I wrote on Jewish privilege last week and the post was made more as a satirical bite at critical theorists than really related to Jews at all. As should be obvious to anyone reading my blog, I am not a critical theorist and am opposed to them. (My thoughts on white male privilege can be seen here and here). So any post where I seem to be supporting it should be read as containing a certain level of satire or irony.
I was accused of being anti-semitism because of the Jewish privilege post. Given that my post was mostly just a collection of statistics, it would seem some people think that reality itself is anti-semitic. So, note to Jews, you’ll probably make more enemies than friends if you go around yelling anti-semitism whenever someone mentions Jews in anything less than worshipful tones.
I’ve written little on Jews before for the simple reason that I don’t really care all that much about Jews either way. I don’t write pro-Jewish things because I’m not a Jew, Jew’s aren’t my people. I’ll leave it to Jews to promote and defend to themselves. I don’t write anti-Jewish things because I’m not particularly anti-Jewish either. But, given that the topic’s come up, I’ll give my thoughts on the Jewish Question and alienate all my readers in the process.
On a personal level, I’ve met few Jews, they’re sparse on the ground in the Canadian prairies, but those few I have met seemed to be decent-enough folks. As with any group of ‘others’, I’ll interact and judge Jews on an individual base but I have a natural preference for my own and tend to naturally congregate to my own, so I tend to spend the majority of my time with working/middle-class Christian whites.
On a group level, I view Jews as I do any other out-group not engaged in war with my in-groups, with benevolent neutrality. They are not my group but neither do I wish them ill.
Continuing on, as I demonstrated in my Jewish privilege post, in North America Jews are vastly overrepresented in any non-physical, high-status area of achievement, be it government, the financial sector, the media, the education system, or the justice system. Jews wield a disproportionate level of influence. This is a statistical fact. Anybody who denies this is a liar or ignorant and anybody who thinks stating this is anti-semitic thinks reality itself is anti-semitic and is no more worth listening to on the subject than any other race-baiter.
The reason for Jew’s over-representation is likely a combination of intelligence and tribalism. Jews have a high average IQ, which is correlated heavily with success. As well, Jews, like most people groups excepting some pathologically altruistic whites, tend to favour their own group over out-groups. This in-group favouring gives Jews, along with Asians and blacks, a competitive advantage as a group over whites in white dominated countries where the white in-group is larger, more diffuse, and riddled with the pathologically altruistic, making whites less likely to act in their group interests. Whites simply don’t identify as whites as an in-group and don’t act on this in-group loyalty.
For these two reasons, Jews are more successful on average than the white majority and I don’t really begrudge them that. Tribalism is natural and healthy, it is a good thing. I don’t hold it against other groups who act in the interests of their group except when it is to attack my group. That Europeans deny their natural tribalistic impulses is on Europeans not on Jews.
(I’ll note here, that whites as a group are not my group; white in North America is far too large and diffuse a group to make it an in-group. My in-group would be the red tribe, particularly Prairie Canadians. Many whites, particularly blue tribe whites, are also the other).
Some would point to the Jewish over-representation in progressive causes as an attack on my people, but I do not think Jewish over-representation in progressive causes indicates any purposeful, malign attack on the part of Jews. Jews have always voted strongly Democrat and are a liberal group who prefer liberal policies, and given the earlier two reasons they tend to represent themselves well wherever they happen to be; this combination of achievement and liberalism is why Jews tend to be heavily represented in progressivist movement.
Those minority of Jews who have not been liberal have acquitted themselves proportionately well in anti-progressivism. Jews were the largest minority who fought for the confederacy. Jews were important aides to McCarthy in his anti-communist fights. Barry Goldwater himself was half-Jewish. More revealingly, 1% of the John Birch society were Jews, despite the fact that at the time, only 10% of Jews voted for Goldwater. So, .2% of the population that were Jewish conservatives were over-represented by a factor of 5 in the JBS.
So, Jews represent themselves well wherever they seem to go, but they tend to go liberal as a group. It seems less a purposeful attack on us by Jews, and more Jews, as a different group, have different priorities and pursue them. They happen to be good at it and are thus overrepresented among progressives. The effect is the same, progressivism, but ideological convergence rather than malign conspiracy seems more explanatory.
