Neo-Nazis as out-of-fashion thinkers

Posted by Stuka on March 12, 2005, 08:30 PM | #

I’m waiting patiently for the day when hundreds of thousands of neo-Nazis around the world will take offense at your suggestion that they are in reality Leftists, and convert to Respectable Conservatism.

Posted by Fred Scrooby on March 12, 2005, 09:11 PM | #

“They are racial supremacists just as Hitler was.”

[...]

“Although it may no longer be fashionable, belief in the superiority of whites over blacks is still widespread, for instance.”

John I hope you’ll admit that not wanting your race to be replaced by a different one isn’t “racial supremacism” or a “belief in the superiority of whites over blacks” but may simply amount to liking your race and not wanting it to disappear (while wishing all other races well).  Or is someone who wishes other races well but opposes the extinction of his own a racial supremacist who thinks his race superior to others?

Posted by jonjayray on March 12, 2005, 09:26 PM | #

I myself think that there are many differences between races and that some races are good at one thing and some are good at other things.  And ALL human groups prefer their own.  I think that is all anathema to Leftists but I am sure that it is also realistic.  Leftists never worry much about reality, of course.

Posted by Svigor on March 12, 2005, 09:27 PM | #

The nationalist/internationalist race/class distinction is hardly a trivial one, and destines International Socialism (“Communism”) and National Socialism (“Nazism”) to eternal enmity.  Still, I agree with the main thrust of this essay.

I don’t really understand the popular obsession with the term, “neo-Nazi.”  Nazism was particularly German, and cannot be simply transposed elsewhere.  National Socialism can of course be “transplanted.”  More to the point, virtually none of the people described in the media as “neo-Nazis” are properly labeled so.

John, have you read Separation and Its Discontents, and if so, what do you make of MacDonald’s comparison of Nazism and Judaism?

Posted by Geoff Beck on March 12, 2005, 09:37 PM | #

Nazis?

The Stern Gang, Irgun, and

are the ones we have to worry about in this century.

Posted by louise on March 12, 2005, 11:05 PM | #

Not to be a stickler, but haven’t The Stern Gang and Irgun been defunct for some time now - since shortly after the time of the Nazis, in fact? So they belong to the first half of the last century.

As for the neocons: I don’t recall it being a bunch of Jewish intellectuals who crashed planes into the World Trade Center.

Posted by Geoff Beck on March 12, 2005, 11:18 PM | #

Louise:

I don’t recall it being a bunch of Jewish intellectuals who crashed planes into the World Trade Center.

No, but they did provoke war with a country that posed no threat to the U.S., and the stated reasons for going to war proved false.

No, but that same war has killed 1514 Americans and 86 Britons, cost billions of dollars, and killed thousands of people inside the contrivance known as Iraq.

Give the neocons a few more years with our pea-brained president and they’ll be right up there with the bolsheviks and nazis.

Posted by John S Bolton on March 13, 2005, 01:05 AM | #

The left has, for so long, found it so convenient to their propaganda to lump everyone to the right of Stalin in the same category, that they are actually thereby guilty of making public relations for nazism. It has to be deliberate, too, since learned scholars are so much at the forefront of it. Saturday’s NYT reports on p.A8, March 12th ‘05, that Germany is enacting new legislation against marches by what are described as far right neo nazi groups. If they are national socialist, they are leftist, not to the right of anyone except Pol Pot, perhaps. If they are right wing, they are not true national socialists. It is deception, done by people with more than enough education , intelligence and sophistication to know what they are trying to get away with. If our only alternatives are death camps inspired by Hitler, or those modelled by the khmer rouge, leftists can dream of gaining absolute power. If we have a great many other, and superior alternatives politically, democracy and the rule of law are still possible, but the leftist scholars’ dream of forcing dystopia on the servile orders of society dies a painful death by degrees.

Posted by John S Bolton on March 13, 2005, 01:32 AM | #

Responding to the characterization of neonazis as a kind of leftist without fashionability or atunement to the zeitgeist: intellectual fashions come from some overpowering causes, not randomly. The neonazi could be a leftist who hasn’t seen the possibilities of gaining totalitarian power by the new left approaches, which have actually borrowed heavily from the fascist traditions. He is not going to see how anticaucasianism can serve the cause of socialism, if it can only alienate the majority, and make officials into obvious traitors, pining to turn their countries over to foreigners. What becomes the intellectual fashion, will be determined by the degree of degeneracy that the government schools are capable of accomplishing at a given point.

Posted by Guessedworker on March 13, 2005, 03:43 AM | #

Good analysis, John.  But I think Svi is right when he says that few of the people charged these days with neo-Nazism are anything of the sort.  My impression - and I confess that I haven’t your up-close experience - is that they mostly lack the marbles to comprehend political philosophy.  They are fetishists, poor souls.

