ZGram - 7/19/2002 - "Book Review: "The 'Jewish Threat'" - Part I

[irimland@zundelsite.org]

ZGram - Where Truth is Destiny

July 19, 2002

Good Morning from the Zundelsite:

This is a lengthy book review of The "Jewish Threat": Anti-Semitic 
Politics of the U.S. Army by
Joseph W. Bendersky. New York: Basic Books, 2000, xvii + 539 pp.  The 
reviewer is Kevin MacDonald, Department of Psychology, California 
State University at Long Beach, California.

Because it is heavy duty intellectual fare, I am breaking it into four parts:

[START]

Part I

Since the latter decades of the 19th century there has been a remarkable
increase in the cultural and political power of Jewish groups and an equally
remarkable decline in the cultural and political power of Northern European
peoples. In 1880 the vast majority of the Jewish population lived in Eastern
Europe well removed from the centers of Northern European power. These
Jewish populations had expanded dramatically during the 19th century - more
rapidly than any other European group. This rapid expansion placed enormous
strains on both the Jewish and non-Jewish populations of Eastern Europe. As
they have in so many traditional societies, Jews had achieved a dominant
position in the economies of Eastern Europe. But there was also a large mass
of impoverished Jews who were strongly attracted to messianic religious and
political ideologies, especially Zionism and leftist political radicalism.
Because of Jewish economic and cultural domination and lack of assimilation,
there was also an upsurge in popular and governmental anti-Semitism
throughout the area, most famously with the pogroms in Russia beginning in
1881, but extending throughout Eastern and central Europe. [ * ]  The result
was an effort by Jewish organizations to remove Jews from Eastern Europe to
other countries, most notably the United States. Between 1880 and 1924,
approximately 2 million Jews immigrated from Eastern Europe into the United
States. This event was of momentous importance for the history of the United
States in the 20th century and beyond.

Bendersky's book is a history of the conflict between an increasingly
powerful Jewish group and a declining Northern European group as seen in the
writings of U.S. Army officers gleaned from the files of the Military
Intelligence Division (MID). As recounted by Bendersky, Americans of
Northern European descent in the United States thought of themselves as part
of a cultural and ethnic heritage extending backward in time to the founding
of the country. The Anglo-Saxon heritage of the British Isles was at the
center of this self-conception, but Americans of German and Scandinavian
descent also viewed themselves as part of this ethnic and cultural heritage.
They had a great deal of pride in their accomplishments. They believed that
their civilization was a product of their own unique ingenuity and skills,
and they believed that it would not survive if other peoples were allowed to
play too large a role in it.

Christianity was a deeply embedded aspect of the culture of the Northern
Europeans, but it played a remarkably small role in the battles with the
emerging Jewish elite. Far more important for framing these battles were
Darwinian theories of race. The early part of the 20th century was the high
water mark of Darwinism in the social sciences. It was common at that time
to think that there were important differences between the races - that
races differed in intelligence and in moral qualities. Not only did races
differ, but they were in competition with each other for supremacy. Schooled
in the theories of Madison Grant, Lothrop Stoddard, Henry Pratt Fairchild,
William Ripley, Gustav Le Bon, Charles Davenport, and William McDougall, the
generation of U.S. military officers viewed themselves as members of a
particular race and they believed that racial homogeneity was the sine qua
non of every stable nation state. They regarded their racial group as
uniquely talented and possessed of a high moral sense.

But, more importantly, whatever the talents and vulnerabilities of their
race, they held it in the highest importance to retain control over the
lands they had inherited as a result of the exploits of their ancestors who
had conquered the continent and tamed the wilderness. And despite the power
that their race held at the present, there was dark foreboding about the
future, reflected in the titles of some of the classic works of the period:
Grant's The Passing of the Great Race and Stoddard's The Rising Tide of
Color Against White World Supremacy and The Revolt Against Civilization: The
Menace of the Under-Man.

This world of Northern European cultural pride and self-confident hegemony
has vanished, and there can be little doubt that the rise of the Jews and
the decline of Northern Europeans are causally linked. Bendersky's book is
as much a marker of that transformation as it is an extraordinary record of
an important arena in the conflict between Jews and Northern Europeans.
Bendersky's sense of intellectual and moral superiority and his contempt for
his Northern European subjects ooze from every page. The book is a
triumphalist history written by a member of a group that won the
intellectual and political wars of the 20th century.

The main thrusts of Jewish activism against Northern European hegemony
focused on several critical power centers in the United States: The academic
world of information in the social sciences and humanities, the political
and legal world where public policy on immigration and other ethnic issues
is decided, and the mass media where "ways of seeing" are presented to the
public (MacDonald, 1998/2002). As recounted in The "Jewish Threat", all of
these power centers were important in the battle against the generation of
U.S. army officers who came to power after World War I. In focusing on these
power centers, these Jewish efforts essentially sidestepped the U.S.
military. Their effort was aimed not at achieving an influential position
within the officer corps but rather at nullifying the ability of the officer
corps to influence public policy. As the old guard retired or died off, it
was replaced by a new generation of officers who eventually, as the century
wore on, became increasingly steeped in the ideology of the new elite.

One of the advantages of being on the winning side in these intellectual and
political battles is that Bendersky can safely assume that any statement by
a U.S. military officer that reflects negatively on Jews or Judaism is a
reflection of the prejudices and bigotry of the officer and has nothing to
do with the actual behavior of Jews or the nature of Judaism. Further, any
statement reflecting the Darwinian theories of race differences so prevalent
in the early 20th century can safely be discounted as well because such
theories have been shown to be "erroneous" (p. 262). The basic style of the
book is to simply catalog the attitudes of U.S. Army officers. To the extent
that the attitudes of the officers require any rebuttal at all, Bendersky
deems it sufficient to simply cite statements of Jewish activist
organizations and his belief that science has placed his ethnic agenda
firmly on the side of the angels. In the following I will attempt to show
that the officers had a basically accurate view of Jews and Judaism. And
they were quite correct in their fear that Jewish influence would have a
disastrous effect on the ability of their race to retain control of the
United States.

[END OF PART I]

(REF:  The Occidental Quarterly, Vol. I(2), 2001.)

TOMORROW;  PART II

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[ * ]  See www.papurec.org , FUNDAMENTAL DOCS, "Power and Aims of
International Jewry" and BOOKS, "15. Jewish Actions During the Restitution
of Poland ... (1925)"
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