The Alt Right and the Jews

by Kevin MacDonald

September 17, 2016

Certainly the most basic issue of the Alt Right is that it is entirely legitimate for Whites to identify as Whites and to pursue their interests as Whites, such as resisting attempts to make White Americans a minority.

Ethnic and racial identities are common among all other groups, and, despite constant propaganda emanating from centers of media and academic power, Whites should be no exception. Voluntarily ceding political and cultural power is the ultimate foolishness, particularly in an atmosphere of non-White grievance and the hostility towards Whites, their history and their culture, that is so apparent today.

However, another issue that is central to the world view of many on the Alt Right (but by no means unanimous) is the issue of Jewish power and influence. Ultimately, this stems from an understanding of the role of Jews in White dispossession, both historically and in the contemporary West. Accounting for around 2% of the U.S. population, Jews have never had much power as a result of sheer numbers. What counts is Jewish power in the media, in the academic world, and in government.

It must be made clear at the outset that the Jewish community is not monolithic, and, as discussed below, there may be some Jews who are wholeheartedly opposed to the de-Europeanization of America. As an obvious example of the lack of unanimity among Jews on important issues, neoconservatism is a Jewish movement, led by and dominated by Jews since its inception. Most Jews are not neocons, but neoconservatism has had a huge influence on American foreign policy, successfully dominating the George W. Bush administration and promoting the Iraq war. And long before that, during the Reagan administration, neoconservatives were instrumental in expelling more traditional conservatives from power in the GOP and in general moving it to the left on critical issues like immigration.

Samuel Francis recounts the

catalog of neoconservative efforts not merely to debate, criticize, and refute the ideas of traditional conservatism but to denounce, vilify, and harm the careers of those Old Right figures and institutions they have targeted. There are countless stories of how neoconservatives have succeeded in entering conservative institutions, forcing out or demoting traditional conservatives, and changing the positions and philosophy of such institutions in neoconservative directions. . . . Writers like M. E. Bradford, Joseph Sobran, Pat Buchanan, and Russell Kirk, and institutions like Chronicles, the Rockford Institute, the Philadelphia Society, and the Intercollegiate Studies Institute have been among the most respected and distinguished names in American conservatism. The dedication of their neoconservative enemies to driving them out of the movement they have taken over and demonizing them as marginal and dangerous figures has no legitimate basis in reality. It is clear evidence of the ulterior aspirations of those behind neoconservatism to dominate and subvert American conservatism from its original purposes and agenda and turn it to other purposes. . . . What neoconservatives really dislike about their "allies" among traditional conservatives is simply the fact that the conservatives are conservatives at all — that they support "this notion of a Christian civilization," as Midge Decter put it, that they oppose mass immigration, that they criticize Martin Luther King and reject the racial dispossession of white Western culture, that they support or approve of Joe McCarthy, that they entertain doubts or strong disagreement over American foreign policy in the Middle East, that they oppose reckless involvement in foreign wars and foreign entanglements, and that, in company with the Founding Fathers of the United States, they reject the concept of a pure democracy and the belief that the United States is or should evolve toward it.[1]

The result is that the GOP has become the party of the Chamber of Commerce and the Israel Lobby. They are entirely on board with massive non-White immigration, and this is in no small part due to neoconservative influence. Neoconservatives have been staunch supporters of arguably the most destructive force associated with the left in the twentieth century — massive non-European immigration. Support for massive non-European immigration has spanned the Jewish political spectrum throughout the twentieth century to the present and, as noted below, Jewish organizations and activism were responsible for the sea change in immigration policy resulting from the 1965 immigration law. A principal motivation of the organized Jewish community for encouraging such immigration has involved a deeply felt animosity toward the people and culture responsible for the immigration restriction of 1924–1965 — "this notion of a Christian civilization" as Samuel Francis characterized it. The comment of neoconservative Ben Wattenberg indicates the emotional commitment that many Jews have to the ethnic transformation of America: "The non-Europeanization of America is heartening news of an almost transcendental quality."

Even Daniel Pipes, who is known as an "Islamophobic" critic of the Muslim community, is not supporting Donald Trump because of his stance on immigration and diversity-related issues. This may seem surprising because one of Trump's signature proposals has been a moratorium on Muslim immigration, while Hillary Clinton wants to ramp up the number of refugees and other immigrants from Muslim countries.

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 hypocritical given Pipes' status as a pro-Israel activist, since Trump’s proposals parallel the policies of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in Israel. A consistent theme on the Alt Right is that diaspora Jews have advocated very generous immigration and refugee policies in the West and the idea that Western countries have no ethnic core (the proposition nation idea) while supporting Israel as a Jewish ethnostate. This should be infuriating to anyone who advocates White interests.