Continuing on, Jews are only 2% of the population. They are, as a group, smart and wealthy, but they are not super-human monsters. They may be progressive and disproportionately powerful, but even then they still hold only a small fraction of power and wealth in North America. If the majority were opposed to progressivism it wouldn’t matter what Jews thought. Our willful self-destruction is our own fault.
Because of this I can’t bear any particular ill-will towards Jews as a group; I do not fault groups for pursuing their interests and the only reason their interests are hurting us is because too many of us are pursuing self-immolation. But, we do have different interests, so something should be done so neither of our groups are hurting each other while pursuing our own interests.
So, what is to be done?
The same as is to be done with any other group: separation. As with blacks, Jews are not us, they are a different group with different priorities and different values, and they should be allowed to pursue them, just as we should be allowed to pursue our own priorities.
The answer to the Jewish question is subsidiarity or patchwork. Different groups, whether ethnic, religious, or ideological should have their own regions to live as they see fit without interference from other groups. In the particular case of Jews, this should be easy, as they tend to be geographically concentrated in the Northeast, Florida, and California. When we divide the country, we can allow these areas to either be cosmopolitan or give them to the Jews to run as they see fit. Then Jews and blue tribe whites can have their progressive utopia, blacks can have their welfare state, and red tribe whites can have agrarian conservatism. We can all live separate but in peace.
“The answer to the Jewish question is subsidiarity or patchwork. Different groups, whether ethnic, religious, or ideological should have their own regions to live as they see fit without interference from other groups. In the particular case of Jews, this should be easy, as they tend to be geographically concentrated in the Northeast, Florida, and California. When we divide the country, we can allow these areas to either be cosmopolitan or give them to the Jews to run as they see fit. Then Jews and blue tribe whites can have their progressive utopia, blacks can have their welfare state, and red tribe whites can have agrarian conservatism. We can all live separate but in peace.”
Sign me up amigo. When the Jewish/blue tribe run areas don’t have the gentile generated tax revenue to keep the blacks, hispanics, et al (underclass) at bay, we can watch Ferguson, MO redux on cable each week as every one of their cities goes the way of Detroit on Devil’s night.
I think the traditional progressive mindset of the American Jew will quickly become “so yesterday” as their utopia runs out of $$ and the Christian policeman, fireman, solider doesn’t ride in to save the neighborhood from chaos. Social justice/liberalism/statism is like that…great in theory until you need able-bodied men to mete out the order.
But I’m good with tending a farm or business and letting them have the cesspools that were once vibrant cities. If they need help…they can always leave a message at the beep.
‘Our willful self-destruction is our own fault.’
Very true. That’s human nature and it doesn’t matter what tribe you subscribe to.
‘Anti-semitic’ just means something a Jew doesnt like. Such as when they cant get their way.
It means nothing more. And has no more substance than that.
It used to be more complicated than Red vs. Blue.
McCarthy was less popular in the South than in the US as a whole:
http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/08821127.1996.10731836?journalCode=uamj20#.VHsYpDHF-So
Minneapolis (of all places) was long known as “the capital of anti-Semitism in the United States” :
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Minneapolis#Politics.2C_corruption.2C_anti-Semitism_and_social_change
As a libertarian leaning, conservative, gun owning Jewish guy, I get hit from both sides. Firstly, I agree that Ashkenazi Jews, especially, are represented in culture, politics, academia, etc, way out of proportion to their numbers. But you have to realize that those at the top care nothing about their “lesser brethren”. For example, Bernanke’s largesse with taxpayer money went to his Progressive cronies at the top. There is no Jewish “inner circle” with a secret handshake that gets me a cut of that stolen money. And I didn’t get an inside heads-up and a wink from Gruber when he conned the American public and then taunted them for being such suckers. I got conned just like everybody else.
I get the “evil eye” from all sides. To the Jew Haters, I am just another filthy, lying Jew. To the Progressives I am just a self-hating Jew who would have been a concentration camp collaborator.
No love for the outliers :)
I hear you Robert.
Not many Jews are revolutionaries, but 50% of revolutionaries are Jews.
It’s the 95% of X who are bad giving the other 5% a bad name. Where X = (lawyers, Jews, Churchians/modern Christians, …).
Very fair and interesting post. I don’t think separation is practical, for a whole host of reasons, although I do like the idea within the confines of the American system — we should try and strengthen federalism and subsidiarity as much as possible so those with a real stake in their communities are the ones making decisions (and forced to live with those decisions).
