White Shite 2

The following extract comes from Zac Beauchamp's incisive critique of Kaufmann's White Shift:

"Much of [Kaufmann's] argument centers on relaxing what he calls the 'anti-racism norm,' the informal rules that stop mainstream Western political leaders and intellectuals from nakedly appealing to white identity and cultural fears. 'If politics in the West is ever to return to normal rather than becoming more polarized, white interests will need to be discussed,' Kaufmann writes. 'Not only is white group self-interest legitimate, but... in an era of unprecedented white demographic decline it is absolutely vital for it to have a democratic outlet.' This means politicians speaking openly of the need to maintain 'white culture' in their societies, and to emphasize the assimilation of migrants into the traditions and national identity that define whiteness. Acting on this means a series of policy proposals that sound like straight-up concessions to the far-right political forces Kaufmann claims to oppose.

"He suggests that Western nations should develop a 'cultural points system on immigration' that would rank immigrants on things like their 'assimilability to existing groups.' He proposes Europe put refugees in 'long-term refugee camps' rather than allowing them to move into existing cities and towns, a kind of segregation designed to to prevent native whites from freaking out. He advocates creating a form of 'second-tier citizenship' for undocumented immigrants currently in the United States, which would 'deny them membership in the nation and the right to vote.' Kaufmann wants to let Trump build a wall on the Mexican border, and even defends the idea of white student groups on US college campuses. 'It is unclear to me why no members of a dominant group would be interested in their cultural traditions, ethno-history, and memories,' he muses...

"Chapters seven and eight of Kaufmann's book are dedicated to attacking the social justice left, blaming their overly censorious definition of 'racism' for helping produce the rise of the far right. In these chapters, Kaufmann advances a definition of 'racism' as, essentially, personal animus toward nonwhites and 'racial discrimination which results in a violation of citizens' right to equal treatment before the law.' He contrasts this with what he calls the 'left-modernist' account, the notion of 'structural racism,' which views racism as deeply embedded within systems that ultimately privilege whites over nonwhites. The problem... is that it is impossible to talk seriously about modern race relations without discussing structural racism. Racial prejudice did not disappear after the American civil rights movement; it simply became less overt. The anti-racism norm prevented people from outright saying, 'Black people are inferior,' but it didn't stop them from perpetuating a social system that privileged whites over nonwhites.

"Yet Kaufmann dismisses the very idea of structural racism as pseudoscientific gobbledegook. 'Indicators of structures of white oppression have largely disappeared,' he argues. 'Arguments based on critical race theory, history, or income differences do not constitute evidence of a structure of white privilege. Too often proponents make unfalsifiable claims which intimate that white privilege is engraved into the soul of society.' Kaufmann is mostly talking about research on race in America here - and he is presenting a straw man portrait of it. Even if you only care about quantitative research, as Kaufmann seems to, there are hundreds of studies, often validated by researchers in large meta-studies, documenting 'evidence of a structure of white privilege.'

"One review of 28 quantitative studies on job applications finds that 'whites receive on average 36% more callbacks than African Americans, and 24% more callbacks than Latinos,' and that levels of discrimination have not changed since 1989. A literature review on racism in unemployment, housing, credit, and other markets from scholars at Princeton and Harvard found that 'the weight of existing evidence suggests that discrimination does continue to affect the allocation of contemporary opportunities,' and that 'our current estimates may in fact understate the degree to which discrimination contributes to the poor social and economic outcomes of minority groups.' A massive report from the National Institutes of Health found that 'racial and ethnic minorities tend to receive a lower quality of healthcare than non-minorities, even when access-related factors, such as patients' insurance status and income, are controlled.'

"The causal mechanisms here are straightforward. Slavery, Jim Crow, and racially discriminatory practices like 'redlining' created a society in which African Americans were separated from the white population and shunted into inferior institutions. This was not fixed overnight in the late 20th century; on some metrics, like measures of school segregation, the United States has actually gone backward of late. Nor did white attitudes change overnight; while explicit prejudice toward all groups became less popular, stereotypes about minorities persist and affect the way whites treat minorities. The result is that it's still harder on average for minorities to live in safe neighborhoods, attend high-quality schools, or get access to the best health care. White Americans now enjoy systemic privileges purely because they were born white, a brute social fact that is among the most well-documented in all of American social science.

