I really enjoyed Cooper’s opening series on the Israeli civil war/the Nakba, the Jim Jones series, the episodes on the split between African Americans and Jews. #22 Whose America? on the West Virginia Coal Mine Wars & The Battle of Blair Mountain is a great episode as well.
He tells a lot of untold/unheard stories. He’s two episodes in to The German’s War, and both have been pretty informative. I certainly didn’t know anything about what happened at the end of WWI in Germany, and now I do.
Not that relevant to the point your making, but it probably should have been said. Both Churchill's England and Petain's France were A OK with ruling over hundreds of millions of Brown people with the express purpose of taking their stuff for the benefit of the metropole.
Also, a point that was lost here against the the Hitler apologists was the total omission of Asia.
Yes the us got into the war because Germany declared war on us, but the US was incandescently angry about it because of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor.
I think that Matt in this article should discuss the particular history of American antisemitism in the US. Although it didn’t take the same form as European eliminationist, racial antisemitism, it was much more than authors including off color jokes about Jews in their novels.
It involved Jewish quotas at universities and workplaces, which often made it difficult for Jews to get jobs or attend the colleges they sought to attend. It involved restricted covenants preventing Jews from living in whole neighborhoods and towns. It took the form of social exclusion from community groups, exclusion from hotels. It took the form of bullying and ostricization of children. It took the form of widespread accusations of conspiracy theories.
While there’s some overlap with anti-Black racism, there’s also quite a lot of divergence. That’s why I think MY’s whole discussion of post-Jim Crow racial politics without actually discussing antisemitism in America missed the mark.
The Jewish strategy to this was to blend in as much as possible. Jews changed their name. (The myth that clerks at Ellis Island changed their names for them is debunked. They changed their names mostly to try to avoid antisemitism and to fit in). They downplayed the distinctiveness of their cultural and religious practices, emphasizing that they are Americans that just go to a different church (an approach to Jewish identity that is wholly different than most of Jewish history in most places, which emphasized peoplehood). Many religious Jews stopped wearing kippot or would hide it, along with their tzistzis (ritual fringes). They refused to teach their kids Yiddish, or other Jewish languages, with the thought that if they know Yiddish they may not be able to assimilate as well.
This is a very different history. And a couple generations of Americans who learned that being antisemitism is wrong because “Jews are just like us” (with visually distinctive Jews like Haredi Jews never really fully being accepted) are now struggling to handle a world where many Jews are increasingly embracing their distinctiveness.
I agree with many of Matt’s points. But I wish there was more discussion of antisemitism from an American context.
I don’t infer that people interested in race stats are more likely to have some issue with other races. US-Americans are racist, or have racial anxiety if we’re being diplomatic, generally. If someone is interested in race science, are they therefore extra racist? Or are they simply more honest. I also disagree that the omertà around race helps anyone, for a few reasons. (1) it allows people to plausibly deny the background level of racism. (2) it prevents people from addressing or accurately assessing what causes racism. We can’t even agree that racism is a thing, and then people talk in circles about systemic, interpersonal or miasmic racism. (3) for some racialized people who are economically mobile, they should consider leaving the US. Of course, standards of living are lower abroad and the decrease in racism varies. Whatever the trade off ends up, the discursive norms prevailing in the US only obscure.
This is a really weird post. Just say that racism is bad, and anti-semitism is bad, and if you think that something you’re saying or doing is coming close to the line, then don’t say or do it.
Contrary to some people on Bluesky, I don’t think Matt is a scientific racist, but I do think that as a prominent political commentator he should put more thought into how he talks about this stuff.
As the crime descends from generation to generation, so does the guilt. The very presence of black people in the Americas, the direct result of their ancestors being kidnapped and brought here in chains, is a crime that stinks to high heaven. The crime will compound forever, and so will the guilt. A just system and remedial justice are also crimes that stink to high heaven, because they exist in relation to those whose ancestors were kidnapped and brought here in chains. Every an American does is a crime that stinks to high heaven.
