There is a particular kind of racism in history, the racism associated with national socialism, or Nazism, that denies Jews their whiteness. Whiteness is used here in the racial sense, as in caucasian. As I have shown on the pages of Freedom and Reason, there are reckoned on basis of population genetics a handful of racial categories, only five likely, these determined by constellations of phenotypic traits revealed by factor analysis, albeit intuitively known for centuries. The caucasian race is distributed across Europe, Middle East and North Africa (MENAs or Arabs), and into the Indian subcontinent (e.g., Persians).
Within this vast geographical area lie numerous ethnic groups that have in the development of the modern world become nation states. Israel, the only Jewish state in the world, is one of them. Nazis race science conflated ethnicity and race, seeing a myriad of racial groups in the myriad of ethnicities. Race theorists for the regime then endeavored to organize that myriad into a hierarchical system that placed ethnic Germans at the top of the ladder, with Jews located towards the bottom rungs. All along the truth was that Jews were as racially white as the ethic German. Both are caucasian. As we can understand, Nazis science was corrupted by ideology.
In June of 2019, I wrote a very lengthy (and frankly rather prescient) piece on the matter titled Race, Ethnicity, Religion, and the Problem of Conceptual Conflation and Inflation. In the epigraphs that often adorn my posts, this one, by David Bernstein, law professor at the George Mason University and contributor to the legal blog, The Volokh Conspiracy, appeared at the top of that analysis: “Note that this does not mean that the Irish, Italians, Jews, Poles, Arabs, and so on didn’t face discrimination, hostility, assertions of inferiority and occasionally even violence. They did. But historically, they were also considered white.” This quote was drawn from Bernstein’s essay “Sorry, but the Irish were always ‘white’ (and so were Italians, Jews and so on,” published in the Washington Post on March 2017.
Bernstein is right. It was always understood in the United States that Jews were white. The distribution Jews faced in America was not on account of racial distinction but because Jews were confronted by a Christian majority. Jews were never under the rules of Jim Crow. Nor did the rules applied to black Americans apply to any ethnicity from the geographical regions described in the previous paragraph (Asian populations are a different story). Bernstein stresses that such historical facts exposes the distortions of ideologically-driven academic literature and political rhetoric. Indeed. With this as a departure point, my June 2019 essay explored the emerging trend among Jews questioning their whiteness, with some deploying a rhetoric suggesting that Jews had never been white. We are seeing in the streets of cities and towns across the trans-Atlantic space confirmation of Jewish concern over their status in Western society. No longer outsiders, they are included in oppressor class.
I noted in June 2019 that, given political developments, “the pariah status of whiteness has produced some curious effects.” I provided several examples. One of them was Seth Frantzman, writing for The Jerusalem Post, December 2018 (“Now they call us ‘White Jews’”), he cautioned his readers about the whitening of Jews. Tagging it the “new American antisemitism,” he warned of a “creeping hatred” towards Jews. “The labeling of Jews as ‘white’ and debates on how to ‘treat Jews,’” he said, “is a form of dehumanizing rhetoric designed to force Jewish people into a binary of ‘white/non-white’ that is currently trendy in US discussions.” He continued: “The new toxic discussion taking place primarily in the United States is designed to label Jews as ‘white supremacists.’” Despite conflating qualitatively different categories of things—ethnicity, race, and religion—, Frantzman had put his finger on something.
Fast forward to today. Those young Americans and Europeans out on the streets calling for the elimination of the Jews from their homeland see as the racialized minority the Muslim, the follower of a religion founded by another white people, the Arabs, the actual majority in the region where Jews have for millennia made their home. The actual minority in the region, the Jew, driven from Arab lands, seven million living in a space one-fifth the size of the state of Kentucky, becomes a colonizer in his own land. In the strange alchemy of social justice, Jews become the bad guys. Antisemitism finds its dissimulation in the jargon of post-colonial ideology. Frantzman’s concerns were warranted.
Venture capitalist David Sacks, appearing on the All-In Podcast (see above for full episode), tells us that in the aftermath of recent events, a growing number of Jewish individuals are recognizing a sense of disconnect from the political left (as the mainstream defines left). He anticipates that a significant portion of the Jewish community will shift towards the right, aligning themselves with the Republican Party—an alignment Sacks has personally maintained for some time.
There are several reasons Jews have historically supported the Democratic Party. The community has longstanding ties to social movements, including the civil rights movement, that have shaped the cultural and historical connections that influence contemporary political preferences. Jewish values often emphasize social justice and compassion, aligning Jews with Democrats on issues such as the environment, healthcare, and income inequality. Concerns about discrimination have led many Jews to support the party that, at least ostensibly, emphasizes inclusivity and equal rights. Higher levels of education and urbanization, common among Jewish Americans, are associated with Democratic Party support, as well.
Sacks notes that, over the past few decades, there has been a notable shift within the civil rights movement and the left, marked by the emergence of woke ideology, which emphasizes identity groups over colorblindness. Rather than bridging racial differences, this ideology accentuates them, manifesting in an equity agenda characterized by the redistribution of resources among different racial groups. This dynamic generates division and resentment.
