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Tag: Jewish Question (JQ)

Categories
Final solution Free speech / association Liberalism

A “final solution” to the Jewish problem

Instead of replying to a comment by Ward Kendall in the latest thread, I better rephrase here something that Larry Auster wrote about Islam in 2008:

Commenter 1 and others in this thread argue as follows: “Solution X may be what we need to do for our survival, but the support for X does not exist, therefore Solution X is not a good idea and I disagree with it.”

This is to argue backward, in a way that is very common among conservatives, and shows a failure to grasp the radical nature of the challenge before us.

Obviously, any kind of solution to the Jewish Problem that is favored by serious Western patriots will be completely outside current accepted thinking. Therefore any solution offered by white nationalists is going to lack current support and seem completely out of the question—by current standards. Commenter 1 and others implicitly imagine that the solution they seek could be arrived at within the current liberal assumption that governs our world. But that is false. It is modern liberalism itself—the belief that all people and cultures are basically the same and that discrimination against and exclusion of any group or religion are the greatest sins—that is leading us to our destruction.

Therefore it is the liberal worldview that must be challenged and defeated. For Commenter 1 to say, “Solution X is no good, because the liberal orthodoxy would refuse to support it,” is to give up the battle without having even tried to fight it. What Western patriots need to grasp is that Western survival requires and assumes the defeat of liberalism. Those who are not prepared to challenge liberalism on a fundamental level will not be able to save the West. Thus any policy that the participants in this discussion favor—ranging from stopping all Jewish immigration, to designating Judaism as a political ideology and placing legal restrictions on it, to initiating Jew out-migration, to the quarantine of Jews within Israel or Madagascar, to the more radical and violent steps that Westerner and others have proposed—all these policies assume that the West will have gone beyond its current liberalism. The defeat of liberalism is the assumed starting point of all our proposed solutions. Therefore the end of liberalism should not be seen as some distant, impossible goal, but as the indispensable condition of our survival.

To believe in the West and in our own life as Westerners, is to believe in the defeat of liberalism. Those who are unwilling to challenge liberalism may offer a lot of lip service about defending the West, but they will eventually yield to its destruction. So how do we get from here to Solution X? Not by saying, “There’s no support for it.” Not by saying, “We have to wait for liberals to change.” Not by saying, “Let’s spend the next 20 years telling people that ZOG is a mortal threat to our civilization, but never telling them what they can do in order save themselves from this threat.”

No. We get to Solution X by making our case, our whole case, including the diagnosis (ZOG is a mortal threat to us) and the possible cure (my own preferred cure is the removal, disempowerment, and permanent quarantine of Judaism; others have their preferred cures and we should continue discussing them). By making our whole case, we persuade people (1) of the nature of the problem, (2) of the only possible solutions to the problem, and (3) of the fact that these solutions are not possible within liberal assumptions, because liberalism is a suicidal ideology, and therefore we must renounce liberalism.

It’s the whole case what will persuade people and move them to the position that will make Western survival possible. Not a quarter case, not a half case.

See my whole parody in the previous incarnation of this blog—so sarcastic that it moved the Blogger admins to vaporize the West’s Darkest Hour last year.

Categories
Free speech / association Israel / Palestine Kevin MacDonald Mainstream media

MacDonald’s latest article

Manny Friedman: Jews “own a whole freaking country”; and yes, that includes the media.

Well, it turns out after all that Jews do control the media—and a whole lot besides. So says Manny Friedman, writing in the Times of Israel. Of course, we at TOO have known this for quite a while, but it’s nice to hear it from a Jew, even though it’s in a Jewish publication and intended to be part of a Jews-only dialog.

The thing is, it’s okay for someone like Friedman to say it (or Joel Stein, writing in the LATimes and linked by Friedman). But it’s definitely not okay for someone like me.

In fact, Friedman is typical of Jewish writers who inhabit a completely Jewish universe when they talk about anything relating to Jews. Friedman is well aware that non-Jews who talk about such issues should prepare for a wall-to-wall, no-holds barred, 24/7 campaign against them:

The funny part is when any anti-Semite or anti-Israel person starts to spout stuff like, “The Jews control the media!” and “The Jews control Washington!”

Suddenly we’re up in arms. We create huge campaigns to take these people down. We do what we can to put them out of work. We publish articles. We’ve created entire organizations that exist just to tell everyone that the Jews don’t control nothin’. No, we don’t control the media, we don’t have any more sway in DC than anyone else. No, no, no, we swear: We’re just like everybody else!

Does anyone else (who’s not a bigot) see the irony of this?

I don’t see any “funny parts” to this, and I’m not sure “irony’ is the right word here. How about “ethnic strategizing,” as in “Does anyone else (who’s not a bigot) see the ethnic strategizing of this?”

And what does being a “bigot” have to do with anything? The working philosophy of the ADL is that bigots are non-Jews who thinks Jews control the media or anything else. And underlying that philosophy is the idea that public awareness of Jewish control would be bad for the Jews. Bigots are people who think that Jews use their control to influence many other aspects of culture in ways that are not in the interests of non-Jews: That the Israel Lobby has virtually made the US into a client state subservient to the interests of Israel, including the Iraq war and a looming war with Iran. Or that Jews use their control of the media to undermine public Christianity and traditional Western sexual mores, and to promote things like multiculturalism that are quite opposed to the interests and attitudes of White Americans. Or that Jews are an integral part of what Pat Buchanan calls the “casino capitalists.”

Buchanan, although avoiding the ethnic angle, only mentions Robert Rubin, Alan Greenspan and Goldman Sachs when discussing post-1995 problems.

This new predatory elite has exported American jobs and repeatedly obtained lucrative bailouts when things get bad.

Fortunes are lost and made overnight. Names appear on the list of richest Americans no one has ever heard of. Cheating and corner-cutting are constantly being unearthed. Broker- and banker-gamblers in their 30s amass and flaunt nine-figure fortunes.

When WASPs were the dominant elite in America, their many Jewish critics never had any compunctions about calling them by name and probably loved using what Andrew Fraser calls the “subtly, perhaps deservedly derogatory acronym” of ‘WASP’. But our new Jewish elite cannot tell its name despite the fact that they “own a whole freaking country”—a rather large and powerful country in which the vast majority of the population are not Jews.

Friedman says the reason for Jewish angst about discussions of Jewish power is

because they’re afraid of being responsible. It means that they’re suddenly culpable when they create dirty TV shows that sully the spiritual atmosphere of the world.

Right. Jews understand that there are huge conflicts of interest over the construction of culture, whether it’s foreign policy, the sexualization of culture, immigration, multiculturalism, or the role of Christianity in the public square. Quite simply, Jews have different attitudes and perceived interests, and they have been pushing in different directions than White Americans for the entire last century. Massive amounts of money, propaganda, and organizational effort have gone into this effort. This effort has been transformative.

Abe Foxman (quoted in the Stein article) would love to have Americans believe that there are a lot of executives in Hollywood who just happen to be Jewish and that’s the end of it. But it’s far more than that. Jews have fundamentally different attitudes and perceived interests when it comes to the construction of culture, from religion to foreign policy. It wouldn’t matter that Jews are an elite if they had the same attitudes and perceived interests as the traditional people and culture of America. But they don’t, and they haven’t ever since they arrived en masse a century ago. Indeed, in general Jews have an atavistic hostility toward the traditional culture of the Christian West.