They are, of course, very useful to liberal-left intellectuals, most especially the large Jewish component, and to the liberal-left political class.  Indeed, the old saying “if it didn’t exist someone would have to invent it” probably holds true.  Numerically, neo-Nazism does not really exist.  That which does is unworthy of attention.  But it is so useful for tarring non-liberal opinion it has to be inflated ito a boogie-man for our greater liberal instruction.

Last point.  “The far right” is not another form of socialism.  “The far right” is anarcho-libertarianism.  It is the right of the liberal zeitgeist.  Conservatism, on the other hand, is an inactive zeitgeist, and not part of the same spectrum.  One can be conservative.  One can hark back to better times and better ideas.  But the real McCoy is one of the two only potential replacements for liberalism as a whole, the other being feudalism.

Posted by Phil Peterson on March 13, 2005, 05:50 AM | #

John Ray,

I am a bit amused by your obsession with Nazism. As a political movement Nazism was a failure (nay, a disaster). It lasted only 12 years and almost completely destroyed Germany leading it to worse defeat than World War I. Also, there are fewer Nazis in this world today than people who believe the earth is flat. Politically Nazis are irrelavent. Also, if the old Nazis had seen the punks that now pass for “Neo-Nazis”, they would be rather ashamed!

So why Nazis John? Why this Nazi fetish? Unless your post is an indirect finger pointing at us because we do not share your deeply philo-semitic views or your admiration for George Bush?

As a purely academic exercise, your post is a good summary. However, it contains a major flaw: trying to equate Nazism with Communism and dismissing the National versus International difference as trivial is a gargantuan mistake. Because love of one’s country and its opposite can inform a political perspective completely.

Here is what I think of Nazism:

Nazism was a reaction against the enlightenment. This was made possible by the writings of men like Nietzsche who rejected the enlightenment, democracy, commerce and appealed to the warrior spirit and aristocracy. Other intellectuals in Germany followed Nietzsche’s footsteps and laid the intellectual foundations for it. Its coming into being was precepitated by the sanctions at Versailles and by economic chaos.

The Nazis, according to you, become Communists because they nationalized Industry? I suppose you would regard any element of Nationalization as a “socialism” and an affiliate of communism?

Where would you place the Romans, John? Were they Socialists too? I take it that you regard the political spectrum as a linear thing with two extremes and everything else in between depending on the tax rates?

Leo Strauss once wrote a brilliant essay on German nihilism. Have you read it?

Anyway, here is an excellent starting point in understanding the philosophical basis for rejection:

http://www.mala.bc.ca/~johnstoi/Nietzsche/beyondgoodandevil8.htm

Lastly, I doubt many Turks read us. They would be repulsed by our views on Islam.

Posted by Phil Peterson on March 13, 2005, 05:59 AM | #

Might add here: Nazism was an attempt at creating a new aristocracy. It was fundamentally at war with the principle of EQUALITY (for a start).

Communism was an extension of the principle of EQUALITY and was quite obviously aimed at the destruciton of all remnants of Aristocracy.

That Nazism was an attempt at creating a new aristocracy is not just my view:
  http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/0671657151/qid=1110707896/sr=8-1/ref=sr_8_xs_ap_i1_xgl/026-0984170-3108405

Posted by Phil Peterson on March 13, 2005, 06:09 AM | #

“European spirit.  What people call “modern ideas” or “the ideas of the eighteenth century” or even “French ideas”—in other words, what the German spirit has risen against with a deep disgust—were English in origin.  There’s no doubt of that.”

“The French have been only apes and actors of these ideas, their best soldiers, as well, and at the same time unfortunately their first and most complete victims.  For with the damned Anglomania of “modern ideas” the âme française has finally become so thin and emaciated that nowadays we remember almost with disbelief its sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, its profoundly passionate power, its resourceful nobility.”

Posted by jonjayray on March 13, 2005, 06:38 AM | #

Phil
You don’t seem to be very keen at following up links.  It is “Mein Kampf” that is Turkey’s best-seller.  I think that answers your first question.

Your other questions are answered in the articles I link to.

Posted by Phil Peterson on March 13, 2005, 06:49 AM | #

John,

If the Turks don’t read us, what we say of Nazism has little impact on Turkey.

You seem to be hung up on the word “socialist”. I have read your excellent historical summaries. My critique of your post goes to a more fundamental question: the question of the *intellectual* underpinnings of Nazism.

For the Nazis, socialism was a tool at achieving a certain end. That end was completely different from what the communists intended. The similarity here is that both communists and Nazis hated Capitalism.

But almost all political writers among the ancients or those of the middle ages would have been repulsed by Capitalism too with its levelling effect and its destruction of all distinctions except those of money (which they would have regarded as vulgar). Would that also make them Communists/Socialists? Clearly not!

