Why Jewish Guilt in Communism Matters

A reply to a commenter, Eric Dondero, on the Islam Versus Europe Blog.

Islam Versus Europe
October 14, 2013

You see as normal a world in which Europeans are continually insulted by Jews for being “Nazis”, even the Europeans whose ancestors fought against the Nazis. You see as normal a world in which every manifestation of European nationalism is stigmatised as Nazism and greeted with special repressive measures.

In this world, flayed by guilt, which they passively and meekly accept and internalise, Europeans have no chance of defending their countries against islamisation. Seen as tainted by some kind of “Nazi” original sin, the only way Europeans can redeem themselves is to mutely hand their countries over to the aliens and hope for the best.

You see this world as normal because that’s the world we live in.

But I don’t see this world as normal. It is built on a falsified narrative of 20th century history, one which stresses the evils of nationalism, racism and right-wing politics. An authentic history, however, would acknowledge that anti-nationalism, political prejudice and left-wing politics had consequences that were as destructive, if not more destructive, than nationalism, and that the excesses of nationalism were among those consequences. In other words, extreme nationalism was a reaction to artificially-imposed extreme anti-nationalism. Those anti-nationalist ideas have been expressed in ideologies like Communism and multiculturalism. Each of these movements, if they even deserve to be considered separate movements, has exhibited the vastly disproportionate involvement of diaspora Jews in the fermentation of their ideas, their promotion through intellectual discourse and their implementation at the policy level. Anti-nationalism is, literally, the worst idea in history. If you could quantify the misery and death the violation of the nationalist principle – the idea that a people should live in a homogeneous ethnic group in its own territory under its own government – has provoked, it would be staggering to contemplate. History is largely the chronicle of the unpleasantness that arises when this principle is violated.

The islamisation of Europe is the consequence of the elevation of anti-nationalism to be the dominant moral ideal of our age. Immigration is the most obvious consequence of the elite’s embrace of this destructive ideal. And islamisation is the consequence of immigration.

When people are infected by HIV, they don’t die of HIV. HIV is just a state of weakness. It is when they catch a secondary infection in this vulnerable state that fatality results. That’s how it is with modern Europe. Islam is not the problem. Islam is what will kill us. But it’s the secondary infection, not the underlying malady. The underlying malady is anti-nationalism.

To some Europeans, it will no doubt sound banal to say that islamisation is the consequence of immigration because, for many of them, the two are inseparable. But this is much less obvious to Americans, since America has been a country of immigration since its inception. Because the American influence is dominant within the Counterjihad movement, and because much of the Counterjihad movement wishes to make itself as inoffensive as possible to elite opinion, in a pitiful attempt to win mainstream acceptance, this fairly obvious truth goes generally unacknowledged. Many Counterjihad activists will abstain from saying anything about immigration for fear of being accused of racism.

A more rounded history of the 20th century would be the clearest possible refutation of the ideal of multiculturalism. It would show that the fact of having different peoples living in the same territory inevitably produces unpleasant results. Even after centuries, separate peoples retain their own sense of ethnic distinctness because the urge to empathise with your own ancestral kin group is an ineradicable part of human nature. Cherishing their own separateness, these distinct ethnic groups inevitably generate conflicts of interests and end up plotting against one another. The Jews plotted against the Europeans in whose countries they were living and the Europeans plotted back, or vice versa. It doesn’t matter. The point is that the best way to have a harmonious world is to have separate peoples living in their own territories. That is the policy conclusion that an authentic 20th century history would tend to lead to. The warped narrative we have all been treated to hitherto, however, suggests exactly the opposite conclusion, namely that nationalism, ethnic identification, and the quest for territorial homogeneity is a terrible scourge which we must all be on constant guard against; that having different peoples living in the same territory is a great and enriching thing; and that all we need is a state willing to victimise the majority population, criminalise its free expression and use its power to crush any incipient manifestation of pride or self-assertion among its people.

The recent persecution of Golden Dawn is a good example of where the dominant narrative takes us. Now, Golden Dawn are very far from being my political ideal. Whatever their imperfections, however, they were one of the best hopes for stopping the islamisation of Greece and Europe in the only way that actually matters: achieving governmental power and using it to stop Muslim immigration and facilitate or enforce Muslim ex-migration. That hope may now have been extinguished, partly through direct and indirect pressure from Jewish organisations; and partly through the mythologised narrative of 20th century history that assigns some demonic significance to nationalism, racism and right-wing politics more generally. The EDL likewise have been wounded by the same bizarre European guilt obsessions arising from this distorted account of history.