Jewish organizations do everything in their power to prevent an honest discussion of Jewish power. And that is completely understandable. Do they really want to advertise to White America that Jews have had a preponderant role in making Whites a minority, in promoting the ideal of multiculturalism, in making America a client state of Israel, in the sexualization of culture and in legalizing and promoting pornography, in banning Christianity from the public square, in obliterating traditional American conservatism in the Republican Party, and in predatory financial practices that are destroying the American economy…?

Likely not. But one can bet that to the extent that there will be any discussion of Jewish power, it will be more or less exclusively within the confines of the Jewish community. (Here’s a recent WND article titled “Who Stole Our Culture?” that fails to come to grips with the powerful ethnic component of the correct answer, despite their emphasis on the central role of the notoriously Jewish Frankfurt School.) Friedman publishes his article in an Israeli newspaper (which is completely ignored by the MSM in the US) and links to Joel Stein (whose article sank like a rock and certainly did not ignite a national discussion on the consequences of Jewish media domination). Neither Friedman nor Stein would dream of linking to The Occidental Observer or anything remotely similar to back up their claims. Yet our discussions are far more extensive, nuanced and well-sourced than anything put out by Friedman or Stein.

Non-Jews should have a robust role in the discussion of all these issues. Here’s Steven Walt criticizing Peter Beinart’s The Crisis of Zionism (in an otherwise favorable review) for addressing only Jews in the discussion of American attitudes toward Israel:

I think it is unfortunate that Beinart chose to direct his book almost entirely toward the American Jewish community. That is his privilege, and it’s possible that the best way to get a smarter U.S. policy would be to convince American Jewry to embrace a different approach. Yet Beinart’s focus also reinforces the idea that U.S. Middle East policy—and especially its policy towards the Israeli-Palestinian conflict — is a subject that is only of legitimate concern to Jewish-Americans (and Arab-Americans) and can only be legitimately discussed by these groups. In fact, U.S. Middle East policy affects all of us in countless ways and it ought to be a subject that anyone can discuss openly and calmly without inviting the usual accusations of bigotry or bias. I’m sure Beinart would agree, yet his book as written sends a subtly different message.

Right. We all have a right and even a duty to discuss these subjects because they affect our vital interests. But, like Walt and John Mearsheimer when their book on the Israel Lobby came out, doing so invites the worst sort of hostility from Jewish critics—accusations that it was shoddy scholarship and a throwback to the Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion.

It is a compelling measure of Jewish power that Jews are able to so effectively suppress discussion of Jewish power. The power of no other group is off limits for public discussion. I can’t resist quoting Joe Sobran’s 1996 classic:

The full story of [Pat Buchanan’s 1996 presidential] campaign is impossible to tell as long as it’s taboo to discuss Jewish interests as freely as we discuss those of the Christian Right. Talking about American politics without mentioning the Jews is a little like talking about the NBA without mentioning the Chicago Bulls [then the dominant team]. Not that the Jews are all-powerful, let alone all bad. But they are successful, and therefore powerful enough: and their power is unique in being off-limits to normal criticism even when it’s highly visible. They themselves behave as if their success were a guilty secret, and they panic, and resort to accusations, as soon as the subject is raised. Jewish control of the major media in the media age makes the enforced silence both paradoxical and paralyzing. Survival in public life requires that you know all about it, but never refer to it. A hypocritical etiquette forces us to pretend that the Jews are powerless victims; and if you don’t respect their victimhood, they’ll destroy you. It’s a phenomenal display not of wickedness, really, but of fierce ethnocentrism, a sort of furtive racial superpatriotism. (Joe Sobran [1995]. “The Jewish establishment.” Sobran’s [September]:4–5).

The reality is that Jews cannot afford to have these issues discussed openly and honestly because doing so would not only threaten their power. It would create a huge backlash, since Jewish power has been so deeply antithetical to the interests of Whites in America and elsewhere. So they sit on an ever more explosive powder keg. Shoring up their defenses, but unable to go back even if they wanted to (which they don’t). Pouncing mercilessly on anyone who gets off the reservation. With 100,000,000 non-Whites in America who are rapidly increasing as a percentage of the population, there are simply too many facts on the ground at this point to go into a low-key retreat.

[See e.g., this video presently featured at The Occidental Observer]

The external controls keeping the non-Jews in line are certainly very powerful. As Cooper Sterling’s recent article shows (and as Friendman acknowledges), individuals who cross the lines imposed by the SPLC (a Jewish organization in all but name) or the ADL face dire economic and social consequences.

However, Jewish control goes far beyond the ability to punish behavior and attitudes they don’t like. Ultimately the whole edifice depends on massive self-censorship by non-Jews. Jews also need to use their position in the media to continue the incessant propaganda that reinforces the current dispensation— that diversity is a strength and is good for everyone, that all humans are essentially the same so that importing millions of Africans, Asians, and non-Whites from Latin America would have no effects on the fundamental character and institutions of the West, that Jews are powerless and that they are morally and intellectually superior victims of irrational hatreds, that Israel is an embattled democracy with a strong allegiance to the same values Americans hold dear, etc.

Implicitly at least, Jews realize that they need to use their media power to make these messages into psychological reflexes so that all White people, including especially respectable, well-educated White people, will feel shame and guilt for even thinking politically incorrect thoughts. In this, of course, they have been incredibly successful. We never see the end of guilt-ridden, self-flaggelating, ethnomasochistic Whites who look up to the New York Times for moral enlightenment. (Here’s a NYTimes “news article” from yesterday intended to induce guilt for opposing oppose massive non-White immigration to Greece: “Greek Far Right Hangs a Target on Immigrants.” Wall-to-wall. 24/7.)

It’s a long story why Whites are so susceptible to such manipulations. But yes, it matters who runs the media.

This is a short list of things that could possibly challenge the dominance of the current system:

• Victory by a European Nationalist Party, such as Greece’s Golden Dawn (the focus of the NYTimes article), Hungary’s Jobbik, or France’s National Front. If one European country manages to have a nationalist revolution and manages to withstand the severe pressures that would be immediately arrayed against it, there would be a transformative effect on the rest of the White world.

• The effect on the rest of the White world would be especially powerful as the costs of multiculturalism inexorably rise throughout the West and Western economies suffer from the effects of our predatory financial elite. There is a palpable anger in White America and throughout the White diaspora. It is unfocused or maladaptively focused (e.g., Christian Zionism). And it is without effective leadership. But it is a powerful force waiting to be harnessed.

• The rise of new media, able to avoid the stifling conformity to the culture of Western suicide being preached by the mainstream media throughout the West. Our word is getting out, even though it is to relatively a tiny audience, many of whom are already converted. If our media becomes obviously influential and a threat to the current regime, there will be powerful attempts to destroy it.

