theoccidentalobserver.netJєωιѕн Fear and Loathing of Donald Trump (5): Would Trump’s Defeat Be Blamed On Jєωs?Posted at
Vdare.comSee previous articles in this series.Almost exactly a year ago,
VDARE.com Editor Peter Brimelow raised
the question of whether America’s Jєωιѕн groups would turn on Donald Trump (who after all has Jєωιѕн grandchildren and a lifetime of Jєωιѕн business associates) with the hysteria they
employed against
Patrick J. Buchanan. I have been
tracking the matter ever since and the answer is now in: yes—clearly triggered by visceral reaction against Trump’s
nationalist acceptance speech in Cleveland and outright panic at his subsequent poll lead (July 25-29 according to the
Real Clear Politics average). I suspect, however, that we have crossed a watershed and that, regardless of the results of this election, this will not end well for them.
Before the convention,
Wall Street Journal Deputy Editorial Page Editor Bret Stephens [
Email him] said with
astonishing arrogance: “It’s important that Donald Trump and what he represents—this kind of ethnic quote, ‘conservatism,’ or populism be so decisively rebuked that the Republican Party, the Republican voters will forever learn their lesson…”
WSJ‘s Bret Stephens: Trump Must Lose So Badly That the GOP Voters ‘Learn Their Lesson’, by Sam Reisman,
Mediaite, May 29 2016.
Just on Friday, Paul Krugman [
Email him] writing in the
New York Times continued the now-widespread theme:
any expression of ethnic identity by America’s whites, no matter how implicit, was “bigoted” and “white nationalist”:
Recently
Avik Roy, a leading Republican health-policy expert, had the personal and moral courage to admit what liberals (and political scientists) have been saying for years: “In reality, the gravitational center of the Republican Party is white nationalism.”
Just to be clear, I’m not saying that top Republicans were or are personally bigoted—but that doesn’t matter. What does matter is that they were willing to curry favor with bigots in the service of tax cuts for the rich and financial deregulation. Remember,
Mitt Romney eagerly accepted a Trump endorsement in 2012, knowing full well that he was welcoming a racist conspiracy theorist into his camp.
All that has happened this year is a move of those white nationalists from part of the supporting cast to a starring role.
Trump has been hit with a deafening crescendo of
hostility from the Main Stream Media, as well as blatantly-orchestrated defections and denunciations from
prominent Republicans. [
Which Republicans Oppose Donald Trump? A Cheat Sheet, by David A. Graham,
The Atlantic, August 11, 2016.
]These tend to come down to moralizing about Trump’s character and temperament. This is not surprising given that the elite consensus favoring mass immigration and multiculturalism is usually justified as a
moral imperative—far too many respectable, intelligent white people desperately want to be in sync with the moral pronouncements of
NPR and the
New York Times editorial page to
look out for their own interests. And to make it worse, Trump has not backed down or pivoted from his
statements on a
moratorium on Muslims,deporting illegals and
making immigration policy work for America since winning the nomination.
At this time, there is not one MSM outlet on board with Trump, and the coverage given to manufactured crises about Trump
vastly outstrips coverage given to the very real Clinton corruption:
This for a candidate who received more votes than any other Republican candidate in history.
It’s obvious, of course that not all Jєωs are in the
#nevertrump bandwagon. Jєωs who support Trump—likely a dwindling number—claim to do so for the
same reasons many non-Jєωs do: the domination of US politics by
lobbyists and big money, as well as honesty and
willingness to be unconventional [
To understand American Jєωs who support Trump, read this, By Uriel Heilman,
Jєωιѕн Telegraphic Agencey, March 8, 2016] But it is also obvious that, if only because of historical patterns, the vast majority of Jєωs will not vote for any Republican candidate—let alone Trump.
And, as always, what’s really important in thinking about Jєωιѕн issues is to focus on media power and
financial donations, as well as tracking what the major Jєωιѕн organizations are up to. All three of the major networks mentioned in the above charts are managed by Jєωs (
CBS: Leslie Moonves;
NBC: Bob Greenblatt;
ABC: Ben Sherwood), and CBS (Sumner Redstone’s
Viacom) and NBC (the Roberts family’s
Comcast) are controlled by Jєωιѕн corporations. CNN is
managed by Jeff Zucker.
