Another failure at assimilation

An interesting post at SPLC's Hatewatch blog on the failure of some Jews to join the white supremacist movement and the organization they formed in response.

Ethnic whites in America have often tried to assimilate by playing the white/black divide - and in response, African Americans have often tried to fight racism with xenophobia - except for Jews, where it's been a much less important strategy. (In fact, the SPLC is itself a more important example of Jewish strategies at assimilation, in this case by becoming white allies to minorities.) It's no surprise that some Jews would try this.

But it's also an interesting example of Jewish assimilation. How much does it force the (white) Jews to erase their Jewish identities to become simply white? How Jewish is that "Judeo-Christian" identity? And how ironic that they've had more success in a way -attracting more mainstream academics- than the white supremacists who forced them out of the "mainstream" white supremacy movement?

Cloaked websites

Via Jesse Daniels.

White supremacists getting aggressive

White supremacists getting aggressive, going onto the blog of two anti-racist professors to spout their stuff. There was an article in Inside Higher Ed on Kevin MacDonald, who is a white supremacist and a tenured professor at Cal State Long Beach. The post at racismreview, a good one, shifts the question away from the limits of academic freedom (a difficult question since tenure is specifically designed to protect unpopular views) to one of how the system allowed him to get tenure. I pointed out that Kevin MacDonald is easy for everyone to hate, and that the controversy over him now might be timed to make up for a lack of serious response to Mearsheimer and Walt, Norman Finkelstein, and others.

The rest of the comments - which are what I'm trying to point to - are mostly white supremacists attacking critical theory as Jewish.

I read Culture of Critique and it was solid. It makes a very specific point — namely that Jewishly motivated actors did bad scholarship and their real motives were Jewish interests, such as Franz Boas. Franz Boas earlier in his career wrote things that would be considered “racist” nowadays, but then he realized that this went against the Jewish agenda and made a complete 180.

Also, the Frankfurt School was a whacky hate cult against a perfectly normal culture, and their “scholarship” was incredibly shoddy and pseudo. Look at “The Authoritarian Personality.” What a bunch of poppycock! Thank heavens someone like McDonald came along and exposed it for what it is.

Of course you guys don’t like that — those are your intellectual and ideological parents. But the Frankfurt School, like “Critical Theory” is not scholarship but rather a hate campaign of psychological warfare against white people and the civilization we built.

and

Multiculturalism is the Judaism of fools and scoundrels.

The thing, though - I have no fear of someone like this. That kind of message is never going to be mainstreamed, even if someone clever and controlled is able to present it in a polite sort of way. It's too obviously hateful. Mearsheimer and Walt might be less hateful, but they're already on the NYT Bestseller list. It's only by attaching that sort of message about "Jewish power" to an anti-war or otherwise "progressive" agenda that it'll ever gain any traction. That's a big part of the reason why I think we should be focusing more on left antisemitism.

Update: A slighly more polite debate on the same topic over at the SPLC's Hatewatch blog.