DIALOGUE
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 by Joey Kurtzman, February 27, 2007
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From this Dialogue
From: Joey Kurtzman
To: John Derbyshire
Subject: Jewesses and Derbyshire’s Law
Excellent stuff, John, thank you.
The Jewess question is a good place to dive in.
I was recently shocked, while watching Kill Bill 2 by Quentin Tarantino, to hear the word Jew used as a verb. Imagine! Jew-as-verb in a major American feature film! Maybe Harvey Weinstein allowed it because Spike Lee had recently complained that Weinstein would never let “kike” be used in his films as he does “nigger.”
Regardless, it was a shocker to hear it. America has come a long way from the days when we could play fast-and-loose with our ethnic words. I think this is, on balance, a very good thing. I just spent five years marooned in the British Isles, where I was shocked to discover that gentle race-baiting remains, in many quarters if not all, a more-or-less acceptable form of light banter.
I reacted to this much as I imagine an anthropologist might react to the discovery of an Indian village where the locals still practice sati, or a Chinese community where all the girls have bound feet: “Do they really still do this? It’s atrocious and fascinating all at the same time! Quick, grab me a notebook, I shall study them.”
Jewess snaps us to attention precisely because it’s the type of word a certain sort of Brit might use, but Americans won’t. Like Irishman and other antiquated coinages, it suggests that ethnicity is a fundamental feature of a person’s identity (for that reason, Elijah Muhammad made a concerted effort to popularize blackman). American Jews, like other Americans, dislike that implication.
We once dealt with this by using wacky innovations such as “Americans of the Hebrew faith.” And that’s not just a Jewish thing. During the height of PC tyranny in the 1990s, constructions such as these were drawn out even to sillier lengths. “John, my buddy at NRO who happens to be black…” was the hot formulation. One had to apologize for even alluding to someone’s ethnic background.
The same sensibility gives us the ongoing gag about the person who defends him/herself from charges of bigotry by announcing that “but…but some of my best friends are black/Jewish/Mexican/whatever!” The joke, presumably, is that a real non-racist would never even have noticed the ethnicity of their friends.
There has to be a middle ground. I appreciate the sensitivity that American culture affords to minorities, but I’m hardly the first to observe that there is a downside. When you police language so relentlessly, you don’t improve the quality of debate…you shut it down. But whereas this was once a mere annoyance, today it’s a real problem. More and more information on the genetics of human populations is rolling in, and we can’t be sure where it’s all headed or what it will reveal. It’s increasingly urgent that we learn to discuss group differences without flipping out over linguistic trivia or falling back on feel-good platitudes that get us nowhere.
John Tooby dealt with the Kevin MacDonald kerfuffle in Slate by offering the comforting pablum that “human races don’t exist as distinct biological groups.” Well, maybe, depending on how you define “race” and “distinct” and “group.” But that’s a spineless cop-out.
Even interested non-scientists like you and me, John, have learned that human populations have different distributions of various alleles (variants of a certain gene); that some of these variations between groups result in different distributions of biological traits such as Tay-Sachs disease, sickle cell anemia, and so on; and that we need prepare ourselves for the very real possibility that the list also includes psychological and behavioral traits.
I’m not asking for crudeness or intentionally insulting behavior, of course. But if puncturing some of our American and Jewish anxieties about race-related language will make it easier to have the honest discussion I’m looking for, then, hey, I say let’s go for it. Jewess is innocuous enough—let’s you and I agree to use it. If anyone calls you an antisemite or asks you to take one of the ADL’s sensitivity courses, you just tell them that a Jew gave you permission—nay, urged you!—to use the word. Pass the buck to me.
To be honest—and here is where my interest in MacDonald can be explained by resorting to his theories—I also think more open discussion of Jews and Jewishness will be “good for the Jews.” The protective veil in which American culture shrouds minority groups is a mixed blessing for us. Informed external criticism is a good thing for any community trying to improve itself.
Jews were once made to confront some of the more distasteful aspects of our scripture because European Christians called us on them during medieval disputations between rabbis and priests. And while I don’t want a return to medieval Europe or to religious disputations, I do think that when American Gentiles dance around Jewish sensibilities for fear of setting us off, when they fellate us with unqualified celebration of the wisdom of our ancient culture, the genius of our geniuses, and so on, it only encourages self-satisfaction and complacency on our part.
