I'll weigh in a bit on the Jewish question as a Mischling descended from a fairly wealthy family.
One important source of Jewish power that is not well understood by the public is that there are no Jewish Boomers. This disparity is a lot of what drives lopsided Jewish influence in the current period, in my opinion. That is, Boomers are lazy and spoiled because they grew up in the warm embrace of the highly prosperous post-war period. Whereas, Jews born contemporaneously grew up in the dark shadow of the Holocaust. There is therefore an enormous motivation gap between Jews and Gentiles that are at the peak of their career power today, having been born from 1946 to 1964.
Nowhere is this gap more obvious than in politics, which Boomer gentiles do not take seriously at all, in contrast to "Boomer-Aged" Jews. This is why modern Republican governments (run by Boomer gentiles) are incompetent messes (GWB, Trump), but modern Democratic governments (generally run by Boomer-Aged Jews) are competently run, even if you disagree with their politics (Clinton, Obama I, Biden*).
Looking ahead, Millennial and to a lesser extent Gen X Jews are just as spoiled as their gentile counterparts. For this reason among others, Jewish power in the United States is in my opinion likely to decline substantially over the next 10-20 years. Darren Beattie sometimes talks about the decline in leadership quality at the ADL, from Foxman to Greenblatt. Well, Foxman was born in 1940 and grew up in the shadow of the Holocaust, and Greenblatt was born in 1970 and did not.
One other point is as relates to Jews and changes in American culture since 1946. What I believe happened is the following. If you are Jewish, you do not blame yourself for anti-Semitism. So, what then happened in the 1930s and 1940s in Europe? Well, gentile populations were consumed by extremist ideology that preached Fascism and anti-Semitism, leading to disaster for the Jewish people.
OK its 1951, and Jews live in the US now. They are safe. But they were safe in Germany... until they weren't. How to prevent a similar disaster? Well, of course you do what you can to influence or control ideological production and propagation in the US. It's obvious - that's what went wrong in Europe, so make sure it doesn't go wrong here. So you form NGOs, you carefully edit newspapers, you lobby for young children to be taught about the evils of racism and anti-Semitism, etc. None of this is surprising or unreasonable.
This strategy in practice turns out to have limited opposition. After all, the Americans are not anti-Semitic, so why should they stop you? In addition, Americans have weak cultural heritage (Europeans are correct on this point), so they don't notice much is changing. And then maybe you go a little bit too far with anti-WASP media narratives, with the Civil Rights Act, with Hart-Celler, etc.
* OK, the Biden administration doesn't seem too competent. But, I would point out that Blinken and Klain are both nearly Gen X.
I'll just add this. My uncle is a banker. He is not Jewish. None of my family are. But he does not have nice things to say about them, I'll put it that way. My personal experience with Jews has been the guy's on the street. Normal guys, I grew up playing football with them. They weren't ethnically conscious. Just did their traditions as I did mine in the Christian faith. But you're right, we must distinguish between the elites and the regular guys.
My personal experience has likewise been that the hatred of “all things white and Christian” is mostly limited to the elite types, not the regular ones on the street, leading me to believe it is perhaps not so much ethically driven as it is ideologically, probably inculcated by the university system and such, much the same way that we get so many elites of a WASP background who hate all things white and Christian despite it being their own heritage.
A thing that unifies most "leftist" movements is universalism. The idea of radical egalitarianism (the goal getting rid of all differences, religion, race, gender, nation, hierarchy, identity, etc. if not right now at least eventually). Social engineering a "New Soviet Man" so to speak.
True Believers are those that actually believe in this idea of universalism and are not just cynically using and/or spouting for their self-benefit. Lots of Jews say they are in favor of this universalism, but if you bring up Jews themselves and/or Israel suddenly it's "Nationalism for me, but not for thee". This can be viewed as a way for Jews to weaken other groups they compete with (a good strategy since they are such a minority), while maintaining their own strong in-group preference, nepotism, and strong social bonds. The problem that AA believes is that eventually Jews start buying their own propaganda more and more and don't have the unwritten and unspoken exception for themselves and they attack Jewish identity, religion and culture as well.
An interesting thing is that this tension was also present in the socialist/communist movements that lead to the Soviet Union. This movement was heavily stocked with Jews and there was a tension between secular/atheist/universalist Jews such as Lenin and Trotsky, and the more nationalist/identitarian Jews such as the Jewish Bund faction for example. This episode of the Fall of Eagles (produced by BBC of all things) focused on the split between the Bolshevik and Menshivik factions, but there is a random scene of the Jewish Bund being expelled: https://youtu.be/_Kks1va6eq0?t=2465 . The BBC of today would never draw attention to that conflict between the Jewish intelligentsia of the time, let alone mention Jews and socialism/communism in the same sentence.
