Being logical, rational and reasonable is no defence against Leftist hate
Nathan Cofnas
According to the mainstream narrative about race, “white supremacy” is an all-controlling social force responsible for bad outcomes such as racial disparities. According to an alternative narrative popular on the far-Right, Jewish influence is a similarly powerful force, which explains outcomes disliked by those on the Right, such as multiculturalism and mass immigration.
Last year, I published a paper in the Israeli philosophy journal Philosophia arguing that both the woke and the far-Right narratives are wrong and rooted in similar errors. I focus on the work of Cal State Long Beach psychologist Kevin MacDonald. MacDonald argues that Judaism is a “group evolutionary strategy,” and that Jews were a necessary condition for the triumph of liberalism, which he sees as bad for white gentiles. His approach is similar to that of MSNBC anchors who cherry-pick (real or imagined) examples of racism and then spin fanciful stories about how these isolated cases illustrate a “system” of “white supremacy.” MacDonald points to examples of prominent Jews promoting liberalism, ignores prominent liberal gentiles, and claims to find evidence that Jewish liberals are secretly motivated to undermine gentile society for the benefit of their co-ethnics.
In my paper I address three specific false claims made by MacDonald and other advocates of the anti-Jewish narrative: Jews (a) are highly ethnocentric, (b) hypocritically promote liberal multiculturalism for gentiles/Western countries but not for Jews/Israel, and (c) were responsible for liberalism and mass immigration to the US.
Why bother refuting MacDonald? Why not just dismiss him as an antisemite? There are at least three reasons to engage with him. First, some respected scholars have (publicly or privately) endorsed his ideas. Second, Jewish influence is a legitimate topic for scientific investigation, and his theory cannot be dismissed a priori. Third, he has been enormously influential on the far-Right, and many of his readers interpreted the lack of a refutation as proof that there are no good arguments against his views. So both scholarly and political considerations dictate that he should be given a fair hearing.
On January 1st, MacDonald’s reply to me, “The ‘Default Hypothesis’ Fails to Explain Jewish Influence,” appeared online in Philosophia. I strongly agree with the decision to publish this. If there are compelling reasons to publish my side of the debate, then the other side should be given a chance to make its case. MacDonald’s response meets the normal standards of publishability, ergo it should be published. Mainstream scholarship in all areas with which I am familiar (philosophy, psychology, nutrition, etc.) often distorts sources, cherry-picks facts, and the like. The fact that MacDonald’s scholarship displays these flaws does not, therefore, seem like a sufficient reason to deny him (but no one else) the right to reply to criticism.
But many philosophers do not think that controversial ideas should be discussed—let alone defended—in academic journals. And so the backlash swiftly followed. On January 2nd, Philosophia’s associate editor Moti Mizrahi called on the editor-in-chief Asa Kasher to “reconsider” the publication of MacDonald’s paper, then resigned in protest.
The next day, University of South Carolina philosophy professor Justin Weinberg, who runs a popular philosophy blog called Daily Nous, wrote a post attacking Philosophia, MacDonald, and me.
When I first started writing on conspiracy theories about Jews, I thought this would win me some political correctness points. After all, I say there is not a Jewish conspiracy! But, as I discovered, that’s not how it works. The only way you’re allowed to criticize a politically incorrect idea is to call its proponents a slur ending in “-ist,” “-ite,” or “denier.” If you try to provide evidence against it then you are guilty of taking the evil idea seriously and therefore just as doubleplusungood as someone who actually believes it. Luckily, I don’t care about gaining political correctness points, or I would live my life very differently.
The original version of Weinberg’s post (archived here) begins with the calumny that both MacDonald and I agree that “Jews insinuated themselves into positions of power and influence, ‘transforming America contrary to white interests.’” This is of course the opposite of what I argue. As I say in the abstract, one of the three main points of my paper is to refute the claim that “Jews are responsible for liberalism and mass immigration to the United States.” And I have never framed my critiques of leftism in terms of “white interests.” After I complained, Weinberg revised his opening sentence slightly. But his post still says that the fact that an Israeli journal published these papers must pose a challenge to “presumptions of [the] debate” that both MacDonald and I accept—as if I, too, believe in a Jewish conspiracy to censor discussion of Jews.
This is not the first time Weinberg has spread such lies about me after I crossed an ideological red line. In 2020, for example, he published a guest post falsely claiming that I support racial segregation in education. Once again, thousands of philosophers will read an outrageous lie about me. Weinberg did this without even providing a link to my paper where people could see what it actually said and quickly discover that he was misrepresenting it.
Nor did Weinberg provide a link to MacDonald’s paper, which he portrayed as a mad, nonacademic, antisemitic rant. (I will say more about this misrepresentation in a moment.) Many philosophers in the Daily Nous comments section and on social media have said that MacDonald’s paper should be retracted and/or that this isn’t a legitimate topic for discussion in an academic journal. But no one produced good arguments for these positions.