And the American Jewish community, as anyone involved in Jewish organizations will tell you, is in crisis. The last thing we need is complacency. Other American ethnic groups, I would hazard, derive just as little benefit from the WASP inability to discuss ethnic issues frankly.
So let it fly, John. In this dialogue and beyond, tell us what you’re thinking and why. Give us material to chew on, thoughtful criticism to work with. Sure, some Jews are so traumatized by Jewish history (in most cases, traumatized by traumas they never experienced) that in any criticism of Jews or Jewish culture they see the makings of another Holocaust. But if Tutsis can have frank conversations with Hutus hardly a decade after the Rwandan genocide, and if Bosnians can hash out political issues with Serbs, then surely a Jew who has no experience of persecution can handle a frank conversation with a Gentile who has no experience as persecutor. So bring it on.
I’m disappointed, though, to hear you discuss the catastrophic consequences of crossing the Jews. I think of it as the Robert Fisk conceit, and it’s a very old line. Guys like Fisk or Norman Finkelstein sell themselves as martyrs to world Jewry, as people who love truth so much that they are unwilling to bend to our intellectually totalitarian demands. That’s a neat marketing ploy, and it certainly gets them a ton of attention and the adoration of a certain type of intellectual groupie. But is it true?
No, it’s bullshit, is what I think. Derbyshire’s law is certainly true…no matter what you say about Jews (or any other ethnic group, for that matter), someone, somewhere will call you a bigot. But so what? If you’d given Kevin MacDonald’s ideas a more positive hearing, you’d have likely gotten a ton of criticism, sure. But that’s life as a public intellectual. Welcome to the monkeyhouse. People are allowed to criticize you, and with the democratization of ideas and arguments through the Web, more and more people now have the platform to do just that. Some will resort to nasty ad hominems. Such is life. Argumentative integrity is too rare a bird in public debate. Deal with it.
You mention the case of William Cash. I’m not very familiar with his case; I only know that he’s oft-mentioned by people who claim that an accusation of antisemitism is a professional kiss of death. But if The Spectator can run a cover image of a Magen David piercing a Union Jack, if Walt & Meirsheimer can get a relatively muted reaction in the States to their piece arguing that the pro-Israel lobby has hijacked American foreign policy, is it really true that you would be committing professional sepuku, or even just damaging your career prospects, by digging into Jewish culture and giving a positive review to Kevin MacDonald’s work? I suspect that what drives people away from these topics is a fear of harsh, emotional criticism, rather than a realistic likelihood of damage to their career.
Indulge my curiousity: what would happen if tomorrow you submitted a piece to National Review saying, “Kevin MacDonald is really onto something. He’s doing great work and I think everyone should read him.” What sort of craziness would ensue? How would your career be damaged in concrete terms?
Joey
Thursday: The first thing you hear when you go into opinion journalism is "don't f*ck with the Jews"
 |
Joey Kurtzman is president of Jewcy Partners, LLC, and co-founding editor of Jewcy.com. Prior to joining Jewcy he was an on-air contributor to Ireland's political and cultural radio program, The Wide Angle. He lives in Los Angeles with More... |
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Anonymous
Tutsis and Hutus
"But if Tutsis can have frank conversations with Hutus hardly a decade after the Rwandan genocide"
Except for they, uh, can't: this sentence is completely wrong. For example, from the Aug 25th 2005 Economist: "In Rwanda, politicians cannot even mention tribe. “There is no ethnicity here; we are all Rwandan,” declares President Paul Kagame. In the context of central Africa's tribal wars, which have invariably been stoked by rabble-rousing politicians, this shows understandable delicacy. It can also be absurd: earlier this year, for example, the government banned a pygmy-rights group on the grounds that it was inciting ethnic hatred. Outlawing “ethnic divisionism” is also a handy way to gag critics. In June last year, the country's parliament, which is tightly controlled by Mr Kagame's ruling Rwandan Patriotic Front party, used it to ban the last independent human-rights organisation. The leading opposition party had been banned on similar grounds the previous year."
I also missed all the Serb-Bosniak bull sessions springing up (perhaps you were thinking of Bosniak protests that Serbia just got found not-really responsible for ethnic massacres).
This really doesn't inspire confidence in what else you're saying.