Jews generally have no difficulty with the concept of ulterior, even subconscious, motivation. Freud, after all, who pioneered the concept of the subconscious, was a Jew. It is common to hear, for example, European governments accused of disguised or subconscious antisemitism for their policies towards Israel or the Palestinians. Why, then, do you have such difficulty with the idea that the Jews active in Communist movements could have had ulterior or even subconscious motivations related to their Jewishness? Are we really expected to believe it was pure coincidence that a group of excluded outsiders embraced and implemented an ideology that denigrated almost every aspect of mainstream European society, that sanctioned its deconstruction, the erasure of all its traditions, the wiping out of Christianity, the suppression of European patriot movements and the criminalisation of antisemitism?

I don’t take accusations of antisemitism any more seriously than I take accusations of islamophobia or racism. These are terms designed to shut down rational discussion by imputing impure motivations to opponents and elevating subjective considerations such as emotion and motivation above the core criterion of objective truth. In the world of serious discourse, however, a person’s motivations don’t matter. Facts matter. It is examination of the facts that has led me to take a critical view of the influence Jews have had on European history through their promotion of anti-nationalist ideas. Not that it matters, but I was emotionally well-disposed towards Jews prior to becoming aware of these facts. If any of the facts I have cited are inaccurate, I would welcome their correction. But that would be to engage in rational discourse. And we have seen no sign of a willingness to do that. Even you, in your comment, make no attempt to cite any factual inaccuracy. The post you are responding to consists almost entirely of quotes from a Jewish historian who acknowledges the Jewish role in the Communist dictatorships and balances this presentation of facts, overly so I would say, by offering a sympathetic appreciation of the context in which the Jews made the choices that they did.

Instead of rational engagement, we see exactly what I expected when I decided to broach this issue: the de rigueur insults of antisemitism, much like the de rigueur insults of islamophobia, and the silent withdrawal of support from websites that claim to be part of a Counterjihad movement. It is clear that these websites are primarily engaged, not in resisting Islamic Jihad, but in promoting the (perceived) interests of Jewry. They are interested in resisting Islam only insofar as the Islamic agenda conflicts with the interests of Jewry, which it clearly does to a significant degree. But that far and no further. When the two agendas come into conflict, the anti-jihad agenda falls by the wayside. Even the Counterjihad sites run by gentiles fear the disapproval of Jews, either because they are economically reliant on them in some way or because they have internalised the codes of conduct created to delegitimise criticism of Jews.

As I said, this response was anticipated when I first started talking about this issue. Nonetheless, it is dismaying to see the lack of moral and intellectual integrity in people you once respected. These are people who spend much of their lives presenting tangible evidence to a hostile mainstream audience unwilling to set aside its preconceptions in favour of the facts. At every turn, they are accused of having impure motivations, of being animated by hatred. You would hope, then, that these same people, having faced down the intimidating accusation of wickedness themselves, having bravely brandished factual truth in the face of the hostile arbiters of acceptable opinion, would themselves, when they found their own preconceptions challenged, be better than their own adversaries had been. But, tragically, they’re not. When presented with facts that challenge their preconceptions about Jews, they react in exactly the same way that their mainstream interlocutors do when presented with facts that jar with their preconceptions about Muslims.

The notion that a people – any people – could provoke a mindless, irrational hatred in almost everyone it comes into contact with is a very strange one, much like the idea that a religion could provoke irrational hatred and fear in anyone who comes into contact with its practitioners. Yet these very strange ideas are accepted without challenge in the mainstream discourse of our times. If I claimed, for example, that I knew of a dog that was persecuted everywhere it went: other dogs barked at it and attacked it; no one would give it food; children would throw stones at it for no reason; drivers would swerve to try and run it over, etc. the story would provoke extreme scepticism. It would sound so utterly fantastical, so at variance with our normal understanding of the world, as to hint almost at something supernatural. Individuals who claimed to be persecuted in this way would be classed as paranoid schizophrenic. Rather than indulge these fantasies, the best way to help someone suffering from this affliction would be to explain to them that other people’s responses to them would be governed by their own behaviour, just like every other person in the world, and that the idea of being singled out for persecution in some fateful way was absurd. The fact that so many seemingly rational Jews can take seriously the idea that they have some mystical identity which causes them to be persecuted for no reason is deeply disturbing. This bespeaks an Oriental, non-European mindset in which things happen because of supernatural agency. The European mind, by contrast, seeks rational explanations for the way the world works.

When one people attempts to live as a discrete minority in the homeland of another, setting itself apart, adopting an us-and-them mentality, favouring its own in-group in every interaction, it is going to end badly, sooner or later. This is simply human nature in operation. It is not the result of some mystical evil called antisemitism.
The lesson to be drawn from the tragic experience of the Jews throughout history is that anti-nationalism – in other words having different peoples living in the same territory – is a bad idea. Yet most Jews, at least diaspora Jews, have drawn exactly the opposite conclusion. No people can be secure without a homeland of its own. yet the effect of the anti-nationalist ideas advocated by so many Jews is that the peoples of Europe will lose control of their homelands.

