the frankfurt school

Thomas Wheatland’s book, The Frankfurt School in Exile

To be, or not to be, that is the question.... Hamlet,W.Shakespear

http://www.theoccidentalobserver.net/articles/MacDonald-WheatlandI.html#KM

Review of Thomas Wheatland's The Frankfurt School in Exile, Part I: Authoritarianism and the Family

Prof. Kevin MacDonald

Kevin MacDonald is a professor of psychology at California State University

October 19, 2009
The Frankfurt School has its way, undermining relationships with the Family

Thomas Wheatland’s book, The Frankfurt School in Exile, provides a useful historical account of the travels, connections, and ideas of an important Jewish intellectual movement. The Institute for Social Research began as an orthodox Marxist organization during the Weimar period. During this period, they were dedicated to studying the class struggle and were often in close contact with members of the German Communist Party. Like several other members of the Institute, Max Horkheimer, who became head of the Institute, came from a wealthy background, but like so many Jewish radicals, had a “moral and emotional” opposition to bourgeois society (p. 15).

Wheatland agrees with other scholars that a persistent motivation of the Frankfurt School was to understand why a working class revolution failed to occur in Germany. Two main theoretical thrusts emerged from this realization: a critique that located ethnic prejudice, backward religious attitudes and lack of revolutionary fervor in the family, and a critique of mass culture seen as promoting passivity and escapism rather than revolutionary consciousness. Part I of this review deals with the first of these issues. Part II will discuss the theory of mass culture and interactions between the Frankfurt School and the New York Intellectuals.

The Frankfurt School Finds Authoritarianism in the Family

Since Marxist revolution was so obviously desirable to the Frankfurt Intellectuals, they developed a theory in which the failure of revolution could be attributed to psychopathology in the family. As reviewed here, the epitome of psychological health was the “genuine liberal” — a radical individualist who is completely detached from all ingroups, including race and family. White people who rejected their family as role models were analyzed as psychologically healthy, while those who had positive views of their parents were analyzed as psychologically inadequate.

Such a view is obviously subversive of traditional values, since competent parents transmit their religious and cultural values to their children, and at the time of the study, many of these competent White parents had a sense of White racial identity which they were transmitting to their children. The Frankfurt School was essentially claiming that White families who successfully transmitted their ethnocentric attitudes to their children were pathological — a view for which there isn’t a shred of evidence. (Needless to say, the successful transmission of Jewish identity to Jewish children was not considered a pathology.)

A major part of the intellectual ammunition for this assault on the people and culture of the West derived originally from Erich Fromm whose association with the Frankfurt School dates from 1930. Fromm pioneered the idea of combining Marx with Freud and was responsible for the early development of the authoritarian personality concept. Fromm’s ideas are an excellent illustration of the ludicrous but deadly theories that resulted from this marriage of these two influential Jewish philosophers. For example, in Studien über Authorität und Familie (1936), Fromm wrote,

With regard to authoritarianism, masochism manifested itself in the surrender to authority, and sadism was evident in the acceptance of social hierarchy. In the developmental and sexual sense, the authoritarian character had suffered a regression from genital sexuality to infantile sexuality. Accompanying this regression of libidinal energy, Fromm also expected a shift from heterosexual to homosexual behavior among authoritarian personalities. (quoted in Wheatland, p. 68)

As a psychologist, I really can’t imagine a more ridiculous theory — unless perhaps one counts Freud’s politically useful Oedipal complex. None of these ideas ever had even a glimmer of empirical support. Freud’s theorizing — one hesitates to call it a theory — combines outrageousness with infinite plasticity. In the hands of Freudian revisionist like Fromm, it could be used as a weapon against those who resist a communist revolution. Eventually, Fromm’s ideas would be the basis for The Authoritarian Personality and its assault on White racial identity and traditional Western family values.

Wheatland, however, is utterly credulous in discussing these preposterous ideas: “Fromm had carefully examined the empirical findings. Exercising caution to make use of his data, Fromm utilized every response to each question to provide confirmation for his character models” (p. 69).

Ah yes, Erich Fromm — ever the dedicated, impartial empirical scientist. Since such findings have never been confirmed by the research of actual psychologists — indeed, they would be laughed at as the height of ridiculousness, one would think that Wheatland would at least suggest that perhaps Fromm was reading his a priori theories into the interview results — a common enough practice among psychoanalysts.

Indeed, a strikingly similar passage to Fromm’s monstrosity can be found in Dialectic of Enlightenment (1944), by the two leading lights of the Frankfurt School, Max Horkheimer and Theodor Adorno:

The forbidden action [of killing one’s father out of Oedipal jealousy] which is converted into aggression is generally homosexual in nature. Through fear of castration, obedience to the father is taken to the extreme of an anticipation of castration in conscious emotional approximation to the nature of a small girl, and actual hatred to the father is suppressed” (p. 192).