Posted by John S Bolton on March 13, 2005, 07:17 AM | #

The Nazis were actually egalitarian and antiaristocratic, in their overall pattern. They had groups characterized as demonic, subhuman, born criminals and so on, but so did the communists in their most radical moments. They emphasized the common man over against the uncommon, stressing soldierly virtues over against elite ones. They carried out a major land reform against the aristocracy. Their propaganda against the Jews proceeded on the same assumption as our current antimerit quota system; if one group has much more than its share of something valuable, that is a prima facie case that they conspire in some way. The distinction between the two totalitarian systems is that one is more radical and internationalistic, while the other accepts a degree of moderation from national customs. This could account also for the untrendy tendency of fascism; it is somewhat rooted in national customs which are less likely to change with the academic weather.

Posted by Phil Peterson on March 13, 2005, 07:27 AM | #

John,

From one of your links:

“Let us consider the actual, worldly Jew—not the Sabbath Jew, as Bauer does, but the everyday Jew. Let us not look for the secret of the Jew in his religion, but let us look for the secret of his religion in the real Jew. What is the secular basis of Judaism? Practical need, self-interest. What is the worldly religion of the Jew? Huckstering. What is his worldly God? Money. Very well then! Emancipation from huckstering and money, consequently from practical, real Jewry, would be the self-emancipation of our time…. We recognize in Jewry, therefore, a general present-time-oriented anti-social element, an element which through historical development—to which in this harmful respect the Jews have zealously contributed—has been brought to its present high level, at which it must necessarily dissolve itself. In the final analysis, the emancipation of the Jews is the emancipation of mankind from Jewry”.

The difference between what Marx writes and what Hitler writes is in the conclusion. Marx wants the “emancipation” of Jews, which means, shall we say, “secularizing” of Jews AND Gentiles to overcome persecution of Jews.

This is completely different from Hitler’s solution to the “Jewish Question” which is the removal of all Jews from Europe. The two are completely different and opposed to each other. To equate them is a fallacy.

Posted by Phil Peterson on March 13, 2005, 07:34 AM | #

“The Nazis were actually egalitarian and antiaristocratic, in their overall pattern. They had groups characterized as demonic, subhuman, born criminals and so on, but so did the communists in their most radical moments. They emphasized the common man over against the uncommon, stressing soldierly virtues over against elite ones. They carried out a major land reform against the aristocracy. Their propaganda against the Jews proceeded on the same assumption as our current antimerit quota system; if one group has much more than its share of something valuable, that is a prima facie case that they conspire in some way. The distinction between the two totalitarian systems is that one is more radical and internationalistic, while the other accepts a degree of moderation from national customs. This could account also for the untrendy tendency of fascism; it is somewhat rooted in national customs which are less likely to change with the academic weather.”

Nazi ideas were crude. Within the German context, they wished a “meritocracy” of sorts and the elimination of all distinctions of birth (except biological ones like deformities etc).

But in all German occupied territories, the distinctions are immutable. The German as occupier is “ubermensch” (a word straight out of Nietzsche). The very concept of “ubermensch” invokes an INEGALITARIAN predisposition and appeals to a sense of high birth.

The crudity here is that you simply had to be born a German to become an “ubermensch”. The communists had no concept of “ubermensch”. There were enemies of the proleteriat which had to be destroyed. But the Communist utopia had no “ubermensch”. The Nazi utopia is a condition in which the supremacy of the “ubermensch” is permanent.

This is why equating Nazis and communists is a fallacy from the outset. There is no doubt that Nazis were crude. And their rhetoric was mass demagoguery aimed at masses of working class Germans. But the picture has to be seen as a whole.

Posted by John S Bolton on March 13, 2005, 07:38 AM | #

If one doesn’t make excuses for him, it is clear that he asking for the entire world to be emancipated from the Jews, not the Jews from their own supposed ethnic character. With radicals, one can’t say they don’t mean it; if they didn’t, they wouldn’t be radical, and you would not have heard of their moderate and mixed doctrines.

Posted by John S Bolton on March 13, 2005, 07:43 AM | #

In radical communism there are subhuman classes; namely the bourgeois parasite subhuman, and sometimes the peasantry. These are distinguishable also by their ancestry, in the communist system used in Russia and elsewhere, which required pedigrees to be adduced.

Posted by Phil Peterson on March 13, 2005, 07:51 AM | #

John,

A further question:

Zionism was deeply socialist from the outset. That Israel was a very deeply socialist state at its inception is not a matter of doubt. In fact, the American Right was not favourably disposed towards Israel in the beginning because of this.

Does that make Zionism the same as Nazism and Communism? Just another “Socialist” exercise?

