Populism, Whiteness Studies and Nazi Jew Hatred

Part of an interview of Jonah Goldberg, author of Liberal Fascism.

One of the more under-appreciated motives of the Nazi extermination campaign against the Jews was how it was driven by paranoia. Nazi anti-Semitism wasn’t merely bigoted, it was conspiratorial. The Nazis and affiliated intellectuals firmly believed that the Jew was behind the scenes, pulling strings, manipulating events, rigging the system — even the language — in profound and pernicious ways. Carl Schmitt — quite popular on the left today — was tasked with the job of purging the Jewish spirit from the law. Other similar projects were launched across the political, economic and intellectual landscape. Jeffrey Herf recently wrote an absolutely brilliant book on this exact point, bringing to the fore what was long considered mere background noise of the 12 year Reich. I wrote about his book, The Jewish Enemy, here.

The white male is the Jew of liberal fascism. The “key to solving the social problems of our age is to abolish the white race,” writes the whiteness studies scholar and historian Noel Ignatiev. Whiteness studies is a cutting-edge academic discipline sweeping American higher education. Some thirty universities have WS departments, but many more schools teach the essentials of whiteness studies in other courses. The executive director of the Center for the Study of White American Culture explains, “There is no crime that whiteness has not committed against people of color . . . We must blame whiteness for the continuing patterns today . . . which damage and prevent the humanity of those of us within it.” The journal Race Traitor (ironically, a Nazi term) is dedicated “to serve as an intellectual center for those seeking to abolish the white race.” Now, this is not a genocidal movement; no one is suggesting that white people be rounded up and put in camps. But the principles, passions, and argumentation have troubling echoes.

First, there is the left’s shocking defense of black riot ideology and gangsterism. The glorification of violence, the romance of the street, the denunciations of “the system,” the conspiratorialism, the exaltation of racial solidarity, the misogyny of hip-hop culture: all of these things offer a disturbing sense of déjà vu. Hip-hop culture has incorporated. On college campuses, administrators routinely look the other way at classically fascist behavior, from newspaper burnings to the physical intimidation of dissident speakers. These attitudes ultimately stem from the view that the white man, like the Jew, represents every facet of what is wrong and oppressive to humanity. As Susan Sontag proclaimed in 1967, “The white race is the cancer of human history.” Meanwhile, Enlightenment notions of universal humanity are routinely mocked on the academic left as a con used to disguise entrenched white male privilege.