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The vile hatred at the heart of liberalism: Joe Klein and Time on conservatives
In my exchange with a reader who said that Jimmy Carter and other liberals are not accusing Obamacare opponents of racism, I replied that not only had Carter said that, though he used some sneaky escape language, but that lots of liberal columnists are indeed saying exacty that, plain as day, without any escape language at all.
Here, for example, is Joe Klein of Time magazine. I don’t have words at the moment to comment on this execrable column, except to say, just read it.
Yes, It’s Racism…but it’s Complicated
Posted by Joe Klein Wednesday, September 16, 2009 at 5:21 pm
195 Comments
Jimmy Carter’s intervention in the winguts v. Obama controversy has raised the expected amount of dust—and I suppose the standard reaction is that “it’s a good thing we’re having this conversation,” but I’m not so sure that it is. Since I was one of the early racism-shouters here on Swampland, and on the Chris Matthews show last Sunday, I probably should explain why “this conversation” is heading in the wrong direction.
First of all, I tried to make it clear that I wasn’t talking about classic white-black racism, though elements of that are present, to be sure. My sense of the teabaggers is more complicated: they are primarily working-class, largely rural and elderly white people. They are freaked by the economy. They are also freaked by the government spending—TARP, the stimulus package etc.—that was necessary to avoid a financial collapse. (I’m not sure Keynes is taught in very many American high schools.) But most of all, they are freaked by an amorphous feeling that they America they imagined they were living in—Sarah Palin’s fantasy America—is a different place now, changing for the worse, overrun by furriners of all sorts: Latinos, South Asians, East Asians, homosexuals…to say nothing of liberated, uppity blacks.
In that sense, Barack Obama is the apotheosis of all they fear. He is a child of what used to be called miscegenation—a mixed marriage. His father was a Muslim, his mother was sort of a hippy. She raised him in Hawaii, which is just barely American and in Indonesia (which is very suspicious). He is a liberal (even if a prohibitively moderate one). Worse, he’s a completely urban sort. There is nothing resembling a log cabin in his background. We’ve had elite Presidents—the Roosevelts, the Bushes—but we have never really had an urban one. (New York Governor Al Smith, Tammany Hall’s finest, was trounced in 1928—the last pure urban candidate.) This sort of populist paranoia is disgraceful, but as American as apple pie. The appropriately-named Know-Nothing Party of the 1840s was anti-immigrant. The Republican Party has pursued an implicitly racist “southern strategy” since the late 1960s.
But there is a reason why Barack Obama has tried to lowball the race issue since he arrived on the public scene: it is divisive, in a reprehensible way. If everything he does is seen through the prism of race, if he becomes a “black” President, he loses—the furriners may be overrunning the country, but we’re still majority white. He does not want to be perceived as a minority President either racially or numerically. And he’s right: we have more important business to transact right now.
Finally, I should say that the things that scare the teabaggers—the renewed sense of public purpose and government activism, the burgeoning racial diversity, urbanity and cosmopolitanism—are among the things I find most precious and exhilarating about this country. And even though the teabaggers’ pinched , paranoid sensibilities are now being stoked by Boss Rush and the leaders of the Republican party, I take comfort in this: the racists and nativists have always been with us, and they have always lost. They will lose this time, too.
[end of Klein column]
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A. Zarkov writes:
Joe Klein at his worst. He uses the vile expression “teabaggers” to describe protesters. Does he even know what this means?—see the Urban Dictionary here. Then he uses the unnecessarily pejorative “wingnut” making his column look like a Daily Kos blog comment. Almost every part of his essay reveals his ignorance. For example he writes “I’m not sure Keynes is taught in very many American high schools.” Keynes is not taught in college much anymore. Until very recently Keynesian theory was pretty much dead and buried being replaced by competing theories. Now to justify TARP, the corpse of Keynes has been reanimated to justify run away spending. But Klein knows none of this. He doesn’t understand the rapid shift in public opinion against Obama. The sleeping giant has awoken. He is going to get stepped on, only he doesn’t know it yet—but he will.
