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The bad demographic news—and an unrelated discussion of Steve Sailer
Note: My passing comment below about Steve Sailer’s views on race and American identity was not intended as argumentative, since his views on that subject are an established part of the record, and I assumed everyone understood them. But it triggered an e-mail from a reader who proceeded to attack me in very insulting terms for everything I’ve ever said about Sailer, even though I have not written anything critical of him for a year or two. Replying to the reader and to a subsequent reader who also came to Sailer’s defense required me to explain my past criticisms of Sailer, particularly my condemnation of him two years ago for his professed indifference to the threatened nuclear destruction of Israel by Iran. In the past I had only paraphrased his objectionable comments on that subject, which he had expressed by means of a baseball analogy. Here I quote his comments and demonstrate exactly what he was saying, so that no one will be able to deny that he said what he said.
Many readers have sent me the recent story on the latest demographic projection that whites will become less than 50 percent of the U.S. population by 2042, instead of 2050, which has been the standard projected date of this event for almost 20 years. See, for example, the New York Times. I’m not ignoring the news. I just haven’t focused on it yet. I’ll have something to say about it soon.
In passing, I wonder what Steve Sailer is saying about it, since, even though he is very race conscious in some ways, he places no value on the white race or on America’s white majority character as such.
- end of initial entry -
MK writes:
I am a regular reader of both VFR and Steve Sailer’s blog and am a Traditionalist/paleocon that places tremendous value on the white race and America’s white character.
I have always suspected that you dislike and distrust Steve largely because of his views on Jewish ethnocentrism and his not infrequent postings on the topic.
Despite all your High Church pretensions, you are still ethnically Jew, and understandably irked by and fearful of Steve’s insightful views gaining any traction.
So you resort to snide asides and comments about Steve, dismissing him as either a frivolous movie critic too interested in pop culture or someone afflicted (along with Derbyshire, Kevin MacDonald) with the mental disease of hyper-reductionist/scientism.
Steve is tremendously insightful on the topic of race and ethnocentrism, including Jewish ethnocentrism.
Furthermore, you misrepresent him by saying that he places no value on the white race or America’s white character. It was a sneaky, deceitful move on your part to discredit Steve, especially in the eyes of your readers who may be unfamiliar with Steve’s work.
LA replies:
Ok, you got my number! Thanks for showing me my real motivations! It really makes me happy about the intellectual capacity of my fellow conservatives when they read articles of mine in which I lay out the facts and arguments and give my reasons why I come to certain conclusions, and all they get out of it is that I want to “get” somebody because I’m “jealous,” or “envious,” or “threatened he’ll expose the truth about Jews,” or driven by a desire to discredit everyone in the universe except myself so that Austerism will be ascendant over the West, or simply crazy. Conservatives’ reduction of my writings to personal craziness really makes me hopeful for the intellectual and political future of conservatism.
Now, on the question of Sailer’s not placing value on white America as such and not wanting to defend it, I was not attacking him when I said that in today’s blog entry. This is a well known position he has had for a long time and that he has been quite explicit about. And therefore I was genuinely interested in how he would deal with this news.
I guess you haven’t read his debate with Jared Taylor at Vdare on “Citizenism versus white nationalism.” Sailer’s definition of America is whoever happens to be living here. He has no civilizational, ethnic, racial idea of America. I didn’t make that up. That’s Sailer’s position.
See “Citizenism” vs. White Nationalism and, particularly, Sailer versus Taylor on white nationalism, where I analyze Sailer’s response to Taylor.
As for my supposed motives in criticizing Sailer, which you describe as: “you are still ethnically Jew, and understandably irked by and fearful of Steve’s insightful views gaining any traction,” There’s the reasoning among today’s “conservatives” in a nutshell. If I criticize someone, it’s not because I think he’s saying something untrue and harmful, it’s because I’m fearful of his ideas. (And by the way, what’s wrong with being fearful of something bad? Are you not fearful of bad things in our world and what they can do to us?) In any case, I’ve been very clear on why I’ve criticized him. Here are the two articles where I attacked Sailer most strongly.