But most Jews are not neocons and remain Democrats. Most Jews did not support the Iraq invasion. Nevertheless, Jewish power was very much a part of the Iraq war story. Besides neocons, other prominent elements of the organized Jewish community were intimately involved in the Iraq invasion as well, especially AIPAC. Moreover, the ADL was involved because it called people "anti-Semites" if they said true things about the role of the Israel Lobby in promoting the war; also, the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations and the American Jewish Congress made comments encouraging President Bush to engage in some kind of military action in Iraq (see first link). The role of the Jewish lobby and neocons in the Iraq war has been noted by many, including John Mearsheimer and Steven Walt in The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy.

Another example was bombing Syria in 2013 ("Wall-to-Wall Support for a Strike on Syria") when the entire organized Jewish community (including the Simon Wiesenthal Center, the ADL, and the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations) advocated the strike — a view that was out of step with "record opposition" to the strike noted by many Congressmen but entirely in line with Israeli policy.

Every American, and especially anyone with any sense of American nationalism and sympathetic to the Alt Right, should be furious at Jewish involvement in this disastrous war — thousands dead, tens of thousands grievously wounded, trillions of dollars, with no end in sight. The instability caused by these wars is a main cause of the refugee crisis that is engulfing Europe (abetted by treasonous elites in Europe), and as usual, the entire organized Jewish community in Europe and the U.S. is encouraging generous refugee policies.

Given Jewish influence over the political process, their opinion matters, so that it is vitally important for those of us attempting to reverse White dispossession to understand this, to call attention to it, and to combat it.

The special role of Jewish organizations in the 1965 law is the theme of my chapter in The Culture of Critique and was also noted by historians Hugh Davis Graham and Otis Graham. This is how Hugh Davis Graham summarized it in his 2002 book Collision Course (pp. 56–57):

Most important for the content of immigration reform, the driving force at the core of the movement, reaching back to the 1920s, were Jewish organizations long active in opposing racial and ethnic quotas. These included the American Jewish Congress, the American Jewish Committee, the Anti-Defamation League of B'nai B'rith, and the American Federation of Jews from Eastern Europe. Jewish members of the Congress, particularly representatives from New York and Chicago, had maintained steady but largely ineffective pressure against the national origins quotas since the 1920s. . . . Following the shock of the Holocaust, Jewish leaders had been especially active in Washington in furthering immigration reform. To the public, the most visible evidence of the immigration reform drive was played by Jewish legislative leaders, such as Representative Celler and Senator Jacob Javits of New York. Less visible, but equally important, were the efforts of key advisers on presidential and agency staffs. These included senior policy advisers such as Julius Edelson and Harry Rosenfield in the Truman administration, Maxwell Rabb in the Eisenhower White House, and presidential aide Myer Feldman, assistant secretary of state Abba Schwartz, and deputy attorney general Norbert Schlei in the Kennedy-Johnson administration.

This unanimity across the Jewish organizational spectrum continues today. For example, a wide range of Jewish organizations advocate a path to citizenship for illegals. And in 2013 during debate over the immigration amnesty/surge bill, a letter organized by the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society and sent by over 100 Jewish organizations to President Obama and Congress notes that "American Jews know too well the impact of restrictive immigration policies." This bill was bitterly opposed by the grassroots Republican base and didn't make it through the House. There were no Jewish organizations that came out against the bill.

Jewish Activism on Behalf of Blacks

Activist Jews and the organized Jewish community had a critical role in changing the racial landscape of America. Given that Alt Righters tend strongly to be race realists (i.e., they accept research findings that there are real average differences between races that are important for success in the contemporary world, such as IQ and impulse control), they realize that these actions of the Jewish community have compromised legitimate White interests in a creating a culture of grievance and White guilt in which the genetically based tendencies of Blacks are ignored.

The role of the Jewish community in the transformation of racial attitudes and institutions during the 1950s and 1960s is well known and often commented on with pride by Jewish intellectuals. As I noted in my chapter titled "Jews and Blacks,"

Jews contributed from two thirds to three quarters of the money for civil rights groups during the 1960s. The AJCongress, the AJCommittee, and the ADL worked closely with the NAACP to write legal briefs and raise money in the effort to end segregation. Jewish groups, particularly the AJCongress, played a leading role in drafting civil rights legislation and pursuing legal challenges related to civil rights issues mainly benefiting blacks. "Jewish support, legal and monetary, afforded the civil rights movement a string of legal victories. . . . There is little exaggeration in an American Jewish Congress lawyer's claim that 'many of these laws were actually written in the offices of Jewish agencies by Jewish staff people, introduced by Jewish legislators and pressured into being by Jewish voters."