Aaron S. writes:
This column is despicable. We know what’s coming when we see this sort of thing:
First of all, I tried to make it clear that I wasn’t talking about classic white-black racism, though elements of that are present, to be sure. My sense of the teabaggers is more complicated: they are primarily working-class, largely rural and elderly white people. They are freaked by the economy.
Translation:
I won’t pretend to have evidence of anything resembling actual racism. No, in the following ruminations, I will put my sublime intellect to work explaining a rarefied phenomenon only the enlightened can see. It’s “complicated,” which means the people exhibiting these qualities aren’t really to be blamed, though they are definitely sub-rational and incapable of seeing their own interests (poor dears haven’t learned their Keynes). Get out the cattle prod, we’ll push this putrid herd off the cliff just yet!
In another entry, you asked whether we can remain a free country with a black president. I believe this demonstrates that the answer is “no, not for long”, at least insofar as our ruling elite are like this.
Here’s something I’ve been wrestling with over the last few days. Perhaps Obama’s election is merely one of many possible events to reveal such open hostility. If people like Klein actually feel this way about their countrymen, what hope is there for avoiding civil conflict in the long run? Race (or hysteria about race) may be the most obvious proximate cause, but doesn’t hatred like this always find some outlet or another in time?
LA replies:
But in fact he’s not saying it’s complicated or subtle. He’s saying it’s an expression of the fear of the darkening and diversifying of America. To which I say: WOULD THAT IT WERE SO (meaning, would that these grass roots conservatives cared as much about the destruction of the American culture and nation through mass non-European immigration as much as they care about the destruction of our freedom and economy through Obamacare). But it’s not. It’s what it is: fear of Obama’s un-American, economy-destroying, wealth-destroying, freedom-destroying policies.
Karl D., writes;
The more I read and hear from all the usual elitist twits like Klein, Dowd, Carter etc., the more I really view these people as Liberal Mullahs issuing thinly veiled Fatwas for Liberal Jihad from their Ivory Minarets. I have been under the weather today and have been watching a marathon of a show called “The Color of War” on the Military channel which is WW2 footage all in color. And I must confess that by the time they got to VE day I was weeping. Weeping at the fact that 70 million lives perished and weeping because the footage of the throngs of cheering crowds in England, Denmark and France were all white Europeans. Not a Muslim or African face in the crowd. They were beaten, bruised and bloody but hardly suicidal. I wept because Hitler and Stalin won the war albeit in different ways. Ways we are seeing today through the likes of Klein. He says:
“they are freaked by an amorphous feeling that they America they imagined they were living in—Sarah Palin’s fantasy America—is a different place now, changing for the worse, overrun by furriners of all sorts: Latinos, South Asians, East Asians, homosexuals…to say nothing of liberated, uppity blacks.”
With the exception of “liberated Uppity blacks” (unless he means blacks who feel liberated to bash whites willy nilly) he is right. They ARE freaked out and rightly so. I truly believe that these neo-Mullahs would have no problem calling for oppressive measures against those they deem to be on the wrong side of history. And believe me, they are as convinced of the history argument as Ahmadinejad is of the coming of the 12th Imam. But in the end this is good. For the first time they are crawling out from under their rocks to show us who and what they truly are.
LA replies:
You write:
“They ARE freaked out [by furriners] and rightly so.”
You’re falling into the leftists’ hands. Yes, people like us are concerned about these changes—consciously so. But if you allow the argument that opposition to Obama’s policies is not opposition to Obama’s policies, but merely a symptom of some other feeling that doesn’t dare express itself, a-moronic “fear of furriners,” then you are subscribing to the classic liberal denigration of all conservatism, which says that that conservative positions, including the present opposition to the federal takeover of healthcare, are not rational positions, but outbursts driven by irrational, cthonic fears.
Karl D. writes:
I agree with your response to my comment.