"Kaufmann does not engage with the literature in any sustained way... the sense you'd get from reading Whiteshift's middle chapters is that 'anti-white radicalism' - his term - is a bigger problem in the modern West than actual racial discrimination. This is vital to Kaufmann's argument. Because structural racism doesn't exist, he argues, white identity politics are no different from minority identity politics. 'Expressing a white identity, or group self-interest, or an ethno-traditional national identity which includes a white-majority component, isn't racist,' he writes. 'The same holds true for black, Muslim, or other minority interests.' This equation can only be true if a politics of 'white identity' does not require, by its very nature, maintaining a social structure in which whites enjoy privileged and unfair access to social goods. But to defend 'white group interests' today in the West  is to defend white privilege." (The Virtue of Nationalism and Whiteshift: books that explain Trump, vox.com, 26/2/19)

The (Kosher) Axis Rides Again

This time with Israel's approval, of course:

"Support for Europe's right-wing populist parties, and their response to the challenges caused by the refugee/migrant wave, is rising... Last week, the German, Austrian and Italian ministers of the interior initiated an 'axis' of states aiming at stopping immigration to Europe, confirming their commitments to an already thriving reactionary nationalistic trend in both eastern as well as western Europe. Israel is in effect a silent partner to this 'axis': it is doing its utmost not only to prevent what its government terms 'infiltrators' from entering Israel, but also to get rid of those who were able to cross the Egyptian/Israeli border in the past.

"It was the Austrian Chancellor, Sebastian Kurz, who after his short visit to Israel last week (re) coined the term 'Axis' for the Berlin-Vienna-Rome anti-immigrant alliance, a term which even people with relatively crude historical antennae will recognize for its historical resonances. That was straight after getting an enthusiastic 'kosher certification' from Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, thanks to Kurz's speech in Jerusalem, in which he admitted that Austrians were not only victims but also perpetrators during WWII...

"It would be no surprise if he interpreted his warm welcome in Israel as a laissez passer for his far right populist coalition partner, euphemistically called the 'Freedom Party,' whom Israel, until now, still officially boycotts on account of its neo-Nazi roots...

"The Austrian Freedom Party is attempting - like other European populist parties - to use Israel as a springboard for international legitimization. The first tactical step of such parties is to demonstrate support for Israel's nationalist government policy, in order to get that coveted so-called kosher certificate. Then, they move on to the second step: They proclaim their aversion to anti-Semitism, past and present... " (Israel: the one place Europe's anti-Semitic far right wins the Jewish vote, Shimon Stein, Haaretz, 20/6/18)

One wonders why all of this should come as a bit of a surprise to Stein, a former Israeli ambassador to Germany (2001-07). After all, didn't political Zionism's founding father, Theodor Herzl, predict that "The anti-Semites will become our most dependable friends, the anti-Semitic countries our allies"? And isn't it typical of liberal Zionists like Stein to raise the issue of Israel's anti-African refugee policies, but remain silent when it comes to those other, Palestinian, refugees?

Spartans in Afghanistan

The 'exploits' of an Australian death squad, operating until 2013 in Afghanistan are currently the subject of a major Sydney Morning Herald investigation. Central to the story is an officer known only as 'Leonidas', "who cannot be named for legal reasons." If 'Leonidas' isn't proof that Hollywood is far more than a US Weapon of Mass Distraction (as if that were not bad enough) but a form of spiritual pollution which plays havoc with the minds of the cretins who flock to its juvenile productions, I don't know what is:

"At the time (2009), he was part of an SASR [Special Air Service Regiment] patrol that was increasingly dividing the regiment. A warrior culture was being embraced by some special forces troops but loathed by others. It involved tattoos and a devotion to the Hollywood movie 300, which glorifies the fighting prowess of the ancient Spartans, and whose climactic moment involves an enemy soldier being kicked off a ridge. Several former SASR officers say this rock-star ethos emboldened certain soldiers to test the elasticity of the rules of engagement - rules that govern when a soldier can take a life. 'The regiment over time prided itself on being an organisation that broke the rules but not the law,' explains one former officer... 'What happened, though, was during the Afghan campaign, there was a group of individuals who believed they were immune from the law'... [In] the patrol Leonidas belonged to... sources say, junior members were pushed to kill rather than detain." (SAS's day of shame: war crime allegations: bound detainee kicked off cliff and executed, Nick McKenzie & Chris Masters, 9/6/18)

As a SMH reviewer wrote of 300 back in 2007: "Welcome to the new double-speak. Sparta as a metaphor for America, courtesy of Warner Bros, in which the politics of eugenics is reborn amid one of the most sickeningly violent and mindless films of the new millennium. Adolf Hitler would have been pleased: he may have lost the war, but his ideas live on in mystical, military propaganda like this, aimed at spotty boys in need of heroes. God help us. Of course, latent fascism isn't new in American military movies. It's just that it's rarely as politically naive as it is in 300. That's me being charitable. It's just possible the filmmakers intended it to be as inflammatory as it is. These are strange times and 300 fits the mood of a part of the West that would like to see the Middle Eastern barbarians bathed in their own blood. This is their kind of movie, complete with references to 'barbarians' and 'Asian hordes'. Perhaps the Klan has become a new demographic for Hollywood." (In the name of freedom, Paul Byrnes, 6/4/07)

The 'genius' behind this filth, director Zack Snyder, was quoted at the time as saying, "My feeling is if a movie's not sexy and fucking violent and fucking cool, then why go sit in the theatre? I look at the screen and half the time I'm like, 'I'm going to fall asleep. Somebody's going to have to kill somebody. Or fuck somebody.' A movie should kick you in the face." (Sympathy for the Spartans, Stephen Applebaum, The Australian, 21/3/07)

And guess what? Snyder's 'movie' did just that - to an innocent, handcuffed, Afghan shepherd, Ali Jan:

"[A] junior soldier described a scene he'd witnessed which was haunting him. It involved an irate and frustrated Leonidas grabbing one of the PUCs [Persons Under Confinement] and walking him to the edge of a cliff... Leonidas gave himself a short run-up then kicked the detainee. As he plunged, his face smashed into rocks. Then the injured man was executed, the junior soldier told his superiors. A second witness... has corroborated that story. He says he saw Leonidas kicking 'the hell' out of an Afghan detainee. The witness says this incident mirrored the climactic 'kick' scene from the Spartan movie, 300."

I really don't think I can take too much more of this Western Civilisation shit.

Israeli Fascism? So What Else is New?

"[Israeli] Opposition leader and Zionist Union chairman Isaac Herzog warned on Saturday that Israel was headed toward fascism..." ('Israel is becoming a fascist state, US can't save the day', Joy Bernard, jpost.com, 24/6/17)

Was headed toward fascism?

Israel has always been fascist:

"April slid into May in a crescendo of heat. Down the lanes, the mimosa trees were powdered with yellow pollen, and the fragrance hung sweetly in the still air. May Day itself was a blaze of luxurious sunshine. I spent it leaning over my parapet watching the many processions of colony boys and girls marching along, singing, bearing gay blue-and-white banners - the Zionist colours - with the Shield of David and Hebrew lettering embroidered in scarlet and gold. The banners were carried with the dignity and precision of a regiment bearing the colours. And the marching of the children, whose ages ranged from 7 or 8 to near the enlistment age, was as faultless as well-drilled infantry...

"Rising on the clear air above the rooftops came the sound of Hebrew songs as the children marched past, and the rhythmic shouting as they kept impeccably in step. On either side, the road was lined with people from the village - parents, friends of the children who cheered as the columns went by.

"Ruth, the hotel help, who came up to my rooftop to watch, said: 'Ah, but it is beautiful...' And she leant over the parapet with an intense air of satisfaction.

"I shook my head. The picture was certainly gay and colourful. But to me there was something deeper which made the May Day processions a symbol of militant Zionism. I wished that the three-abreast marching could become rigged, that just one small boy or girl would straggle out of the ranks and break the immaculate neatness of the columns.