You can’t make this stuff up. Nevertheless, despite such passages and a generally fanciful theory of anti-Semitism (see Chap. 5 of The Culture of Critique), Wheatland refers to Dialectic of Enlightenment as the Institute’s “theoretical masterpiece” (p. 242).

Wheatland is typical of so many American intellectuals who become caught up in the well-honed mystique of the Frankfurt School, completely losing their critical sense. Even a casual reading of Dialectic of Enlightenment indicates the importance of Jewish ethnic interests in developing a theory of anti-Semitism in which the behavior of Jews is completely irrelevant. As Jacob Katz notes, the Frankfurt School has “not been notable for the accuracy of its evaluation of the Jewish situation either before the advent of Nazism or afterward” (p. 40).

Wheatland presents evidence that the Institute separated themselves from Fromm because of his revisionist views on psychoanalysis. Nevertheless, the separation was more tactical than real. Both Fromm and his former Frankfurt colleagues developed a similar intellectual rationale for radical individualism among Whites — mainly because they viewed it as effective in combating anti-Semitism. Prototypical individualists such as libertarians are much less prone to enmeshing themselves in cohesive groups — especially mass movements of ethnic defense They have no allegiance to their race, their culture, or even their family. The following is a famous passage from Fromm’s Escape from Freedom (1941):

There is only one possible, productive solution for the relationship of individualized man with the world: his active solidarity with all men and his spontaneous activity, love and work, which unite him again with the world, not by primary ties [e.g., family, religion, ethnic group, and race] but as a free and independent individual.... However, if the economic, social and political conditions... do not offer a basis for the realization of individuality in the sense just mentioned, while at the same time people have lost those ties which gave them security, this lag makes freedom an unbearable burden. It then becomes identical with doubt, with a kind of life which lacks meaning and direction. Powerful tendencies arise to escape from this kind of freedom into submission or some kind of relationship to man and the world which promises relief from uncertainty, even if it deprives the individual of his freedom. (Erich Fromm, Escape from Freedom)

In other words, psychologically healthy people have no psychological ties to anything except their "active solidarity" with all of humanity. This lack of ethnic commitment is what defines freedom.

Fromm never saw any contradictions between this philosophy and his own strong Jewish identification. Fromm derived from an Orthodox Jewish religious background and was actively involved in promoting Jewish religion and culture in his 20s. Like many secular Jews on the left, Fromm's view of Judaism was that it was a set of ethical, humanistic beliefs — indeed, it is common to assert that his view of Judaism had a strong influence on his humanistic psychology.

Obviously, such a view of Judaism ignores the strong Jewish emphasis on identifying with an ethnically-based ingroup (and all that that entails in terms of between-group conflict) rather than with humanity as a whole. In any case, "although he later distanced himself from Judaism, it is reported that Fromm never tired of singing Hasidic songs or studying scripture." One suspects that whatever Fromm's public pronouncements, his identification with Judaism was quite a bit stronger than his identification with humanity.

While Fromm remained a psychoanalytic revisionist, the Frankfurt School retained an orthodox views of psychoanalysis. This had a major payoff for the Frankfurt School because it was able to ally itself with the Ernst Simmel’s Psychoanalytic Institute. Simmel, a powerful and well-connected psychoanalyst who had direct ties to Freud (the gold standard of psychoanalytic royalty), then promoted the Frankfurt School’s work and called for research on anti-Semitism within the American Psychiatric Association (p. 325) at a time when psychoanalysis used its political muscle to dominate the APA. Simmel also sought funding for the Frankfurt School from wealthy, presumably Jewish, benefactors of psychoanalysis.

The entire episode is a wonderful example of Jewish ethnic networking that had the effect of subverting scientific psychiatry. Psychoanalysis is clearly a Jewish intellectual movement, as indicated not only by the ethnic background of the leading lights of the field, but also by the support it received from the wider Jewish community — the subject of Chapter 4 of The Culture of Critique.Fortunately, the rise of scientific psychiatry has resulted in the more or less complete eradication of psychoanalysis within mainstream psychiatry. Ultimately this was due mainly to the rise of biological psychiatry as well as the usefulness of cognitive and learning perspectives derived from mainstream psychology. During its heyday, however, psychoanalysts like Simmel used their position of power within the APA to promote psychoanalysis — an effort that had the effect of retarding scientific research in psychiatry.

In the event, the Institute received funding for its Studies in Prejudice project (including The Authoritarian Personality) from the American Jewish Committee (AJC). Wheatland also shows that the ADL was enthusiastic about the project. The Institute’s successful funding proposal argued that modern anti-Semitism aims not only at exterminating the Jews, but also at annihilating liberty and democracy. It has become the spearhead of the totalitarian order. … The attacks on the Jews are not primarily aimed at the Jews but at large sections of modern society, especially the free middle classes, which appear as an obstacle to the establishment of totalitarianism. (p. 236)

In other words, the war on anti-Semitism was really a war against those who would destroy democracy, freedom, and the middle classes — clearly an attempt to appeal to mainstream America.

