Monday, December 23, 2019

Just another example of Left anti-white racism

I have been talking a bit recently about the rise of anti-white racism, antisemitic anti-Zionism, and a condescending racism toward "people of color" increasingly coming out of the progressive-left.

In an article titled, Tucker Carlson Uncovers an AOC Moment of 'Vicious' Racism That Has Somehow Been Ignored published on October 31 of this year by Joe Saunders in The Western Journal, a conservative outlet, Tucker Carlson demonstrated blatant anti-white racism on the part of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez who blames "climate change" on "white" people.

In the record of a congressional hearing we read:
"Do we see largely that it’s the global south and communities of color that may be bearing the brunt of the initial havoc from climate change?” AOC asked a sympathetic witness.

“And in terms of that wealth, the people who are producing climate change, the folks that are responsible for the largest amount of emissions, or communities, or corporations, they tend to be predominantly white, correct?"
Ah, so it's those nefarious "white" people who are behind "climate change."

Needless to say, this is entirely false given that China and India are far worse offenders when it comes to toxic industrial emissions.

I wonder just when so much of the progressive-left gave up on the vision of Martin Luther King, Jr., without telling the rest of us.

Thursday, December 19, 2019

Jews and anti-White Racism

Michael Lumish

{Also published at Jews Down Under and the Elder of Ziyon.}

I recently published a Facebook tidbit titled, "The Grounding of Democratic Party Racism is the Progressive Left." There I suggest that the progressive-left is racist in three primary ways. These are anti-white racism, antisemitic anti-Zionism, and an imperial condescension toward those of non-European descent.

In response, Corinne Blackmer, a Professor of Biblical and American literature and gender studies at Southern Connecticut State University, pointed me to a 2019 article by Keith Payne published in Scientific American titled, "The Truth about Anti-White Discrimination."

The thesis is that anti-white racism is, itself, a racist delusion on the part of "white" people. Payne's conclusions are grounded in a piece published in Perspectives on Psychological Science by Michael Norton and Sam Sommers, titled "Whites See Racism as a Zero-Sum Game That They Are Now Losing."

Payne writes:
...a national survey reported that both blacks and whites believed that discrimination against blacks had declined over the past few decades, but whites believed that discrimination against whites was now more common than discrimination against blacks...

Whites tend to view increasing diversity as anti-white bias.
The implication is clear. The only reason that "whites" detect anti-white racism is out of their own sense of unearned privilege. It is not that there is any incessant cultural or academic tendency to berate "whites," but merely an irrational sense of weakness and vulnerability in the face of rising diversity and social justice in the United States.

The premise of Payne's argument rests on the undeniable fact of disparity of income between "white" people in the United States versus "black" people here. He claims that "the average black family earns about half as much as the average white family" and "that the unemployment rate for blacks is twice that for whites..."

Of course, none of this takes into account the fact that East-Asian Americans, Asian-Indian Americans, and American Jews, out-earn Americans of European descent. It seems hard to argue for "white privilege" in a society wherein those at the top of the economic hierarchy are not "white." Nonetheless, the disparagement of "white" people as essentially racist is obviously itself a racist notion and Jews are swept up in it.

Recently there has been considerable conversation around the notion of the "white Jew." The basic idea is that since Ashkenazim are "white" we enjoy "white privilege" and are, in fact, among the primary oppressors of "people of color." Democratic Party devotees of Louis Farrakhan even believe that Jews were the driving force behind the Atlantic Slave Trade and remain so to this day... as if that makes the slightest bit of sense.

The question then becomes, so what is the evidence for this political and cultural anti-white racism? I am not a sociologist and have not done independent research on the question. So we will have to make do with a few pieces of anecdotal evidence, and one scholarly study, that represents a tiny drop in the bucket if you decide to look into the matter further.

My favorite example is MTV's 2017 New Years Resolutions for White Guys. This one is fun because it is just so transparent in its contempt toward "white guys." Another interesting piece from the New York Times, written by Ekow N. Yankah, is titled, "Can My Children Be Friends With White People?" Can you begin to imagine a New York Times piece titled in all seriousness, "Can My Children Be Friends With Black People"? Yankah is not sure that his children can be friends with "white" people and this was published in The Times. Thankfully, Yankah tells us, "I have not given up on being friends with all white people."

And I have no doubt that "white" people -- whoever they may be, exactly -- appreciate that very much.

This one captured my attention shortly after the election of Donald Trump. This is a case wherein some young black kids tortured a mentally-handicapped white kid because Donald Trump won the 2016 election. The torturers made a point of calling the kid "white" as they stripped him naked into a bathtub and taped his mouth. The point, of course, is that he was tortured for being "white." I feel reasonably certain that the people doing the torturing were not Republicans.