"Why, I asked myself, were the Jewish settlements bringing up their children in a free land in a way that emulated one of the worst practical expressions of a doctrine they had fled? In conversations with British Government officials and with Arabs, I had heard the Jews condemned for teaching their children to become militant, and I had been told by the Arabs that such training was deliberate because the colonies were preparing for the day when they should rise and seize Palestine by force; that together with this military preparation there was an equally careful mental training designed to convince the children that Palestine was their lawful heritage, that they had only to reach out and take it and Britain and America, faced with a fait accompli, would not interfere. They would, in fact, be satisfied that the Palestine problem had solved itself. Arabs had assured me that this was the Zionist educational policy and that already Jewish children born and brought up in Palestine sincerely believed that the Arabs had no right to the country and that only those who had reclaimed the soil, like the colonists, were the legitimate inheritors of the land.

"'It reminds me,' I told Ruth, as I watched with unhappy fascination another column passing along the road, 'of a procession of boy Blackshirts I once saw marching over the cobbles of Trieste - kindergarten children carrying Fascist banners and moving faultlessly along the waterfront past the Town Hall'." (Reporting from Palestine: 1943-1944, Barbara Board, 2008, pp 45-46)

From Neoliberalism to Neofascism

There is much truth in this post-election statement by Cornel West, US philosopher, academic, social activist, author, public intellectual and member of the Democratic Socialists of America:

"The neoliberal era in the United States ended with a neofascist bang. The political triumph of Donald Trump shattered the establishment in the Democratic and Republican parties - both wedded to the rule of Big Money and to the reign of meretricious politicians. The Bush and Clinton dynasties were destroyed by the media-saturated lure of the pseudo-populist billionaire with narcissist sensibilities and ugly, fascist proclivities. The monumental election of Trump was a desperate and xenophobic cry of human hearts for a way out from under the devastation of a disintegrating neoliberal order - a nostalgic return to an imaginary past of greatness.

"White working- and middle-class fellow citizens - out of anger and anguish - rejected the economic neglect of neoliberal policies and the self-righteous arrogance of elites. Yet these same citizens also supported a candidate who appeared to blame their social misery on minorities, and who alienated Mexican immigrants, Muslims, black people, Jews, gay people, women and China in the process. This lethal fusion of economic insecurity and cultural scapegoating brought neoliberalism to its knees. In short, the abysmal failure of the Democratic party to speak to the arrested mobility and escalating poverty of working people unleashed a hate-filled populism and protectionism that threaten to tear apart the fragile fiber of what is left of US democracy. And since the most explosive fault lines in present-day America are first and foremost racial, then gender, homophobic, ethnic and religious, we gird ourselves for a frightening future.

"What is to be done? First we must try to tell the truth and a condition of truth is to allow suffering to speak. For 40 years, neoliberals lived in a world of denial and indifference to the suffering of poor and working people and were obsessed with the spectacle of success. Second we must bear witness to justice. We must ground our truth-telling in a willingness to suffer and sacrifice as we resist domination. Third we must remember courageous exemplars like Martin Luther King Jr, who provide moral and spiritual inspiration as we build multiracial alliances to combat poverty and xenophobia, Wall Street crimes and war crimes, global warming and police abuse - and to protect precious rights and liberties.

"The age of Obama was the last gasp of neoliberalism. Despite some progressive words and symbolic gestures, Obama chose to ignore Wall Street crimes, reject bailouts for homeowners, oversee growing inequality and facilitate war crimes like US drones killing innocent civilians abroad. Rightwing attacks on Obama - and trump-inspired racist hatred of him - have made it nearly impossible to hear the progressive critiques of Obama. The president has been reluctant to target black suffering - be it in overcrowded prisons, decrepit schools or declining workplaces. Yet, despite that, we get celebrations of the neoliberal status quo couched in racial symbolism and personal legacy. Meanwhile, poor and working class citizens of all colors have continued to suffer in relative silence. In this sense, Trump's election was enabled by the neoliberal policies of the Clintons and Obama that overlooked the plight of our most vulnerable citizens. The progressive populism of Bernie Sanders nearly toppled the establishment of the Democratic party but Clinton and Obama came to the rescue to preserve the status quo. And I do believe Sanders would have beat trump to avert this neofascist outcome!