Particularly interesting is that prior to the publication of the Studies in Prejudice series, Commentary developed a public relations campaign to promote the books. (Commentary is an important intellectual magazine published by the AJC.) “From the very first issue [in 1945], the magazine began to publish a series of [uniformly uncritical] articles that brought the work of the Horkheimer Circle to the attention of American readers” (p. 253).

After the Frankfurt School received funding from the AJC, Horkheimer’s office and Commentary were housed in the same building. Nathan Glazer, a prominent New York Intellectual, got his job at Commentary because he was already working for Horkheimer. There was an obvious congruence between the views of the AJC and the Frankfurt School:

Rather than simply fulfilling Jewish aims that had been dramatically highlighted by the Holocaust, The Studies in Prejudice series was envisioned to be a broader contribution to American society and culture — efforts consistent with the AJC’s desire to promote pluralism and Jewish cultural interests within the United States. UnlikePartisan Review which self-consciously promoted an ideal of cosmopolitan universalism that was framed by the influences of Marxism and modernism, Commentary … was envisioned to be a distinctly Jewish magazine (p. 154).

Indeed, despite a carefully crafted public image of Commentary as completely independent of the AJC, in fact its “autonomy may have been more of an illusion than a reality” (p. 155). Wheatland cites evidence that Elliot Cohen, the editor of Commentary from 1945–1959), was occasionally reprimanded by the AJC executive board and at other times was pressured to promote projects advocated by the AJC. Significantly, Cohen encouraged members of the Frankfurt School to write for Commentary, and the AJC had become the main financial support for the Frankfurt School. Wheatland shows that Commentary played a major role in promoting the Frankfurt School’s Studies in Prejudice series, including the disastrously influential The Authoritarian Personality. The Institute also appealed to the wider Jewish community, publicizing their work “through public lectures at Jewish colleges and local temples” (p. 251) as well as other public venues.

An example of Frankfurt School writing in Commentary is Leo Lowenthal’s 1947 article on Heinrich Heine, a 19th-century Jewish poet who converted to Christianity early in his career but later renounced his conversion. “Heine’s religion” is interesting because, as Wheatland notes, it reflects not only Heine’s attitudes but also the attitudes of the New York Intellectuals and the other members of the Frankfurt School. Heine “sacrificed his Jewish traditions in order to embrace the same ideal of cosmopolitanism — embodied by the Enlightenment and the French Revolution — that the Frankfurt School and the prewar writers for Partisan Review adopted … For both groups [i.e., the Frankfurt School and the New York Intellectuals] Marxism embodied the yearning for a repaired and redeemed humanity — a world in which racial prejudice and socioeconomic injustice were overcome” (p. 157).

Eventually, however, Heine and Lowenthal (and the other Frankfurters and New York Intellectuals) abandoned the Enlightenment and reverted to Jewish patriotism. Heine wrote that “my preference for Greece has declined. I see now that the Greeks were merely handsome youths, while the Jews were, and still are, grown men, mighty, indomitable men, despite eighteen centuries of persecution and misery. I have learned to rate them at their true value.” Lowenthal concurred: Judaism “was a tradition that need not be transcended in the name of loftier ideals” (p. 158).

In other words, Jews could advocate cosmopolitan universalism for Whites while at the same time retaining their own Jewish identity. This is perhaps the fundamental intellectual stance of Diaspora Jewish intellectuals since the Enlightenment (and strikingly absent in Israel). Wheatland doesn’t comment on the obvious contradiction here. White Christians are to give up their ethnic and religious attachments as outmoded and “anti-democratic” while Jews fashion an ethnic identity that wears the mask of cosmopolitan universalism.

To his credit, Wheatland presents at least some of the criticisms of the Studies in Prejudice series and, in particular, The Authoritarian Personality. As he notes, a consistent thread of the criticisms was the belief that the authors let their biases color their hypotheses and interpretations. My views on this body of work are a bit more scathing: “It is not difficult to suppose that the entire program of research of The Authoritarian Personality involved deception from beginning to end.”

After WWII, the Institute “returned to Germany with great fanfare, it received the generous support of HICOG [the US High Commissioner in occupied Germany] and the Rockefeller Foundation, … and its staff was viewed as a living bridge to the past” (p. 261). It’s fascinating that Adorno then embarked on a series of articles completely repudiating the entire concept of empirical research — perhaps agreeing with me that The Authoritarian Personality and the rest of the Studies in Prejudice series were not really empirical research at all.

Adorno would presumably not agree with me that these works were nothing more than thinly disguised, ethnically motivated ideology. But that’s what it was — aided and abetted by the organized Jewish community.

Kevin MacDonald is editor of The Occidental Observer and a professor of psychology at California State University–Long Beach.  Email him.