This Jewish role in the racial reconstruction of the US should certainly be something that should be of deep concern to people who identify with the Alt Right.

Jews and the Media

Because of their very powerful role in the media, Jews are also important for the cultural transformations in the areas of promoting a public culture of homosexuality, premarital sex, pornography, and adultery. Survey data continue to show that Jewish attitudes on these issues are well to the left of most Americans. The fact that Jewish attitudes depart from traditional American attitudes on these issues has therefore had a huge effect on American culture and certainly not in a direction supported by most of those associated with the Alt Right. And although Jewish activists like Abe Foxman claim that the large number of Jews with positions of power in Hollywood makes no difference, it makes a very large difference (here, pp. xlvi–lvi, especially p. l (50) ff). Even Joe Biden thinks (correctly) that Jews were behind the gay marriage movement.

In general, television portrays Jewish issues "with respect, relative depth, affection and good intentions, and the Jewish characters who appear in these shows have, without any doubt, been Jewish — often depicted as deeply involved in their Judaism" (Pearl & Pearl 1999, 5). For example, All in the Family (and its sequel, Archie Bunker’s Place) not only managed to portray working class Europeans as stupid and bigoted, it portrayed Jewish themes very positively. By the end of its 12-year run, even archenemy Archie Bunker had raised a Jewish child in his home, befriended a black Jew (implication: Judaism has no ethnic connotations), gone into business with a Jewish partner, enrolled as a member of a synagogue, praised his close friend at a Jewish funeral, hosted a Sabbath dinner, participated in a bat mitzvah ceremony, and joined a group to fight synagogue vandalism. These shows, produced by liberal political activist Norman Lear, thus exemplify the general trend for television to portray non-Jews as participating in Jewish ritual, and "respecting, enjoying, and learning from it. Their frequent presence and active involvement underscores the message that these things are a normal part of American life" (Pearl & Pearl 1999, 16). Jewish rituals are portrayed as "pleasant and ennobling, and they bestow strength, harmony, fulfillment, and sense of identity upon those who observe them" (p. 62).

Television presents images of Jewish issues that conform to the views of mainstream Jewish organizations. Television "invariably depicts anti-Semitism as an ugly, abhorrent trait that must be fought at every turn" (p. 103). It is seen as metaphysical and beyond analysis. There is never any rational explanation for anti-Semitism; anti-Semitism is portrayed as an absolute, irrational evil. Positive, well-liked, non-Jewish characters, such as Mary Tyler Moore, often lead the fight against anti-Semitism — a pattern reminiscent of that noted in CofC in which non-Jews become high-profile spokespersons for Jewish-dominated movements. There is also the implication that anti-Semitism is a proper concern of the entire community.

Jewish Involvement in Censorship and Punishing Thought Crimes

Another issue that concerns many Alt Righters is that Jewish groups have been in the forefront of penalizing thought crimes related to White identity. Groups like the ADL and the SPLC (funded mainly by Jews) have successfully gotten people fired from their jobs for criticizing Jews or dissenting from other multicultural orthodoxies. As the article on the ADL shows, this is true in other Western countries as well. The general picture is that Jewish groups were enthusiastic defenders of free speech during the 1950s when Jewish communists were being called up before Congressional committees and forced to sign loyalty oaths, but this is definitely not the case now. Even within the Jewish community, there have been campaigns to silence Jewish critics of Israel and thus present a united front (reviewed in Mearsheimer and Walt's The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy).

Jews and the Alt Right

Although I certainly believe that it's important for the Alt Right to be aware of the Jewish involvement in White displacement, I think it’s fine that some organizations and Alt Right figures do not discuss Jewish issues. Many people are more open to that approach, and we have to recognize that there are different audiences that can be reached with different messages. My general impression in talking to Alt Righters is that many begin with an awareness of White decline, race differences in traits like IQ, and minority hostility, and then progress toward an understanding of Jewish influence as they read more widely. I would love it if there could be an Alt Right mass movement with significant Jewish support. But at the same time, it is also legitimate for others to discuss Jewish issues in a critical manner.

At the same time, I am often dismayed by how some people associated with the Alt Right express their views on Jewish issues. I have often thought that anyone who hasn't read a lot in the area and has an IQ of less than 120 should not be allowed to discuss Jewish issues in public.