"In this bleak moment, we must inspire each other driven by a democratic soulcraft of integrity, courage, empathy and a mature sense of history - even as it seems our democracy is slipping away. We must not turn away from the forgotten people of US foreign policy - such as Palestinians under Israeli occupation, Yemen's civilians killed by US-sponsored Saudi troops or Africans subject to expanding US military presence. As one whose great family and people survived and thrived through slavery, Jim Crow and lynching, Trump's neofascist rhetoric and predictable authoritarian reign is just another ugly moment that calls forth the best of who we are and what we can do. For us in these times, to even have hope is too abstract, too detached, too spectatorial. Instead we must be a hope, a participant and a force for good as we face this catastrophe." (Goodbye, American neoliberalism. A new era is here, theguardian.com, 17/11/16)

Deconstructing the Carlton/LeLievre Backlash 2

Hm... is this the mysterious Dr John Nemesh who moonlights as a poster boy for the BDS bashers? (See my posts In the Dead of Night (29/9/11) and In the Dead of Night 2 (13/11/11)):

"Mike Carlton's ire at Israel's supposed fascism would have carried more weight if had he also reminded readers that Hamas is a Islamic Fascist Palestinian movement linked to the Muslim Brotherhood, which denies Jews any right to the very self-determination the Palestinians themselves seek."  (Letter, John Nemesh, Gymea, Sydney Morning Herald, 28/7/14)

Israel's "supposed fascism"? If Israel isn't fascist, it certainly does a damned good imitation:

"A mob of Jewish youths bashed two Palestinians at a tram stop in Jerusalem over the weekend, reportedly with iron bars and baseball bats, until they were unconscious. Meanwhile, a leading Israeli academic has caused a controversy by saying the sisters and mothers of Hamas leaders should be raped." (Israel pulls Gaza ceasefire, John Lyons, The Australian, 28/7/14)

"The UN Security Council also called for an immediate humanitarian ceasefire as a poll in Israel found 87% support for the war to continue." (Obama, UN demand ceasefire, John Lyons, The Australian, 29/7/14)

Weeding Time

What with Senator Cory (Ban the Burqa) Bernardi inviting a certain seriously coiffed Dutch Islamophobe to come down and see him some time, and the emergence of the seriously confused sadsacks of the Australian Protectionist Party, who can find nothing better to do with their time than 'protect' a certain Israeli enterprise from BDS protesters, Peggy Seeger's Song of Choice* has never seemed more relevant:

Early every year the seeds are growing.
Unseen, unheard they lie beneath the ground.
Would you know before their leaves are showing
That with weeds all your garden will abound?

If you close your eyes, stop your ears,
Shut your mouth, then how can you know?
For seeds you cannot hear may not be there.
Seeds you cannot see may never grow.

In January you've still got the choice.
You can cut the weeds before they start to bud.
If you leave them to grow high, they'll silence your voice
And in December you may pay with your blood.

So close your eyes, stop your ears,
Shut your mouth and take it slow.
Let others take the lead and you bring up the rear
And later you can say you didn't know.

Every day another vulture takes flight.
There's another danger born every morning.
In the darkness of your blindness the beast will learn to bite.
How can you fight if you can't recognise a warning?

Today you may earn a living wage.
Tomorrow you may be on the dole.
Though there's millions going hungry you needn't disengage
For it's them, not you, that's fallen in the hole.

It's alright for you if you run with the pack.
It's alright if you agree with all they do.
If fascism is slowly climbing back,
It's not here yet so what's it got to do with you?

The weeds are all around us and they're growing.
It'll soon be too late for the knife.
If you leave them on the wind that around the world is blowing,
You may pay for your silence with your life.

So close your eyes, stop your ears,
Shut your mouth and never dare.
And if it happens here, they'll never come for you
Because they'll know you really didn't care.

[* My favourite version is the incomparable Dick Gaughan's.]