Mustache Man's territorial ambitions were still less than the British Empire. No one thinks Britain were "crazy warmongers" despite subjugating 1/3 of the planet.
MM man's territorial ambitions were in Europe; that made, and makes Germany a threat to us. Britain had a long standing policy of preventing any one power from dominating Western Europe. Centuries before Germany became powerful, France posed that threat, which is why we were constantly at war with the French.
MM triggered a world war, invaded European countries one after another (as opposed to expanding in the new world), and was totally destroyed in 6 years. I'm going to put him in the top 10 of crazy warmongers.
No, the people who declared war on Germany triggered a world war. Austria did not resist German reunification at all. The Polish nation-state did not exist in 1914, nor did it gain it's own sovereignty. It was created by the Allied forces to carve a piece out of Germany, and Russia, ostensibly weakening Germany. After Britain declared war again, the German leadership attempted multiple peace negotiations. All such attempts were rejected.
The non existence of a Polish nation state does not justify an invasion a couple of decades later. The invasion was a challenge to Britain, and by extension the rest of Western Europe. Undoing the settlement which , as you quite rightly point out, put Germany in a weakened position vis a vis Britain, was Germany simply throwing down the gauntlet on that settlement.
As for the attempted peace negotiations, all I can say is: everyone wants peace; we got to war over the terms offered for that peace.
I'm prepared to listen to arguments, but as it's not really possible to debate such a big topic in the comments I'll just give my opinion. Which is that this is an utterly insane re-writing of history.
If you're referring to the mainstream media projection of history, then I will agree that this is not what they present at all. Not on the BBC or the History channel, if that still exists. But my statements are factually correct, and I might suggest a fairly tame book that presents a different perspective then the mainstream media: Patrick Buchanan's "Churchill, Hitler, and 'The Unnecessary War'". That would be an introduction to an alternative viewpoint to the "Moustache Man Bad" thesis, which is the only acceptable viewpoint in academia.
Thanks for the recommendation. I think for me to be convinced MM wasn't bad would require such a dismantling of my existing belief system that it would represent a complete mental breakdown on my part. Maybe that is the reality, but it's not a practical option to bring me along or many others.
I'll weigh in a bit on the Jewish question as a Mischling descended from a fairly wealthy family.
One important source of Jewish power that is not well understood by the public is that there are no Jewish Boomers. This disparity is a lot of what drives lopsided Jewish influence in the current period, in my opinion. That is, Boomers are lazy and spoiled because they grew up in the warm embrace of the highly prosperous post-war period. Whereas, Jews born contemporaneously grew up in the dark shadow of the Holocaust. There is therefore an enormous motivation gap between Jews and Gentiles that are at the peak of their career power today, having been born from 1946 to 1964.
Nowhere is this gap more obvious than in politics, which Boomer gentiles do not take seriously at all, in contrast to "Boomer-Aged" Jews. This is why modern Republican governments (run by Boomer gentiles) are incompetent messes (GWB, Trump), but modern Democratic governments (generally run by Boomer-Aged Jews) are competently run, even if you disagree with their politics (Clinton, Obama I, Biden*).
Looking ahead, Millennial and to a lesser extent Gen X Jews are just as spoiled as their gentile counterparts. For this reason among others, Jewish power in the United States is in my opinion likely to decline substantially over the next 10-20 years. Darren Beattie sometimes talks about the decline in leadership quality at the ADL, from Foxman to Greenblatt. Well, Foxman was born in 1940 and grew up in the shadow of the Holocaust, and Greenblatt was born in 1970 and did not.
One other point is as relates to Jews and changes in American culture since 1946. What I believe happened is the following. If you are Jewish, you do not blame yourself for anti-Semitism. So, what then happened in the 1930s and 1940s in Europe? Well, gentile populations were consumed by extremist ideology that preached Fascism and anti-Semitism, leading to disaster for the Jewish people.
OK its 1951, and Jews live in the US now. They are safe. But they were safe in Germany... until they weren't. How to prevent a similar disaster? Well, of course you do what you can to influence or control ideological production and propagation in the US. It's obvious - that's what went wrong in Europe, so make sure it doesn't go wrong here. So you form NGOs, you carefully edit newspapers, you lobby for young children to be taught about the evils of racism and anti-Semitism, etc. None of this is surprising or unreasonable.
This strategy in practice turns out to have limited opposition. After all, the Americans are not anti-Semitic, so why should they stop you? In addition, Americans have weak cultural heritage (Europeans are correct on this point), so they don't notice much is changing. And then maybe you go a little bit too far with anti-WASP media narratives, with the Civil Rights Act, with Hart-Celler, etc.
* OK, the Biden administration doesn't seem too competent. But, I would point out that Blinken and Klain are both nearly Gen X.
