My copy of Leonard Zeskind’s Blood and Politics: The History of the White Nationalist Movement from the Margins to the Mainstream arrived via UPS this afternoon. So far it doesn’t seem to be generating much attention in the mainstream press or otherwise. This is odd considering that it is the most extended treatment of White Nationalism since Carol Swain’s book was published back in 2002. I have been around this scene long enough to remember that, but know little about the history of “the movement” prior to 2001; one reason I found this book interesting enough to purchase.
Anyway, I will be posting comments here as I wade my way through this. Zeskind himself is invited to join our discussion. From what I know of him, he has an odd fascination with our ilk and likes to drop in the occasional Klan meeting from time to time. Here’s as good a place to start as any …
The ideas underlying the white supremacist movement are manifestly false. Jews do not run the United States or the world.
Nice caricature. No single political pressure group “controls” the United States like an autocratic monarch and determines every aspect of public policy or contemporary fashionable trend. It is more like the American Jewish community exerts a stiffling influence over our goverment and culture far out of proportion to its actual numbers.
Black people are not inherently inferior to white people, or anybody else.
Negroes are generally less intelligent and more likely to commit violent crimes than white Americans. Their race has contributed little to the scientific and technological advancement of the human species.
Nor are the privileges and power accruing to white people God-given or genetically driven.
That’s an open question. No one knows exactly to what extent our genes inform our personality type and determine our intelligence.
At the same time, political power has rested exclusively in white hands during much of this country’s life, and this kernal of truth resides at the heart of white supremacist mythology.
That’s an understatement. America was self-consciously a “white man’s country” from its origins until the mid-twentieth century. This was acknowledged by everyone at the time, black and white, oppressed and privileged, aside from small groups of fringe radicals whose ideas eventually entered the mainstream in the 1930s.
This new essay by Professor Sunic is à propos — he talks about Jewish influence and power that make whites afraid to talk about Jewish influence and power:
http://www.theoccidentalobserver.net/authors/Sunic-Anti-Semite.html
You aren’t a white nationalist unless you listen to screwdriver, tatoo a swastika and dress up in kkk uniforms and post on stormfront, whine about jews and have a tunnel vision where you see the whole world in “european” and “non-european.”
I don’t like this guy describing anti-immgration as “wn.” As a racial realist and immigration restrictionist, I am careful to keep my distance.
Lots of Tom Sunic videos on Google Video:
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-4346332364943395038
Iceman,
Sorry, but as an outsider to the movement, you are hardly qualified to dictate who is and who is not a white nationalist.
Iceman, let’s face it, Whites would be better off without the Jews. What? The Jews are invincible? Their power will last forever? LOL!
As for the screwdriver comment, I listen to nazi music for entertainment purposes the same way one might listen to gangster rap. But I pretend I don’t.
haha.
I gave you a bit of a tribute over at Original Dissent:
http://www.originaldissent.com/forums/showthread.php?t=10919
There was a huge shift in American public opinion towards the Jews between D-Day and 1948. Wyman cites the specific poll in the footnotes to his book.
As I said about some of your ideas: A pearl is a pearl still, though it should hang in the Ethiopian’s ear.
Here is my definitive post on the subject (why did whites change their racial views?) I have always blamed a number of factors and don’t subscribe to the single cause theory.
http://www.occidentaldissent.com/2008/11/12/response-to-gottfried/
Yes, it is me.
I am lecturing now in Europe right now and won’t be able to read Zeskind’s book for a while. Hopefully, you will follow up with solid review and critique.
It will be interesting for me to read the book, as I am sure he still holds a well-earned grudge against me as I intellectually eviscerated him in a media appearance a few years ago. He couldn’t have forgotten it. I am not being immodest, just brutally accurate.
I read a positive review of his book in Slate. The reviewer was himself obviously one of the Chosen, one of the “chosen” who are supposed to tell us how to think about subject that affects our cognizance of and our relationship with the chosen.
Recently, I have placed My Awakening on my site free in an audio format, I hope your readers take advantage of it. In recording my book in this subject area I noted how almost all the books on “anti-Semtism” are written by “Semites.” It is analogous to having almost all books written about anti-Communists by Communists. Not an efficient way to come by the truth.
Look forward to reading a more thorough review of Zeskind’s latest book, I’d like to post it on my website too, and bring more readers to this new blog endeavor which I find very well written and interesting.
Thanks for your efforts,
Best of luck,
David Duke
PS please email me and let me know if and when the review is written!
I’m about half way through it at the moment. Zeskind has much to say about you. So far he seems to be much more focused on Willis Carto and William Pierce. In his account, Carto and Pierce are the godfathers of two tendencies in the WN movement: “mainstreamers” and “vanguardists.”
The book is history of the racialist movement from the 1970s to the early 2000s. It is not really an indictment like I expected it to be. I’m not familar with most of the figures described in the book who were well before my time. He spends a lot of time on Christian Identity, Ruby Ridge, and the militia movement.
Focusing on Carto and Pierce is a logical direction for such a work to take. There is an additional work about about Carto titled: “Willis Carto and the American Far Right” by George Michael that would probably also be a worth-while read. (I have only read parts of it at the library myself)
Another recent book on racialism you should check out is one which was released earlier this year…it’s about the work and life of racialist/environmentalist//zoologist/lawyer/eugenicist/writer Madison Grant; even though the book has a clear liberal/anti-racialist bias, it is one of the most comprehensive books yet about Grant and contains a lot of good information. It’s called DEFENDING THE MASTER RACE: CONSERVATION, EUGENICS, AND THE LEGACY OF MADISON GRANT (by J. P. Spiro, Univ. of Vermont Press, 2009) – http://www.amazon.com/Defending-Master-Race-Conservation-Eugenics/dp/1584657154
For a pretty good review of the book, see: http://hbdbooks.com/?p=76