As for the Jews, I do think your analysis works well for the diaspora — not so much for Israelis. They have become, again by necessity, much more right-wing and hard-core than their soft American (and European) brothers. There is also the minority of Haredi Jews who are generally conservative in their cultural outlook, although like welfare handouts to help them support big families. They are being forced to start paying for their large families in Israel as the secular or non-Haredi population resents having to pay for social services for a bunch of working age men who study Torah all day. We might see the same thing happen in the U.S. if the Haredi communities get any bigger.
” My in-group would be the red tribe, particularly Prairie Canadians.”
By this do you mean Aboriginals in general or something else completely.
It’s not the 1930s anymore. Now that religion has declined, 71% of non-Orthodox Jews intermarry with other Whites. So most younger folks with Jewish ancestry are 50% or 75% Christian.
I can understand how Mila Kunis could be “not us.” But what about Jews like Chris Pine and Dianna Agron? (I’m in the same boat as those two.)
I know you’re not Jewish, Free Northerner, so you really probably don’t think about this, but I would like to know what you would do with Jews who were right wingers? Can you see them assimilating? I can’t see right wing Jews being a big enough group to warrant their own cut of the pie and being strong/large enough to prosper alone.
As I said elsewhere, I am trying to catch up on your blog and ascertain whether you still consider yourself a “Christian.” (I personally avoid the label for various reasons, and one of them has to do with Judaism.)
Any Christian who either
A) writes off Judiasm or
B) doesn’t understand it
is completely missing the point. Yeshua and every writer of the New Testament sans perhaps Luke was a Jew through and through. While the New Testament was composed in Greek, it was written by people who spoke(/thought) and studied the Old Testament in Hebrew. (There wasn’t even a canonized “New Testament” for the early “Christian” faith up until something like 200 years after Yeshua had ascended. I could be less lazy and more exact but the point is that all of the early followers studied the “Old Testament” as their sacred scriptures and the most serious and prominent ones would have studied it in the language it had been written in and transmitted in for thousands of years – and is still read, studied, and written about in the same language today – Hebrew.)
It seems to be a distinctly North American character trait to take other people’s things and try to make them our own or adapt to our systems. A foreigner immigrates and his name is too hard to pronounce? Give him a nice American one like John or Bob! We’ve done the same thing with the CREATOR OF THE UNIVERSE by literally erasing every name He has ever chosen to reveal himself by (which according to some counts is in the hundreds) and replaced them wholesale with “God” and “LORD,” which aren’t even names but titles. Have you never wondered why there are so many verses all over the place talking about the power that exists in His name? A similar impropriety has been done to Yeshua by insisting upon calling him Jesus and insisting that there is somehow power in the “name of Jesus,” despite the fact that when he was alive he would’ve been known as Yeshua (and Yeshua actually contains elements of His father’s name, YHWH – a rough English translation is something like “YHWH’s salvation”). Even Yeshua, I believe, is a contraction of the more formal Yehoshua (which is a name shared by the Old Testament character known in English as Joshua). You’ll forgive me as my serious studies into Hebrew are in their infancy.
Similar treatment was done to most/all major Bible characters, including the disciples. John the Baptist was not “John the Baptist.” He was Yohanan the Immerser.
Somewhere, I believe it is Paul who explains that the new disciples of Yeshua are blessed because they are GRAFTED IN to the tree that was once exclusively Jewish by design. Through Yeshua and what he did, the promise YHWH made to Abram that, through his seed the entire world would be blessed became true, but it was because those who accepted the (JEWISH) Messiah as savior were being grafted into the plan of redemption and salvation that had been revealed to, stewarded by, and enacted in the Earth THROUGH Israel.
So, anyone who considers themselves a true disciple of Yeshua, would also then be Jewish in spirit if not in blood/birth/common practice. (Also now we get to the messiness of the debate over the place of Messianic Judaism versus Orthodox Judaism vs Liberal Judaism but that’s for another time and place.)
Food for thought.
Also I should note that I don’t know if WordPress is now intelligent enough to notify me when someone replies to one of my comments and I have been commenting on a few of your posts here and there… I suppose I could bookmark those posts although I would have to go back and find them again. I’ll have this one bookmarked for sure though.