• But those on our side are increasingly intellectually confident and possessed of an intense moral fervor about the legitimacy of our cause. In the long run, such people are the worst enemies of the current zeitgeist. As recent research on opinion change shows, a small, confident, morally self-assured minority can dramatically alter the opinions of the majority. This has been the secret of Jewish success in influencing the culture of the West. But the ugliness of Israel and the egregious hypocrisy of American Jews on everything related to Israel are pretty much impossible to hide at this point. The emperor clearly has no clothes.

It’s not over until it’s over.

♣

The original article and comments can be read at
The Occidental Observer, here.

See also MacDonald’s “White pathology”.

Categories
Kali Yuga

Monsters from the Id

Inspired by the 1956 classic film Forbidden Planet, by “Monsters from the Id” I mean the not immediately manifest, invisible forces that are driving the white race into self-extinction. In his latest article, Sebastian Ernst Ronin wrote:

It is now two generations of White European non-birthers who ultimately have flung wide open the floodgates of mass, non-White immigration into our Occidental homes; a healthy host cannot be susceptible to a blood-sucking parasite; we are the Niggers of our own demise. This scribbler is included in this number; I am responsible.

Cultural Marxism, for all of its value as a propaganda meme to tackle the soft edges of Jewish political correctness, feminism, and popular culture, as a stand-alone discipline to shed light on racial suicide is a convenient and lazy philosophical afterthought. It is a probe of symptom rather than cause, an argument that it was a few snowflakes that blew off the iceberg onto the decks that was responsible for the sinking of the Titanic. It is an a priori juggling of first principles of most shallow dimensions. Worst of all, it is a mistake because it deflects and cloaks the necessity of having to assume responsibility for the soul sickness of self-induced racial suicide.

Recently I have leaned toward the “suicide” interpretation of what is happening to us, in contrast to the “homicide” hypothesis so popular in white nationalist circles.

International capital does not give a rat’s ass for nor recognize in the least race, ethnicity, religion, gender, sexual orientation, etc., etc. What it does care for and recognize, via the economic and political decision-makers who stand behind it, is an ever-expanding consumer market and tax base to finance the Lib-Mod social programs that have been instituted in Western countries. For this reason have the doors of the Occident been thrown wide open. From the perspective of capital that has overseen and recognized a non-reproducing “market”, i.e. an historically predominant White population, it was a matter of necessity, as understood by capitalists/Globalists, to fling open the doors. There is the betrayal!

And this reminds me of what we have been saying about capitalism.

The betrayal of the White European race stems from deep, deep within, so deep that it is not visible or obvious for most.

My emphasis; that’s why I call it a “monster from the Id.”

There is little return to be had from a racial death wish, ergo little investment. Given such, why would our economic, cultural, and political elites not abandon us in droves, as they have? The first step of the revolution does not begin with the expedient and safe blurting of Jew, Jew, Jew; that is after the fact. The first step of the revolution begins upon the surface of a mirror to identify the source of weakness that has allowed the penetration of an alien and poisonous spirit. Why is it not understood by the finger-waggers that a strong and united front renders the Jew a harmless pooch? Manipulation can only occur with the full consent, be it conscious or not, of the manipulated.

From where does this existential strain of fear and self-loathing stem? The Jew, via the media and popular culture—some would claim via Christianity, may very well have implanted an extraordinary amount of shit into the White Euro psyche—, but the root of fear and self-loathing he did not. It is what makes the Jew’s work so easy; it is the root of the racial death wish, and until such time as the root is dug up and discarded all else is for naught; it is pretend enlightenment. There can be no “awakening.”

Ditto! And we better start acknowledging the presence of these monsters from the Id.

Much of White European nationalist discourse consists of grandiose projections about how political power will be taken back, seldom including the realization that this power has been biologically and willingly surrendered. And now, in the present? In the present, simply put, White Europeans do not have the numbers nor the requisite courage, wisdom, and commitment to counter a realistic challenge. Our racial and spiritual lifeblood bleeds in torrents from the wrist slashes that we ourselves have opened. We require a jolt of unimaginable scope and pain to possibly begin to reverse towards a gasp and grasp for life. Such a systemic jolt arrives, via the combination of Globalist cull and Gaian purge, but it is yet 20 years or so removed.

Fortunately Sebastian is wrong here. Very few nationalists have realized that Armageddon is around the corner. The dollar will crash sooner than expected, opening a window of opportunity for us.

My first comment…

at American Renaissance:

“If you weight the good & the bad Jews in the US have produced, the good is incredibly more important & ‘heavy’ than bad” —Bardon Kaldian

This is an old fallacy: confusing apples with oranges. Jews are never over-represented in organizations or movements that represent the interests of the ethnic majority, only in those that weaken that majority. See my article that marked my saying bye bye to my former philo-Semitism (here).

Categories
Alexander the Great Ancient Greece Ancient Rome Axiology Christendom Individualism Liberalism Miscegenation Universalism

White suicide since Alexander

A comment by Franklin Ryckaert:

It would be nice if a person with the talent of a Prof. MacDonald would write a trilogy on the problem dealing with:

1) The innate psychological characteristics of Whites (individualism, abstract idealism, universal moralism).

2) The influence of Christianity and its secular outgrowth of Liberalism (inversion of values, altruism as the only form of moralism even to a suicidal degree).

3) The Jewish exploitation of both.

Central to the weakness of Whites is what I call naive inclusivism.

It is naive because it not only believes that all non-white peoples can and want to become like Westerners, but also that including them in Western societies will lead to a Utopia instead of racial suicide.

This naive inclusivism is as old as the European expansion outside Europe itself:

• Alexander the Great wanted to include all peoples of the Middle East in his Hellenistic ideal, even initiating miscegenation with them.

• The Romans included all non-European peoples in their Empire bequeathing Roman citizenship to all who they thought deserved it. They even had one time an Arab emperor (Philippus Arabs).

• When the Western European peoples began to colonize the world, they made the same mistake. The Spaniards and Portuguese miscegenated with the natives of their colonies on a mass scale and later also with their imported African slaves.

• The Dutch miscegenated with the Indonesians and accepted their mixed offspring as “Europeans”.

• The French accepted educated Blacks, the so-called evolués, as their equals. France doesn’t keep statistics about its ethnic and racial minorities because it considers them all as “Frenchmen”.

• Only the British kept aloof from the natives in their colonies and didn’t allow them to immigrate into the white settlement colonies or Britain itself. But that has now radically changed, the British having become the most extreme both in terms of immigration and miscegenation.

We simply cannot ascribe this suicidal behaviour to Jewish machinations, rather it is the age-old inclination of Europeans to include the whole world in a universal ideal. You aptly describe Jewish destructive influence as an “epiphenomenon”; it couldn’t function as it does without the above-described preconditions.

Tanstaafl and Carolyn Yaeger refuse to acknowledge this basic fact, ascribing its recognition to “treason”. Self-criticism hurts, but it is absolutely necessary.

Categories
Conspiracy theories Kevin MacDonald

Hunter Wallace on the Jewish Problem

A comment by Wallace on September 21, 2011:

As someone who considers Jewish influence an important problem, but not the only problem, and as someone who believes the matter should be dealt with in a reasonable and responsible way, the problem is that the clown movement (which has always overlapped with WN) is constantly sabotaging every attempt to discuss the issue in public with their theatrics.

