Jews responded to these movements — for example, were they a source of anti-Semitism?
Several of the movements I discuss have been very influential in the social sciences. However, I do not argue that there are no Jews who do good social science, and in fact I provide a list of prominent Jewish social scientists who in my opinion do not meet the conditions outlined under (2) above (see Ch. 2 of CofC). If there was evidence that these social scientists identified as Jews and had a Jewish agenda in doing social science (definitely not in the case of most of those listed, but possibly true in the case of Richard Herrnstein — see below), then they would have been candidates for inclusion in the book. The people I cite as contributing to evolutionary/biological perspectives are indeed ethnically Jewish, but for most of them I have no idea whether they either identity as Jews or if they have a Jewish agenda in pursuing their research simply because there is no evidence to be found in their work or elsewhere. If there is evidence that a prominent evolutionary biologist identifies as a Jew and views his work in sociobiology or evolutionary psychology as advancing Jewish agendas, then he or she should have been in CofC as an example of the phenomenon under study rather than as simply a scientist working in the area of evolutionary studies.
Interestingly, in the case of one of those I mention, Richard J. Herrnstein, Alan Ryan (1994, 11) writes, 'Herrnstein essentially wants the world in which clever Jewish kids or their equivalent make their way out of their humble backgrounds and end up running Goldman Sachs or the Harvard physics department.' This is a stance that is typical, I suppose, of neo-conservatism, a Jewish movement I discuss in several places, and it is the sort of thing that, if true, would suggest that Herrnstein did perceive the issues discussed in The Bell Curve as affecting Jewish interests in a way that Charles Murray, his co-author, did not. (Ryan contrasts Murray's and Herrnstein's world views: 'Murray wants the Midwest in which he grew up — a world in which the local mechanic didn't care two cents whether he was or wasn't brighter than the local math teacher.') Similarly, 20th-century theoretical physics does not qualify as a Jewish intellectual movement precisely because it was good science and there are no signs of ethnic involvement in its creation: Jewish identification and pursuit of Jewish interests were not important to the content of the theories or to the conduct of the intellectual movement. Yet Jews have been heavily overrepresented among the ranks of theoretical physicists.
This conclusion remains true even though Einstein, the leading figure among Jewish physicists, was a strongly motivated Zionist (Fölsing 1997, 494-505), opposed assimilation as a contemptible form of 'mimicry' (p. 490), preferred to mix with other Jews whom he referred to as his 'tribal companions' (p. 489), embraced the uncritical support for the Bolshevik regime in Russia typical of so many Jews during the 1920s and 1930s, including persistent apology for the Moscow show trials in the 1930s (pp. 644-5), and switched from a high-minded pacifism during World War I, when Jewish interests were not at stake, to advocating the building of atomic bombs to defeat Hitler. From his teenage years he disliked the Germans and in later life criticized Jewish colleagues for converting to Christianity and acting like Prussians. He especially disliked Prussians, who were the elite ethnic group in Germany. Reviewing his life at age 73, Einstein declared his ethnic affiliation in no uncertain terms: 'My relationship with Jewry had become my strongest human tie once I achieved complete clarity about our precarious position among the nations' (in Fölsing 1997, 488). According to Fölsing, Einstein had begun developing this clarity from an early age, but did not acknowledge it until much later, a form of self-deception: 'As a young man with bourgeois-liberal views and a belief in enlightenment, he had refused to acknowledge [his Jewish identity]' (in Fölsing 1997, 488).
In other words, the issues of the ethnic identification and even ethnic activism on the part of people like Einstein are entirely separate from the issue of whether such people viewed the content of the theories themselves as furthering ethnic interests, and, in the case of Einstein, there is no evidence that he did so. The same cannot be said for Freud, the New York Intellectuals, the Boasians, and the Frankfurt School, in which 'scientific' theories were fashioned and deployed to advance ethnic group interests. This ideological purpose becomes clear when the unscientific nature of these movements is understood. Much of the discussion in CofC documented the intellectual dishonesty, the lack of empirical rigor, the obvious political and ethnic motivation, the expulsion of dissenters, the collusion among co-ethnics to dominate intellectual discourse, and the general lack of scientific spirit that pervaded them. In my view, the scientific weakness of these movements is evidence of their group-strategic function.
I could just as easily say, under MacDonald's own logic, that since many of the French leftist existentialists like Fouccault, Sartre and Lacan were ethnically French that this proves all ethnic French are psychologically wired to undermine white European society.
ReplyDeleteNo, you couldn't, unless you could find evidence that they believed their work advanced specifically French interests. Since, if anything, Sartre seems to have been more interested in advancing specifically Jewish interest, good luck with that.
Same with Marx vs. Engels. Or if not Marx, Moses Hess:
He was an early proponent of socialism, and a precursor to what would later be called Zionism. His works included Holy History of Mankind (1837), European Triarchy (1841) and Rome and Jerusalem (1862). He married a Catholic working-class woman, Sibylle Pesch, in defiance of bourgeois values;in socialist literature the idea was propagated that she was a prostitute 'redeemed' by Hess, but that notion has been refuted by Hess' biographer Silberner.[2]
[. . .]
