Interesting read



“In this regard it is interesting that many neoconservative Jewish intellectuals in the contemporary United States have rejected corporate, statist ideologies as a direct consequence of the recongintion that these ideologies have resulted in corporate, state-sponsored anti-semitism. Indeed, the beginnings of the neoconservative movement can be traced to the Moscow Trials of the 1930s in which many of the old Jewish Bolshevisk, including Trotsky, were convicted of treason. The res

Interesting read



“In this regard it is interesting that many neoconservative Jewish intellectuals in the contemporary United States have rejected corporate, statist ideologies as a direct consequence of the recongintion that these ideologies have resulted in corporate, state-sponsored anti-semitism. Indeed, the beginnings of the neoconservative movement can be traced to the Moscow Trials of the 1930s in which many of the old Jewish Bolshevisk, including Trotsky, were convicted of treason. The result was the development of the New York Intellectuals as an anti-stalinist leftist movement, parts of which gradually evolved into neoconservatism. The neoconservative movement had been fervently anti-communist and has opposed ethnic quotas and affirmative action policies in the United States- policies that would clearly preclude free competition between Jews and gentiles. Part of the attraction neoconservatism held for Jewish intellectuals was its compatibility with support for Israel at a time when Third World countries supported by most American leftists were strongly anti-zionist. Many neoconservative intellectuals had previously been ardent leftists, and the split between these previous allies resulted in an intense internecine feud.”

p103





As expected on the basis of social identity theory, all these movements appear to have a strong sense of belonging to an ingroup viewed as intellectually and morally superior to fighting aginst outgroups seen as morally depraved and as intellectually inferior (e.g., Horkheimer's constant admonition that they were among the "chosen few" desined to develop Critical Theory). Within the ingroup, disagrement was channeled into a narrowly confined intellectual space, and those who overstepped the boundaries were simply excised from the movement. The comments on Eugen Bleuler to Frued when he left the psychoanalytic movement in 1911 are worth quoting again because they describe a central feature of psychoanalysis and the other movements reviewed in this volume" "This 'who is not for us is against us,' this 'all or nothing,' is necessary for religious communities and useful for political parties. I can therefore understand the principle as such, but for science I consider it harmful" (in Gay 1987, 144-145). All these features are central to traditional Judaism as well and are compatible with proposing that a basic feature of all manifestations of Judaism is a proneness to developing highly collectivist social structures with a strong sense of ingroup-outgroup barriers (see PTSDA, Ch. 8).

p226-227





Another important theme is that psychoanalysis and the "Authoritarian Personality" studies showed strong overtones of indoctrination: Theories were developed in which behavior that did not conform to politically acceptable standards was conceptualized as an indication of psychopathology. This is apparent in the tendency for psychoanalysis to attribute rejection of psychoanalysis itself to a various forms of psychopathology, as well as in its general perspective that a pathology-inducing gentile culture was the source of all forms of psychiatric diagnosis and that anti-Semitism was the sign of a disturbed personality. The "Authoritarian Personality" studies built on this tradition with its "discovery" that the failure to develop a "liberal personality" and to deeply and sincerely accept liberal political beliefs was a sign of psychopathology".

p227





"...American Jewish capitalists like Jacob Schiff financed Russian radical movements directed at overthrowing the Czar and may well have had a considerable impact (Goldstein 1990, 26-27; Szaijkowski 1967)."

p227





"In a real science the fundamental structure of reality cannot be decided a priori and protected from empirical disconfirmation, as is the case whenever groups develop a political stake in a particular interpretation of reality. Yet this is precisely what occurred during the Inquisition and the period of medieval Christian religious orthodoxy, and it has been the case in all the intellectual movements reviewed here (as well as in much of the Jewish historiography reviewed in SAID, Ch 7). Becuase the movements reviewed here have had an underlying Jewish political agenda, the essential doctrines and the direction of research were developed a priori to conform to those interests. And because of the fundamental irrationality of the ideologies involved, the only form these movements could take was that of an authoritarian ingroup that would simply excise dissenters from the group. Within these movements the route to a successful career involved, as necessary condition, authoritarian submission to the fundamental tenets of the intellectual movement."

p233





"For a similar reason, Jews have consistently advocated an internationalist foreign policy because "an internationally-minded America was likely to be more sensitive to problems of foreign Jewries" (Cohen, 1972, 342).