Posted by John S Bolton on March 13, 2005, 08:02 AM | #

It contains elements of both, but is much less radical than either as it exists today. The right can support Israel insofar as it represents civilization and human achievement under attack by the moslem savage. The antimoslem fences are singularly appropriate in that they show how wild animals are to be treated, not with compassion, but with the resolve to exclude from anything of value.

Posted by Phil Peterson on March 13, 2005, 08:04 AM | #

John,

My question was put to John Ray.

Yes it is less radical than the two today. But we are now speaking of its founding and the founding ideas.

Posted by Phil Peterson on March 13, 2005, 08:07 AM | #

“The antimoslem fences are singularly appropriate in that they show how wild animals are to be treated, not with compassion”

Unfortunately the building of similar fences in the West is opposed by the same people who support the building of these fences in Israel (some of these men are referred to as “neo-cons”).

Posted by Jeffrey Feldman on March 13, 2005, 11:02 AM | #

The socialism of the early generation of Zionists is well-known.  No secret there.  But you are conflating two issues here (socialism:fascism) that can be easily cleared up by dipping into very well-established mainstream history of the Zionist movement.

Theodore Herzl was a socialist.  He is typically named as the “father” of modern political Zionism and it was his promotion of the idea of statehood for European Jewry (colonization) that sold the idea to Eastern Europeans.  His first idea was a state in Liberia, then Palestine. 

Through a series of well-known congresses called “Zionist Congresses”—starting in the end of the 19th Century, Herzl’s movement gained support.  Eventually, the idea to colonize Palestine caught the attention of the Jewish workers movement called the “bund,” and eastern European Jews moved in great numbers to Israel.  This wave of colonization in the first part of the 20th Century became the founding generation and included such figures as David Ben Gurion.

Now, these folks had nothing to do with fascism.  They were a land-oriented nationalist movement no different than a dozen other land-oriented nationalist movements in Europe at the time.

The fascist element in Zionism—also very well-documented in mainstream history books—is associated with one of Herzl’s rivals, a man named Vladimir Jabotinsky.

Unlike Herzl who believed that Jewish national determination would come through a return to the land (which was just Herzl channeling Tolstoy), Jabotinsky believed that Jews needed to re-invent themselves in militaristic terms.  They needed to become soldiers.

Jabotinsky’s following was always small, but it had all the appearances of any other fascist movement in Europe in the 1920s, and was oriented largely towards training Jews to fight. 

Jabotinsky did not become truly influential in Zionism until his star student—Menachem Begin—moved to mandate Palestine and started using Jabotinsky’s ideas against the British.

So, in the 1930s, there was a struggle in Palestine between two forms of Zionism:  Socialist Zionism (Ben Gurion) and Fascist Zionism (Begin).  Ben Gurion believed in military force, absolutely, but his form of Zionism had nothing to do with fascism.

When Begin’s Reut party finally took power in the 1970s under the name “Likud,” (the party that again rules Israel), most of Jabotinsky’s fascism had been excised from the party in favor of different approach.  Begin was probably a fascist at heart, but Israel in the 1970s had other concerns.  The occupation of land through settlements, in fact, was a chapter out of the Socialist playbook from the 1920s.

Most British Mandate officers from the 1920s, including Mackay, were ignorant colonial bigots who knew nothing about Zionism, and were more inclined to talk about “the Jews” as if they were some monolithic, single force that the world needed to deal with (like typhoid).  Men like Mackay felt it was their gentlemanly duty to explain “the Jews” to the world—a pathetic and offensive habit.  Many English and American politicians in Mackay’s time would have felt that a true gentleman had to be prepared at all times to express an authoritative sounding opinion on such matters as wine, music, women, war and Jews.  Thank goodness there are very few of these arrogant and offensive types around, today.

Posted by Guessedworker on March 13, 2005, 11:17 AM | #

Surely, Jeffrey, you cannot be insinuating that an Englishman of Mackay’s generation could wax authoritative upon the subject of woman.  He may, though, have had several questionable experiences at the hands of women.

Posted by Jeffrey Feldman on March 13, 2005, 11:21 AM | #

They were strange times!!

(LOL)

Posted by Phil Peterson on March 13, 2005, 11:23 AM | #

Jeffrey,

Welcome to our blog.

You offer an interesting perspective there. While I cannot endorse everything you have written, your perspective does suggest that the early Zionists were Socialists. The main thrust of my argument so far has been that in and of itself, socialism is not sufficient to have communism and Nazism lumped together. You agree? (Which is why I took the example of Zionism)

I assume that you agree more with the Ben Gurion rather than the Jabotinsky school of Zionism. Whats your take on Areil Sharon and the current Likud movement? The reason I ask is that many Likudniks are fans of Jabotinsky.

Posted by Jeffrey Feldman on March 13, 2005, 11:47 AM | #

Thanks for the welcome.