Permanent URL:http://www.theoccidentalobserver.net/articles/MacDonald-WheatlandI.html

The Frankfurt School - now we are the ones with feelings of Alienation

http://www.theoccidentalobserver.net/articles/MacDonald-WheatlandII.html

Review of Thomas Wheatland's The Frankfurt School in Exile, Part II: The Critique of Mass Culture

Kevin MacDonald

Kevin MacDonald is editor of The Occidental Observer and a professor of psychology at California State University–Long Beach

October 28, 2009

One of Wheatland’s strengths is his rich documentation of the strong connections between the New York Intellectuals and the Frankfurt School. Both groups were predominantly Jewish (the first generation Frankfurt School exclusively so), and both were associated with the anti-Stalinist left. However, they had somewhat different theoretical perspectives and overlapping associations. It is common among intellectual historians (e.g., Eric P. Kaufmann) to view the New York Intellectuals as the most important group advocating cosmopolitan racial ideology in the post-World War II era.

Prominent New York Intellectuals include the art critic Clement Greenberg, writer and critic Robert Warshow, philosopher Sidney Hook, Partisan Review editors William Phillips and Philip Rahv, and several forerunners of the neoconservative movement, especially Irving Kristol and Norman Podhoretz. Wheatland shows that the some of the second-generation New York Intellectuals (e.g., Daniel Bell, Irving Howe, and Nathan Glazer) were well acquainted with the work of the Frankfurt School. Howe and Glazer had minor roles in the notorious Studies in Prejudice series discussed in Part I of this review.

The Critique of Mass Culture

These linkages and cross-fertilization were especially apparent in the analysis of culture. The Frankfurt School viewed contemporary Western societies of the 1930s and '40s as “soft authoritarianism” — a phrase also used by Tom Sunic in describing contemporary Western societies. From their point of view, the basic problem was to explain the lack of revolutionary fervor in Western societies. Quite clearly, orthodox Marxism was wrong: The predicted revolution hadn't happened.

This lack of fervor was particularly problematic because there was a considerable degree of personal freedom in Western societies: Theoretically at least, people had the freedom to be revolutionary, but instead they passively accepted the evils of capitalism.

These intellectuals developed the theory that control had shifted from obvious forms of external control (like gulags in the USSR) to control via the media — “secondary emanations of authority … namely newspapers, advertising, radio, etc.” (p. 79). Because the media was an expression of "late capitalism," it prevented people from seeing the world as good leftists should, and as a result they were unable to “break the cycle of injustice and domination” (p. 79).

Early on Erich Fromm gathered survey data showing that working class Germans were not interested in revolution but were passive and prone to escapism. (Incidentally, Fromm seems to have been the originator of the most important ideas of the Frankfurt School. As noted in Part I of this review, he also came up with the disastrous idea of explaining ethnocentrism among Whites as due to family pathology.) The passivity and escapism of the working class were viewed as due to the failure of the culture, and particularly the media, to properly foment revolutionary consciousness. For example, during the 1930s, Herbert Marcuse wrote attacking “all bourgeois culture for its escapism, repression, and concealment of capitalism’s harsh realities” (p. 160). As discussed extensively by Elizabeth Whitcombein TOO, the Frankfurt School criticized culture because it upheld a reactionary status quo.

Eventually, there was a general understanding among both the Frankfurt School and the New York Intellectuals that mass culture — whether in the USSR (both of these groups were anti-Stalinist), National Socialist Germany, or bourgeois United States — promoted conformism and escape from harsh political realities; it “offered false pleasure, reaffirmed the status quo, and promoted a pervasive conformity that stripped the masses of their individuality and subjectivity” (p. 175). Obviously this fits well with the Frankfurt School ideas on the family: Again, there is a plea for individualists free from family and ethnic ties and in favor of non-conformity with the status quo.

These intellectuals promoted modernism in art at least partly because of its compatibility with expressive individualism, but also because they believed that it effectively opposed the culture of capitalism. Modernism was also seen as capable of alienating people from modern Western societies. As Elizabeth Whitcombe points out, “Adorno’s desire for a socialist revolution led him to favor Modernist music that left the listener feeling unsatisfied and dislocated — music that consciously avoided harmony and predictability.”

To be modern is to be alienated from the society of capitalism. The alienation of the New York Intellectuals is legendary. Norman Podhoretz was famously asked by a New Yorker editor in the 1950s “whether there was a special typewriter key at Partisan Review with the word ‘alienation’ on a single key.”

In short, they were trying to make all of America as alienated as they were.

Both the New York Intellectuals and the Frankfurt School had nothing but disdain for traditional art. In Adorno’s words, they sought “the end of the order that bore the sonata” — the end of European high culture. And if the audience failed to appreciate modernism, it was their fault. For example, Adorno wrote that the failure of the audience to appreciate Schoenberg “pointed to widespread alienation and irrationalism that were pervasive in society” (p. 29). Only the revolution would make people psychologically whole again and in tune with a genuine aesthetic sense.