Aaron S. replies to LA:
You wrote:
“But in fact he’s not saying it’s complicated or subtle. He’s saying it’s an expression of the fear of the darkening and diversifying of America. To which I say: WOULD THAT IT WERE SO…. But it’s not. It’s what it is: fear of Obama’s un-American, economy-destroying, wealth-destroying, freedom-destroying policies.”
True, that’s what he’s saying. And it allows him to give full vent to his contempt. But notice what else is going on here. He mentions the economic things first, so that if pressed, he can retreat to “they’re made hateful by economic conditions,” meaning that people resort to these attitudes as a response to large problems they’re too simple to understand. In other words, they cling to their guns and religion.
This is classic Marxist stuff, an enduring maneuver because it lets the speaker get away with moralizing while at the same time speaking “objectively.” I’m not suggesting that Klein went into this piece designing this sort of argument, but I think that’s the logic at work. People on the left live and breathe these degraded views of humanity … it comes naturally to them.
Marco Jawsario writes:
Joe Klein, a pillar of the Jewish Media Left, probably knows as much about the Tea Partygoers as I know about Zulu tribesmen. He cannot have an accurate insight as to what motivates us traditionalists, because like most Jewish leftists, he has likely lived an isolated, affluent life far removed from the encroaching blacks and Hispanics he so ardently defends.
As every VFR reader knows, Jews are the most affluent demographic group in America. Today’s Jewish kids likely attend the whitest schools and the most elite colleges. The vast majority of them grow up next to fellow Jews, or professional non-Jewish white people. They have probably not formed a meaningful lasting relationship with a military person, a construction worker, or a truck driver their entire lives. American Jews are concentrated in the professions and financial services, academia, and entertainment industries. There are very few Jews under age 60 who work in blue collar jobs or who have served in the military. During my 20 year career in the Army I was usually the only Jew in my regiment or brigade. Is it any wonder, then, when a smarmy liberal Jewish reporter interviews a Joe The Plumber type, it is done in the some hopelessly clueless and patronizing manner somewhat like Margaret Mead trying to communicate with a New Guinea tribesman?
In an earlier post I mentioned the Kosher Nostra Media Order of Battle. Here is but a small sample. The Senior Editors of Time and Newsweek are Mark Halperin and Jerry Adler. Both, “just so happen to be Jewish.” Time’s Political columnist is our very own Joe Klein, and its senior writer is Karen Tumulty, both, too, “just so happen to be Jewish.” Newsweek, whose CEO is Donald Graham, half-Jewish, is managed by a plethora of Jewish writers. Contributing Editor is David Alpern, Senior Writer is David Ansen, Senior Columnist Jonathan Alter, and Chief Poltical Correspondent, Howard Fineman, who all “just so happen to be Jewish”—with the exception of David Ansen. And, the Chairman of the Associated Press, Donald Newhouse, also—you guessed it—“just so happens to be Jewish.” All this information is obtained via Google and Wikipedia.
Is it any wonder, then, given the clannish affluence and insular nature of leftwing Jews, that they blatantly (and probably deliberately) misread what the white American masses think and feel and how we traditionalists react to the encroaching socialism the Democrats are imposing. This, ladies and gentleman, is but a small peek into the dramatic lack of diversity practiced by the left-wing Jewish media, which thus helps to explain why it is so out of sync with the rest of the country.
LA replies:
Mr. Jawsario’s analysis represents a beginning, but a problem I see with it is that the same contemptuous, clueless attitudes characterizes gentile elite liberals as much as the Jewish elite liberals that Mr. Jawsario discusses. So, if there is to be a useful critique of Jewish liberals, it must show things that make Jewish liberals distinct from other liberals.
Here’s an example of what I would describe as a distinctively Jewish attitude. Klein writes:
“Finally, I should say that the things that scare the teabaggers—the renewed sense of public purpose and government activism, the burgeoning racial diversity, urbanity and cosmopolitanism—are among the things I find most precious and exhilarating about this country.”