I have to say I am repulsed, but not surprised, by the inability of Jews to acknowledge fault. It is the perfect analogue of the Muslim inability to acknowledge fault because it conflicts with their Koran-mandated self-image as the “perfect nation”. How is it antisemitic to simply take note of the fact that anti-nationalist ideas have had destructive effects on the world and that Jews have been disproportionately involved in generating them, advocating them and implementing them? If I take note of the fact that Socialistic ideas have had destructive effects on the world and that Scots have been disproportionately involved in generating them, advocating them and implementing them, does that make me antiscotistic or Scotophobic?

Why can you Jews not make such a simple acknowledgement yourself? Are you so steeped in a lachrymose narrative of victimhood in which innocent Jews suffer continuously at the hands of evil goy that you cannot admit that Jews, like every other people on earth, have, at times, had conflicts of interest with other peoples and, at times, have committed grievous wrongs against those other peoples? No European people that I am know of claims to have innocently glided through history without ever having had a conflict of interest with other peoples, without ever having engaged in contention with other peoples and, at times, having wronged those other peoples. To my knowledge, Muslims are the only other people who make this claim. The Koran tells Muslims they are the “Perfect Nation”. Jews believe they are the Chosen People. Although rarely voiced publicly these days, it is clear that this idea still influences the outlook of many Jews. Nothing else can account for such a reluctance to acknowledge fault or the strength of the curious conviction that a people is destined to be the constant target of persecution and that this persecution will be completely unrelated to its own actions.

You say you have no difficulty blaming Jews when appropriate and then cite an example in which you blame Jews for not resisting Nazism more forcefully. But this was mere passivity on the part of the Jews, not actual wrong-doing against another people. Can you give me any example from history in which Jews engaged in wrong-doing against another people?

I have to say that the unwillingness of Jews to acknowledge responsibility for their historical actions takes me much closer to a feeling of general antisemitism than my awareness of the Jewish role in Communism does. The Jewish role in Communism is a detail of history from a time in which there were many mitigating circumstances to explain the choices Jews made. The Jewish unwillingness to acknowledge responsibility is not a historical curio, however. It is right here among us in the present day and it comes from Jews who live in completely secure circumstances and who otherwise sound like reasonable people. We could compare the Jewish role in the atrocities of Communism to the Turkish Genocide of the Armenians in the WW1 era. As various diplomats have pointed out when attempting to persuade the Turkish government to be rational on this issue, this doesn’t necessarily have anything to do with modern Turkey. If Turkey acknowledged that the genocide had occurred, admitted wrong-doing by a previous generation of Turks and expressed its regrets, the issue would be closed and we could move on. The fact that modern Turkey is unwilling to do this, however, hints that something sinister and ugly is going on. It suggests that whatever attitudes lay behind the Armenian Genocide still exist. And Jewish unwillingness to acknowledge their culpability in relation to the atrocities of Communism evokes the same possibility.

Discussion and exploration of Jewish guilt in Communism is important for the following reasons:

1) It would establish that anti-nationalism had consequences that were as destructive, or more so, than nationalism. This is critical. The dominant political narrative portrays Nazism and, by extension, right-wing politics generally as being uniquely sinister and associated with violence and mass murder. Factual analysis doesn’t support that claim, however. The mass exterminations resulting from the political prejudice of Communism were greater in scope than the Nazi extermination based on racial prejudice. Throughout the post-WW2 era, right-wing terrorism has been almost unknown in Europe, while left-wing terrorism has been a chronic problem. In the present day, Europol issues annual reports cataloguing terrorist incidents in Europe. From these reports it is clear that right-wing terrorist incidents are rare to non-existent, while dozens of left-wing terrorist incidents occur every year. Highlighting the atrocities of Communism is one way of restoring balance to public perception.

2) It would make it clear that when individuals who self-identify as belonging to different peoples live in the same territory, they will, ultimately, perceive themselves as being threatened by the interests and actions of the other group and will try to ward off the perceived threat from the other group. This will cause unpleasantness to at least one of the ethnic factions and very often both. And this is true regardless of how highly qualified or economically successful the groups are, refuting the core contention of the immigration apologists that immigration should be assessed solely in terms of the obvious indicators of economic success.