The view that modernism would ultimately usher in the revolution eventually faded when it became obvious that it would never be popular with the great mass of people. The view that, say, Schoenberg, could ever have become popular with the great mass of people can only be described as amazingly naïve. We just aren't wired that way. But of course realistic ideas about human penchants and limitations have never been a strong suit of the intellectual left.

In reading the views of the Frankfurt School on the importance of cultural control, it struck me that those of us attempting to preserve the traditional peoples and culture of the West are in a similar situation to the Frankfurt School and the New York Intellectuals. Their complaints about the American culture of the 1930s through the 1950s are mirror images of the complaints that we have now.

Whereas the New York Intellectuals and the Frankfurt School felt alienated from the culture of the West, now we are the ones with feelings of alienation from the culture that has been so strongly influenced by these Jewish intellectual movements.

We are dismayed at the failure of the media to properly address White interests or even to allow expressions of White identity to be seen or heard in the mainstream media.

We are well aware that when there is a failure of media self-censorship (e.g., when media critic William Cash described the Jewish media elite as “culturally nihilist” in the Spectator in 1994), there are powerful campaigns to punish the guilty parties and to get them to recant.

Just as the Frankfurt School theorized, the West has come under the control of soft authoritarianism. But now the shoe is on the other foot: Power resides in the soft totalitarianism of the multi-cultural, multi-racial, anti-White left.

These Jewish intellectual movements decried the passivity, escapism, and conformity of American culture. Those of us who are White advocates are horrified that the vast majority of White people passively accept media messages filled with distorted images of Whites and their history. We are appalled that so many Whites are far more interested in escapist entertainment, ranging from sporting events to sci-fi thrillers, than they care about the future of their people.And we are dismayed by the conformity of the great mass of Whites people who are terrified of being called a racist or in any way violating the current taboos of political correctness. We deplore the pathetic conformists striving to uphold the rules of a society deeply hostile to their own long term interests.

Rather than see a culture controlled by the "late capitalist" media,” White advocates see the culture of the West as controlled by a hostile media that advocates multiculturalism, the displacement of Whites, and the culture of Western suicide. And many of us believe that a very large influence on this culture stems not only from the influence of the Frankfurt School and the New York Intellectuals, but also from Jewish ownership and production of the media.

There is thus a common ground between these Jewish intellectual movements and those of us attempting to preserve the traditional people and culture of the West. We all agree in the importance of media control. As I concluded in an article describing the psychology of cultural control, paraphrasing a Bill Clinton campaign slogan: “It’s the culture, stupid.”

Control of the media is critical. If there were strong media messages advocating White identity and the legitimacy of White interests, things would turn around rather dramatically and rather quickly. This is because the psychological power behind a movement of ethnic defense is far greater than the motivation that can be mustered for a multi-racial, multi-ethnic communist revolution.

Such media messages would be able to tap into the natural wellspring of ethnic feeling. There is a deep psychological attachment to one’s people and culture — even among us individualistic White folks — that can easily motivate a mass movement of ethnic defense.

Often these feelings are implicit and unconscious rather than explicit and conscious. They manifest themselves in moving to neighborhoods where their children can attend school with other Whites. Or they manifest themselves in activities where they are able to enjoy the company and camaraderie of others like themselves.

But these feelings are nevertheless real. And they are potentially very powerful. The revolution needed to reverse the cultural tides of the last decades would therefore be far easier to pull off than the communist revolution so ardently desired by the Frankfurt School.

If there is one central message from the post-World War II world, ethnicity and race matter. As Jerry Z. Muller has shown, there has been a strong trend toward ethnically based nations over the last 150 years, not only in the territorial adjustments in Europe following World War II, but around the world.

It’s interesting that these leftist critics of the media completely ignored the actual mechanisms of cultural control that were in place during the period when they were writing. The controls on culture had little if anything to do with the culture of "late capitalism." Instead, the traditional Anglo-American culture managed to retain its primacy during this period because of political activism on the part of Anglos in defense of their culture, often quite self-consciously directed against Jewish influence in the media.

Jewish influence on the media, especially Hollywood movies,weighed heavily on the minds of people like Henry Ford early in the 20th century. Public outrage at the content of Hollywood movies led to more or less successful controls on the moral and political content of movies until around the mid-1960s. The following passage fromChapter 2 of Separation and Its Discontents discusses this American Kulturkampf (references omitted):

During the McCarthy era, there was concern that the entertainment industry would influence American culture by, in the words of an overt anti-Semite, Congressman John R. Rankin of Mississippi, “insidiously trying to spread subversive propaganda, poison the minds of your children, distort the history of our country and discredit Christianity” ....