It is certainly possible that individual Jews may be attracted to work in concert with the Alt Right. This attraction may come because of a genuine concern that a non-White America would not be good for Jews. Indeed, we are already seeing in some European countries that Muslim immigration has resulted in anti-Jewish and anti-Israel attitudes being increasingly common on the left, and that some parties on the left (e.g., the Labour Party in the UK) depend on Muslims votes. Jews have no problem in being friendly with non-Jews, such as Christian Zionists, whenever doing so is "good for the Jews." We can do the same: whatever is good for European-Americans.

However, as Andrew Joyce has noted, there is a historical pattern where Jews have entered putatively nationalist movements and directed them towards positions that make them “safe for the Jews,” at the expense of developing a true sense of ethnic interests.

That Jews would try to co-opt, or attempt to derail, a potentially damaging movement does have many historical precedents. In one of the most pertinent, Steven Beller writes that during the rise of German nationalism in 1860–1880, Jews attempted to take key roles in the movement with a view to re-directing it from its roots in volkisch philosophy and an antagonism towards Jewish influence, and towards a mission of "cultural and social revolution." Media promotion and careful networking even led to two Jews, Victor Adler and Heinrich Friedjung, vying for leadership of the German nationalist movement in Austria. Indeed, Adler and Friedjung were two of the five framers of the famous Linz Program of 1882, a political platform that called for the complete Germanization of the Austrian state. It was only due to the continued insistence of the non-Jewish movement leaders, particularly Georg Schönerer, that an ethnic version of German nationalism was eventually adhered to. On Schönerer's insistence, and to the dismay of the erstwhile Jewish "leaders," the movement adopted an "Aryan clause." Their attempt to co-opt the movement having failed, Beller adds, "the Jewish reaction was to look elsewhere for their goals of social and cultural change." For example, Adler became an out and out Marxist overnight.

Similarly in Germany, historian Gordon Mork notes that Jews were also "prominent" among the early leading advocates of German nationalism. In particular, Jews were concentrated in the National Liberal Party, and then formed an influential clique around Bismarck himself. This diversionary clique within German nationalism may be regarded as a key reason why it was more stunted, in terms of an ethnic expression, than its Austrian counterpart until after World War I.

Moreover, Jews who align themselves with organizations or publications that explicitly promote the interests of European-Americans should be willing to acknowledge the role of the organized Jewish community in the dispossession of European America. They should also acknowledge that the policies of the organized Jewish community at the present time are definitely opposed to the interests of European Americans.

Jews who want to be considered our allies should direct most of their activism to changing the direction of the organized Jewish community. Just as Joe Lieberman was the emissary of the McCain campaign to the traditionally Democratic Jewish community, there is every reason to think that Jews would be far more effective in producing change in the organized Jewish community than non-Jews. Such efforts, especially if they were successful, would be the surest sign of their sincerity and good will.

On the other hand, the absence of a commitment to change the Jewish community or refusing to acknowledge the historical role of the organized Jewish community in producing our present malaise invites the skepticism that the Jews involved in pro-European-American movements are simply trying to make these movements safe for Jews in the event that such movements gain traction. It’s a fallback plan and an escape hatch if things start to get sticky.

Moreover, when pro-European-American groups feel it judicious to be silent about the role of the organized Jewish community in our current malaise, this must be seen as an expression of Jewish power. Much of our task on behalf of European-American civilization and our people is the promotion of historical understanding. Many Jews will inevitably find an honest discussion of the history of European dispossession threatening because of the prominent role of Jews revealed by any objective account of that history. However, silence on the role of Jews in our current malaise forces these groups to live in a sort of ahistorical present — avoiding a realistic discussion of the past and preventing any attempt to understand this past in an objective manner.

This forces these pro-European movements into a major departure from all other ethnic activist movements we are aware of, including Judaism: Ethnic identity and commitment are deeply interwoven with an understanding of history. Indeed, Jews' understanding of their own history as victims of Europeans is an important wellspring of Jewish identity and Jewish activism against European-Americans. As Paul Johnson said in describing the philosophy of Walter Benjamin, a Jewish cultural Marxist: "Politics [is] not merely a fierce physical struggle to control the present, and so the future, but an intellectual battle to control the record of the past."

Even worse, it prevents these organizations from making explicit attempts to oppose the very real power that the organized Jewish community and other strongly identified Jews continue to exert in a wide range of areas in opposition to the interests of European-Americans. Again, the best role for Jews in these movements is to be vocal critics of the Jewish community and its role in the dispossession of European-Americans. But the unfortunate reality is that, just like mainstream politicians forced to never mention the power of the Israel Lobby, these pro-European-American groups end up ignoring the 800-lb gorilla in their midst — a wonderful comment on Jewish power in America.

In guarded optimism, we might look to the future and hope that some influential Jews will be able to look at this history without their ethnic blinders and come to see their own best interests lie with a renewed European America.