p241





“Ethnic and religious pluralism also serves external Jewish interests because Jews become just one of many ethnic groups. This results in the diffusion of political and cultural influence among the various ethnic and religious groups, and it becomes difficult or impossible to develop unified, cohesive groups of gentiles united in opposition to Judaism. Historically, major anti-semitic movements have tended to erupt in societies that have been, apart from the Jews, religiously or ethnically homogeneous (see SAID). Conversely, one reason for the relative lack of anti-semitism in the United States compared to Europe was that “Jews did not stand out as a solitary group of (religious) non-conformists” (Highham 1984, 156). Although ethnic and cultural pluralism are certainly not guaranteed to satisfy Jewish interests (see Ch. 8), it is nonetheless the case that ethnically and religiously pluralistic societies have been perceived by Jews as more likely to satisfy Jewish interests than are societies characterized by ethnic and religious homogeneity among gentiles”

p242





"The Census Bureau has just reported that about half of the American population will soon be non-white or non-European. And they will all be American citizens. We have tipped beyond the point where a Nazi-Aryan party will be able to previal in this country"

p244





"Postive attitudes toward cultural diversity have also appeared in other statements on immigration by Jewish authors and leaders. Charles Silberman (1985, 350) notes "American Jews are committed to cultural tolearance because of their belief- one firmly rooted in history- that Jews are safe only in a society acceptant of a wide range of attitudes and behaviors, as well as a diversity of religious and ethnic groups. It is this belief, for example, not approval of homosexulaity, that leads an overwhelming majority of U.S. Jews to endorse 'gay rights' and to take a liberal stance on most other so-called "social issues."

p244





"Nevertheless, it is probable that the decline in evolutionary and biological theories of race and ethnicity facilitated the sea change in immigration policy brought about by the 1965 law. As Higham (1984) notes, by the time of the final victory in 1965, which removed national origins and racial ancestry from immigration policy and opened up immigration to all human groups, the Boasian perspective of cultural determinism and anti-biologism had become standard academic wisdom. The result was that "it became intellectually fashionable to discount the very existence of persistent ethnic differences. The whole reaction deprived popular race feelings of a powerful ideological weapons" (Highham 1984, 58-59)

p251





"The ideology of racial equality was an important weapon on behalf of opening immigration up to all human groups. For example, in a 1951 statement to Congress, the AJCongress stated, "The findings of science must force even the most prejudiced among us to accept, as unqualifiedly as we do the law of gravity, that intelligence, morality and character, bear no relationship whatever to geography or place of birth." The statement went on to cite some of Boas's popular writings on the subject as well as the writings of Boas's protege Ashley Montagu, perhaps the most visible opponent of the concept of race during this period. Notagu, whose original name was Israel Ehrenberg, theorized in the period immediately following World War II that humans are innately cooperative, but not innately aggressive, and there is a universal brotherhood among humans (see Shipman 1194, 159ff). In 1952 another Boas protege, Margaret Mead, testified before the President's Commission on Immigration and Naturalization (PCIN) (1953, 92) that "all human beings from all groups of people have the same potentialities...Our best antrhopological evidence today suggests that the people of every group have about the same distribution of potentialities." Another witness stated that the executive board of the American Anthropological Association had unanimously endorsed the proposition that "all scientific evidence indicates that all peoples are inherently capable of acquiring or adapting to our civilization" (PCIN 1953, 93)(see Ch 2 for a discussion of the success of the political efforts of Boasians to domintate the American Anthropological Association). By 1965 Senator Jacob Javits (Cong. Rec., 111, 1965, 24469) could confidently announce to the Senate during the debate on immigration bill that "both the dictates of our consciences as well as the precepts of sociologists tell us that immigration, as it exists in the national origins quota system, is wrong and without any basis in reason or fact for we know better than to say that one man is better than another because of the color of his skin." The intellectual revolution and its translation into public policy had been completed."

p252





“America has ample room for all the six millions of the Pale (i.e., the Pale of Settlement, home to most of Russia’s Jews); any one of her fifty states could absorb them. And next to being in a country of their own, there could be no better fate for them than to be together in a land of civil and religious liberty, of whose Constitution Christianity forms no part and where their collective votes would be practically guarantee them against the future persecution. (Israel Zangwill, in Ross 1914, 144).