The great majority of those stigmatized by the Un-American Activities Committee of the House of Representatives (HUAC) were Jews, many of them in the entertainment industry.... A belief that “Jewish Hollywood” was promoting subversive ideas, including leftist political beliefs, was a common component of anti-Semitism in the post-World War II period, and indeed the push for the HUAC investigation was led by such well-known anti-Semites as Gerald L. K. Smith and Congressman Rankin .... For example, Smith stated that “there is a general belief that Russian Jews control too much of Hollywood propaganda and they are trying to popularize Russian Communism in America through that instrumentality. Personally I believe that is the case” ....

The substantive basis of the opinion of Rankin and others was that beginning in the 1930s Hollywood screenwriters were predominantly Jewish and politically liberal or radical — a general association that has been typical of Jewish intellectual history in the 20th century .... The American Communist Party (CPUSA), which was under Soviet control during the period, sent V. J. Jerome and Stanley Lawrence, both Jews, to Hollywood to organize the writers and take advantage of their political sentiments. Jerome argued that “agitprop propaganda was actually better drama because Marxists better understood the forces that shaped human beings, and could therefore write better characters” ....  Writers responded by self-consciously viewing themselves as contributing to “the Cause” by their script writing. “But as much as the Hollywood Communist party was a writers’ party, it was also . . . a Jewish party. (Indeed, to be the former meant to be the latter as well).”

Nevertheless, during this period the radical writers were able to have little influence on the ultimate product, although there is good evidence that they did their best to influence movie content in the direction of their political views .... Their failure was at least partly because of pressures brought to bear on Hollywood by conservative, predominantly [non-Jewish] political forces, resulting in a great deal of self-censorship by the movie industry. ... The Motion Picture Producers and Distributors of America, headed by Will H. Hays, was created in 1922 in response to movements in over thirty state legislatures to enact strict censorship laws, and the Production Code Administration, headed by Joseph I. Breen, was launched in response to a campaign by the Catholic Legion of Decency. The result was that producers were forced to develop projects “along the lines of a standard Hollywood genre while steering clear of both the Hays and Breen offices and the radical writer who may have been assigned to the project” ....

In addition, the HUAC investigations of the late 1940s and early 1950s and the active campaigning of religious (Legion of Decency, Knights of Columbus), patriotic (Daughters of the American Revolution [DAR]), and educational (Parents and Teachers Association) groups influenced movie content well into the 1950s, including a great many anticommunist films made as a rather direct response to the HUAC investigations. The result was, in the words of one studio executive, that “I now read scripts through the eyes of the DAR, whereas formerly I read them through the eyes of my boss” .... Particular mention should be made of the American Legion, described ... as “the prime mover” in attempting to eradicate “Communist influence” in the movie industry during the 1950s. The list of sixty-six movie personalities said to be associated with communism published in the American Legion Magazine caused panic in Hollywood and a prolonged series of investigations, firings, and blacklistings.

The point here is that there were strong controls emanating from political conservatives and from religious and cultural traditionalists that kept a lid on Jewish influence on culture through the 1950s — doubtless much to the chagrin of the Frankfurt School and the New York Intellectuals who prided themselves in their alienation from that culture.

This all ended when the culture of the left finally triumphed in the 1960s. At that point, when the multi-cultural, anti-White left had seized the high ground in the cultural wars, they had far less reason to engage in the types of cultural criticism so apparent in the writings of the Frankfurt School and the New York Intellectuals. Hollywood and the rest of the American media were unleashed, and it must have became apparent to many on the left that passivity, escapism and (leftist) conformity weren't so bad after all.

Indeed, as Elizabeth Whitcombe suggests, there seems to have been some realization among the Frankfurt School intellectuals in the late 1940s and 1950s that popular culture could be utilized to “manipulate the masses in the directions that they wanted — toward liberal cosmopolitanism, breaking down racial barriers, and promoting Black cultural icons.”

What would have surprised these intellectuals is that the culture of the left could co-exist with capitalism. As Marxists at heart, at least for most of their existence, they felt that it was necessary to destroy capitalism in order to usher in a revolution in culture that would affect the great mass of people.

But it turns out that capitalism was not the problem they faced any more than it is the problem White advocates face. It is certainly true that capitalism requires control by a racially conscious political and intellectual elite. In the absence of such controls, capitalists may, for example, advocate mass immigration because of the purely economic benefits for individual capitalists.

Political control over capitalism was certainly apparent during the period from 1924–1965 when America reaffirmed that it was a nation of Europeans. Capitalism remained on a strong leash — a leash motivated by a deep desire for ethnic defense on the part of the great majority of European Americans.

Even when the immigration law was finally changed in 1965, business interests were notable for their absence. Far more important was Jewish activism motivated ultimately by perceptions of ethnic self-interest.

All of the great changes in culture over the last 100 years occurred within the capitalist system. Capitalism co-existed with immigration restriction from 1924–1965, and it co-exists with the open borders reality of recent decades.