In one of the most upvoted comments on Daily Nous, SUNY Buffalo philosophy professor Lewis Powell notes that MacDonald’s work “has been roundly rejected by his own former institution, at the level of his department all the way up to the entire academic senate.” For Powell, this is an important reason “why we shouldn’t engage [MacDonald] academically.” If you’re looking for an idea that’s not worth considering, I cannot think of a better example than we shouldn’t discuss X because X has been rejected by some faculty senate. (After I pointed out how ridiculous this is, Powell denied saying what he clearly said.)
Powell also blames me for “elevating [MacDonald’s] non-serious non-academic anti-Semitic conspiracy theories into more serious academic venues by engaging them.” Other commenters similarly compare MacDonald’s work to theories like flat-earthism that do not merit serious discussion. But here’s the thing: MacDonald’s work is not like flat-earthism, nor is it “non-academic.” I have suggested that his arguments are based on “systematically misrepresented sources and cherry-picked facts.” But, as I mentioned earlier, so is a great deal of mainstream scholarship that is published without controversy. MacDonald provides quotes and evidence—most of which are not completely made up—that on the face of it seem to support his case. An intelligent, informed reader cannot immediately know what’s wrong with his arguments. If MacDonald had employed his talent for misrepresentation and cherry-picking in the service of wokism—if he concluded that whites rather than Jews are the source all of the world’s problems—he would have had a distinguished career publishing in leading journals.
Lingnan philosophy professor Derek Baker suggests that “a journal could adopt ‘We’ll publish any controversial idea—except Nazi conspiracy theories’, as its editorial policy, and that would work fine.” Although this might sound good in theory, such a policy might not be so fine in practice. Virtually all conservatives have views that would be considered in some broad sense to be “Nazi conspiracy theories” by many liberal academics. Every Republican president and presidential nominee since World War II has been compared to Hitler by many on the Left. (It didn’t start with Trump.) The 2024 Republican nominee, as well as everyone who votes for him or her, will no doubt be seen by many academics as “literally Hitler.” Even liberals who deviate slightly from woke orthodoxy—such as Kathryn Paige Harden, who acknowledges that genes play a role in individual differences in ability and personality—are sometimes accused of holding Nazi views. Who is going to decide what views count as “Nazi conspiracy theories” that are disqualified from discussion in journals?
Under the editorship of Asa Kasher, Philosophia has been one of the few respected journals in the field that is open to publishing work defending genuinely controversial views. Not coincidentally, it has also featured some of the most interesting philosophy papers in recent years. The fact that it is an Israeli journal run by Jewish editors makes the publication of MacDonald’s paper a particularly bold statement: all sides of a debate should be heard, and we are not afraid of Kevin MacDonald’s arguments.
https://quillette.com/2022/01/13/philosophers-want-to-censor-kevin-macdonald/
****************************************************Hillary Clinton criticizes 'white moderates' with quote from MLK after Senators Sinema and Manchin backed the filibuster and killed Biden's voting rights plans
Hillary Clinton took a thinly veiled dig at Sens. Kyrsten Sinema and Joe Manchin on Friday, tweeting out a Martin Luther King quote about 'the white moderate' who ends up blocking 'the flow of social progress.'
It came less than 24 hours after the two holdout senators effectively killed President Biden's hopes of pushing through voting rights legislation.
As if there were any doubt at what she meant, she cheekily added: 'This is a subtweet.'
After combining to first weaken and then stop Biden's huge Build Back Better spending plans last year, the two centrist senators on Thursday restated their opposition to reforming the Senate's filibuster rule.
That meant Biden and his party lieutenants would need 60 votes to steer through his package of voter protection measures - an impossible task given Republican opposition.
Clinton, a former Democratic presidential candidate, offered the words of King in response.
'MLK Jr. said: “I had hoped that the white moderate would understand that law and order exist for the purpose of establishing justice, and that when they fail in this purpose they become the dangerously structured dams that block the flow of social progress,"' she tweeted.
'This is a subtweet.'
King's line - taken from his 1963 'Letter from a Birmingham Jail' - set out his disappointment with some white people allied to the civil rights cause, who said the right things but balked at the direct methods necessary to get results.
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Another Muslim hater with a conspiracy theory about Jews
A woman who who worked as a volunteer with victims of the Grenfell Tower disaster and claimed on Facebook that victims of the blaze were 'burnt alive in a Jewish sacrifice' has been found guilty of stirring up race hate.
Tahra Ahmed, 51, posted 'virulently' antisemitic conspiracy theories on social media, with one sent just days after the fire in West London that claimed the lives of 72 people.
An Old Bailey jury deliberated for eight hours to find her guilty - by a majority of 11 to one - of two charges of stirring up racial hatred by publishing written material.
During the trial, prosecutor Hugh French said Ahmed's posts in January and June 2017 had 'crossed the line as to what is acceptable in a liberal society'.
On June 18, 2017 - four days after the disaster - she posted a video on Facebook of the blaze and referred to it as a 'Jewish sacrifice'.
