Comments on: Kevin MacDonald and the Politics of WASP Resentment

By: Paul

Paul — Sat, 06 Jun 2009 18:46:28 +0000

A year and a half and no comments. You were righter than you knew when you mentioned "important sociological trends that few people are talking about out loud." Maybe word gets around. I have no portfolio in the chattering class – I'm an unpublished, overage MA student in rhetoric, but I have wide interests in cultural studies, so I can probably air a few thoughts at no risk to my (nonexistent) reputation. Mr. Weiss, I agree with you that the old tribes are, by and large, loosening and changing. Maybe it's the snags that trip us up – the ways Jews (for example) stay the same, such as the ethnocentrism and intensity you acknowledge. The things we hold true and dear give us identity, and they're important in a diverse society. I think we realize that, but realizing why they're important – and what changing meanings they have in a diverse society – is going to take time. Maybe not McDonald's seven generations, but at least one or two. As a psychologically intense gentile myself – and one well immersed in "Jewish" pursuits like jazz, humor, and pop and material culture – I, like you, wish such things were no longer quite so coded and typed. To this day, people not only assume A, B, and C about (say) a white jazz musician, but often, they assume correctly. A lot of apples don't fall far from the tree – but whether that's proof of some essential racialist truth or just because no one is shaking the tree is something nice smart people don't talk about. I think they'd better get talking, if only because there are a lot of folks out there with racialist assumptions they don't know they have.

By: Chris

Chris — Mon, 29 Nov 1999 23:00:00 +0000

Great post. Kevin Macdonald is an individual I am unsure how to talk about. I think that Philip Weiss's response in this blog posting and his general synthesis/cross cultural approach is a good one.

BTW did anyone catch Pat Robertson blaming recent bad weather on the Bush Administration's failure to please Israel?

http://wonkette.com/335474/just-dont-look-him-in-the-eye

By: David the First

David the First — Mon, 29 Nov 1999 23:00:00 +0000

Too important a post for a quick response, so I'll just mention a coincidence that caught my eye--

"Ultimately, Europeans may come to realize that the conflict is really about the ethnic displacement of themselves as a people."

It's interesting that this is exactly the way the necons (from Bernard Lewis up to and including Thomas Friedman) think of Islam.

So in this way MacDonald shares the same core assumption as his subjects -- that the human journey is a zero sum game (as a very wise monkey once said).

By: Richard Witty

Richard Witty — Mon, 29 Nov 1999 23:00:00 +0000

"Jews won the culture war"???

Can you start a valid argument with a statement like that?

By: anon

anon — Mon, 29 Nov 1999 23:00:00 +0000

Well, I suppose we can have different definitions of culture, Richard. But can you name a Hollywood movie studio which is not Jewish-run? Or a TV news network? Or a book publishing house? Or a national newspaper? Magazine? An ivy-league college without a Jewish president?

There might be one or two of each, but not more.

By: cogit8

cogit8 — Mon, 29 Nov 1999 23:00:00 +0000

Philip is to be commended for bringing the name of Prof. MacDonald into his discussion.

All of the participants in this discussion can be accused of 'having a fixation' with the topic of "The Jewing of America". [Not a book title you will see at Borders.]

And with good and proper reason: if the Jews succeed in provoking an immoral attack on Iran, everyone in the world will suffer for it.

On the other hand, the Iranians could stoop to the level of our moral turpitude and decide to make preemptive war on Israel. It would be a comensurate response to paranoid Jewish war-mongering and Jewish exceptionalism.

By: Gene

Gene — Mon, 29 Nov 1999 23:00:00 +0000

The culture war is over and the gentiles have lost. All we're doing now is burying the dead.

By: Tony Lawless

Tony Lawless — Mon, 29 Nov 1999 23:00:00 +0000

Why don't you read the trilogy? That way, you would know what you are talking about. I suspect you will end up thinking that MacDonald is a very important, even if very unsettling, thinker.

By the way, when you say that "The Jewish law against intermarriage smacks of racism in today's America", you betray your continuing ethnocentrism. It doesn't "smack" of racism; it IS racism.

By: Samarkand

Samarkand — Mon, 29 Nov 1999 23:00:00 +0000

anon said:

"But can you name ... (an) ivy-league college without a Jewish president? There might be one or two of each, but not more."

Wrong. There are eight Ivy League schools. At the most there are likely three Jewish Ivy League presidents.

Brown = gentile
Columbia = gentile
Cornell = ?
Dartmouth = gentile
Harvard = gentile
Princeton = gentile
Penn = Jewish
Yale = Jewish

By: Richard Witty

Richard Witty — Mon, 29 Nov 1999 23:00:00 +0000

I too got a post booted.

What difference does it make how many Jewish Ivy League presidents there are.

"Winning" the culture war implies that there was some collective "intent" to win something, a ludicrous idea.

Individuals strive to succeed, personally, individually.