Finally, I want to point you to a piece written by Muneeb Hafiz, a PhD Candidate and Associate Lecturer at Lancaster University, UK, published in Critical Ethnic Studies by the University of Minnesota Press, titled "On Whiteness" (2018). Hafiz writes:
Whiteness “is on a toggle switch between ‘bland nothingness’ and ‘racist hatred,’” Professor Nell Painter tells us. It is a “metaphor for power” in James Baldwin’s vocabulary. According to Kehinde Andrews, Whiteness is “a process rooted in the social structure, one that induces a form of psychosis.” Whiteness, Achille Mbembe explains, “became the mark of a certain mode of Western presence in the world, a certain figure of brutality and cruelty, a singular form of predation with an unequaled capacity for the subjection and exploitation of foreign peoples.” A fantasy — no more real than Blackness, we should add — later transformed into a kind of common (non)sense, Whiteness “involves a constellation of objects of desire and public signs of privilege that relate to body and image, language and wealth.”
It is frankly astonishing that we can reify "whiteness" as a negative toxic epistemology in human history and not recognize this notion for the racism that it is. This does not only effect those of European descent. It represents racism towards Jews, as well.

Wednesday, December 18, 2019

The Executive Order

Sar Shalom

One of the leftist critiques of Trump's executive order last week is that it defines Judaism as a nationality as well as a religion. It is unsurprising that leftists would oppose such a move, as many oppose such a definition. However, they go further than stating opposition to creating that definition and claim that doing so is antisemitic. Unfortunately for those who claim the mantle of standing up to antisemitism in opposing the definition of Judaism as a nationality, that opposition to recognition of Jewish nationhood is a staple of PLO propaganda for decades. As Einat Wilf has said, it was being exposed to Palestinian so-called moderates who insisted that the Jews are not a people that started her questioning whether or not there is a genuine peace partner.

Further, it is because Judaism is a nationality as well as a religion that the Jewish people has a natural right to a homeland where the Jews became a people. Readers of my work would know that I am not a fan of Trump. However, to the extent that he implied that Judaism is a nationality, he should be celebrated.

Wednesday, December 11, 2019

A note to an old college friend

Michael Lumish

So, you support Sanders.

Do you understand that Sanders is not considered a friend of either the Jewish people or the state of Israel... by, y'know, most Jews. I am very familiar with the ongoing discussion among Jews who care about the Jewish people and Sanders is not well-liked.

He is hostile toward Israel and even brought antisemitic anti-Zionist, Linda Sarsour, into his campaign as a representative.

As for "far right talking points" I am liberal.

I marched against the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

I support Gay rights and a woman's right to choose an abortion.

I support a tax code that favors the middle-class and the poor.

You write:

<"There's been mostly white people at every Bernie rally I've ever been to.">

What's your point? Of course, there has mainly been "white" people at Bernie rallies. This does not negate the fact of anti-white racism as a central feature of progressive-left politics.

This is not a "right-wing" perspective.

It is simply a matter of acknowledging the obvious.

You write:

<"For hardcore Zionists it seems that anyone critical of the Israeli government's policies and actions towards the Palestinians is, BOOM, automatically, an anti-Semite...">

How do you distinguish a "hardcore Zionist" from a Jew who supports Jewish self-determination and self-defense on historically Jewish land?

Do you think that Jews who support the well-being of our brothers and sisters in Israel are "hardcore Zionists"?

Is any Japanese person who believes in Japanese self-determination and self-defense on Japanese land a "hardcore Japanese nationalist"?

How about the French?

From there you launch into a diatribe that is something akin to the "blood libel" wherein you discuss how brutal and murderous "Zionists" are.

<"1,492 civilians brutally killed during protective edge or the teams of Israeli snipers shooting thousands of unarmed protesters at the wall in Gaza, killing hundreds including paramedics and journalists.">

You know nothing of the conflict.

I remember you as a good guy, but you know zero about the Long Arab War Against the Jews in the Middle East and seem to think that Israeli Jews are something akin to evil.

This is, by the way, a very sort-of nineteenth-century imperial outlook which sees "people of color" as merely innocent victims who have no agency in the world.

This is a perfect example of how "progressives" -- who are not liberal, btw -- treat those of non-European descent as children.

I find it racist, as hell, frankly.

The fact of the matter, of course, is that the Jews of the Middle East lived under the boot of Arab and Muslim imperial rule for thirteen long centuries.

We were not allowed to ride horses, only donkeys.

We were not allowed to marry Muslim women or build housing in higher geographical locations than Muslims.

Cursing "the prophet" meant death.

In some places, we were not even allowed to go out in the rain lest our filth washed into the streets and contaminated our neighbors.

And we had to pay protection money, the jizya, in order to live in our own communities.

Furthermore, Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez are not "critical" of Israeli policies. They are antisemitic anti-Zionists who want Israel eliminated as the national homeland of the Jewish people. They are not working for social justice but against it.

These people are not liberals. They are something much more akin to fascists and they are all very protective of political Islam which targets Jews for death.

I know that you mean well, and I do not mean to give you a hard time, but I do not think that you are very well educated on this subject.