Beyond the idea that after WW2 polite society decided racism as unseemly, I think there has also been a marked change in the idea of elites and how they are regarded by the masses. Eyes on the Prize, the brilliant PBS documentary on civil rights, interviews numerous KKK members and others who were on the wrong side of the struggle. In the 1980s. They don’t express embarrassment or remorse. I doubt any of them cared whether their views were looked down upon by the elites. Today, resentment towards the elites is an unironic plank in the MAGA movement. What changed?
Yup. I grew up near Birmingham, and the Klan marched on Martin Luther King Day through the ‘80s. My mom interviewed a Grand Wizard who was very gracious and concerned about softening the brand a bit for the next generation.
The “politely ignore it” approach to group differences makes for a very fragile peace. Isn’t it best to be honest about interrogating the reasons for over/underrepresentation of different groups in different fields? At best we can learn from one another and all be stronger for it, at minimum we have a compelling rebuttal to racist and conspiracist explanations. At baseline, we really need to return to the idea that everyone has the right to be evaluated as an individual.
"And there’s a counter-view, perhaps most forcefully articulated by Nathan Cofnas, that it’s not good enough to reject Kendi’s brand of anti-racism, you need to work to rehabilitate racism so that people can hold their heads high and believe in a hierarchy of races"
I do not see Cofnas arguing to rehabilitate racism in the linked article. I'm not saying he doesn't, but it seems like a strong charge to make against someone without actually linking to somewhere where they do it.
Is Darryl Cooper worth listening to, just to understand that perspective? Or is he just categorically terrible? His podcasts seem extremely long but I would venture a listen if I could learn something. I think I'm pretty immune to that version of brain rot
I really enjoyed Cooper’s opening series on the Israeli civil war/the Nakba, the Jim Jones series, the episodes on the split between African Americans and Jews. #22 Whose America? on the West Virginia Coal Mine Wars & The Battle of Blair Mountain is a great episode as well.
He tells a lot of untold/unheard stories. He’s two episodes in to The German’s War, and both have been pretty informative. I certainly didn’t know anything about what happened at the end of WWI in Germany, and now I do.
I've never listened to him, but apparently he did an excellent podcast series on I/P a long while back? I've seen people credibly defend him, but then I see his tweet about how Naziism was preferable to the French Olympics open, and it seems like he's been traveling to a weird place for some time. What happened to him?
On the question of if the west could have coexisted with Nazi Germany - I think if anything it would have been easier than the Soviet Union - for a bunch of reasons.
1. The economic dimension: Nazi Germany's controlled capitalism model (private ownership with state direction) resembles systems that have outperformed communist economies elsewhere (South Korea, recent China, France during "Les Trente Glorieuses"). Nazi Germany likely would have been more economically successful than the Soviet Union, and its economic relationship with the west plausibly more like the current relationship with China.
2. Ideological evolution: The Soviet Union's policies evolved significantly from Lenin to Gorbachev. Even deeply racial imperial systems (Japanese Empire, British Raj) moderated their treatment of subject populations over time. A post-Hitler Nazi regime might have similarly evolved away from its most genocidal policies, and so the level of ongoing oppression/atrocities wouldn't be so horrible to prevent coexistence, even if the Generalplan Ost was extremely evil.
3. Imperial scope: While Nazi racial ideology was extreme, it was less universalist than Soviet communism, which explicitly called for worldwide revolution. Nazi territorial ambitions were primarily focused on European "living space," not global ideological conversion. There's no real evidence to suggest Nazi ambitions extended beyond Europe and parts of Africa.
Divorcing WWII from the holocaust is analogous to the Lost Cause: take an event that is very much about race and recontextualize it as being about something else. Both WWII and the Civil War were about race. They were about economics. They were about geopolitics. They were about local politics. The only reason to solely focus on the non-racial factors is because somebody wants to destigmatize the racism that contributed to both wars.
I really enjoyed Cooper’s opening series on the Israeli civil war/the Nakba, the Jim Jones series, the episodes on the split between African Americans and Jews. #22 Whose America? on the West Virginia Coal Mine Wars & The Battle of Blair Mountain is a great episode as well.