I can say as sure as the earth is round that early Zionism was socialist and that Israel was a socialist country from 1948-1976.  It’s not a suggestion.  It’s a fact. 

I think it’s unknown by many Americans simply because the early history of Zionism is a somewhat specialized field.  But the ruling party in Israel from 1948-1976 was the “Labor Party.” 

They weren’t very into Marx and Engels, but Marx and Engels didn’t invent socialism.  They just wrote the longest German books on it.  Ben Gurion would have been a fan of Pinsker who wrote in Yiddish and Russian.

There are in fact three dominant genealogies of Zionism:  religious, socialist, fascist (or militant).

I don’t really like Ben Gurion very much.  He believed that Judaism was old fashioned and needed to fade away.  Terrible idea.  I also do not agree with the practice of displacing Arab villages that he crafted.  Also a terrible idea.

But it was a troubling time in Jewish history the 1920s-1940s. So, I try not to judge him too much. 

Jabotinsky on the other hand, was a dangerous man.  I don’t believe it was right for Begin’s gang to blow up British installations in Mandate Palestine.  It didn’t help anyone’s cause.  And after Begin became more mainstream in the 1970s, the adherants of Jabotinsky gravitated towards the violent movement of Meir Kahane and the more militant religious zionism of Rav Kook. 

Sharon is as much a product of Jabotinsky as he is a product of Kahane and Kook.

All nationalist movements have militant wings, right?  And most of them are dangerous. Jabotinsky was it for Zionism. 

I don’t support the Likud movement and am skeptical about the progress that Sharon will make.  But these are strange times. 

There’s an old saying in Israel:  For things to work, let the Left make War and the Right make peace. 

If Sharon takes on the more militant settlers—disarms them and moves them to less contested territory—well, let’s just say that many of us will sit back down in our chairs, stunned.

But I wouldn’t stand on one foot waiting for Sharon to do that.

Posted by dissidentman on March 13, 2005, 01:00 PM | #

If Sharon takes on the more militant settlers—disarms them and moves them to less contested territory—well, let’s just say that many of us will sit back down in our chairs, stunned.

That’s actually a lie. Sharon has no such intention.

Is this a decision to evict settlements? Clearly not. Nowhere does it positively state that any settlement would be evicted. All it says is that the cabinet would meet in some future time to consider such an eviction. So, in fact, Sharon’s cabinet decided, once again, not to decide on settlements eviction. Compare this with the news headlines, both in Israel and all over the world, which loudly celebrated the alleged historic decision to dismantle settlements.

From Democracy, a Free Press, and Other Fantasies by Ran HaCohen. (2/28/2005)

Posted by Phil Peterson on March 13, 2005, 01:34 PM | #

Jeffrey,

Thanks for the fascinating input on this.

By the way, do you live in Israel?

I have a question. Are you aware that the Israeli Arabs have a much higher birthrate than Israeli Jews and at current trends will outnumber Jews within Israel in a few decades? This does not even begin to take into account the troubles that might be caused by the Palestinian birth rate which is nothing short of phenomenal.

I have personally been of the view that the only rational policy for securing Israel’s future is to stop expansion, evict all Arabs (including those who are Israeli citizens) from within Israel’s boundaries. In retrun, they would get significant monetary compensation and land on the west bank.

Also, as a gesture of peace, the settlers should move to within Israel and then the borders must be sealed totally. I know that it is almost impossible for this to happen now. Because a decent proportion of the West Bank settlers are fanatics who won’t leave and no government would be able to make them leave. At the same time, the Arab population grows dramatically.

The way I see it, there is great conflict waiting to happen if the demographic problem is not addressed. Do you agree?

Posted by Phil Peterson on March 13, 2005, 01:52 PM | #

“That’s actually a lie. Sharon has no such intention.”

Thats possible. Sharon’s past would seem to indicate that.

Posted by Effra on March 13, 2005, 03:00 PM | #

Vladimir Jabotinsky lived in Italy for three years, idolised Mussolini, made friends with leading fascists (who included Italian Jews) and later invited them to Mandate Palestine. Italy was the leading Mediterranean naval power then. Fascist naval officers advised the Zionists on the creation of the Israeli navy. In the 1930s Jabotinsky became so overtly totalitarian that Ben Gurion called him ‘Vladimir Hitler’.

Nazi ideology was anti-monarchist, anti-Christian (one of the best working definitions of National Socialism is ‘Catholicism without Christianity’) and their ‘volkisch’ inclinations naturally inclined them to statism and communitarian, neo-feudal attitudes, with the Party replacing the old conservative hierarchies of Junkers, Ritters, dynastic business houses, etc. There was a good deal of democratic posturing in Nazism: the ‘Order Castle’ system of elite education, compulsory get-togethers for employers and workers, meritocracy in the Wehrmacht with the Waffen-SS as a spur, and so forth. In the German Lebensraum of the New Order, every German was to be a king, lording it over Slavs and other lower forms of life in fortified farms and cities. Class distinctions *among* racial Germans would become less significant. To that extent Nazism was egalitarian, and quite a shock to the status-obsessed Teutonic mind.