Why do people steer clear of the Jewish Question? I’m talking about people who know that issue inside and out like virtually everyone involved with TOQ. I know all about the Jews. There are tons of people in the conservative movement who know all about the Jews.

It is because of the clown movement. Just look at the discussions we are having here at Majority Rights: Jews Did 9/11, Jews Did The Civil War, Jews Did Norway, etc. Look no further than the comment section at The Occidental Observer.

Now, even if you believe that Jews had foreknowledge of 9/11 (future historians will one day resolve that question), what about all this other nonsense that J Richards is stirring up here? It almost seems calculated to make discussion of the Jewish Question look kooky or insane.

Do you remember my blog Antisemitica?

Just to make a point, I could find something bad that Jews were up to on an everyday basis just by reading their own websites. What that segment of the Jewish community does on an everyday basis is damaging enough to them. It would be sufficient for Gentiles to draw attention to what they are doing on a daily basis and to start criticizing them for it in a reasonable manner.

Instead, we have the clown movement coming up with all these absurd conspiracy theories, and accusing people of being “controlled opposition” and “Jewish agents” and “secret Jews” and “Cass Sunstein operatives.”

Probably out of sheer annoyance more than anything else I stopped talking about the issue. I used to talk about it all the time (see my debates with Guy White), but I rarely discuss it anymore. Just because there is a perception out there that it is kooky to obsess over the issue.

My attitude toward the Jewish Question is probably representative of people who know all about the issue, but who have quit discussing it, or who avoid discussing the issue altogether. It is fundamentally an attitude which has been shaped by interaction with the clown movement which is a bigger obstacle to discussion of the Jewish Question than the Mainstream Media.

Don’t believe me?

Every other issue has gained mainstream traction… the racial double standard, criticism of multiculturalism, black-on-white crime, opposition to immigration, HBD discussion of differences in intelligence, attacks on free trade, attacks on globalization, assertion of a pro-White identity, etc.

“White Nationalism Lite” is penetrating the mainstream. It is becoming the common sense of the American Right. I’ve been watching the evolution of sites like Free Republic for 10 years now and can verify this. Jared Taylorism and Sam Francisism is triumphing now.

The Jewish Question though… that remains stuck in the mud. It is stuck in the mud primarily because of the presence of the clown movement who alienate and annoy people who agree it is a serious issue.

Kevin MacDonald is one of the few people who is capable of discussing the Jewish Question purely as an academic in a measured and responsible way. For every Kevin MacDonald, there are thousands of Der Linders and J Richards out there, whose rhetorical radicalism undermines and sabotages MacDonald on an everyday basis.

How many times have I heard it now: “You know, Kevin MacDonald has a point, but his followers are nuts, so lets not go there.”

The Jewish Question will go nowhere (unlike immigration, unlike black-on-white crime, unlike reassertion of White identity) until that perception begins to change.

Categories
American civil war Christendom Judeo-reductionism Kevin MacDonald Liberalism Slavery

“There is NOTHING wrong with us”

Monocausalism is the simplistic notion that all of our issues are to be laid on the feet of Jews, that “there is NOTHING wrong with us” as the commenter Helvena put it this year at Age of Treason.

The problem with those who advocate the single-cause hypothesis of our current predicament is that they have not done their homework. Who in the movement can be more knowledgeable about the Jewish Question than Professor Kevin MacDonald? At The Occidental Quarterly when this printed, scholarly journal was under the watch of Greg Johnson (Vol. 8, no. 2, Summer 2008), MacDonald wrote (no ellipsis added between unquoted paragraphs):


Philip Gura’s American Transcendentalism provides a valuable insight into a nineteenth-century leftist intellectual elite in the United States. This is of considerable interest because Transcendentalism was a movement entirely untouched by the predominantly Jewish milieu of the twentieth-century left in America. Rather, it was homegrown, and its story tells us much about the sensibility of an important group of white intellectuals and perhaps gives us hints about why in the twentieth century WASPs so easily capitulated to the Jewish onslaught on the intellectual establishment.

Both New England and East Anglia (the center of Puritanism in England) had the lowest relative rates of private crime (murder, theft, mayhem), but the highest rates of public violence—“the burning of rebellious servants, the maiming of political dissenters, the hanging of Quakers, the execution of witches.” This record is entirely in keeping with Calvinist tendencies in Geneva.

The legal system was designed to enforce intellectual, political, and religious conformity as well as to control crime. Louis Taylor Merrill describes the “civil and religious strait-jacket that the Massachusetts theocrats applied to dissenters.” The authorities, backed by the clergy, controlled blasphemous statements and confiscated or burned books deemed to be offensive. Spying on one’s neighbors and relatives was encouraged. There were many convictions for criticizing magistrates, the governor, or the clergy. Unexcused absence from church was fined, with people searching the town for absentees. Those who fell asleep in church were also fined. Sabbath violations were punished as well. A man was even penalized for publicly kissing his wife as he greeted her on his doorstep upon his return from a three-year sea voyage.

Whereas in the Puritan settlements of Massachusetts the moral fervor was directed at keeping fellow Puritans in line, in the nineteenth century it was directed at the entire country. The moral fervor that had inspired Puritan preachers and magistrates to rigidly enforce laws on fornication, adultery, sleeping in church, or criticizing preachers was universalized and aimed at correcting the perceived ills of capitalism and slavery.

Puritans waged holy war on behalf of moral righteousness even against their own cousins—perhaps a form of altruistic punishment as defined by Ernst Fehr and Simon Gächter. Altruistic punishment refers to punishing people even at a cost to oneself. Altruistic punishment is found more often among cooperative hunter-gatherer groups than among groups, such as Jews, based on extended kinship.

Whatever the political and economic complexities that led to the Civil War, it was the Yankee moral condemnation of slavery that inspired and justified the massive carnage of closely related Anglo-Americans on behalf of slaves from Africa. Militarily, the war with the Confederacy was the greatest sacrifice in lives and property ever made by Americans. Puritan moral fervor and punitiveness are also evident in the call of the Congregationalist minister at Henry Ward Beecher’s Old Plymouth Church in New York during the Second World War for “exterminating the German people… the sterilization of 10,000,000 German soldiers and the segregation of the woman.”

It is interesting that the moral fervor the Puritans directed at ingroup and outgroup members strongly resembles that of the Old Testament prophets who railed against Jews who departed from God’s law, and against the uncleanness or even the inhumanity of non-Jews. Indeed, it has often been noted that the Puritans saw themselves as the true chosen people of the Bible. In the words of Samuel Wakeman, a prominent seventeenth-century Puritan preacher: “Jerusalem was, New England is; they were, you are God’s own, God’s covenant people; put but New England’s name instead of Jerusalem. They had left Europe which was their ‘Egypt,’ their place of enslavement, and had gone out into the wilderness on a messianic journey, to found the New Jerusalem.”