Sailer compares Iranian nuclear attack on Israel to baseball, or, The enemy of my enemy doesn’t exist
Eric Breindel and Steve Sailer
In these articles you will see that I gave the reasons, based on Sailer’s own words, why I objected so strongly to his positions. In the first case it was because he said, indirectly but unmistakably, that the nuclear destruction of Israel would mean nothing to him. In the second case it was because he launched a gratuitous attack smearing the character of a talented man, Eric Breindel, who died in his early 40s ten years ago, and the only reason one could find in the article for this attack was that Breindel was associated with neocons, was an Israel supporter, and, about 20 years ago had been married to Tamar Jacoby (long before she got into the immigration issue).
As far as I remember, these articles represented the first occasions that I argued that Sailer is anti-Jewish or anti-Israel; and they are only articles in which I’ve made that case in a sustained way. And they speak for themselves. I know it’s hard for you to understand this, but I was attacking him for what he wrote, not because I dislike him or anything like that. If my motive was dislike, then I would never have said anything positive about him. But in reality I have said positive things about him many times, referring to his originality and his valuable insights, in the areas where he has a particular talent. In fact, as I have explained, I was carrying on a fairly regular e-mail correspondence with him until his comparison of the nuclear destruction of Israel to a ball game in another league so revolted me that I stopped corresponding with him and began reading him far less than I used to. Thus the thing that made me stop talking with Sailer was not that I was “irked” by and “fearful” of his bringing out the supposedly damning truth about the Jews by which I was supposedly threatened. The thing that made me stop talking with Sailer was that he quite deliberately expressed a sociopathic indifference to the prospect of the nuclear annihilation of Israel. And by the way, the thought of what all the Jew-haters in the world seek to do to Israel does frighten me. Does it frighten you? Instead of attacking me for attacking Sailer over that, as though I did something objectionable, why don’t you criticze him too? No, you’re protected from that possibility by your line that his anti-Jewishness and anti-Israelism are really just criticisms of “Jewish ethnocentrism,” for which I am unfairly attacking him.
He’s still a talented guy, and I read him from time to time and give him credit when it’s due, for example when he brought out crucial facts about Obama during the Rev. Wright affair last Spring. And by the way, notice how, when Sailer did a piece on Obama in spring 2007 that I felt did not provide the facts to back up Sailer’s negative statements, I criticized Sailer for it. But in spring 2008, when Sailer provided revealing quotes from Obama’s biography, I quoted him and gave him credit for being the only person in the country who had brought out these important facts.
So, my motive in what I said about his Obama articles was not dislike of Sailer or fear of what he would say about the Jews, or any of the personal motives you’ve accused me of, it was that in the first instance he wrote a poor article in which he didn’t back up his sweeping conclusion that Obama was obsessed with race and anti-white, and in the second instance, he wrote a bunch of good articles in which he did back up his critical statements about Obama, and they were very useful.
So the truth is that, while I can be very tough in my criticisms, I try to be fair. I look at both sides. On one hand, unlike many Jews and liberals, I don’t completely close Sailer out of my universe because of his objectionable aspects. On the other hand, I don’t let the fact that he makes useful contributions blind me to the fact that he has an ugly animus against Jews and Israel, and that the acceptance of this kind of animus among the paleocon circle deservedly marginalizes it. Which is another reason I’ve made the criticisms I’ve made. I would like to see a sound paleoconservative movement that can offer a viable alternative to the neocon establishment. But that’s impossible so long as paleocons remain hung up with certain well known obsessions, obsessions that express themselves by, for example, describing naked hostility to the Jewish state as mere criticism of Jewish “ethnocentrism.” .
I’ve also criticized Sailer’s reductionist approach as being both false and incompatible with conservatism and traditonal morality:
Can bio-centric yuppiedom save America?
Biocentric yuppiedom versus the West
A reductionist view of nationhood
Again, I know this is hard for you to understand, but this is not a personal fight, it is a serious intellectual disagreement. As you yourself have noticed, I also attack other material reductionists on the right.
And as for my “snide comments” about Sailer being a frivolous movie critic, well, that’s my opinion. I guess Paleoconformism has reached the point where if I criticize a paleocon for writing vapid and pointless movie reviews, that shows that I have a vicious and sneaky intent. Indeed, Paleoconformism has reached the point where if I simply make a true, descriptive comment about Steve Sailer’s well-known position on race and American identity, I receive an e-mail like yours filled with personal insults, making derogatory remarks about my religion and my ethnicity, and accusing me of bad and dishonest motives. All hail the great Paleoconformity!