She stated: 'I've been at the scene, at the protest and at the community meetings and have met many of the victims...some who were still in the same clothes they escaped in.
'They are very real and genuine, their pain and suffering is raw and deep and their disgusting neglect by authorities continues.
'Watch the footage of people trapped in the inferno with flames behind them.
'They were burnt alive in a Jewish sacrifice.'
Ahmed went on to link Grenfell to an antisemitic conspiracy surrounding the 9/11 terror attacks in New York in 2001.
On June 18, 2017 - four days after the disaster - she posted a video on Facebook of the blaze and referred to it as a 'Jewish sacrifice'. Pictured: Grenfell Tower ablaze on June 14, 2017
An earlier post, on January 26 2017, also set out an antisemitic conspiracy theory, jurors were told.
Police launched an investigation after a story was published in The Times newspaper on December 11, 2017, focusing on some of those who attended public meetings after the fire.
An examination of Ahmed's Facebook account revealed a history of antisemitic comments, the court heard.
Mr French said that, while Ahmed's Facebook account demonstrated 'strongly held beliefs', the two posts identified were 'clear demonstrations of racial hatred'.
The prosecutor said: 'Looking at the language of the posts, the crude racial stereotyping and the insulting tone, the Crown say that you can infer that she posted them either intending to stir up racial hatred (or) that racial hatred was likely to be stirred up.'
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Land of the free? Liberty has dwindled for most Americans over past 20 years because federal government has encroached on freedoms previously decided by individual states
Americans' freedoms have been gradually eroded over the last 20 years, a new study has found, with the COVID-19 pandemic giving local officials more power over everyday life.
A new study by the Cato Institute, a Washington, D.C. think tank that promotes individual liberty, limited government and free markets, has assessed each of the 50 states under 23 different categories and produced an overall ranking.
The most and least free states are unchanged - New York being the least free, followed by Hawaii and California, and New Hampshire, Florida and Nevada being the most free.
The three least free states all have Democrat governors; two of the three freest states have Republican governors, except Nevada, ruled by Democrat Steve Sisolak.
William Ruger and Jason Sorens, the Cato Institute researchers who compiled the annual report, said that their analysis showed individual liberties were being curtailed across the board.
'Although the rights of some have increased significantly in certain areas, for the average American, freedom has declined generally because of federal policy that includes encroachment on policies that states controlled 20 years ago,' they state.
They looked at factors that varied depending on the state - such as taxation, marriage restrictions, rules around wearing seatbelts in cars and helmets on motorbikes, and marijuana and gambling laws.
New Hampshire, whose motto is 'live free or die', unsurprisingly came at or near the top on most metrics - although they were at the bottom of the rankings for land use and marriage equality.
'We ground our conception of freedom on an individual rights framework. In our view, individuals should be allowed to dispose of their lives, liberties, and property as they see fit, so long as they do not infringe on the rights of others,' the authors wrote.
'This understanding of freedom follows from the natural-rights liberal thought of John Locke, Immanuel Kant, and Robert Nozick, but it is also consistent with the rights-generating rule-utilitarianism of Herbert Spencer and others.'
Florida was ranked the freest state, with no individual income tax. 'Florida does especially well on economic freedom, and even more so on fiscal policy,' the authors write. 'Indeed, it is our top state on both.
Florida is followed by Tennessee and third New Hampshire.
'The Volunteer State lacks an income tax, and both state and local tax collections fall well below the national average,' the report notes.
New Hampshire's overall tax burden is well below the national average at 8.1 percent. The state government taxes less than any other state but Alaska.
The average individual income tax rate for all taxpayers is 13.3 percent, according to a Tax Foundation report from February 2021.
All three states have Republican governors.
EDUCATION
Arizona, Florida and Indiana are leading the way when it comes to education, taking into account requirements and restrictions for private and homeschools.
The most restrictive states are North Dakota, ranked 50, followed by Nebraska and Michigan
'North Dakota remains the very worst state in the country for educational freedom,' the authors write.
'Private schools and homeschools are both more harshly regulated than anywhere else, and the state has no private or public school choice.'
The Cato Institute recommends that Doug Burgum, the Republican governor of North Dakota, eliminate teacher licensing, mandatory state approval, and detailed curriculum requirements for private schools, and reduce the notification and record-keeping burdens on homeschooling families.
Maryland - ranked 46th for educational freedom - 'is one of the least free states in the country, and it has had this status since the beginning of our time series in 2000,' the authors write.
Homeschools and private schools are tightly regulated, the latter more so, thanks to mandatory state approval and teacher licensing.
The state raised the years of compulsory schooling from 11 to 12 in 2014, and then to 13 in 2017.
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Kristina Pimenova, once said to be the most beautiful girl in the world. Note blue eyes and blonde hair
Bliss: What every woman wants: to feel safe and secure in the arms of her man. Robert Irwin and Rorie Buckey. See 
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