Ethnic interests and cultural traditionalism were far more important than capitalism in defending the ethnic and cultural integrity of pre-1965 America. And the ethnic interests of the nascent Jewish elite were far more important than capitalism in undermining the traditional people and culture of America in the post-1965 era.

As Eric P. Kaufmann shows, the best explanation for the enormous shift in culture is that the left was able to seize the elite institutions of society — the media, the universities, and the political culture. In my view, this would not have happened without the intellectual and political activism of Jewish intellectual and political activists who not only identified as Jews, but also saw their work as advancing specifically Jewish interests. Certainly the Frankfurt School and the New York Intellectuals played important roles in this revolution.

The result of the countercultural revolution is that those who detest the cosmopolitan culture erected by these movements are now on the sidelines, feeling alienated, and decrying the passivity, escapism, and conformity of the contemporary culture of Western suicide.

Kevin MacDonald is editor of The Occidental Observer and a professor of psychology at California State University–Long Beach.  Email him.

Permanent URL:http://www.theoccidentalobserver.net/articles/MacDonald-WheatlandII.html

Update on Malinowski: The Trobriands Art of Persuasion, by Nancy Sullivan

http://www.nancysullivan.org/article-thetrobriandsartofpersuasion.htm

The Trobriands Art of Persuasion

by Nancy Sullivan

The Trobriands are like nowhere else in PNG. So remote and yet so complex, locked into a Massim-wide trade in shell valuables, and characterised by matrilineality and a system of chiefs, the Trobriands are a busy, industrious island cluster. They are far from the sleepy South Sea islands they appear to be, although they cast that impression by their palm-lined white sandy beaches, surrounded by clear blue seas, and the unmistakable fact that the Trobrianders are beautiful people. Wiped by Malay-Chinese traders thousands of years ago, these are Melanesians stamped with the fine features of the Asian forefathers. And this beauty is an important part of their culture, because Trobrianders are masters of the art of persuasion. In youth, this might more aptly be called seduction. Young people use their beauty to pull lovers, enhancing it with shells, oil, flowers and, most importantly, love magic. As they grow older, such skills are refined into the arts of charm and persuasion, where other kinds of magic are used to lure trade partners, lovers and political allies into one's sphere of conquest.

Youngsters depend on adults to become beautiful: they must be given the coquettish banana fibre skirts, the ornate kula valuables and the secret magic spells that make them irresistible. At every public ceremony parents can be seen primping and perfecting their children's appearance, because a child's ability to influence his or her peers will be increasingly important in their future. But children are also constantly adorning themselves, placing fragrant flowers and herbs into their armbands, fashioning wreaths of hibiscus for their hair, and mastering the jaunty walk and evasive smile that heightens their appeal.

It is the art of influencing others while resisting their influence over you that becomes important as children grow into adults. Being able to acquire powerful magic spells that control the thoughts of would-be lovers develops into a more serious skill. Once married, Trobs men and women both hone their abilities to influence the feelings and desires of others. A woman may want to persuade her brother to give her the best yams of his garden, or a man may wish to influence a kula partner into giving up a prized necklace or armshell. Because Trobrianders believe everyone's desires are their own, and that mere argument is unlikely to change someone's mind, they focus on all the more indirect and subtle means of persuasion, from physical allure to gifts of betelnut, yams and shells valuables, to the elaborate love potions, gardening magic and kula spells.

If village life were as regimented and predictable as it sometimes appears, there would be no need for such skills. But in fact, even in a chieftainship where social and political status is inherited, women still compete to become master of ceremonies at special mortuary proceedings, called sagalis, where they will also gain acclaim by exchanging more of the banana fibre wealth they have spent many months producing. They charm and seduce men into favourable trade relations, and to secure better gardening lands from their uncles and brothers. Men also use their powers of influence to gain support of his wife's relatives, to have them produce more yams for him, and to assist in the complex activity of kula. Likened to three-dimensional chess, kula is a game of will, patience, memory and most of all persuasion. It is the only system of exchange like it in all of Melanesia, where equal but unlike valuables are continually moved from partner to partner around a ring of island throughout the Massim, passing slowly over vast distances, across languages and cultures, never removed from the ring, and always, systematically, tracked by all players at all times. Necklaces move in a clockwise direction as armshells move in another. And one armshell of a certain value must be exchange for a necklace of equal value. Players are required to anticipate the exchanges of their scores of partners' partners', to second-guess which piece will be coming to whom, and to negotiate their current exchanges in terms of what they hope will come their way in the future. Partners may send gifts of fish, betelnut, yams--they may arrange marriages and political alliances to persuade partners to favour them in an exchange several years down the track when a certain historic, yellowed, engraved and especially valuable kula shell comes their way.