Anonymous
What is ironic about this
What is ironic about this posting by Mr. Kurtzman is that, while saying that Jews could stand more criticism, he is actually criticizing Derbyshire. Specifically, he disputes Derbyshire's claim that he takes on an important risk if he criticizes Jews. More generally, he is blaming the Gentiles for their reticence in criticizing Jews, rather than considering that it might be professionally or socially risky, much less considering what the Jewish community may have done to bring this about. In fact, Derbyshire makes only one criticism, and that is it. And Kurtzman instantly fires back.
Moreover, why should Derbyshire bother? As Kurtzman points out, it is the Jewish community who would benefit from honest criticism. Not Derbyshire. But when Derbyshire bravely offers his one core criticism (that they have made themselves dangerous to criticize), Kurtzman does not appreciate it, or even believe it. Or if he does believe it, then he seems to think Derbyshire has a duty to martyr himself.
Anonymous
Walt & Meirsheimer
But of course Walt & Meirsheimer's piece was published in The London Review of Books and not in the States... Perhaps the 'relatively muted reaction' in the States was due to its not being published there. The reaction in the pages of the LRB was certainly not muted. Why don't YOU address the truth or otherwise and responsibility or otherwise of MacDonald's thesis seriously instead of skipping about on the edges of the debate with your pal John Derbyshire?
Anonymous
Derb Has Already Done What You Are Asking
Joey, your biggest beef with Derb's approach seems to be that he was not totally honest with his readers in his AmConMag review and his response to you. Your latest post was a long challenge for Derb to "tell us what you really think". Well, I think he has told us what he thinks:
(1) MacDonald is possibly on to something but the scientific principles he relies on are specious (although there are opportunities for honest scientific research on the types of questions he poses), (2) his motives for pursuing this line of research are (increasingly) suspect because he makes a not-very-convincing act of feigning surprise that research in "Jewish genetics" might call for certain disclaimers and caveats and because he exhibits a bit too much enthusiasm for traditional antisemitic tropes, and (3) with a wink and a grimace, Derb sent signals that he might admit Macdonald has "the Jew thing" in private, but publicly, he thinks the man has enough to stand on that it is more prudent not to make such an accusation directly.
(I am guessing that your take on (3) will be exactly the opposite of mine: that Derb would privately state that Macdonald is not an antisemite but that he is at pains publicly to make his readers think he disapproves of Macdonald.)
Derb admitted that he was circumspect in how he wrote the original review, but he also noted that he is paid to speak his mind, not dissemble. My sense is that any reticence on Derb's part resulted in a difference of tone, not substance in his review. He told us what he honestly thought while not phrasing things exactly as he might have were "the Jew Thing" not cowing him. Aside, perhaps, from the man Derb is currently supporting for president, Derb is the last person I would ever accuse of not telling us what he REALLY thinks.
A New York Jew
Anonymous
Bosnians and Serbs
I just love this discussion (the Derb is the man!) and only wanted to post one nit-picky comment. Bosnians are both of Serbian (Christian) descent and Slavic Muslim descent; in fact one could say they are both slavic with different religions. So it would probably have made more sense for you to say "if Bosnian Christians and Muslims can talk...", although I'm sure most readers understood the point you were trying to make.
Anonymous
Re: Right yes, he is of the extreme-right persuasion
“But all the time, the question lingers: might Kevin MacDonald be right about the Jews?”
The issue of MacDonald’s antisemitism should by now have been answered in the affirmative. For anyone even remotely familiar with traditional European antisemitic tropes will find them all laid out in his screeds, albeit packaged in the new language of genetics.
Like traditional antisemitic scholarly writing, MacDonald’s forces Jews into a double bind with his thesis/accusations. For example, when he argues that Jews are programmed to survive this is obviously true of all living objects. Yes when applied to Jews it become a kind of conspiracy “these people will do anything to survive,” or “they are guilty of surviving.” The implication is that the Macdonalds of this world don’t have to do anything to survive.
Moreover, the concept of genetic programming functions as a kind of unconscious in MacDonald’s formulation. Hence, no Jew can defend himself against an accusation of putting the interests of his people first since his defense will be seen as an admission of guilt: “Of course you will deny it,” you have been programmed to think that way.
This means that Jews, and probably all humanity, are denied the possibility of free will.