Communism
Hess originally advocated Jewish integration into the universalist socialist movement, and was a friend and collaborator of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels. Hess converted Engels to Communism, and introduced Marx to social and economic problems. He played an important role in transforming Hegelian dialectical idealism theory of history to the dialectical materialism of Marxism, by conceiving of man as the initiator of history through his active consciousness.
Hess was probably responsible for several "Marxian" slogans and ideas, including religion as the "opiate of the people." Hess became reluctant to base all history on economic causes and class struggle, and he came to see the struggle of races, or nationalities, as the prime factor of past history.
Proto-Zionism
From 1861 to 1863 he lived in Germany, where he became acquainted with the rising tide of German Anti-Semitism. It was then that he reverted to his Jewish name Moses in protest against assimilationism.
But this makes no sense to blame any ethnic group collectively for the actions of individual intellectuals.
ReplyDeleteYet you seem quite eager to collectively blame "WASPs" (and in any case don't complain when others do, as at UR).
"Yet you seem quite eager to collectively blame "WASPs" (and in any case don't complain when others do, as at UR)."
ReplyDeleteI'll address your other points in a moment, but Moldbug is not trying to assign MORAL guilt to WASPs, Moldbug is saying that the ORIGIN of American Leftism is WASP.
It obviously picked up some Marxist influence along the way - along with a wide array of other left ideologies - and Jews have contributed to Marxism.
But the origin of modern American leftism is not Marxist even if it was influenced by Marxism to an extent.
"Interestingly, in the case of one of those I mention, Richard J. Herrnstein, Alan Ryan (1994, 11) writes, 'Herrnstein essentially wants the world in which clever Jewish kids or their equivalent make their way out of their humble backgrounds and end up running Goldman Sachs or the Harvard physics department.' This is a stance that is typical, I suppose, of neo-conservatism, a Jewish movement I discuss in several places, and it is the sort of thing that, if true, would suggest that Herrnstein did perceive the issues discussed in The Bell Curve as affecting Jewish interests in a way that Charles Murray, his co-author, did not."
ReplyDeleteHow does MacDonald know Murray did not have an ethnic motive in writing the Bell Curve?
Murray is white, and Murray's proposals to end welfare for the poor for having kids would be very beneficial to whites so clearly Murray is acting in his own ethnic interests, right?
"There have been complaints that I am viewing Judaism in a monolithic manner. This is definitely not the case."
ReplyDeleteIf MacDonald does not view Jews as monolithic, and if he concedes that only a minority of Jews took part in the movements he is critical of, then why does he claim Jews COLLECTIVELY psychologically evolved to undermine host societies in the name of "resource competition"?
He's trying to have it both ways, from an evolutionary standpoint he blames Jews as a GROUP for things like the Frankfurt School and psychoanalysis - "group evolutionary strategy" -, but then denies he is saying Jews are monolithic!
The whole point of Culture of Critique is to show Jewish leftists are working as an evolutionary group.
Are Jews working from a "GROUP evolutionary strategy" or are they working as individuals?
Which is it?
"In other words, the issues of the ethnic identification and even ethnic activism on the part of people like Einstein are entirely separate from the issue of whether such people viewed the content of the theories themselves as furthering ethnic interests, and, in the case of Einstein, there is no evidence that he did so. The same cannot be said for Freud, the New York Intellectuals, the Boasians, and the Frankfurt School, in which 'scientific' theories were fashioned and deployed to advance ethnic group interests."
MacDonald claims to have found evidence that INDIVIDUAL Jews such as those in the Frankfurt School had some ethnic motivation in advancing their intellectual pet projects.
That only suggests INDIVIDUAL Jews were motivated by ethnicity to some degree, as are ALL ethnic groups.
This does not prove that Jews as a collective are using a unique group evolutionary strategy. It only indicates ethnic bias among a handful of Jewish individuals.
In other words, the Frankfurt School intellectuals are entirely to responsible for the Frankfurt School, not Jews collectively few of which took part as followers of the Frankfurt School.
Forget about "evolutionary strategy" for now. Deal with the facts.
ReplyDeleteWhere is the "WASP" equivalent of the ADL? Where is the "WASP" Israel? If you seriously doubt that Jews evince vastly more ethnocentrism than "WASPs" in the present day, I see no reason to continue this dialog. The past century in America has seen Jewish ethnocentrism widely promoted while white and particularly "WASP" ethnocentrism has been attacked and suppressed. Personally, I think it would be great if Charles Murray were promoting the ethnic interests of founding-stock Americans, but to the extent he cares about ethnic interests, my impression is he's most concerned with promoting those of Jews.
YES, ethnocentrism in some degree has characterized practically every ethnic group. This is one of the reasons it makes no sense to argue some magical disembodied, unstoppable religious meme is the primary actor in history while insisting we ignore the role of ethnicity, as Moldbug does. Much of 20th-century history simply doesn't make sense if you pretend Jews aren't ethnically conscious. Jews happen to be probably the single best organized and most ethnocentric minority in the West, but to a lesser degree the same dynamic applies among other ethnicities. See, e.g., The Dispossessed Majority.
And forget about "blame". I don't care about "assigning moral guilt". I'm interested in understanding the world.