Simon N. writes from England:
I forwarded my comment below to Steve Sailer in case he had any clarification/response on his position. He has replied that he is not indifferent to Israel’s destruction and that he is “against anybody and everybody”s destruction.”
-Simon
Dear Lawrence
Re “he has an ugly animus against Jews and Israel”—as far as I can tell, this is based on Sailer’s stated indifference to Israel’s destruction. This is not the same as desiring Israel’s destruction. As far as I can tell, Sailer would be equally indifferent to the destruction of Iran, Egypt or Saudi Arabia. Does that make mean he holds an ugly animus against those nations? I don’t think so; I don’t think he holds an animus against any of those nations. He criticises Mexicans and blacks at least as often as he criticises Jews, and is often called a racist for doing so. Again, I don’t get the impression that there is any animus or hostility there.
I think Sailer at least in his public persona does seem to lack the natural chains of affection—and hostility—that most people have towards other countries and ethnicities. Most educated people in the West do I think have an opinion about Israel, either positive and affectionate as I do, or negative and hostile as do many European Leftists and sundry anti-Semites. I think this tendency to form emotional attachments and antipathies is natural to humans; another example would be Russia’s attachment to Serbia. Another would be George W Bush’s emotional attachment to Mexico and Mexicans. Sailer doesn’t appear to share this tendency and I’m not sure he understands it. This is not the same as having a particular animus against Jews and Israel; though it may appear as such when contrasted with the strongly positiive attitude to Israel common in America.
I do think there is something odd about Sailer’s public persona. His attitude is that of the dispassionate scientific observer, interested in truth above all, facts above emotion. He writes as someone outside the situation he discusses—an external observer, not an internal participant. Yet he consistently argues for positions which only make sense from the view point of a paleoconservative Anglo-American—restrict Mexican immigration, reduce the black crime rate, restrict Israeli influence on the U.S. government. So paleoconservatives will naturally seek to defend him from criticism. Yet his own stated political position is not paleoconservative, “citizenism” as stated is closer to the state ideology of e.g. France, or Bob Hawke’s “An Australian is someone who lives here and pays taxes.” My suspicion is that “citizenism” is something of a false flag intended to distinguish Sailer from Jared Taylor and the white nationalists. I don’t think it’s necessary—I think you can love your own people without hating others, as Taylor and co often seem to. But I can understand why in modern American society a white writer on race would wish to adopt it.
-Simon N
LA replies:
Simon,
Respectfully, your discussion shows blindness to the facts, since Sailer doesn’t simply express indifference to Israel, but constantly portrays it in the most negative light, making it seem sinister and trying to make his readers dislike and despise her. Thus his indifference to the prospect of Israel’s destruction by Iran is not the same as his indifference to, say, an attack by Tutsis on Hutus. He has no agenda against Hutus. He has repeatedly expressed hostility against Israel. Which apparently you’ve never noticed.
You write:
“His attitude is that of the dispassionate scientific observer, interested in truth above all, facts above emotion.”
This is simply untrue when it comes to his statements about Israel. I find it surprising that you have not noticed this.
Now, I think we can say that publicly professed indifference to the nuclear destruction of a country and its five million citizens would be bad enough and deserving of severe condemnation. But as I’ve just said, Sailer is not merely indifferent to Israel, and therefore indifferent to the possibility of its destruction. His professed indifference to Israel’s destruction is the way he expresses his profound hostility to Israel.
That sets up the context for the following.
Here is excerpt from the Sailer blog entry that I attacked two years ago (at the time I only paraphrased it, and did not quote it or analyze it textually, this is the first time I have done so). The entire entry, which mocks and trivializes the idea that Iran poses a nuclear threat to Israel, is pathological, or at least sociopathic, in conveying complete moral neutrality toward that threat. Here are the last two paragraphs of the entry:
Much of what we read these days about the Iran threat is driven by boredom because of a lack of more credible challenges. The tedious truth is that the Great Game of nations is going through a dull patch of relative global peace right now because American military dominance (about 49 percent of the human race’s military spending) is so overwhelming that there isn’t too much organized slaughter going on right now by historical standards. So, a lot of foreign policy pundits are puffing up Iran as a threat to America with all the zeal and imagination that Don King brought to puffing up Chuck Wepner, a full liquor time salesman and part time boxer known as “The Bayonne Bleeder,” as a threat to Muhammad Ali in their 1975 fight.