I'll just add this. My uncle is a banker. He is not Jewish. None of my family are. But he does not have nice things to say about them, I'll put it that way. My personal experience with Jews has been the guy's on the street. Normal guys, I grew up playing football with them. They weren't ethnically conscious. Just did their traditions as I did mine in the Christian faith. But you're right, we must distinguish between the elites and the regular guys.
My personal experience has likewise been that the hatred of “all things white and Christian” is mostly limited to the elite types, not the regular ones on the street, leading me to believe it is perhaps not so much ethically driven as it is ideologically, probably inculcated by the university system and such, much the same way that we get so many elites of a WASP background who hate all things white and Christian despite it being their own heritage.
As always, very good chap.
Your writing is even clear than your video essays.
Hope to join you on here one day.
I would like to understand how you are using the terms Universalist/True Believers. Any help?
A thing that unifies most "leftist" movements is universalism. The idea of radical egalitarianism (the goal getting rid of all differences, religion, race, gender, nation, hierarchy, identity, etc. if not right now at least eventually). Social engineering a "New Soviet Man" so to speak.
True Believers are those that actually believe in this idea of universalism and are not just cynically using and/or spouting for their self-benefit. Lots of Jews say they are in favor of this universalism, but if you bring up Jews themselves and/or Israel suddenly it's "Nationalism for me, but not for thee". This can be viewed as a way for Jews to weaken other groups they compete with (a good strategy since they are such a minority), while maintaining their own strong in-group preference, nepotism, and strong social bonds. The problem that AA believes is that eventually Jews start buying their own propaganda more and more and don't have the unwritten and unspoken exception for themselves and they attack Jewish identity, religion and culture as well.
An interesting thing is that this tension was also present in the socialist/communist movements that lead to the Soviet Union. This movement was heavily stocked with Jews and there was a tension between secular/atheist/universalist Jews such as Lenin and Trotsky, and the more nationalist/identitarian Jews such as the Jewish Bund faction for example. This episode of the Fall of Eagles (produced by BBC of all things) focused on the split between the Bolshevik and Menshivik factions, but there is a random scene of the Jewish Bund being expelled: https://youtu.be/_Kks1va6eq0?t=2465 . The BBC of today would never draw attention to that conflict between the Jewish intelligentsia of the time, let alone mention Jews and socialism/communism in the same sentence.
Thank you.
Very deep and nuanced analysis as always, looking forward to more of this
I have to say, I'm struggling with the arguments against the boomer con frame. If MM wasn't a crazy warmonger, then who is?
Mustache Man's territorial ambitions were still less than the British Empire. No one thinks Britain were "crazy warmongers" despite subjugating 1/3 of the planet.
MM man's territorial ambitions were in Europe; that made, and makes Germany a threat to us. Britain had a long standing policy of preventing any one power from dominating Western Europe. Centuries before Germany became powerful, France posed that threat, which is why we were constantly at war with the French.
MM triggered a world war, invaded European countries one after another (as opposed to expanding in the new world), and was totally destroyed in 6 years. I'm going to put him in the top 10 of crazy warmongers.
No, the people who declared war on Germany triggered a world war. Austria did not resist German reunification at all. The Polish nation-state did not exist in 1914, nor did it gain it's own sovereignty. It was created by the Allied forces to carve a piece out of Germany, and Russia, ostensibly weakening Germany. After Britain declared war again, the German leadership attempted multiple peace negotiations. All such attempts were rejected.
The non existence of a Polish nation state does not justify an invasion a couple of decades later. The invasion was a challenge to Britain, and by extension the rest of Western Europe. Undoing the settlement which , as you quite rightly point out, put Germany in a weakened position vis a vis Britain, was Germany simply throwing down the gauntlet on that settlement.
As for the attempted peace negotiations, all I can say is: everyone wants peace; we got to war over the terms offered for that peace.
I'm prepared to listen to arguments, but as it's not really possible to debate such a big topic in the comments I'll just give my opinion. Which is that this is an utterly insane re-writing of history.
If you're referring to the mainstream media projection of history, then I will agree that this is not what they present at all. Not on the BBC or the History channel, if that still exists. But my statements are factually correct, and I might suggest a fairly tame book that presents a different perspective then the mainstream media: Patrick Buchanan's "Churchill, Hitler, and 'The Unnecessary War'". That would be an introduction to an alternative viewpoint to the "Moustache Man Bad" thesis, which is the only acceptable viewpoint in academia.
Thanks for the recommendation. I think for me to be convinced MM wasn't bad would require such a dismantling of my existing belief system that it would represent a complete mental breakdown on my part. Maybe that is the reality, but it's not a practical option to bring me along or many others.
Great as always!
Lucid and properly nuanced.