Many Jews had not fully acknowledged the transformation of the left in this direction, perhaps stemming from the belief that, under this woke paradigm, Jews would naturally be considered a victim group. However, a realization is dawning that, within the framework of this ideology, Jews are perceived simply as white individuals with a Jewish background, making them members of the oppressor class. Many within the Jewish community, Sacks contends, are awakening to the realization that this ideology becomes destructive by casting Jews as adversaries.
Sacks tells his audience that, under these circumstances, it’s expected that a considerable number of Jewish individuals will reevaluate their political allegiances. A shift towards the right seems to be underway, he suggests, as more Jewish individuals become attuned to the evolving landscape of political ideologies. It’s hard to listen to Bari Weiss’ moving speech addressing the Federalist Society and not hear a collective voice in her words and her passion.
But the problem isn’t that Jews are white. It will not do to abandon Christians to the woke mob and escaping into a self-serving reracialization. As the great sociologists have pointed out, geniuses as grand and different as Karl Marx and Max Weber, practical Jewish life is realized in the Christian world with the rise of Protestantism. It is this historic development that makes possible capitalism and the Enlightenment and the incorporation of Jews fully into Western society. In contrast, Islam has no capacity for the emancipation of religion from the state—it’s fated to be a totalitarian ideology. And Jews are white in any case. Social constructionism has its limitations. Rather, the problem is woke progressivism and its antipathy to equality, individualism, liberty, and republicanism.
Recently, hedge fund manager Bill Ackman raised the profile of this issue by going after the presidents of Harvard University, MIT and the University of Pennsylvania for applying a double standard with respect to speech codes. Ackman has focused on the disparity between Harvard’s commitment to free expression and its ranking in the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE) free speech rankings. He notes that faculty members there have expressed concerns about a perceived narrowing of acceptable speech and self-censorship on campus. They confirm the existence of a perspective that associates whiteness at Harvard with oppression, normalizing hostility towards Israel and Jews. The Office of Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Belonging (ODEIB) focuses on colonialism, denials of indigenous rights, and racism, which cases whites as oppressors. There are claims of discrimination against straight white males, Asians, and individuals of Indian origin in the hiring process.
This brings me to Emma Green’s 2016 Atlantic article penned a month after Donald Trump shocked the pollsters and won the presidency of the United States, defeating the establishment favorite Hillary Clinton. The article was titled simply “Are Jews White?” The subtitle is telling: “Trump’s election has reopened questions that have long seemed settled in America—including the acceptability of open discrimination against minority groups.” In the piece, Green goes after Steve Bannon, who she accuses of shilling for white nationalism, feeding an alt-right troll army engaged in antisemitism (i.e., shit-posting). Green noted that progressive groups were eager to mount a rebellion and Trumpism, and that Jews, three-quarters of whom voted for Hillary Clinton, believing that Trump won largely on account of racism and white supremacy, were eager to join in. However, some of the groups Jews sought allyship with had “singled out particular Jews for their collusion with oppressive power.” Green sense the approach storm before most did.
“These are rough sketches of two camps, concentrated at the margins of US political culture,” Green surmised. “On the extreme right, Jews are seen as impure—a faux-white race that has tainted America. And on the extreme left, Jews are seen as part of a white-majority establishment that seeks to dominate people of color. Taken together, these attacks raise an interesting question: Are Jews white?” The suggestion that the political right in the United States sees Jews as “impure” and “faux-white” is wrong. One might object that she is talking about the extreme right. But she is lumping Trump and Bannon in with that tendency. Trump is a liberal New York businessman adored by the cultural and political elite until he sought the presidency. Bannon is hardly the fascist and antisemite she thinks he is. It is the progressive left that fulfills Green’s worst dreams. This is the crow that images a white-majority establishment seeking to dominate racialized minorities. Moreover, how does any of this raise the question “Are Jews white?” Asserting that Jews do not fit neatly into American racial categories, despite admitting that “[f]rom the earliest days of the American republic, Jews were technically considered white, at least in a legal sense,” the rest of Green’s essay involves rehearsing the debunked thesis that Jews, like many European ethnic groups, underwent a process of “becoming white.”
I have written quite a lot on the distinctions between culture, ethnicity, race, and religion. Here are some of these essays: Almost Everybody in the Bible is White; Muslims are Not a Race. So why are Academics and Journalists Treating Them as if They Were?; Culture and Race—Not the Same Thing; Are Cultural Explanations of Racial Disparities Always Racist? Only By Conflating Race and Culture; Multiracialism Versus Multiculturalism; The Myth of White Culture; Culture Matters: Western Exceptionalism and Socialist Possibility; Critical Race Theory: A New Racism; Smearing Amy Wax and The Fallacy of Cultural Racism; Kenan Malik: Assimilation, Multiculturalism, and Immigration; Is There Systemic Anti-White Racism?
Concerning the alchemy of social justice, here are some essays you might find useful: The New Left’s War on Imaginary Structures of Oppression in Order to Hide the Real Ones; Race-Based Discrimination as a Model for Social Justice; see Frantz Fanon and the Regressive Ethics of the Wretched: Rationalizing Envy and Resentment—and Violent Praxis; Why the Woke Hate the West; Woke Progressivism and the Party of God; The Peril of Left-Wing Identitarianism. There are many others, so peruse the table of contents. Reach out with any questions.
freedom and reason 