Whereas Puritanism as a group evolutionary strategy crumbled when the Puritans lost control of Massachusetts, Diaspora Jews were able to maintain their group integrity even without control over a specific territory for well over 2,000 years. This attests to the greater ethnocentrism of Jews. But, although relatively less ethnocentric, the Puritans were certainly not lacking in moralistic aggression toward members of their ingroup, even when the boundaries of the ingroup were expanded to include all of America, or indeed all of humanity. And while the Puritans were easily swayed by moral critiques of white America, because of their stronger sense of ingroup identity, Jews have been remarkably resistant to moralistic critiques of Judaism.

With the rise of the Jewish intellectual and political movements described in The Culture of Critique, the descendants of the Puritans readily joined the chorus of moral condemnation of America.

The lesson here is that in large part the problem confronting whites stems from the psychology of moralistic self-punishment exemplified at the extreme by the Puritans and their intellectual descendants, but also apparent in a great many other whites. As I have noted elsewhere:

Once Europeans were convinced that their own people were morally bankrupt, any and all means of punishment should be used against their own people. Rather than see other Europeans as part of an encompassing ethnic and tribal community, fellow Europeans were seen as morally blameworthy and the appropriate target of altruistic punishment. For Westerners, morality is individualistic—violations of communal norms… are punished by altruistic aggression.

The Puritan legacy in American culture is indeed pernicious, especially since the bar of morally correct behavior has been continually raised to the point that any white group identification has been pathologized. As someone with considerable experience in the academic world, I can attest to feeling like a wayward heretic back in seventeenth-century Massachusetts when confronted, as I often am, by academic thought police. It’s the moral fervor of these people that stands out. The academic world has become a Puritan congregation of stifling thought control, enforced by moralistic condemnations that a seventeenth-century Puritan minister could scarcely surpass. In my experience, this thought control is far worse in the East coast colleges and universities founded by the Puritans than elsewhere in academia—a fitting reminder of the continuing influence of Puritanism in American life.

The main difference between the Puritan New Jerusalem and the present multicultural one is that the latter will lead to the demise of the very white people who are the mainstays of the current multicultural Zeitgeist. Unlike the Puritan New Jerusalem, the multicultural New Jerusalem will not be controlled by people like themselves, who in the long run will be a tiny, relatively powerless minority.

The ultimate irony is that without altruistic whites willing to be morally outraged by violations of multicultural ideals, the multicultural New Jerusalem is likely to revert to a Darwinian struggle for survival among the remnants. But the high-minded descendants of the Puritans won’t be around to witness it.


Postscript

At Occidental Dissent, today Hunter Wallace also liked MacDonald’s article:

Kevin MacDonald has an excellent essay on Counter-Currents about the Yankee Question. This is too good to pass up.

Note: MacDonald has never been a Single Jewish Causer. He could easily write an entire book on the radical utopian movements of the nineteenth century (abolitionism, civil rights, pacifism, “strongminded womanism,” Unitarianism, Free Loveism, Shakerism, Fourierism, Transcendentalism, etc.) that plunged America into racial and cultural decline and laid the foundation for their destructive successors in the twentieth century.

(Read MacDonald’s entire article here.)

Categories
Judeo-reductionism

An exchange at TOO on monocausalism

Luke said…

“Our problem is us, not the Jew. The Jew is weak in and of himself, for he is totally dependent on his White slaves performing outside their character. He has only the strength we give him.” —Franklin Ryckaert

This sounds suspiciously like a Jared Taylor style proclamation. May I suggest that the TOO [The Occidental Observer] readers, and Brother Ryckaert visit this link and peruse what the blogger Tanstaafl has coined “The Suicide Meme” and what Tanstaafl’s views are of those who push it?

http://age-of-treason.blogspot.com/2010/05/suicide-meme.html

Incidentally, I would be last White to try to deny that there exists an incredible amount of White racial cowardice throughout the vast majority of the non-White Nationalist, still asleep, White community. I have seen this disgusting cowardice up-close, and it is truly sickening to behold.

However, I do not support the idea of letting the jews off the hook for the mess we find ourselves in today. For those so inclined, would they also make excuses for a doctor whose patient just kept getting sicker and sicker, the longer the doctor handled the patient’s health care?

These “sick” and racially gutless Whites that most of us on TOO encounter in our lives—are the way they are, because of jewish media brainwashing, which is reinforced via academia, via our treasonous anti-White alien hijacked government and via just about every major area of our jewish corrupted society. Their only real fault was not being immune to jewish spider venom, the way most on TOO readers seem to be.

I encourage all TOO readers to review Tanstaafl’s “Suicide Meme” and absorb its implications and message. I found it to be excellent.

Franklin Ryckaert said…

Luke, this discussion about the question of “guilt” is going on Carolyn Yaeger’s new website The White Network in the comment section of the program “Are White Males Hooked on Weakness” with comments by me, Chechar and Tanstaafl himself. Tanstaafl blames everything on the Jews and even has asked Chechar whether he is himself a Jew or partly Jewish simply for suggesting that Whites might be partly responsible for their own predicament. On this latest developments, see Chechar’s website The West’s Darkest Hour article: “Are monocausalists Paranoid?”

My position is that Whites have some unique characteristics such as individualism, abstract idealism and universal moralism [emphasis added] that can be exploited by alien ethnocentric groups, especially in times of degeneration. This has to be understood by Whites themselves. Many however refuse to consider a change to White ethnocentrism. Of these Whites one could say that they are indeed suicidal. Even without Jews such Whites would fall victim to other ethnocentric groups. To fight the Jews we must be strong ourselves and that entails an honest taking stock of our own weaknesses.

Chechar said…

Re: “Our problem is us, not the Jew.” —Farnham O’Reilly

More important that the post you mention are my series of articles criticizing “monocausalism”. In one of them I advanced a definition of the JP: “The Jewish Problem is an epiphenomenon of the deranged altruism resulting from the secular fulfillment of universal Christian values.”

Franklin Ryckaert said…

Chechar, Tanstaafl has reacted to your articles on his own blog Age of Treason on June 22, 2012. He seems not to understand.

The problem with Tanstaafl, who is definitely gifted in other respects, is that he is incapable to see the difference between guilt tripping (by Jews) and honest self-criticism (by Whites). He thinks that self-criticism by Whites is nothing but interiorized guilt tripping. Then he proceeds to proclaim the total innocence of Whites (as if that is possible): Jews are the only ones who are guilty of white decline, anyone who suggests that Whites have a responsibility of their own is telling a lie. He calls that the “suicide meme”.

Fact is that Jews cannot practise their destructive dominance without cooperation of Whites. Fact is also that Jews couldn’t exploit certain weaknesses of Whites if they didn’t have them in the first place. As for guilt tripping, Whites have committed crimes during their history. That cannot be denied. Only, their crimes are not unique to them.

Tanstaafl cannot think in terms of a combined causality, for him there can be only one cause: the Jews.

Chechar said…

I am afraid that you are right.

“There is NOTHING wrong with us”.

This is monocausalism in a nutshell: an actual quotation of a commenter in Tan’s site not long ago.

When you study the Whites’ ethno-suicidal tendencies in historical contexts sans Jews (e.g., how the Catholic Spaniards mongrelized their race in the Americas since the 16th century or how after Constantine the Romans destroyed the libraries of their Classic World—a “self-lobotomy” as Carl Sagan put it), we simply cannot claim that all of our issues are to be laid on the feet of Jews. I find it amazing that some people don’t want to see something so obvious.