This is absolutely typical of the way Jewish progressives talk. They don’t just support diversity because it’s the right thing to do. No, the increasing diversity of America makes them kvell, makes them swell with joy and pride. Gentile liberals support diversity because it’s what a decent person does. Jewish liberals support diversity because it gives them an almost physical sensation of joy. They love the fact that America is becoming less Anglo and nonwhite. And in many cases, Klein being a prime example, their love of diversity moves in step with withering contempt for gentile/Christian conservatives—you know, those barely human types who talk abut “furriners”—and a more or less openly expressed desire to make them disappear from the earth.
Since this leftist Jewish sensibility is so at odds with the long-term well being and survival of America, and also so atypical of the majority American population, such attitudes should not be allowed to be authoritative for our society. They should be identified as what they are—as Jewish liberal attitudes. I’m not trying to take Jews’ legitimate particularity away from them. But the drive of liberal Jews to impose their anti-majoritarian, pro-diversity agenda on the rest of us, to make their minority view the ruling view, must be exposed and opposed.
As I have said many times, the Jewish self-aggrandizement of recent decades has largely been a function of the collapse of the former majority culture. That is why the only way to push back against this Jewish expansiveness—and that of other minority groups as well—is through the restoration of a majority culture that stands up for itself.
David B. writes:
Around 1990, I read New York magazine often. Joe Klein was the political writer. He wrote a lot of articles about the racial situation in New York City and was sympathetic toward whites who were angry about black crime. I also recall Klein hoping the Democratic party could appeal more to the broad electorate. He wrote of the public employee unions skewing the Democrats too far to the left.
Klein is a lot different now from the way he wrote some 20 years ago. The demographic changes likely are taking him in this direction. Klein did not write like this back around 1989-92, at least to my knowledge.
LA replies:
Yes, a radical change. From sort of neocon to radical left-liberal. His “National Interest” column at New York Magazine was terrific, a real highlight of political journalism in the 1980s.
The change took place a long time ago, when he left NY Magazine and went to Newsweek. He instantly morphed into a typieal left liberal. I noticed the change, felt bad about it, and lost all interest in him.
Marco Jawsario writes:
I readily admit that there are far more non-Jewish liberal white drones who are marching toward self-annihilation, but only by the mere fact there are 50 times more non-Jewish whites than Jews. I will contend though that it has been left-wing Jews—going all the way back to the Frankfurt Research Institute in the 1920s—who have provided the intellectual firepower for the imposition of Political Correctness.
Let’s go back to Joe Klein. If he and other left-wing Jews claim to have the inside track into the minds of tens of millions of non-Jewish whites, then we right-wing Jews can be equally ridiculous by claiming that left-wing Jews are out to enslave whites as payback for more than 2000 years of persecution going all the way back from Alexander the Great, through the Crusades, the Holocaust, and ending with Joe McCarthy. To accomplish this, we should remind folks that left-wing Jews have been—and continue to be—heavily involved through the ACLU to undermine our religious heritage and cultural icons. They have also led the charge to flood our country with unassimilable and undersirable third world types, who will inevitably end up voting Democratic. We should also remind the white masses that left-wing Jews are out to disarm us—just look at attempts by Schumer, Feinstein, Lautenberg, and Czar Sunstein.
If we want to witness the resurgence of Austerian White Majoritarianism, we right-wing Jews, given our unparalleled levels of chutzpah, must provide the shock troops to isolate and paralyze the major obstacle to this white rebirth—the Jewish Left. To hit them in such a way using their own rhetoric about diversity, that they will become embarassed and immobilized, will allow whites to reassert themselves. If we could accomplish this, we could pay the country back for the damage wrought by our left-wing cousins.
September 18
Joel P. writes:
You’re absolutely right to point out that Carter is far from alone when it comes to voices on the left attributing the driving force behind conservative opposition to Obama’s policy agenda to racism. Here’s a clip from of the despicable Keith Olbermann from about a week ago wherein he essentially says that criticism of Obama from the right is nothing more than the manifestation of thinly-veiled racism.
Posted by Lawrence Auster at September 17, 2009 03:34 PM | Send
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