3) It would establish that Europeans can be victims as well as perpetrators. Unlike anti-semitism, which is a marginal phenomenon, anti-Europeanism is the dominant ideology of the world. It is so overwhelmingly dominant that it is not even regarded as a distinct ideology. It is simply regarded as “the norm”. The emotional grip of this ideology rests on tales of Europeans doing bad things to non-Europeans in instances such as the Holocaust, the transatlantic slave trade, imperialism, etc. These accounts are, to say the least, unbalanced. They leave out key facts such as that all societies we know of practised slavery since the dawn of recorded time and that Europeans, after indulging in the practice for a few hundreds years, were the ones who stamped it out; that imperialism often brought betterment to the countries that experienced it in ways that can be measured through metrics such as life expectancy, population size, etc. Standard accounts of the Holocaust are also fundamentally unbalanced in that they neglect to mention the key fact that Nazism was a reaction to Bolshevism, that Bolshevism was an overwhelmingly Jewish phenomenon, and that millions of Europeans, and almost every constituent element of European society, were liquidated under Bolshevist rule. This was ethnic war wearing a mask of morality.

4) It would destroy the destroy the harmful myth of the innocence of Jews. The dominant narrative of the 20th century assigns Jews the role of passive, innocent victims to a mindless, irrational evil. This gives them a special moral authority, which they have not hesitated to invoke at every opportunity to push for open-borders immigration, diversity and the de-Europeanisation of European societies more generally. This may not be as apparent in America. But in Europe, any attempt to limit immigration, to discuss its harmful effects or to distinguish between various streams of immigrants results in the Nazi card being played almost instantly. Once the truth that fascism was a reaction to Bolshevism, and Bolshevism was an overwhelmingly Jewish phenomenon, is established in the public mind, that special moral authority disappears for good. The standard mythology is an extraordinarily powerful tool that Jews can use to advance their own purposes. It is understandable that any people would be reluctant to give up such an all-conquering trump card. Nonetheless, truth demands that they do so.

5) It is simply a moral imperative that atrocities of this magnitude be acknowledged and their perpetrators held to account. Everything that is true of the Holocaust – the memorials, the commemorative ceremonies, the presence in textbooks and the popular imagination, the mantra of “We must never forget” – is equally true of the atrocities of the Bolshevist regimes, which were greater in scope than the Holocaust. It is an abomination that these truths are not more generally known. Imagine that we lived in a world where the Holocaust had been obscured from history. People were generally aware that there had been a war, that bad things had happened and that a lot of people had been killed, but nothing about a deliberate program to exterminate the Jews was known to the ordinary person. Only a few people reading esoteric books would occasionally stumble on this truth. Whenever they tried to raise it for public discussion, they would be immediately accused of paranoid anti-Germanism, anti-Europeanism or anti-Christianism and silenced. That’s the world we live in. In reverse. Anyone who denies Jewish guilt in the atrocities of Communism after the facts have been presented to them is the equivalent of a Holocaust Denier.

6) There is, it seems to me, inherent value in establishing the point that the world is explicable, that there are reasons why things happen. If we are to improve the world, we must first understand it. A narrative that postulates the existence of a mindless, irrational evil that mysteriously blinks into existence from time to time is childlike, primitive, absurd and un-European. This is how Orientals see the world, in the simplistic chiaroscuro of good vs. evil. A mature understanding of the world can accommodate nuance and assign more morally complex roles to history’s actors than the cartoon characterisation of goodies vs. baddies. The truth about the clashing totalitarianisms of 20th century Europe is that Jews and Europeans mutually victimised one another for reasons that were partially understandable, even if the atrocious form their vengeance took is ultimately unpardonable. If we wish to avert the possibility that such things could happen again, we must understand why they happened the first time. And the standard narrative – that the Nazis came to power through a combination of economic crisis and the spellbinding rhetoric of an evil demagogue – is simply false. Such an account deprives Nazi atrocities of their meaning. The Jews who died at Hitler’s hands are not honoured or ennobled by false accounts of what led up to their murder. The opposite is true. The truth is that at the heart of the clashing totalitarianisms of 20th century Europe was ethnic conflict. And this ethnic conflict only came about because the principle of nationalism – different peoples living as homogeneous groups in their own homelands under their own governmental authority – had been violated. Jews were living outside of their ancestral homeland ruled by non-Jews. Germans were living outside of Germany ruled by non-Germans. The twin facts set off emotional chain reactions culminating in tragedy.

Once I see general acknowledgement by Jews of their moral culpability in this; once I see them express repentance and engage in the critical and public moral self-examination that Europeans have engaged in with regard to nationalism; once I see Jewish guilt in Communism become a matter of public knowledge and parallels drawn with the modern Jewish embrace of multiculturalism, I will be happy to let this issue drop. Until then, I will continue to talk about it. If that makes people unhappy or uncomfortable, then they had best go elsewhere.