He tells a lot of untold/unheard stories. He’s two episodes in to The German’s War, and both have been pretty informative. I certainly didn’t know anything about what happened at the end of WWI in Germany, and now I do.
Not that relevant to the point your making, but it probably should have been said. Both Churchill's England and Petain's France were A OK with ruling over hundreds of millions of Brown people with the express purpose of taking their stuff for the benefit of the metropole.
Also, a point that was lost here against the the Hitler apologists was the total omission of Asia.
Yes the us got into the war because Germany declared war on us, but the US was incandescently angry about it because of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor.
I think that Matt in this article should discuss the particular history of American antisemitism in the US. Although it didn’t take the same form as European eliminationist, racial antisemitism, it was much more than authors including off color jokes about Jews in their novels.
It involved Jewish quotas at universities and workplaces, which often made it difficult for Jews to get jobs or attend the colleges they sought to attend. It involved restricted covenants preventing Jews from living in whole neighborhoods and towns. It took the form of social exclusion from community groups, exclusion from hotels. It took the form of bullying and ostricization of children. It took the form of widespread accusations of conspiracy theories.
While there’s some overlap with anti-Black racism, there’s also quite a lot of divergence. That’s why I think MY’s whole discussion of post-Jim Crow racial politics without actually discussing antisemitism in America missed the mark.
The Jewish strategy to this was to blend in as much as possible. Jews changed their name. (The myth that clerks at Ellis Island changed their names for them is debunked. They changed their names mostly to try to avoid antisemitism and to fit in). They downplayed the distinctiveness of their cultural and religious practices, emphasizing that they are Americans that just go to a different church (an approach to Jewish identity that is wholly different than most of Jewish history in most places, which emphasized peoplehood). Many religious Jews stopped wearing kippot or would hide it, along with their tzistzis (ritual fringes). They refused to teach their kids Yiddish, or other Jewish languages, with the thought that if they know Yiddish they may not be able to assimilate as well.
This is a very different history. And a couple generations of Americans who learned that being antisemitism is wrong because “Jews are just like us” (with visually distinctive Jews like Haredi Jews never really fully being accepted) are now struggling to handle a world where many Jews are increasingly embracing their distinctiveness.
I agree with many of Matt’s points. But I wish there was more discussion of antisemitism from an American context.
I don’t infer that people interested in race stats are more likely to have some issue with other races. US-Americans are racist, or have racial anxiety if we’re being diplomatic, generally. If someone is interested in race science, are they therefore extra racist? Or are they simply more honest. I also disagree that the omertà around race helps anyone, for a few reasons. (1) it allows people to plausibly deny the background level of racism. (2) it prevents people from addressing or accurately assessing what causes racism. We can’t even agree that racism is a thing, and then people talk in circles about systemic, interpersonal or miasmic racism. (3) for some racialized people who are economically mobile, they should consider leaving the US. Of course, standards of living are lower abroad and the decrease in racism varies. Whatever the trade off ends up, the discursive norms prevailing in the US only obscure.
This is a really weird post. Just say that racism is bad, and anti-semitism is bad, and if you think that something you’re saying or doing is coming close to the line, then don’t say or do it.
Contrary to some people on Bluesky, I don’t think Matt is a scientific racist, but I do think that as a prominent political commentator he should put more thought into how he talks about this stuff.
As the crime descends from generation to generation, so does the guilt. The very presence of black people in the Americas, the direct result of their ancestors being kidnapped and brought here in chains, is a crime that stinks to high heaven. The crime will compound forever, and so will the guilt. A just system and remedial justice are also crimes that stink to high heaven, because they exist in relation to those whose ancestors were kidnapped and brought here in chains. Every an American does is a crime that stinks to high heaven.
Beyond the idea that after WW2 polite society decided racism as unseemly, I think there has also been a marked change in the idea of elites and how they are regarded by the masses. Eyes on the Prize, the brilliant PBS documentary on civil rights, interviews numerous KKK members and others who were on the wrong side of the struggle. In the 1980s. They don’t express embarrassment or remorse. I doubt any of them cared whether their views were looked down upon by the elites. Today, resentment towards the elites is an unironic plank in the MAGA movement. What changed?