To carry on the baseball analogy, the current foreign policy punditry situation would be as if the New York sportswriters [American media] spent half their time writing not about the Yankees [America] but about how their beloved San Francisco Giants [Israel] are in danger from the San Diego Padres [Iran] now that the Giants’ Barry Bonds has returned to mortal human statistics, and how the Yankees [America] ought to forfeit their own American League games so they can instead fly down to San Diego and beat the Padres for the Giants in the National League.
Going back several years now, Iran’s leaders, who are Shi’ites with an apocalyptic theology, and who are actively pursuing the development of nuclear weapons, have repeatedly promised to destroy Israel with nuclear weapons as soon as they were developed. How does Sailer treat the situation? As having the same moral import as if New York sportswriters, who ought to be care only about the New York Yankees (in the American League), instead were worried about the San Francisco Giants being beaten by the San Diego Padres (both in the National League), and urged that the Yankees cross over into the National League and play against the Padres in order to help out the Giants.
In other words, the prospect of the nuclear destruction of Israel by Iran should be of no more importance to us than the defeat of the San Francisco Giants by the San Diego Padres (in the National League) ought to be to fans and supporters of the New York Yankees (in the American League). Just as the prospect of the Padres defeating the Giants ought to be a matter of indifference to the Yankees and their fans, the prospect of Iran causing the nuclear annihilation of Israel and its people ought to be a matter of indifference to Americans.
If Sailer, as he now tells you, is not indifferent to Israel’s destruction, then he needs to retract what he said in this blog entry.
Lawrence Auster
Simon N. writes:
Lawrence—a preliminary response re Steve Sailer’s attitude to Israel, I meant his avowed attitude, or the stance he adopts in discussion, which could be different from his actual intent. I agree it’s certainly possible to take an avowedly neutral stance towards a group but to actually be advocating hostility towards that group through choice of facts and argument. Sailer’s avowed position from what I can tell is that the Israeli lobby has too much influence on US politics, he wants that influence reduced but in particular he wants it to be possible to freely discuss the lobby’s influence. Personally I don’t feel this is the result of anti-Jewish opinions as such but I can see why you might disagree, and it can be hard not to conflate the two—“I dislike the influence of group X” easily becomes “I dislike group X”.
LA replies:
AS I’ve said a thousand times to arguments such as yours, if he wanted a hands-off position re Israel, then he would urge that. Instead he constantly attacks Israel as a sinister country. Therefore he is not neutral toward Israel, he is hostile toward Israel. I do not know what it is in the air and water of our time that prevents people from seeing this obvious fact.
Simon N. writes:
You write:
Iran’s leaders, who are Shi’ites with an apocalyptic theology, and who are actively pursuing the development of nuclear weapons, have repeatedly promised to destroy Israel with nuclear weapons as soon as they were developed. How does Sailer treat the situation? As having the same moral import as if New York sportswriters, who ought to be care only about the New York Yankees (in the American League), instead were worried about the San Francisco Giants being beaten by the San Diego Padres (both in the National League), and urged that the Yankees cross over into the National League and play against the Padres in order to help out the Giants.
In other words, the prospect of the nuclear destruction of Israel by Iran should be of no more importance to us than the defeat of the San Francisco Giants by the San Diego Padres (in the National League) ought to be to fans and supporters of the New York Yankees (in the American League). Just as the prospect of the Padres defeating the Giants in the National League ought to be a matter of indifference to the Yankees and their fans, the prospect of Iran causing the nuclear annihilation of Israel ought to be a matter of indifference to Americans.
If Sailer, as he now tells you, is not indifferent to Israel’s destruction, then he needs to retract what he said in this blog entry.
I take your point. I think Sailer does not take the Iranian nuclear threat to Israel seriously, and so deals with it flippantly. My impression is that Iran lacks the capacity for a nuclear attack on Israel and will continue to lack that capacity for a long time. Conversely, if the Iranian leadership could destroy Israel without their own destruction, they certainly would do so (as would most or all of the Arab countries). The question is whether they would be willing to destroy Israel at the cost of their own destruction. That’s where the uncertainty lies. I think that Sailer probably does not see this as a realistic possibility, because it seems like irrational behaviour, and so deals with it flippantly. Neocons see it as a certainty, because Ahmadinejad is Hitler, undetterable, etc. My own view is that Ahmadinejad is not the one who decides an Iranian nuclear attack on Iran, and that we don’t know enough about Iran’s actual leadership to know whether they are deterrable or not. I do think that they want to hold the moral high ground for an attack, which means they would prefer to be able to present a nuclear attack on Israel as self-defense. That does not mean that they would only attack in self defense. More likely an attack with e.g. a truck-driven nuclear weapon would be simultaneously (a) denied as being of Iranian origin, (b) justified as retaliation/self defense, and (c) presented to the Muslim world as righteous jihad against the Zionist crusaders.