This leads me to the second point: arguing about free speech in such a context is meaningless. We are all after programmed to speak and write in a certain way and hence dialogue is impossible.
jdyer
Anonymous
Huh
Jews were once made to confront some of the more distasteful aspects of our scripture because European Christians called us on them during medieval disputations between rabbis and priests.
I can’t quite figure this out. Is this just bad writing? Is it the kind of deliberately glib characterization of a set of historical events that might result from a combination of self-delusion about one’s own cleverness and denial of one's own intellectual laziness and/or ineptitude? Is it evidence of complete ignorance of the history of Jewish-Christian relations? Is it all three?
Anonymous
Penalties for crossing Jews overblown?
No, American Jews are rich, and touchy. I heard of one Jew withdrawing support for WBUR Boston (it was a lot of money, he was rich) because the BBC had been reporting a little too accurately about Israel + Palestine to suit him. You surely don't think this is implausible. If you have enough money you rule the world, and can afford to be hissy. This is only an incident I know of; multiply it by surely thousands...
Anonymous
excuse me!
"I heard of one Jew withdrawing support for WBUR Boston (it was a lot of money, he was rich) because the BBC had been reporting a little too accurately about Israel + Palestine to suit him."
The BBC reporting accurately about Israel?
Give me a break. You must be the only person in the world left who believes that bit of nonsense.
Anonymous
"Jewess"
We may have become overly and ridulously sensitive and reactive to names, terms, and so on, but the word Jewess, like the word Negress, makes the Jewishness or Negro-ness sound biological. A Jewess is the female of the Jew species. It names the person as Jew, then female, not as person. If he had simply said a Jewish friend of mine...she said..., then Jewish would only be an important adjective that would serve to help the reader understand the story he was relating. I don't like it. A person using it sounds to me as if he is referring to someone barely or not even human. It's extremely distancing.
Anonymous
on the matter of "race"
Two things that've often disturbed me is when people (and you even see some references to this in the early Zionist literature) refer to the Jewish "race", or when people say, "No, it's just a religion." One of my best friends from high school, who isn't Jewish, told me, a Jew, that it cannot be an ethnic conception.
That's an important qualifier, 'ethnic' as opposed to 'racial'. Races are 'social constructs,' as the jargon goes, which seems right. They're definitely not biological realities, and that's more than simply a comforting platitude. Yet I've found it quite demeaning to be told that, as a part of a people by heritage, in this case, Jewish identity must only be religious, and that to even suggest it encompasses more than that must be ipso facto antisemitic.
But don't get me started on *that* word, especially its hyphenated variant. Anyway this is a wonderful forum; I'm glad to have came across it.
Michael Nehora
The term "anti-Semitism" (or anti-semitism or antisemitism or..)
But don't get me started on *that* word, especially its hyphenated variant.
The previous commenter has a point. Although the phenomenon of Jew-hatred is inarguably genuine, "anti-Semitism" is truly a bogus term for it. First, it wasn't a Jew, or someone sympathetic to Jews, who coined the term, but Wilhelm Marr, a nineteenth-century right-wing German political agitator. In his 1879 book, The Way to Victory of Germanicism over Judaism, he created the term Antisemitismus in order to provide a pseudo-scientific, "racial" basis for hatred of Jews, this being all the rage at the time, and as is well known, an eventual theoretical basis for Nazism. Should we Jews use a word coined by one of our enemies, and resting on an obsolete, unscientific concept?
Second, the term "Semitic" is primarily a linguistic category. Hebrew, Arabic and Aramaic, as well as the ancient languages Akkadian, Ugaritic, Moabite and others, are all Semitic languages in that they share many cognate words and roots, as well as certain grammatical features. More broadly and inexactly, the term refers to Near Eastern cultures with similar languages and, in some cases, a similar cultural heritage. (Whether they share common genetic characteristics is, as I understand it, an open question.) That's why many refer to Arabs as a "Semitic" people. So, using the term "anti-Semitism" specifically for Jew-hatred confuses the issue. The term "Jew-hatred" (Judenhass in German) is direct and unambiguous. Just as importantly, it lacks the genteel, euphemistic, pseudo-rationalist quality of the term "anti-Semitism," revealing hatred of Jews for the ugly phenomenon it is.
Anonymous
Jewcy a Neo Nazi Rag?
After reading this article, I can only conclude it is.
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