05/20/2016
The reactions of anonymous people on Twitter criticizing Jews are now fodder for news stories by both “right wing” Jews like Ben Shapiro and more liberal journalists like Jonathan Weisman. [Trump’s supporters unleash anti-Semitic attack on New York Times editor, by Sophia Tesfaye, Salon, May 20, 2016] Somehow, all the death threats, vulgar criticism, and actual violence conservatives have received over the years never become a source of sympathy from the Main Stream Media!
One of the more spectacular examples of an MSM frenzy over supposed anti-Semitism: the reaction to the attack by David Horowitz against his fellow Jew Bill Kristol, leader of a campaign to destroy Donald Trump [Bill Kristol: Republican Spoiler, Renegade Jew, May 15, 2016] The headline, written by Horowitz, alluded to Kristol being Jewish.
As Jonathan S. Tobin notes in Commentary,
[T]he real offense here is … his attempt to wrap him in the Star of David and to somehow brand his opponents as traitors to the pro-Israel cause. …[H]is invocation of “America First” and the use of a term like “renegade Jew” in the headline (though not in the text of the article) seems to echo the smears of the pro-Trump alt right racists who have attacked conservative critics of the candidate with an avalanche of anti-Semitic invective.
[Breitbart’s ‘Renegade Jew’ Disgrace, May 16, 2016]
Horowitz’s offense was not simply criticizing Kristol’s campaign against Trump. Lots of people have done that without incurring the wrath of Commentary. And even saying that Kristol’s views are not good for Jews and Israel is commonplace: Mondoweiss, J Street, and Mearsheimer and Walt in The Israel Lobby argue that neoconservatives and the Israel Lobby have a tragically mistaken view of Jewish and Israeli interests — also discussed in Charles Bloch’s and Steve Sailer’s VDARE posts.
The unforgivable offense: implying Kristol’s being a Jew had something to do with his opposition to Trump. After all, there would have been exactly zero upset if instead the headline was “Bill Kristol: Republican Spoiler, Renegade Republican.”
But putting ‘Jew’ in the headline was guaranteed to bring out immediate charges of anti-Semitism by the likes of Michelle Goldberg in Slate :
To define someone as a 'Renegade Jew' in a column about scheming elites written for an audience full of white nationalists is to signal to the sewers. … A narrative is taking shape, an American Dolchstoßlegende that will blame a potential Trump loss on conniving Semites.
[Breitbart Calls Trump Foe “Renegade Jew.” This Is How Anti-Semitism Goes Mainstream, May 16, 2016]
Of course, we are supposed to engage in the fiction that the opinions of Bill Kristol et al. have nothing to do with being Jewish or what is good for Israel, but everything to do with their perception of what is good for America.
And of course, this goes well beyond neocons to include Jews in the media generally. For example, the ADL condemns the idea Jews have an outsized influence in Hollywood by claiming that Hollywood Jews just “happen to be Jews” — that their Jewish identity does not affect the content of movies or television. [Alleged Jewish ‘Control’ of the American Motion Picture Industry, September 1999] As I’ve painstakingly documented over the course of my career, this is patently absurd. In fact, the Jewish identities and sense of Jewish interests of the neocons are obvious from a close reading of their careers [Understanding Jewish Influence III: Neoconservatism as a Jewish Movement, by Kevin MacDonald, The Occidental Quarterly, August 2004].
While it’s obviously true that Trump has support among some Jews linked to the GOP, there is one Jewish faction that is all but apoplectic he might win [Where Jewish conservatives stand on Donald Trump: A running tally, by Ron Kampeas, Jewish Telegraph Agency, May 6, 2016]. And there can be little doubt that their opposition is fueled by their Jewish identity.
This mystifying to some. For example, Bill O'Reilly seemed genuinely bewildered when he interviewed (at 3:00) Charles Krauthammer — another ardent neocon opponent of Trump — about a Bret Stephens article in the Wall Street Journal.
Stephens was triggered by Trump’s use of the phrase "America First" and decried "the Republican descent into populism” [The GOP Gets What It Deserves, May 2, 2016]. O’Reilly couldn’t help but observe, "he’s really teed off, he’s really angry."
Stephens' outburst was nothing compared to the anti-Trump invective spewed by neocon stalwart Max Boot
Boot said:
I would vote for a conservative third-party candidate or for Hillary Clinton. I regard Donald Trump as an ignorant demagogue who is one of the most dangerous candidates ever to run for the American presidency and one of the least qualified. … He has shown that he doesn’t understand the basics of policy, he has shown that he is erratic, he is xenophobic, he is guilty of sexist and racist comments …Let’s remember, this is the guy who wants to ban all Muslims from the country, he wants to send the police breaking into American homes to round up 11 million undocumented migrants; … He has hijacked the party. … He is not remotely conservative. He is a populist demagogue, xenophobic … [BBC NewsNight (YouTube) May 9, 2016]
This sort of anger is hardly likely to come from Trump’s supposed lack of concern about "limited government," or "commitment to the Constitution," "true conservatism," or even his personal qualities.