Franklin Ryckaert said…

Yes, and people with such a self-righteous mindset tend to become paranoid. That is why he suspected you of being a Marrano. To his mind that could be the only explanation.

Carolyn Yeager said…

Franklin, you are misrepresenting Tanstaafl’s views. He is not a “monocausalist”. That is not his word or his position. That seems to be Chechar’s word for something he disagrees with. [Chechar’s note: In fact, Tanstaafl seems to subscribe to what commenter Helvena said in Tan’s blog: “There is NOTHING wrong with us”: a perfect definition of monocausalism by a “single Jewish causer” himself]

It would be correct to state that Tanstaafl’s main focus is on the Jews, not on white guilt or white faults. Tan has opened a lot of people’s eyes to the Jewish strategy and to Jewish interlopers. I can’t see that that has anything to do with paranoia.

Chechar, you quote Farnham O’Reilly as saying “Our problem is us, not the Jews.” That is supposed to solve everything? Because O’Reilly says it, it must be true? That is too simple. People are imperfect, including White people. Are Whites supposed to be perfect paragons of virtue, as you present yourself, in a way? Jews have taken advantage of White characteristics and right now hold ALL the power. White confidence needs to be built up, not torn down.

Franklin Ryckaert said…

Carolyn Yeager,

Tanstaafl may of course chose himself the subject he wants to concentrate upon. For him that is the JQ and he is doing a good job at that. I found especially his exposure of the insincere motives of so-called “pro-White” Jews like Lawrence Auster very clarifying.

But there are always two sides in a conflict. I never saw a conflict in which one side is totally “guilty” and the other side totally “innocent”. Whites do have their faults and weaknesses. They had better face it and try to mend their ways instead of always complaining being “victims”. That is not undermining self-confidence, it is strengthening of character.

Of course this is something different from the (mostly Jewish) “guilt tripping”, which is a psychological tactic to disarm Whites in order to make them accept their own dispossession. Guilt tripping, based on real, exaggerated or invented guilt is meant to destroy not to build.

Self-criticism is meant to restore. To point that out doesn’t mean that you are in the enemy’s camp.

Junghans said…

Very well stated Franklin, my sentiments as well. With all due respect to both Carolyn and Tanstaafl, (who I highly regard), the poisoning of the Anglo/White mindset is both internal and external, and that is what we need to recognize. This issue has been discussed before at this site, in an article by Kmac [Kevin MacDonald] about whether our genetic demise is ‘racial suicide’, or ‘assisted racial suicide’. The general consensus was that it was both. [emphasis added] The racial interlopers have discovered our foibles, and are ruthlessly compounding and exploiting them. The mega-question here is: finding the psychological key to unlocking these enigmatic, innate White racial character faults, and to come to grips with them.

Carolyn Yeager said…

“The racial interlopers have discovered our foibles, and are ruthlessly compounding and exploiting them.” —Junghans

That is exactly what I said.

“The mega-question here is: finding the psychological key to unlocking these enigmatic, innate White racial character faults, and to come to grips with them.”

This has already been done. But our White character is not something we need to, or can, change because Jews exploit it. We are good people and our character is important to who we are, and all that we have accomplished. What we should come to grips with is those who are exploiting this.

This “debate” over “monocausalism” as it’s being called, has only confirmed for me that we need to educate our people about the Jews much more than we need to blame ourselves and try to make ourselves better. I’m seeing that Tan is right when he says that this is just one more Jewish tactic to take attention off themselves.

You, for example, want to spend time and energy looking for a “psychological key” to unlock our faulty nature in order to fix ourselves. A fool’s errand. However, if you’re talking about ridding ourselves of homosexuality, pornography, alcoholism, drug addiction, sex addictions, and other such vices, I’m for that. But who injects these vices into our societies? Let’s start with getting rid of them.

Junghans said…

Carolyn Yeager: A Fool’s errand? Hardly. Please re-read what Franklin wisely wrote, and calm down a bit.

Studying our own people’s nature is essential in understanding who we are, how we think and how to enlighten and motivate our alienated folk. In my experience, considering the apathetic White people that I encounter daily, and the greater historical experience, I’d say that we face a titanic struggle in trying to save these credulous, intellectually toxified people from themselves. Why, indeed, have they foolishly let themselves become domesticated as a de facto Jewish colony? A Golem for Israel? And, worse yet, remain clueless about it! Where is their sense of critical analysis? Why have they let their weak racial radar become deactivated by the Jewish usurped media? Why, indeed, why? I believe that even Kmac recognizes this dilemma, is currently researching this White psychological enigma, and is likely to write another paper on it. [emphasis added]

Regarding Jewish culture distortion, revisionism and the JQ, I quite agree with you. By all means, keep the major focus on these critical problems. I never implied otherwise. By the way, Carolyn, I still like you and your outspoken grit, and do listen to your broadcasts. I wish that there were more ladies like you out there.

Chechar said…

This “debate” over “monocausalism” as it’s being called, has only confirmed for me that we need to educate our people about the Jews much more than we need to blame ourselves and try to make ourselves better. I’m seeing that Tan is right when he says that this is just one more Jewish tactic to take attention off themselves. —Carolyn

I don’t know what this means, since as a relatively newcomer to WN (by the end of 2009) I learnt everything about dismissing the single-cause hypothesis from well-known WN writers, who for obvious reasons cannot be accused of “one more Jewish tactic to take attention off themselves [the Jews]”.

Here’s a quotation from my June 21 blog entry that caused all of this debate (links omitted so that this comment doesn’t get stuck in the filter):

Niflson is not alone speaking out about the character flaws of present-day whites. If I wrote for this blog the articles criticizing monocausalism it’s because notable people moved my train of thought toward that direction after Michael O’Meara became disenchanted with the webzine Counter-Currents:

1) Tom Sunic for one has been openly dismissive of monocausalism in his radio podcasts.

2) Michael O’Meara’s best 2011 article at Counter-Currents dismissed monocausalism as something silly and quite stupid.

3) Many of Harold Covington’s radio rants convinced me that, although the subversive Jew must be named, something horribly wrong—“yellow dogs” is one term used by Covington—is going on within the character of today’s Whites.

4) Hunter Wallace has been contradicting monocausalism for at least two years at Occidental Dissent. Although I disagree with his claim that America is run by blacks (I believe that Jews are far more influential) I have quoted some of his recent pronouncements on monocausalism, which Wallace calls “single-cause hypothesis.”

5) The harshest diatribes against these degenerate whites I’ve read comes from the pen of William Pierce: one of the best minds that the movement produced in the continent.

6) Even Kevin MacDonald himself doesn’t seem to support strict monocausalism!

The heavyweights convinced me that strict monocausalism is silly, and that besides naming the Jew we must also note our flaws that empowered the tribe since the French Revolution.

Carolyn Yeager said…

Junghans, Why is it that so many men want to tell a woman to “calm down” when she is calm? What was not calm about what I said? A fool’s errand? Well, that is what you’re on, whether you and Franklin agree with me or not… I do not care.