p261





"I believe that this nation is the last hope of Western civilization and if this oasis of the world shall be overrun, perverted, contminated or destroyed, then the last flickering light of humanity will be extinguished. I take no issue with those who would praise the contributions which have been made to our society by people of many races, of varied creeds and colors. America is indeed a joining together of many streams which go to form a mighty river which we call the American way. However, we have in the US today hard-core, indigestible blocs which have not become integrated into the American way of life, but which, on the contrary are its deadly enemies. Today, as never before, untold millions are storming our gates for admission and those gates are cracking under the strain. The solution of the problems of Europe and Asia will not come through a transplanting of those problems en masse to the United States...I do not intend to become prophetic, but if the enemies of this legislation succeed in riddling it to pieces, or in amending it beyond recognition, they will have contributed more to promote this nation's downfall than any other group since we achieved our independence as a nation. (Senator Pat McCarran, Cong. Rec., March 2, 1953, 1518)

p297





“While constituting approximately 2.4 percent of the population of the United States, Jews represented half of the top one hundred Wall Street executives and about 40 percent of admissions to Ivy League Colleges. Lipset and Raab (1995) note that Jews contribute between one-quarter and one-third of all political contributions in the United States, including one-half of Democratic Party contributions and one-foruth of Republican contributions."

p304





"Although multicultuaralist ideology was invented by Jewish intellectuals to rationalize the continuation of seperatism and minority-group ethnocentrism in a modern Western state, several of the recent instantiations of multiculturalism may eventually produce a monster with negative consequences for Judism. Irving Louis Horowitz (1993, 89) notes the emergence of anti-Semitism in academic sociology as these departments are increasingly staffed by individuals who are committed to ethnic political agendas and who view Jewish domination emanating from some multiculturalist ideologues, especially from Afrocentric ideologues (Alexander 1992), and Cohen (1998, 45) finds that "multiculturalism is often identified nowadays with a segment of the left that has, to put it bluntly, a Jewish problem." Recently the Nationof Islam, led by Louis Farrakhan, has adopted an over anti-Semitic rhetoric. Afrocentrism is often associated with racialist ideologies, such as those of Molefi Asante (1987), in which ethnicity is viewed as the morally proper basis of self-identity and self-esteem and in which a close connection exists between ethnicity and culture. Western idealos of objectivity, universalism, individualism, rationality, and scientific method are rejected because of their ethnic origins. Asante accepts a naive racialist theory in which Africans (the "sun people") are viewed as superior to Europeans (the "ice people").

p313





"Indeed, fear of anti-Semitism on the left has been the major impetus for founding the neoconservative movement (see Gottfried 1993, 80)- the final resting point of many of the New York intellectual and political evolution was discussed in Chapter 6. As Gottfried points out, the cumulative effect of neonconservatism and its current hegemony over the conservative political movement in the United States (achieved partly by its large influence on the media and among foundations) has been to shift the conservative movement toward the center and, in effect, to define the limits of conservative legitimacy. Clearly, these limitss of conservative legitimacy are defined by wheter they conflict with specifically Jewish group intersts in a minimally restrictive immigration policy, support for Israel, global democracy, opposition to quotas and affirmative action, and so on."

p314



"As anti-Semitism develops, Jews begin to abandon the very movements for which they originally provided the intellectual impetus. This phenomenon may also occur in the case of multiculturalism. Indeed, many of the most prominent opponents of multiculturalism are Jewish neoconservatives, as well as organizations such as the National Assocation of Scholars (NAS), which have a large Jewish membership. (The NAS is an organization of academics opposed to some of the more egregious excesses of feminism and multiculturalism in the university.) It may well be the case, therefore, that the Jewish attempt to link up with secular political ideologies that appeal to gentiles is doomed in the long run. Ginsberg (1993, 224ff) essentially makes this point when he notes that these is increasing evidence for anti-Semitism among American liberals, conservatives, and populist radicals."

p315





"The case of multiculturalism is particulraly problematic as a Jewish strtegy. In this case one might say that Jews want to have their cake and eat it too. "Jews are often caugth between fervent affirmation of the Enlightenment and ciriticsm of it. Many Jews bleieve that the prelacement of the Enlightenment ideal of uniervaslism with a politics of difference and fragmented 'multi-culture' would sontitute a threat to Jewish achievement. At the same time, they recognize the dangers of a homogeneous 'monoculture' for Jewish particularity... (Jews) seek to rescue the virtues of the Enlightenment from the shards of its failures and salvage an incluisve vision from multiculturalism, where the fragmentation and divisiveness now reign" (Biale, Galchinsky, and Heschel 1998, 7). Multicultural societies with their consequent fragmentation and chronic ethnic tension are unlikely to meet Jewish needs in the long run even if they do ultimately subvert the demographic and cutlural dominance of the peoples of European origin in lands where they have been dominant."

p 315- 316