In unpacking these talking points, it’s useful to separate the red herrings from more fundamental concerns. For real conservatives, such as Mike Huckabee, Rick Perry, and Newt Gingrich, this election is a simple choice between someone who would be far better than Hillary Clinton on fundamental issues conservatives claim to hold dear. There is in fact a long list of Trump policies and proposals that are conservative by any reckoning — promising Scalia-like Supreme Court appointments, securing the border and deporting illegals, supporting the police against the Black Lives Matter movement, promising to end Obamacare, doing away with Common Core, taking strong pro-life and pro-Second Amendment stands, and supporting the military and veterans. [Trump unveils his potential Supreme Court nominees, by Jeremy Diamond, CNN, May 28, 2016]
Neocons never threatened to run a third-party candidate against "compassionate conservative" George W. Bush even though he was far more liberal than Trump — proposing Amnesty for illegals, expanding Medicare entitlements, signing No Child Left Behind, and racking up huge budget deficits — what some have called "Big Government Conservatism” [The liberal leanings of George W. Bush, by John Ibbitson, The Globe and Mail, April 3, 2009]. Nor was Mitt Romney a small-government candidate. [Back to Bush’s Big-Government Conservatism, by Michael Tanner, National Review, November 30, 2011]
For neocons, the huge expansion of entitlements, promotion of culture-destroying immigration, and rampaging budget deficits were not offenses against “conservatism.” These policies didn’t even register as a problem. It was more important that Bush carried out their (disastrous) neoconservative foreign policy.
It’s impossible to take the dedication of self-styled “conservatives” like Stephens and Kristol to conservative principles seriously. After all, they refuse to acknowledge that unless we deal with the problem of importing millions of Third Worlders who both vote for and utilize welfare and “big government,” any kind of “limited government” will be impossible.
Another very basic principle actual conservatives support is freedom of speech. Immigration threatens this as well. Universities throughout the West are under siege by the intolerant Left, and one more liberal appointment to the Supreme Court could well be the end of the First Amendment. Intellectual rationales for curtailing First Amendment freedoms, and in particular speech critical of the multicultural ideal, are already common in liberal academic circles [Why we should ban “hate speech,” by Jared Taylor, American Renaissance, August 24, 2012]. Continuing to import millions from intolerant Third World cultures does not bode well.
Yet Stephens and Kristol soft-pedal the effect the catastrophic impact of a President Hillary Clinton. Indeed, Kristol is given to Pollyannaish tweets that a Third-Party candidate would actually win.
There is a viable path to victory for a credible independent candidate. Not easy, but doable.https://t.co/DECILg4p6l
— Bill Kristol (@BillKristol) May 18, 2016
This is presumably to avoid the charge that he is really quite happy with Clinton and her pro-Israel donors, notably Haim Saban [Jane Harmon, Haim Saban, and AIPAC: The Disloyalty Issue in Multicultural America, by Kevin MacDonald, The Occidental Observer, April 25, 2009].
Indeed, it’s hard to see why Kristol would disapprove of Hillary’s neocon foreign policy advisers like Robert Kagan, who advocates military intervention and democracy creation throughout the Middle East as a moral imperative [Neocon Kagan Endorses Hillary Clinton, ConsortiumNews, February 25, 2016]. Needless to say, this doesn’t stop Kagan from portraying Trump as a fascist [This is how fascism comes to America, Washington Post, May 18, 2016].
So why are neocons so upset? Two reasons:
1.) Trump has rejected basic neocon foreign policy positions on the Middle East. Trump opposed the Iraq war which was promoted by the neocons, calling it a “complete disaster.” Amazingly, he stated:
“They lied. They said there were weapons of mass destruction and there were none. And they knew there were none. There were no weapons of mass destruction.”[Trump vs. Bush: They Said There Were Weapons of Mass Destruction And They Knew There Were None. They Lied, Real Clear Politics, February 13, 2016]
Trump has also supported friendly relations with Vladimir Putin’s Russia and supported an effort to achieve stability in the Middle East by propping up the Assad government in Syria. Assad and Putin are very high on the neocon hate list.
And Trump has given mixed signals on Israel, speaking about neutrality in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and avoiding money from the Republican Jewish Coalition. His most recent speech on the topic, at AIPAC, was intended to quell Jewish fears and mend fences, but the Washington Post’s token (neo)conservative Jennifer Rubin emphasized that this speech was recited from a teleprompter, implying that it didn’t reflect his real views [Trumpkins and the Jews, Washington Post, May 16, 2016]
Of course, Trump has received promises of support from Sheldon Adelson. He also hired ex-AIPAC official Michael Glassner and other prominent Jews to high positions in his campaign [Trump names Jewish financier, fixer to major campaign positions, by Nathan Guttman, Forward, May 7, 2016]
But Trump has given no indication that he would appoint any neocons to his administration. And, unlike George W. Bush, Trump is not a babe in the woods, ready to be dominated by a coterie of neocons. This would mean that the neocons would be deprived of their primary power base, with no choice but to defect to the Democrats (from whence they came).