Obviously so synthetic a reconstruction of the organic, evolved social order, and the slighting of traditional institutions, by a mob movement led by foreign immigrant, would be anathema to a true conservative. It was disliked even by those who had accepted the recent pan-German innovations of Bismarck, and they (not leftists) were the driving force behind most anti-Nazi conspiracies.

I would have supported a restoration of the Hohenzollerns and the redivision of Germany into its traditional kingdoms, provinces and city states in 1945, rather than the phoney neuro-democracy with its artificial Lander based on arbitrary occupation zones. ‘West Germany’ was established at the point of a gun and accepted only as a pis aller.

Laborious efforts to orientate national movements on a post-1789 left/right continuum are doomed to fail because there is no such thing as Universal Political Man—as a great Frenchman, Maistre, noted in the early 1800s. To read the so-called universal values of the French Enlightenment across to other countries is a waste of time: they were little more than a reaction against a specifically French kind of autocratic kingship, masquerading as nostrums for the whole of humanity. Come to that, ‘socialism’ has existed from way back: we had a dose of it in England in the 1640s, and the likes of Robert Owen owed little to Continental models.

Mussolini had the common sense to declare repeatedly that “fascism is not an export article”. Certain political theorists today are more tendentious. The wish to make neat comparisons, to ignore the vast particularities of race, heritage, culture and tradition that keep nation states wary and separate, is hard dying in academe. But in the real world, sovereignties—proclaimed obsolete a century ago at the high tide of empire—keep obstinately multiplying, and peoples keep drawing apart.

Hitler’s fatal flaw was that he was a universalist. Like the Committee of Public Safety, he tried to over-generalise the application of his ideals by making war on too many neighbours at once. But that is not a fault that ‘modernity’ invented; Octavian had the same temptations.

Posted by JF on March 13, 2005, 03:02 PM | #

I have lived in Israel, but do not right now. 

In general I don’t believe in biological definitions of citizenship.  I also don’t think it’s technically possible to establish the distinction between Jew and Arab that the birthrate arguments entail. 

Deportation, as I understand it, should be reserved as a legal measure for immigrants who violate certain laws.  So, if there are foreign immigrants living in Israel and they violate laws, then that should be ground for deportation.  The same would be true for Israeli citizens who find themselves living in a foreign country.

Financial incentive to move is a really tricky issue.  Personally, I think it’s a good idea in some cases.  The settlers were given financial incentives to move into the west bank (good mortgage rates), and I suspect many of them will move out with the right financial incentives.  But whether or not Israeli citizens who identify as Palestinians would choose to move under similar circiumstances—that would probably need to come through a financial offer from the Palestinian state.

Posted by Phil Peterson on March 13, 2005, 03:12 PM | #

Jeffrey:

“In general I don’t believe in biological definitions of citizenship.”

Well, the very basis of the state of Israel is partly biological, i.e. a Jew being a person with a Jewish mother.

If you remove that, the very basis of Israel disappears.

Effra:

Excellent post. The further drifting apart of peoples is not supposed to happen, as you rightly note. In the “enlighetened” world of Liberalism such things disppear from the earth in a Utopia.

Its a funny thing about Liberals and also Neo-cons. Some Neo-cons were willing to support a partition of Iraq along ethnic lines. Such an idea proposed for America would immediately invoke shrill calls of “White Supremacist!” from the same people who propose it in Iraq.

Posted by JF on March 13, 2005, 03:25 PM | #

Well, the very basis of the state of Israel is partly biological, i.e. a Jew being a person with a Jewish mother.

If you remove that, the very basis of Israel disappears.

The basis of Israel doesn’t vanish, but it evolves. 

As has the basis of every democracy. 

The specific terms by which Israel was established may need to evolve to arrive at the specific terms by which Israel will endure.  We had the same problem in the US, as our original founding Constitution unfortunately had some aspects built into it that needed to evolve before the Constitution could form the basis for an enduring nation. 

The biological definition of citizenship was important to Israel (and the world) for a certain period of time.  It’s going to evolve in the long run, maybe not in the next ten years, but eventually. 

Biological definitions are citizenship are never certain because they are metaphors.  You don’t prove you are Jewish to Israeli authorities through a blood test, but through testimonies from Jewish authorities.  So even as it stands, it’s a social definition that presents itself as a biological definition.  These social definitions of Jewish identity will and should always be a part of the Israeli Constitution, just not in the strict form that they currently inhabit.