Yup. I grew up near Birmingham, and the Klan marched on Martin Luther King Day through the ‘80s. My mom interviewed a Grand Wizard who was very gracious and concerned about softening the brand a bit for the next generation.
Yeah, it's kinda disquieting, isn't it? The barbarians *inside* the gates and all.
Hopefully, though, we'll start to get serious about offering broadly attractive alternatives to their dangerous boorishness.
Thanks, Matt! <3
The “politely ignore it” approach to group differences makes for a very fragile peace. Isn’t it best to be honest about interrogating the reasons for over/underrepresentation of different groups in different fields? At best we can learn from one another and all be stronger for it, at minimum we have a compelling rebuttal to racist and conspiracist explanations. At baseline, we really need to return to the idea that everyone has the right to be evaluated as an individual.
"And there’s a counter-view, perhaps most forcefully articulated by Nathan Cofnas, that it’s not good enough to reject Kendi’s brand of anti-racism, you need to work to rehabilitate racism so that people can hold their heads high and believe in a hierarchy of races"
I do not see Cofnas arguing to rehabilitate racism in the linked article. I'm not saying he doesn't, but it seems like a strong charge to make against someone without actually linking to somewhere where they do it.
Too many of my homies on the right are doing Churchill wrong. Embarrassing.
I know Matt didn’t like this season’s white lotus but the best line was “One person’s fake is another person’s good manners!”
Is Darryl Cooper worth listening to, just to understand that perspective? Or is he just categorically terrible? His podcasts seem extremely long but I would venture a listen if I could learn something. I think I'm pretty immune to that version of brain rot
Copied from my comment below:
I really enjoyed Cooper’s opening series on the Israeli civil war/the Nakba, the Jim Jones series, the episodes on the split between African Americans and Jews. #22 Whose America? on the West Virginia Coal Mine Wars & The Battle of Blair Mountain is a great episode as well.
He tells a lot of untold/unheard stories. He’s two episodes in to The German’s War, and both have been pretty informative. I certainly didn’t know anything about what happened at the end of WWI in Germany, and now I do.
I've never listened to him, but apparently he did an excellent podcast series on I/P a long while back? I've seen people credibly defend him, but then I see his tweet about how Naziism was preferable to the French Olympics open, and it seems like he's been traveling to a weird place for some time. What happened to him?
His multi-part series on the Jim Jones cult, put into the context of the rise of the violent and radical movements during the 1970s, is very good.
On the question of if the west could have coexisted with Nazi Germany - I think if anything it would have been easier than the Soviet Union - for a bunch of reasons.
1. The economic dimension: Nazi Germany's controlled capitalism model (private ownership with state direction) resembles systems that have outperformed communist economies elsewhere (South Korea, recent China, France during "Les Trente Glorieuses"). Nazi Germany likely would have been more economically successful than the Soviet Union, and its economic relationship with the west plausibly more like the current relationship with China.
2. Ideological evolution: The Soviet Union's policies evolved significantly from Lenin to Gorbachev. Even deeply racial imperial systems (Japanese Empire, British Raj) moderated their treatment of subject populations over time. A post-Hitler Nazi regime might have similarly evolved away from its most genocidal policies, and so the level of ongoing oppression/atrocities wouldn't be so horrible to prevent coexistence, even if the Generalplan Ost was extremely evil.
3. Imperial scope: While Nazi racial ideology was extreme, it was less universalist than Soviet communism, which explicitly called for worldwide revolution. Nazi territorial ambitions were primarily focused on European "living space," not global ideological conversion. There's no real evidence to suggest Nazi ambitions extended beyond Europe and parts of Africa.
Good article, Matt. Lots to think about; thank you.
Divorcing WWII from the holocaust is analogous to the Lost Cause: take an event that is very much about race and recontextualize it as being about something else. Both WWII and the Civil War were about race. They were about economics. They were about geopolitics. They were about local politics. The only reason to solely focus on the non-racial factors is because somebody wants to destigmatize the racism that contributed to both wars.