Quite simply, Jєωs have far more power in the media than any other identifiable group. And yes, Jєωιѕн identity makes a difference in content (See
Culture Of Critique, Preface to the Paperback Edition , xlvi–lvi).
The issues that have particularly triggered the broad Jєωιѕн community have had specific Jєωιѕн overtones—the alleged
delay in disavowing the support of David Duke, the ridiculous
claim of a “Roman salute” at a rally in Florida, Trump’s
use of the
“America First” slogan (reminiscent of the pre-World War II movement that
explicitly noted Jєωιѕн influence in promoting a war with Hitler), and the “Star of David” incident in which a picture of Hillary appeared with a 6-sided star over a mass of cash with the caption “Most Corrupt Politician Ever.”
I have to admit that when I saw this (which was before all the fuss), I knew it was going to be trouble. I figured that the imagery would be way over the head of most people but would definitely provoke outrage among Jєωs. And indeed, a
Washington Post article claimed it was decisive for many Jєωs:
The concern expressed by many Jєωs is that Trump, who earlier this year was slow to condemn former Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke and has on several occasions retweeted messages from white supremacists, is bringing into the mainstream a sentiment that has largely been relegated to the dark underworld of the Internet.
Trump’s vigorous defense of anti-Semitic image a ‘turning point’ for many Jєωs, By Jose A. DelReal and Julie Zauzmer, Washington Post, July 8, 2016
The image was quickly removed and replaced with a circle. But Trump, as is his style, did not apologize or back down, arguing that the image was generic (seen also in a poster for Walt Disney’s
Frozen and resembling a sheriff’s badge).
Not being as confrontational as Trump, I would have advised him to simply apologize and move on, given that this is really a no-win situation for Trump and because the financial corruption implied by the image goes far beyond any
Jєωιѕн angle.
(Nevertheless, there is no question that Clinton’s key financial contributors are
wealthy Jєωιѕн Democrats and
hedge fund operators, including Jєωs like
Seth Klarman who donated to Romney in 2012; other members of the Republican Jєωιѕн Coalition are not contributing to Trump, although some, most prominently,
Sheldon Adelson have promised to do so.)
But no matter. Such attempts at exoneration by the Trump campaign are framed by activists as nothing more than implausibly deniable
dog whistles to his “white supremacist” base.
A
New York Times article linked the star symbolism to a pattern in which Trump is
supposedly appealing to white identity politics. It quoted ADL leader Jonathan Greenblatt:
“I think what we really find troubling is the mainstreaming of these really offensive ideas,” said Jonathan Greenblatt, the national director of the Anti-Defamation League, which tracks hate groups. “It’s allowed some of the worst ideas into the public conversation in ways we haven’t seen anything like in recent memory.”
For Whites Sensing Decline, Donald Trump Unleashes Words of Resistance By Nicholas Confessore, NYT, July 13, 2016
In fact, I agree that Trump’s candidacy is an
implicitly White revolt motivated by fears about what being a white minority in a majority black and brown America would mean for the future for their families and our institutions—
entirely reasonable concerns. But the point here is that the organized Jєωιѕн community is consciously determined that this issue
be kept out of public debate.The ADL is unusual among Jєωιѕн organizations in
directly condemning Trump, likely because of IRS rules on political involvement by non-profits. But a long list of Jєωιѕн organizations have skirted the taxation issue by criticizing particular Trump pronouncements, especially his comments on Muslims and other issues related to immigration and multiculturalism. For example,
The Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism has … taken tangible steps to address bigotry and xenophobia raised by the Trump campaign. The organization, said director Rabbi Jonah Dov Pesner, launched a community-wide effort to welcome refugees and reach out to immigrant communities.
[Why Is the Anti-Defamation League Calling Out Donald Trump by Name? , by Nathan Guttman, Forward, May 20, 2016]
Again, the main problem the Jєωιѕн community has with Trump is that he has challenged the
elite consensus on immigration and multiculturalism.
Another interesting angle is that one might think that Jєωs who fund “Islamophobic” organizations, such as the above-mentioned Seth Klarman, or are
known as “Islamophobic” critics of the Muslim community, like
Daniel Pipes, are not supporting Trump. This may seem surprising because one of Trump’s signature proposals has been a moratorium on Muslim immigration, while Hillary wants to ramp up the number of
refugees and other immigrants from Muslim countries. Pipes is particularly interesting given his status as a pro-Israel activist (Klarman is also a major contributor to pro-Israel groups). Why would these “Islamophobes” not support the candidate who will actually do something about Muslim immigration?