2.) Trump represents the undoing of elite consensus on immigration, multiculturalism, and the moral imperative that white Americans become a minority in a country they created.
All of these radically Leftist positions have now been subsumed into “conservative” dogma.
The fact is neocons have never been true conservatives. They adopted conservative positions of convenience in order to appeal to the GOP base. The problem for them now: the base, energized by Trump, is finally ignoring the moral pronouncements coming from on high and voting on the issues that really matter to them, trade, jobs, and immigration. And yes, they also love Trump’s disdain for Political Correctness.
Bret Stephens of the Wall Street Journal is well aware that what he calls "modern conservatism" is a departure from older conservative traditions, which have been the prime target of Jewish intellectuals throughout the twentieth century, including the neoconservatives (labeled as "modern conservatives" by Stephens).
Stephens wrote
[Trumpism] is a regression to the conservatism of blood and soil, of ethnic polarization and bullying nationalism. Modern conservatives sought to bury this rubbish with a politics that strikes a balance between respect for tradition and faith in the dynamic and culture-shifting possibilities of open markets. When that balance collapses — under a Republican president, no less — it may never again be restored, at least in our lifetimes. [Emphases added throughout][Hillary, the Conservative Hope, May 9, 2016]
Or Jennifer Rubin, cited above:
Trump’s nativism and xenophobia make him toxic with a good deal of the American Jewish community for whom such sentiments have invariably been associated with governments hostile to Jews.
Or Robert Kagan, cited above:
[Trump’s] public discourse consists of attacking or ridiculing a wide range of “others” — Muslims, Hispanics, women, Chinese, Mexicans, Europeans, Arabs, immigrants, refugees — whom he depicts either as threats or as objects of derision. His program, such as it is, consists chiefly of promises to get tough with foreigners and people of nonwhite complexion. He will deport them, bar them, get them to knuckle under, make them pay up or make them shut up.
Contra Stephens, the neocons never respected tradition and gave only lip service to faith. Their only outreach was recruiting Evangelical Christians to the cause of a rabidly pro-Israel foreign policy.
Stephens is correct in that there was an older tradition of conservatism based on the ethno-national interests of the traditional American majority. This was purged by the neocons. They are now afraid it is returning, perhaps in the form of the Alt Right — the only recognizable intellectual constituency that supports Trump.
In fact, the intellectual antecedents of the Alt Right go back much further than the conservatives of the 1980s who were purged by the neocons. Their roots go back to Madison Grant, Lothrop Stoddard, Henry Pratt Fairchild, William Ripley, Gustave Le Bon, Charles Davenport, and William McDougall, and an updated version of the intellectual milieu of the early twentieth century when America was self-consciously a European, Christian nation and proud of it [Enemies of my enemy, by Kevin MacDonald, KevinMacDonald.com, Accessed May 20, 2016]. They go back to Charles Lindbergh and the America First movement that has received so much attention since Trump began using the phrase. Significantly, the ADL was among those urging Trump to abandon the phrase [ADL urges Donald Trump to Reconsider “America First” in Foreign Policy Approach, ADL, April 28, 2016]
This early conservative tradition was eradicated by the rise of Franz Boas and the other Jewish-dominated intellectual movements of the left discussed in The Culture of Critique — an intellectual framework that has been embraced by the neocons.
As Robert Kagan writes of Trump:
If he wins the election, his legions will comprise a majority of the nation. Imagine the power he would wield then. In addition to all that comes from being the leader of a mass following, he would also have the immense powers of the American presidency at his command: the Justice Department, the FBI, the intelligence services, the military. Who would dare to oppose him then? Certainly not a Republican Party that laid down before him even when he was comparatively weak. And is a man like Trump, with infinitely greater power in his hands, likely to become more humble, more judicious, more generous, less vengeful than he is today, than he has been his whole life? Does vast power un-corrupt?This is how fascism comes to America.
But perhaps fascism is in the eye of the beholder. After all, it’s in the West of today that certain ideas are illegal, certain political parties are banned, and the majority populations of white nations are openly despised, dispossessed, and have their public policy views dismissed by unelected judges.
How is resisting such tyrannical and genocidal policies “fascist?
It’s not that Trump is bringing “fascism,” it’s that there’s a chance he might be bringing freedom for European-Americans. And for all their talk of tolerance, that’s one thing the Culture of Critique will never allow.
Kevin MacDonald is emeritus professor of psychology at California State University–Long Beach. His research has focused on developing evolutionary perspectives in developmental psychology, personality theory, Western culture, and ethnic relations (group evolutionary strategies). He edits and is a frequent contributor to The Occidental Observer and The Occidental Quarterly. For his website, click here.
This is a content archive of VDARE.com, which Letitia James forced off of the Internet using lawfare.