Tuesday, December 10, 2019

What to call the disputed territories

Sar Shalom

As is well known, most supporters of Israel have a term for the disputed territories that is at odds with what almost all of the rest of the world calls it. For supporters of Israel, that territory is Judea and Samaria, the name by which those territories were known from biblical times until the 19th century. For the rest of the world, it is the West Bank, after the name Jordan gave it in 1949 and which had become standard during Jordan's occupation.

Both of those terms have their problems. The problem "Judea and Samaria" is that it conveys a sense of irredentism without conveying why it is rightfully Jewish (or Judean). Furthermore, using "Judea and Samaria" to refer to the disputed territory implies that the territory from Beersheba to Ein Gedi is not part of Judea. On the other hand, "West Bank" accepts the narrative of the party, Jordan, that acquired the territory in an aggressive war.

The term I would suggest is "Jordanian Conquest." This term conveys what distinguishes the disputed territory from what is not disputed in that the territory that Jordan succeeded in conquering is now disputed between Israel and the international community and there is no dispute between Israel and the international community over any territory that Jordan failed to conquer. The following approaches as to how to allocate any given Parcel X should illustrate the consequences of the terminology.

Approach 1: Was Parcel X under Arab control prior to the 1967 war? If so, no further information is needed, it should become part of Palestine.

Approach 2: Was Parcel X conquered by Jordan during the 1948-49 Independence War? If so, no further information is needed, it should become part of Palestine.

Both lines of inquiry are affected by the preamble to UN Security Council Resolution 242, which states, "Emphasizing the inadmissibility of the acquisition of territory by war ...." If you accept the framing of the first question, then the preamble to 242 almost necessarily leads to the conclusion that everything Israel conquered in 1967 belongs to the Palestinians as of right and that that can only be amended with the Palestinians' assent. However, if you accept the framing of the second question, then embracing the conclusion is outright thumbing your nose as the preamble of 242.

Calling the disputed territory the "West Bank" implicitly accepts the first frame. Calling it Judea and Samaria says nothing about which frame to accept. Since it says nothing, it accepts that anyone who previously accepted the first frame would continue to accept that frame. Calling it the Jordanian Conquest places the second frame front and center. Getting the designation Jordanian Conquest accepted would promote that second frame.

The grounding of Democratic Party racism is the progressive-left

Michael Lumish

The progressive-left is racist in three primary ways.

1) Anti-White racism.

It is both fascinating and sad that the very people who claim to stand for the ethos of Martin Luther King, Jr. no longer believe in judging people as individuals so much as part of various divisive ethnic and gendered categories as we see on the campuses as derived from "intersectionality" theory.

This is why regressives feel very free to tell "white" people to shut the fuck up.

It is because they believe in racial hierarchies.

2) Antisemitic anti-Zionism.

Democrats, such as Barack Obama, honestly believe that they have every right to tell Jewish people where we may, or may not, be allowed to live on the very land of our own history, ancestry, and culture. It gets no more racist than that.

The analogy that I like to use is comparing the Democrats to medieval Italian princes who developed the ghetto system. At least the medieval Italian princes had the modesty to keep their injustice toward Jews within Italy. The Democrats have taken it to the very land of the Jewish people, itself.

3) The condescension toward "people of color."

They seem to believe that, with the exception of Jews, people of non-European descent are like little children in need of a pat on the head and a chocolate chip cookie.

It is racist as hell and reminds me of nothing so much as late-nineteenth-century American imperial notions of "white man's burden."

Friday, December 6, 2019

Welcome To Americastan

Doodad

Almost all of last year's top-10 darlings are still favorites this year (US baby names.) with a few exceptions. Revealing a rise in Arabic names, Muhammad and Aaliyah made the top 10 for the first time, replacing Mason and Layla.
Muhammad is considered the most popular name in the world, and UK news site Independent says it is "given to an estimated 150 million men and boys.

This has happened in other countries over the years and two things happened in conjunction with that.

1. Terrorism incidents increased

2. Antisemitism increased.

They tried to hide it in 2017 but got caught lying. And we all know what is happening in the UK as terror attacks continue and the left panders to the antisemitism of Muslim voters.The same has happened in various European countries.

Will it happen in the US? It's nice to imagine that the US is different; that it has some magical ability to resist all this. But look at the Dems response to antisemitism by the squad and their fans. No censure; only inclusion and support. Two leading 2020 candidates have made it clear that Israel is in their sights if they win.

I suspect the Corbynization of the Dems and an America that has Mohammed as the 10th most popular baby name has begun. And if the Dems win in 2020, well, goodnight Irene.

Tuesday, December 3, 2019

And Suddenly, It Was All Whites.

Doodad

Kamala Harris has dropped out so the entire Democratic 2020 field is WHITE (shudder.) I don't see how Michelle Obama has a choice now unless she DOESN'T want to save the soul of America.

Nice going Tulsi and all you rich white guys. All blacks should vote for Trump now just out of spite; unless Michelle shows up, of course.