I was googling around trying to remember the name of the funeral song for Pinochet and I found this video. The Chilean army uniforms got my attention. I could not recall anyone claiming that Pinochet was Hitler or even antisemitic. Out of curiosity I searched around for anything on his views regarding the Jews. I found this twenty year old article from the Jewish World Review. It turns out that the Jews thought The General was good for the Jews. This bit is what piqued my interest.

It is possible to say with a high degree of certainty that despite the prominent presence of Jews in Allende’s government, an important number of Jews welcomed Pinochet. Moreover, when Allende was elected president in 1970, 8,000 of Chilean’s 30,000 Jews fled the country, mostly to Israel, fearful of losing their property and assets to the socialist regime. Furthermore, when Pinochet took over three years later, many of those who had fled returned to Chile; however, other Jews fled the country.

The casual way in which a total lack of national loyalty is mentioned suggests it is just the way in which Jews view their relationship to the host country. Whether or not Allende was good or bad for Chile was inconsequential. What mattered was protecting their property and assets. There are other countries, after all. It is not the way most people would look at things. Your patriotic duty would require you to put nation ahead of personal gain, but more important, where would you go even if you threw in the towel on your country?

Jews have always been accused of having dual loyalties and the charge is not without some merit. It’s also not without good cause. After all, if you are a tiny minority living in lands where the host population is often less than welcoming, a high degree of clannishness is a necessary tool for survival. That loyalty to the group over all else naturally means a lack of loyalty to the host population. Both Jews and gypsies have managed to thrive as tiny minority groups, largely because of intense group loyalty.

Of course, clannishness is a bit easier when the host population is hostile. In America, the host population has always been indifferent to Jews. The first wave that came over in the 19th century largely blended in with the locals. In areas where they maintained a unique cultural identity, German Jews tended to conduct themselves like the WASP elite. Steve Sailer has done a bunch of stuff on Jewish golf club culture and the divide between the first wave German Jews and the second wave eastern Jews.

If hostility from the majority helps minorities maintain group loyalty, then the lack of hostility works against it. In modern America, there’s no such thing as Irish or Italian culture anymore. It has been commercialized and homogenized out of existence. It is why Jews work so hard to perpetuate the idea that they have faced terrible discrimination in America, despite all the evidence to the contrary. Maintaining the belief that the goyim are about to go full blown Nazi at any minute helps maintain group solidarity.

The thing is though, Jews are not a minority living on the fringes of American life. A scan of who controls the high ground in America shows that Jews are wildly over represented in the law, culture, media and finance. It really is quite incredible. Close to half of the owners of pro sports teams are Jewish. Roughly 85% of Jews attend college and 44% of Jewish households earn $100,000 or more. The statistics are rather incredible, when you consider that Jews are just 2% of the population.

American policy makers struggle to understand why Bashar al-Assad of Syria tenaciously hangs onto power. He has been offered a deal to leave Syria and live out his life in luxury somewhere in the West. Instead, he fights and his people fight, despite being outnumbered by the Sunnis. The Alawites are just 12% of the population, but they have been able to dominate Syria largely by remembering they used to be an oppressed minority. There was a time when Alawites had no legal rights. Righteous indignation is a powerful weapon.

This is relevant to Jews in America because they have manufactured a history of oppression in America as a way to maintain group loyalty and cohesion. This not only allows them to prosper, but it is a strong motivation to be wary of anything resembling group loyalty anywhere else. In a country that is becoming increasing fragmented, and headed for majority minority status, this will eventually be seen as hostility. Put another way, what has so far been good for the Jews could turn out to be really bad for the Jews.

Whether or not that’s how things unfold is hard to know. The appearance of “renegade Jews”, the term David Horowitz applied to Bill Kristol, could be a sign that Jewish identity and group loyalty is breaking apart. The whole neocon experiment looks increasing like a suicide cult. The folks at Commentary Magazine may be ready to close the books on mankind, but it is unlikely the rest of the Tribe is ready to join them. The paranoia over Chabad suggests group loyalty is not holding up.

The world is ruled by numbers. The Syrian Alawites have used cunning and ruthlessness to rule over the majority population. The American Alawites have used superior cognitive skills and the generosity of an open society to occupy the high ground in culture, politics, finance and the law. Maybe that’s enough and it is the natural order of things. The grinding war in Syria, however, suggests otherwise. But, Assad remains in power and the Sunni remain divided, so maybe numbers are not everything.