Along with that, you advise me to listen to Franklin’s “wise counsel.” I’m surprised you didn’t add, “child.”

I have concurred we have to know ourselves, and there is plenty of information on who and how we are. Because every white person is not a paragon of virtue bothers you?

“We face a titanic struggle in trying to save these credulous, intellectually toxified people from themselves.”

Give me a break. Get rid of the Jews and you’ll see a transformation (after the worst of our lot go into work / rehabilitation camps). Mr. O’Reilly was referring in his article to WN leaders, not the average White man. Do you think you can take that on? Well, wait for KMac to write another paper on it; then you’ll know what to say.

I am a little fed up with what’s found on comment boards. I made clear points and you just take on a superior air.

fender said…

Chechar, It’s not about one cause or many, it’s about which cause is most destructive, and that’s the Jewish one.

Chechar said…

Which is, of course, a matter of opinion. The above debate with Carolyn comes from three other websites besides TOO (Carolyn’s, Tanstaafl’s and mine). If you follow the above linked pages you will hit an audio-reply by Severus Niflson to the position of Tanstaafl. Here’s my transcript of part of Niflson’s audio:

If I had to choose on these two sides, I’d go for Ben Klassen and say: it’s our fault… He was very clear that in reality it’s our fault… We are not victims… This type of thing that we are victimized by Jews, I think it’s erroneous, it has a very dark aspect… because it makes us into pathetic type of losers. They [the Jews] have a lot of power, but a lot of it is because we allowed them to, right? Therefore, if we turn the focus on ourselves I think we will do a lot better.

In that audio reply Niflson also mentions that the ancient Greeks brought non-whites into their lands and that it caused the first race replacement in Europe that, with centuries of miscegenation, destroyed that civilization. These ideas are found in scholarly form in Madison Grant’s great book, and I have also complained a lot about how the Spaniards and the Portuguese basically destroyed their ethnicity throughout the whole American subcontinent without the help of the Jews since the 16th century.

See my definition above of the JP. If that definition is right, then a substantial sector of the movement is, basically, blaming the white shark (the Jews) and sparing the megalodon (secular Christianity).

I agree with Niflson that if we turn the focus on ourselves—the megalodon—we will do a lot better.

♣

Excerpted from a discussion at The Occidental Observer.

Categories
Art Beauty Der Ring des Nibelungen Homosexuality Richard Wagner

Alberich’s Revenge

Editor’s Note: For those who liked a featured article I reproduced here under the title “Wagner’s wisdom,” Michael Colhaze has now written another piece on Wagner, but this time about “Barbarians who seem to lack any access to Beauty’s divine joy, and therefore hate it, and thus try to destroy what they can’t have.”

However relevant to understand how these “gay” barbarians of San Francisco want to destroy Aryan beauty, below I omitted most of the images chosen by Colhaze in his recent article at The Occidental Observer:

 

______ 卐 ______

 

Let’s assume, just for the fun of it, that they blindfold you, help you up the wide stairs of the San Francisco Opera and lower you carefully into a velvet fauteuil. You hear the murmur of many voices, a squeaking and scraping of instruments being tuned, and a few harsh coughs as mucous residues are brought under control. Then, on a more mechanical note, a different squeaking and scraping as the curtain opens. Silence! Suddenly the tentative moan of wind-instruments, perhaps oboes and bass clarinets. Horns, or possibly tubas, trumpets, bassoons, bass trumpets, trombones, contrabass trombones and contrabass tubas join the gradually accelerating symphony until a ringing crash shatters the ominous tonal procession. As an old Wagner aficionado you have already twigged the conundrum: this is Mime wielding his hammer while forging anew the sword Nothung that was broken. A sword intended for his mighty foster-son Siegfried who must kill Fafner the Dragon and divest him of his most precious treasure, the one Ring of Power. Which, as the nasty dwarf hopes, will thus end up in his own claws and so make him Master of the World! With a deep sigh you lean back, and while the powerful music overwhelms your heart and mind, its visual setting unfolds before your inner eye.

When Mime laments the Forced Drudgery! with a voluminous tenor while doggedly banging his hammer, you can’t take it anymore. You jump to your feet and rip the blindfold from your eyes. And, from your Grand Tier Premium seat, what do you see?

The above! A hideously illuminated scrap-yard with a smashed-up trailer and a stunted street-bum banging his Made in China Wal-Mart mallet onto a piece of rusty iron.

Stunned, you sit down again. And while you do so, the terrible truth dawns on you. Namely that you have been tricked into attending the modern production of a great classical opera.

Now let’s assume you weren’t in such a great mood anyway, because some run in with your Japanese SUV or Siamese tomcat or crooked solicitor had darkened the day already, and all it needed to blow your top was a piece of theatrical hogwash like this. Thus you jump to your feet again and, with all the power your lungs can muster, begin to curse the heathen hogs to kingdom come.

Which, for a while at least, has the desired effects. The orchestra stops playing. Harp, trombone and first violin allow for a sip from the pocket flask while the conductor opts for a line. Mime drops his hammer and pops another upper. The audience is in turmoil. Some people stand and stare. Others use the opportunity and rip off programs when nobody looks. Old Rebecca Greenberg-Traurig, granny to some of the House’s foremost sponsors, goes down with the vapours. David Dunn Bauer, a celebrated art critic and rabbi, recognizes you as sincerely heterosexual and therefore, amongst other deviations, terroristically inclined. The House’s General Director, David Gockley, widely derided in certain circles as one of the major innovators in American opera, appears on stage while frantically hissing into his diamond-studded I-pod. Francesca Zambello, the production’s legendary artistic director, rolls into the main isle and yells insults at you that would make a harbour trollop blush. From your elevated position you glare down at her heavily powdered pizza-face and hurl your French fauteuil at it. But the damn thing misses by half a yard and only flattens her recently wed wife, Faith Gay (sic).

Finally the door is kicked down and all the world’s cops jump on you, and you are blissfully saved from watching the rest of the outrage.

Well, too bad really! Because by refusing so callously to consider the SFO’s magnificent production of Richard Wagner’s Ring des Nibelung, you’ve missed one the season’s cultural highlights. Just read what the assorted press had to say of the old semitophobe’s most acclaimed oeuvre:

Wagner’s Siegfried a Stunning Smasher, informs Opera Warhorses, which is most likely the most consummate praise ever.

Zambello’s “decaying American landscape” and “world ravaged by greed and neglect”—on Michael Yeargan’s sets with piles of garbage, polluted water and smoke-belching chimneys”—is OK, we are categorically assured by Janos Gereben in The Examiner.

Francesca Zambello, the first American woman to direct Wagner’s macho four-opera epic, was loudly cheered (if also booed by a handful), writes Mark Swed in the Los Angeles Times.

A Siegfried of unparalleled physicality and imagination. Director Francesca Zambello and her forces have created a five-hour opera that plays like a two-hour action flick, enthuses Michael J. Vaughan in The Opera Critic.