Posted by Fred Scrooby on March 13, 2005, 04:14 PM | #

Israel will not survive long-term unless it grow physically—acquire more territory (it’s physically way too small)—and unless it maintain its Jewish population at something like 90% of the total.  In physical size it should be something like five or six times its present area, at least (bigger than that if possible).  Jeffrey Feldman’s flirting with a non-ethnobiological basis for populating Israel is something which, if taken to its conclusion, would spell Israel’s eventual death—as it would any country’s eventual death that tried it.  If all the Negroes in Kenya were replaced by whites, Mexicans, Hindus, or Chinamen Kenya obviously would no longer exist and a brand-new country would take its place.  It’s what happened to Prussia:  originally a Baltic-race nation speaking a Baltic-language dialect (Old Prussian, which was not a Germanic language), Prussia came under rule by Germans, who proceeded to fill it up with ... guess what ..., and it changed from a Baltic to a German country.  It’s what happened to South Vietnam:  racial/cultural/linguistic Vietnamese from the Hanoi area moved south, killing or expelling people there who were called the Chams until the latter were finally replaced, and the country became Vietnamese from having been Cham.  It’s what Hengist and Horsa and those who came after did to the ancient Britons and what the Pilgrims and Jamestown settlers and those who followed them did to the North American Red Man.  Would Israel be Israel if all whites there were replaced with Koreans or Somali Bantus?  Gee ... I kinda doubt it ...

Maybe you need to lose some of the liberalism, Jeffrey.  Step one could be to stop calling “fascists” all people who are only trying to defend themselves.     

“Effra:  Excellent post. The further drifting apart of peoples is not supposed to happen, as you rightly note. In the ‘enlighetened’ world of Liberalism such things disppear from the earth in a Utopia.”  (—Phil Peterson)

Yes, in thermodynamics, that utopia—if you can call it a utopia—is also known as “The Heat Death of the Universe” in which everything’s the same, the temperature is everywhere identical, all discernible distinction disappears, every process whatsoever comes griding to a halt, entropy is maximum and there is no information, no meaning, no life of course, and no mind in the universe.  This universal absolute sameness, the liberals’ idea of utopia, is everyone else’s idea of hell.

Posted by Phil Peterson on March 13, 2005, 04:29 PM | #

“Yes, in thermodynamics, that utopia—if you can call it a utopia—is also known as “The Heat Death of the Universe” in which everything’s the same, the temperature is everywhere identical, all discernible distinction disappears, every process whatsoever comes griding to a halt, entropy is maximum and there is no information, no meaning, no life of course, and no mind in the universe.  This universal absolute sameness, the liberals’ idea of utopia, is everyone else’s idea of hell.”

LMAO

Posted by JF on March 13, 2005, 04:34 PM | #

Jeffrey Feldman’s flirting with a non-ethnobiological basis for populating Israel is something which, if taken to its conclusion, would spell Israel’s eventual death

Not flirting—more like happily married to. 

I live in a country that has avoided biological definitions of citizenship, so it’s just my preference.

As for replacement populations:  there are many Israelis who made the same arguments when Jews came in from North Africa. 

Following the Suez crisis, massive numbers of Jews from Arabic countries emigrated to Israel.  Today, welll over half the population of Israel consists of Jews with Arabic origins.

So, first off, the distinction between Jew and Arab is untenable.

That means there needs to be another distinction to register citizenship:  between Jew and non-Jew.  That’s not possible to establish biologically, so it would require a system of authentication. 

Which is what there is already:  the rabbis. 

As for expanding territorially—I don’t know about that.  The relationship between the size of a country and it’s ability to survive has never been established.  I’d say Israel has a much better chance of surviving if it can establish lasting economic relationships with its neighbors.  Iraq is huge and look what happened there.

My liberalism:  I’ll keep that for now (thank you! ). I don’t see it as a problem.  I go where the good discussion is, and today it is here.

As for fascism—I’m not the one calling everyone a fascist. I think you might have me confused with other writers out there.  I’d be the first to admit that accusations of fascism are unhelpful these days—both on the left and the right.  But I’ve been pretty outspoken against them.  Fascism is an interesting topic though.  So it’s worth discussing in thoughtful ways.

Posted by Fred Scrooby on March 13, 2005, 04:56 PM | #

“As for fascism—I’m not the one calling everyone a fascist.” —JF

I was referring to your discussion of Jabotinsky but no need to comment—we won’t see eye-to-eye.

Posted by Geoff Beck on March 13, 2005, 05:16 PM | #

JF:

> I live in a country that has avoided biological definitions of citizenship, so it’s just my preference.

This is the idea of creed nation. (To me it sounds Bolshevik) This notion is quite young, and a post WWII fiction.