Kula is nothing if not a game of influence. And, just as women will achieve reputations for being alluring and influential, men gain renown for their skill at kula. Indeed, in a matrilineal society, where land and titles are reckoned through the mothers and sisters of a family, and where men work for their nieces and nephews rather than their own children, it is kula that makes men famous. They gain status in life and live through history by their achievements at kula. And with the valuables they have worked so hard to win--but which must eventually be traded away--men will decorate their sons and daughters for ceremonial occasions. In this way, while bequeathing them nothing, they give them the gift of adornment and beauty, and in so doing provide that very important edge in the competitive art of persuasion.

Sometimes persuasion isn't subtle. A couple of years ago I watched a new masawa kula canoe being launched from Kaduaga village on Kaileuna Island. It was filled with twenty men vigorously paddling across the wide bay that shelters Kaduaga, while several outriggers pushed out from the shore. These were filled with women with piles of garden produce at their feet. They raced out toward the men and started pelting them with pawpaw, guavas, yams and bananas, bellowing insults and, as they reached the large slower canoe, trying to scramble aboard. The men kicked and pushed them away, laughing and cursing them back, but eventually the women gained purchase and boarded the canoe to the cheers of villagers lining the shore. One by one, the men jumped and dove off into the shallows, racing toward the beach. Within minutes they were running into the bush. But just as quickly, the women also abandoned the kula canoe and fled off in urgent pursuit. Nothing coy about this. When beauty, magic, little gifts, great skirts, jewellery and hair fail you; when gentle hints and kindness don't do the trick, just get out there and hunt him down!

No one has been able to explain this aspect of Trobs culture better than Annette Weiner. Following in the footsteps of Bronislaw Malinowski, the father of twentieth century anthropology, Weiner was able to build upon the insights of that great scholar, who spent two years in the Trobriands between 1915 and 1917, and who wrote four great books and several articles on Trobriands culture, and shed new light on the life and productive activities of Trobriands women. Weiner tilted the lens on Malinowski's work, viewing the Trobs from a woman's perspective. In so doing, she could draw the brilliant, now sensible, connections between so many aspects of Trobs culture by highlighting what seemed obvious to her--but hadn't been so obvious to Malinowski--about the lifelong need to ëwin friends and influence people' in the Trobriands.

Sadly, Annette Weiner passed away recently. She was all too young, and will be sorely missed by the students, colleagues and her friends in the Trobriands. Certainly she herself had mastered the art of persuasion, having served as the President of the American Anthropological Association and become a Dean of New York University. Her work, especially her Trobriands ethnography, ëWomen of Value, Men of Renown', survives, continually circulating like a piece of precious kula, creating networks of cross-cultural understanding and always, without end, building Annette's personal renown.

Copyright © 1999-2009 Nancy Sullivan Ltd.

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Nancy Sullivan Ltd. & Associates

P.O. Box 404, Madang 511, Papau New Guinea

675 852 3800 - nsullivan@online.net.pg

Iran Rabbi urges Jews to burn controversial book Tue, 17 Nov 2009

A prominent rabbi of the Iranian Jewish community has urged his congregation to burn 'The King's Torah', a controversial book, which supports the murder of non-Jews.

In his recently released book, Rabbi Yitzhak Shapiro, who heads the Od Yosef Chai Yeshiva (religious school) in the occupied West Bank, endorses the murder of non-Jews -- even babies and children -- if they pose an actual or potential threat to Israel. The book, co-authored by Yossi Elitzur, states that Jews are allowed to kill "those who, by speech, weaken our sovereignty", adding that it is permissible "to kill the Righteous among Nations even if they are not responsible for the threatening situation." The decree is backed by several Israeli rabbis including Yitzhak Ginsburg and Yaakov Yosef.
Shapiro claims that the Torah and Talmud fully justify his edict.

The Iranian rabbi, however, said on Monday that the book's message, in fact, directly contradicted the teachings of Moses. Rabbi Golestaninejad said the book was not based on the tenets of the Jewish faith. One of the Ten Commandments in Exodus states "Thou shalt not murder." In the Book of Genesis, as well, murder is forbidden and it is stipulated that anyone who spills blood, must pay for his deed with the spilling of his own blood, said the rabbi, who called the edict a blatant distortion of religious teachings.

Golestaninejad said the word 'rabbi' means 'wise', so it is very unlikely that a wise person, who is responsible for teaching religion, would condone the murder of persons of other beliefs. Anyone who utters anything in opposition to the faith, and then goes on to falsely attribute it to the Torah, Mishnah, Talmud or Halakha deserves punishment and chastisement, he said, adding that the idea behind the verdict is absolutely false. Jews are followers of Moses. Hence, they do not adhere to Zionism and the ideas of Theodor Herzl, the father of modern political Zionism, the rabbi said.

Rabbi Golestaninejad condemned the publication of 'The King's Torah' and called on all Jews to burn the book which he said propagates non-religious ideas.

AR/TG/DT PressTV