And more of the same. But to get a real in-depth impression of the grandiose event, let us look at what one of the more subtle and thoughtful art critics has to say in his international journal for the arts where we are treated prominently to his curriculum vitae:

David Dunn Bauer is a rabbi, stage director, critic, and educator. He is an alumnus of Yale University, Reconstructionist Rabbinical College, and Pacific School of Religion, in addition to having studied with Nadia Boulanger in 1976 and at the Liz Lerman Dance Exchange in 2010 and 2011. Based in San Francisco, he coordinates the Jewish Queer Sexual Ethics Project at the Center for Lesbian and Gay Studies in Religion and Ministry and is the Bay Area Director of Programming for Nehirim, the leading national provider of community programming for gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender (GLBT) Jews, partners, and allies. He writes regularly on issues of Torah, sexuality, Queer culture and community, and the arts.

Truly impressive credentials, you will agree, and particularly appropriate to give the stunning, smashing SFO production its proper due. In addition, Mr. Bauer’s journal styles itself The Berkshire Review, a somewhat misleading label since it clearly tries to give the impression that its editor is in some way akin to bygone critical genii like George Bernard Shaw who commanded the ethical and aesthetic clout to understand what the whole incredible Ring was really all about.

Here follows a brief compression of Rabbi Dunn Bauer’s critical acclaim:

Francesca Zambello forged something new and wondrous from Wagner’s tremendous and often toxic masterwork. I want to proclaim the true innovative triumph of the whole endeavour, the way in which Zambello told a worthy and contemporary feminist story through Wagner’s Romantic score, his heroes and heroines. While the sung (German) text remained unaltered, SFO’s (American) supertitles never referred to “the Rhine” (do you remember the Rhine?), only a nameless “river” and, as has become more and more the custom, often provided a slang and ironic commentary that bent the meaning of the original words.

For this Jewish Wagnerian who feels profound discomfort with Wagnerian anti-Semitism, I was deeply relieved at how thoroughly Zambello’s production eschewed the racist stereotypes implicit in the text and score. The prime Nibelungs, Alberich and Mime, were not by nature ugly or evil, more troubled and embittered. The Valhallan Gods were not lofty in manner or motivation. Neither the Volsung Twins, Siegmund and Sieglinde, nor their love-child Siegfried shone with gilded character against the dark horde of their moral inferiors. The ethical playing field was rendered strikingly even for a game played among deities and dwarves, goddesses of wisdom, demigod heroes, and scheming murderers.

As if to mete out a further measure of Borscht-Belt retribution for repugnant Aryan sins past, Zambello introduced an unprecedented amount of shtick into this portentous musical mythology. There were enough precisely timed elements of low comedy and enough laugh-provoking prop gags (beer bottles, butt kicks to God, telephones, televisions, remote controls, croquet mallets, and lap dances) to fill a revival of Gianni Schicci. In a rough tally, we find that Zambello transported the Ring out of the Rhine to the American River; brought the gods down (and the gnomes up) to a very humane plane; spiked Teutonic mead with vaudeville borscht; enriched the quality of women’s experience and agency beyond the stale limits of conventional heroine-ism; and erased the ethnic caricatures of the most offensively anti-Semitic work of dramatic art to hold an enduring place on the world stage.

And here a few visual highlights of the incredible extravaganza. The comments are lifted from Mr. Dunn Bauer’s unabridged critical piece. [images omitted]

Which seems to be a persiflage of Conrad’s “The horror! The horror!” and is therefore a perfect epitome of the entire hideous and miserable travesty.

Mr. Dunn Bauer, himself in danger to be labelled an ethnic caricature, and a damn queer one at that, has correctly identified Alberich as one of his own tribe. Though imperatives of loyalty forbid him to enlarge on the matter, he surely understands that the nasty dwarf is alive and well and wields the one Ring of Power to his heart’s content. What better therefore to divert attention to Siegfried’s heirs and crush a baby Nibelung for sport, an elegant simile clearly inspired by Elie Wiesel’s masterwork Night wherein the famed Nobelist and crackpot saw with his very own eyes how lorry-loads of small babies were hurled into a gigantic furnace?

Seen in this context, it is of course small wonder that a vengeful schmuck like Mr. Dunn Bauer rejoices about the mountains of shtick that disfigure Wagner’s incomparable magnum opus like plague spots a beautiful Rhinemaiden. Yet what seems odd is that he never mentions the generous sponsors who made this Twenty Five Million Dollar Enterprise possible. Because they are easy to make out. Just look at SFO’s official website and you will find, among small fry like La Boulange who occasionally doles out a free espresso, the usual suspects, namely a few international investment corporations who obviously laid out most of the aforementioned millions.

Just as in other great houses where there are frantic and vain attempts to destroy Wagner’s glorious legacy by presenting it as a theatrical garbage heap. Which gives us once again a clear idea about this particular type of barbarian who seem to lack any access to Beauty’s divine joy, and therefore hate it, and thus try to destroy what they can’t have.

As for those who are firmly grounded in Christian-humanist ethics and aesthetics, the smutty antics of the San Francisco Opera can’t be anything but the convulsions of an utterly diseased counter-culture that will slide back into the gutter once its sponsors have been divested of the one Ring of Power. Which, according to the developments in Greece and elsewhere, will happen rather sooner than later.

Categories
Art Beauty Kenneth Clark Maxfield Parrish

Grand Orc of the Crap Arts!

It is true that the video-series by Roger Scruton (“Why Beauty Matters”) and Scott Burdick (“The Banishment of Beauty”) expose today’s charlatanism in the Art world. But both series are marred by the constant presence of non-whites.

We need an identical message but this time filmed by someone like Craig Bodeker.

This said, what Scruton and Burdick proclaim is pertinent when we try to approach a sophisticated work like the classic The Story of Art by Ernst Gombrich, of Jewish ancestry, which I’ve just read.

In the final two chapters of the later editions of The Story, Gombrich speaks highly of the most soulless form of architecture that both Scruton and Kenneth Clark complained about. To boot, in these later chapters Gombrich reproduces several anti-art works as if they were genuine art, like Alexander Calder’s Universo (above).

The bullshit that Gombrich says in these last chapters was already refuted in “Why Beauty Matters.” For readers of TOO with good memory, perhaps they will also remember a Michael Colhaze article with the following vignette:

Both of us have no truck with Modern art and knew the artist only vaguely by name. Lucien Freud it was, grandson of you-know-who, and his hams about as uplifting as a dead rat under the sink. As we stood in front of one, an uncouth male nude reclining on a smutty bedstead with legs spread wide open while scratching reddish genitals dangling above a cavernous anus, my friend cast a look around and said: Grand Orc of the Crap Arts! Never had any sense of beauty, and never will! [image at TOO article]

I reproduce the anecdote again because Gombrich mentioned favorably the grandson of you-know-who as if he was a legit artist. So Gombrich put artistic junk at the end of his book (one more example: a whole unfolding triptych of one of Pollock’s nonsense paintings) but did not say a word of Parrish, the pictorial emblem of this blog, or about the art of Alma Tadema or the paintings of the pre-Raphaelites.

But let’s not dismiss all of Gombrich’s book: it is very erudite and often insightful. However, it is clear to me that he ignores the real art created in the century when we were born: genuine art that became heresy when these very sophisticated pundits monopolized Art Criticism (just as another Jew, Franz Boas, monopolized Anthropology).