All immigrants, prior to 1965, arrived at the shores of the US and were encouraged and coerced to become Anglo-Saxon in manners and thinking.

The 1924 Immigration Reform Act insured that would remain, that - White, Anglo-Saxon, and European - until 1965, when it was demolished by subversives within the country.

Much of the turmoil and confusion in American society, today, is a result of the creed nation folly. America was for most of its history a specific creation of European peoples, with an Anglo-Saxon philosophical core.

Most Jewish immigrants were opposed to this idea, I’d argue, and devised this creed nation scheme. It is interesting to note the Jews were kept out of Ivy league schools, in some cases, til 1967.

Considering the radical political and intellectuall movements Jews are associated with, like Bolshevism*, Boasian Anthropology, and the like, I’m not surprised.

*Add neo-conservatism to the list.

Posted by JF on March 13, 2005, 06:59 PM | #

Much of the turmoil and confusion in American society, today, is a result of the creed nation folly.

I don’t see turmoil and confusion, so I’ll get up from the table and return to listening.

Thanks, everyone, for making room for me in the discussion.

Posted by Geoff Beck on March 13, 2005, 07:45 PM | #

JF:

I’m sure you don’t read the same newspapers that I do… judges murdered, blacks & hispanics rioting in high schools, California bankrupted and turned into a 3rd world sewer in a generation, high divorce & illegitimacy rates, and that is just a start.

ACLU and other groups breaking the crosses of war memorials…

If that’s not turmoil, then I don’t know what is? Here’s a book, that details the decline

, by Gertrude Himmelfarb. Perhaps you know who she is? The wife of neo-con godfather, Irving Kristol.

So, I guess you agree with me that the creed nation thing is sneaky little lie whispered in post-war children’s ears.

Posted by Svigor on March 13, 2005, 08:44 PM | #

the creed nation thing is sneaky little lie whispered in post-war children’s ears
Just so; it has become fashionable, if not dogmatic, to say “duh, America has absorbed great numbers of immigrants before, duh, America will do it again.” (sorry, but really, pro-immigrationist - that is, party-line - rhetoric on immigration is so very facile)

The extent to which America has assimilated large numbers of immigrants in the past has been circumscribed by (broad) racial boundaries.  To assume that extent is infinitely plastic is stupid.

More to the point, the assertion ignores precisely what Geoff has written, that in the past America demanded assimilation, something Republicans are no longer capable of doing, much less Democrats.

Posted by Stuka on March 13, 2005, 09:10 PM | #

Of course “JF” doesn’t see confusion and turmoil. That’s because everything is going swimmingly, from his POV.

Posted by jonjayray on March 14, 2005, 04:07 AM | #

For an “irrelevant” post, this one has attracted a lot of comments!

Posted by Fred Scrooby on March 14, 2005, 06:24 AM | #

“I myself think that there are many differences between races and that some races are good at one thing and some are good at other things.  And ALL human groups prefer their own.  I think that is all anathema to Leftists but I am sure that it is also realistic.  Leftists never worry much about reality, of course.”  (—John R.)

This was an extremely safe statement to make, which sounded as if John simply didn’t want to be drawn into an argument at that particular point, so was intentionally bland instead of his usual provocative self.  Nevertheless I’ll confirm (though such blandness scarcely requires it) that I agree with every word (and dare say so does every MR.com regular without exception—what’s not to agree with?).

Posted by Andrew L on March 15, 2005, 12:53 AM | #

Jee wizz, what a hornets nest, It is obvious that some people have a prime objective to dispute anything, and hate the Truth, Hitler was also on speed, from about 1942, so administered by his Doctor,perhaps that helped his thinking and promoted his sinking, He was braindead, Idiotic Erational,Anti semetic, Spinoza doctrined, Marxist Doctrined,and I’m a bit worried about Martin Borman’s relationship with Hitler, Yep sounds like a perfect leftoid to me.

Posted by JBB on March 21, 2005, 01:57 AM | #

>John S Bolton:
Their propaganda against the Jews proceeded on the same assumption as our current antimerit quota system; if one group has much more than its share of something valuable, that is a prima facie case that they conspire in some way.

So it can only be a coincidence that jews own and/or operate most of the media in the US ?

http://www.nationalvanguard.org/story.php?id=4231

...more or less like the german press in pre-nazi Germany ?

http://www.jewishtribalreview.org/lapin2.htm

Ethnic nepotism is normal for jews. Most of them have a collectivistic/ethnocentric mind, which leads them to have similar ethnic goals. They don’t need to meet in secret in order to ‘conspire’: they know what their interests are and they act accordingly.

Anyway coincidence or not, the jewish domination of the media has critical consequences for american society:

http://www.natvan.com/free-speech/fs9810a.html
http://www.natvan.com/internet-radio/ts/092698.mp3