I do think you are right that Sailer wishes Americans to take a less positive view of Israeli and Jewish influence in the US than most Americans currently hold. I think this is what primarily informs his writings on the matter. Personally I’m ambivalent as I support Israel, and I want the US & UK to do so, but I do think it should be possible to discuss e.g. AIPAC influence, and for American politicians to disagree with the AIPAC position.
LA replies:
You get the truth, and then you then it leak away on side issues. Sailer’s indifference to the nuclear destruction of Israel had nothing to do with whether he regards it as likely that Iran will actually do what it says it will do. Iran has expressed the intent to destroy Israel as soon as it has the capability of doing so, and Sailer says that he doesn’t care if this happens—and that no one in America or in any country other than Israel should care either.
LA continues:
You write:
I do think you are right that Sailer wishes Americans to take a less positive view of Israeli and Jewish influence in the US than most Americans currently hold. I think this is what primarily informs his writings on the matter. Personally I’m ambivalent as I support Israel, and I want the US & UK to do so, but I do think it should be possible to discuss e.g. AIPAC influence, and for American politicians to disagree with the AIPAC position.
I am sorry to be so insistent, but this is another example of changing the subject. The issue is not whether it is possible to criticize AIPAC influence. The issue is whether Israel is to be singled out as a uniquely sinister state.
I’ve said it a hundred times and I’ll say it again. If a person were truly neutral toward Israel and simply felt that we shouldn’t be involved, then he would and could make that case. But that is NOT what Sailer and other paleocons do; they single out Israel as a sinister country out to harm the US for its own purposes. So they can’t have it both ways. If they are truly neutral toward Israel, then they should be neutral toward Israel. If they are anti-Israel, then they should be honest about their anti-Israelism. But they don’t do either of those things. Instead, they carry on a campaign of vilification against the Jewish state, and, when criticized, turn around and innocently proclaim that they are being attacked for “merely” saying that the U.S. should be neutral toward Israel. It is a despicable lie that taints everyone who has used it.
August 16
Adela G. writes:
MK writes: “Despite all your High Church pretensions, you are still ethnically Jew … ”
Perhaps it’s a regional thing but I don’t recall ever hearing any Gentile refer to a Jew as simply “Jew” nor any Jew referring to himself or herself or other Jews using the word “Jew” in place of “Jewish.” That is, I have always heard “Jew” used by both Gentiles and Jews as a noun and “Jewish” as its adjectival form.
So when I read MK’s comment that you are “ethnically Jew”—not that you are “a Jew” or are “ethnically Jewish“—it strikes me as anti-Semitic. It comes across as an accusation or insult. Am I way off base here? As I said, I’ve never heard anyone, Jew or Gentile, refer to someone as being “Jew” (as opposed to being a Jew) except in a critical or demeaning context like MK’s. [LA replies: Obviously it’s intended to be insulting. Further (which doesn’t change anything), MK has a Jewish surname.]
In the absence of information that has eluded me until now, I therefore conclude that because MK misinterpreted your off-hand and essentially neutral remark about Steve Sailer as an attack on Steve, MK responded in part by attacking your ethnicity, relying on good old-fashioned anti-Semitism to help smear you.
It’s not a new experience for you, I’m sure, but that hardly makes it less troubling to me. I know the left hasn’t got beyond that yet but I thought most of the rest of us had. [LA replies: If you read various right-wing websites, and I’m not talking about explicitly white-nationalist sites, but sites that might be called generically paleocon, you will regularly see this kind of thing. And notice that even Gates of Vienna allowed the anti-Semite (“Jews are my enemy”) Tanstaafl to make anti-Semitic attacks on me.]
LA writes:
Looking over my response to MK, I realize I was too easy on him. The remarks he makes about me are typical of the things that anti-Semites are saying about me all the time. Just Google my name plus “Jew” and you’ll see what I mean.
Posted by Lawrence Auster at August 14, 2008 04:33 PM | Send
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