Actually, it
should not be surprising that Pipes is anti-Trump given that he favors a “
house-broken Islam” in Western countries. What neocons like Pipes want is continued immigration of Muslims and the creation of Muslim communities that do not threaten the status quo on Israel. They are quite content with the demographic decline of White populations, whether in Europe or the US.
Indeed, Pipes just
quit the GOP over this issue, complaining about Trump’s “
pro-fascistic tendencies”:
The United States, the world’s oldest democratic republic, faces an internal danger unlike any in the past 1½ centuries, one with the potential to degrade domestic life and reduce the country’s standing in the world. Nothing is as important as resisting and defeating Donald J. Trump and the neo-fascist virus he wishes to bring to the White House.
Needless to say, this is especially bizarre given that Trump’s proposals
unmistakably parallel the policies of Prime Minister
Benjamin Netanyahu in Israel.Jєωιѕн publications like the
Tablet continue hyperbolic denunciations of Trump. Thus an article by
Eric D. Weitz [
Email him] drew an explicit analogy between the rise of Hitler and the possibility of a Trump presidency, arguing that mainstream conservatives were crucial to Hitler’s ultimate success as well as Trump’s. As is typical of such writing, there is no attempt to appreciate the very real interests that Trump voters have in supporting their candidate—interests that should be obvious to Jєωs supporting the moral imperative of Israel as a Jєωιѕн state, a
Tablet staple:
Today’s Republicans and similarly-minded figures in Europe are like the conservatives who put Adolf Hitler in power: delusional about their influence, playing dangerously with the structures of our democracy. Few Republicans in the United States are willing to follow Sen. [Lindsay] Graham on the “exit ramp,” as he termed it, from the Trump highway. And much of the reason lies in the fact that Trump’s political language is only more blatant than what many Republicans have been saying for decades.
That is the lesson from the right-wing populist upsurge in Weimar Germany, which culminated in the nαzι assumption of power. The political language of fear and hostility directed at “foreign” elements (never mind the fact that many and even most of those so-called foreigners had been residents and citizens for generations) enables moderate and radical conservatives to come together. The moderates make the radicals salonfähig, acceptable in polite society. That is the real and pressing danger of the current moment.
Weimar Germany and Donald Trump, July 18, 2016
Other recent articles explicitly assert the importance of Jєωιѕн identity in opposing Trump: e.g.,
Jєωs have a special responsibility this US election to fight back against Donald Trump, by Matthew Rozsa,
Quartz, July 09, 2016
And a writer at the
Forward, Rabbi Michael Rothbaum, linked Trump to Rep. Steve King (R-IA) who responded to a jeer on MSNBC that “soon there won’t be enough white people to elect Republicans to national office” by
saying the unsayable:
I’d ask you to go back through history and figure out where are these contributions that have been made by these other categories of people that you are talking about? Where did any other subgroup of people contribute more to civilization?
And then he doubled down by linking the contributions of whites to Christianity. Horrors!
Of course, this argument actually has respectable academic support e.g. Oxford University professor Sir
Larry Siedentop’s
Inventing the Individual: The Origins of Western Liberalism. But Rothbaum looks at Christianity exclusively from a narrow Jєωιѕн perspective, seeing only persecution of Jєωs, and dragging in Trump:
Let’s recognize that Donald Trump, by openly demonizing Mexicans, Muslims and many other groups, has emboldened people like King to directly engage in racism. And then let’s realize that King’s racist comments on MSNBC serve to reinforce one of the truly important lessons of this election cycle: If nothing else, the rise of Trump has proven that white supremacy almost always lives next-door to Christian hegemony—and that one form of bigotry will always bolster another.
For every racist meme that Trump tweets about African-American criminals, there’s an anti-Semitic meme that Trump culls from a white supremacist forum. For every unctuous remark Trump makes about “my African-American,” there’s another one labeling a room full of Jєωs “negotiators.”
Why Jєωs Need To Band Together With ‘Subgroups’ That Steve King Attacked, Forward, July 19, 2016. Links in original.
(In fact, of course, King
supported Ted Cruz in the GOP primaries and
like other orthodox conservatives has been noticeably slow to endorse Trump. But maybe Trump’s rhetoric has been a breath of fresh air—for example, college students stood up to a hyper-feminist demonstration at a Milo Yiannopoulos lecture by chanting “Trump, Trump, Trump!”).
The lesson for Rabbi Rothbaum: Jєωs should form alliances with all the other groups:
All of us “subgroups” who stand outside of “Western civilization” are in danger. If we’re going to stand against this rising tide of hate, we’ve got to stand together. So let’s keep building bridges. Surely that’s something even we lowly “subgroups” can contribute.
But building bridges with various subgroups in American society has been the Jєωιѕн strategy for decades, beginning at least by the early twentieth century—making alliances with blacks (the NAACP) and any other group whose interests could be construed as opposing the traditional power structure of America. See my essay
Jєωs, Blacks, And Race, from Samuel Francis’s
Race And The American Prospect, 2006.
Since World War II and especially since the sea change in immigration policy of 1965, the big shift has been away from attempts to make alliances with the white working class in favor of making alliances with non-White ethnic groups as well as with sɛҳuąƖ non-conformists.
The white working class has responded by becoming by far the most enthusiastic Trump supporters.
While Jєωιѕн identity has often been in the forefront of Trump denunciations, the #NeverTrump
neoconservatives are a special case. Obviously concerned that a Trump administration might fail to provide foreign policy jobs for the usual pro-Israel and anti-Russia suspects, the neocon assault on Trump is typically carried on with assertions of US patriotism, their Jєωιѕн identity submerged under thick layers of professed allegiance to American interests. Jєωιѕн #NeverTrump neocons with access to the elite media, notably
Jennifer Rubin [
email her]
Max Boot, Bill Kristol and the aforementioned Bret Stephens, all of whom were featured in
Part 4 of this series, have continued their onslaught against Trump, often with complaints about Trump’s supposed racism and fascist tendencies.
Recently Stephens
complained that Trump was appealing to the
“privileges of a white ethnic bloc.” He has also
attacked Sean Hannity who is perhaps the most prominent MSM figure who is firmly in the Trump camp, complaining that Trump was departing from “genuine Reaganites: pro-trade, pro-immigration, pro-NATO, pro-entitlement reform.” [
Sean Hannity’s Veneration of Ignorance, WSJ, Aug. 8, 2016]
Who would have thought that socially and demographically transformative immigration was a conservative value?
The exchange shows that any MSM figure who dares to show wholehearted support for Trump should expect nothing but wall-to-wall hostility from the neocon wing of the GOP.
But of course, neocons are
not really conservatives and would be
more than happy with a Democrat party committed to Leftist domestic policies (particularly massive non-white immigration) and a staunchly pro-Israel, anti-Russia foreign policy (which is near and dear to Hillary Clinton’s donor base as described above). They will most likely end up going back to the Democrats whence they came.
The Stephens-Hannity exchange also raises the real possibility that if Trump loses in November, neocons and other #neverTrump Republicans will be blamed. And given the role of Jєωιѕн neocons in the GOP and its mouthpieces like
The Weekly Standard and
National Review, to say nothing of the Jєωιѕн organizations’
reckless commitment to mass immigration and
multiculturalism at the expense of the historic American nation, it is hard to see how the issue of Jєωιѕн power can be kept out of public debate.
But the good news: the pre-Trump GOP which was dependent on a neocon media and foreign policy establishment and with a big business, pro-Israel donor base, is dead—and, in my view, it can’t be resuscitated.
That GOP got completely out of touch with the interests of its white middle and working class voters. These voters will not go back to the pro-immigration globalism of the Republican elites. But without this base, the GOP cannot win.
Conservatism Inc. is finished. Its operatives who
dream of reclaiming the Republican Party after a Trump disaster will inherit a corpse.
Kevin MacDonald [email him] is emeritus professor of psychology at California State University–Long Beach. His research has focused on developing evolutionary perspectives in developmental psychology, personality theory, Western culture, and ethnic relations (group evolutionary strategies). He edits and is a frequent contributor to The Occidental Observer and The Occidental Quarterly. For his website, click here.