Witch Hunts (part II): Blacks, Jews and "Racists"

In the first installment of this series (part I), I talked about a rather outlandish and rare witch hunt and its corresponding group of maleficiaries (as opposed to beneficiaries), or alleged conspirators (or sometimes alleged lone actors), child molesters. It's not like people who are accused of child molestation (and might even be child molesters) have it easy. Their lives can be ended or ruined, but it happens relatively rarely. In contrast, the maleficiaries that this essay describes have been historically much more commonly scapegoated, and like accused child molesters, the consequences can be dire for them.

I'm thinking of Jews and Blacks. We'll start with Blacks, because at least on the surface of the Zeitgeist, their scapegoating seems much more relevant, but we'll see that the shadow of Jews lurks right underneath our collective subconscious.

Before we go on, I must state that I am a cultural (but not religious) Jew, and have no ill (and mostly good) will towards anyone, or any group, including Jews, Blacks, liberals, conservatives, alt-right, alt-left, etc.  (but I hope that the alt right people don't stop reading here as a result of this confession and virtue signaling). I also have much respect for (but not much knowledge of) native african Black cultures (all native cultures, actually), as well as the incredibly resilient Black culture that grew out of white american enslavement of african Blacks. This caveat is necessary to avert the inevitable accusations of being a third type of current scapegoat and Jungian shadow projection, whenever one deviates from the culturally accepted narrative of race, the "racist". Even if one does not deviate, mere accusations of "racist" can be used strategically to blacklist (no pun intended, but the word hearkens back to when Blacks were the equivalent of the current "racists") someone or demolish their reputation, something in common also with the "molester" category of scapegoat. Unlike many people today, I don't care if I am blacklisted due to this essay, because I hope to soon be independent of the mainstream system of economic enslavement that makes people afraid to speak their minds. It is more complicated when it comes to my reputation. My friends, who know my heart, will not be fooled by any sort of accusations against me. But I do hope to reach others who do not know me with these ideas, and so I do want to protect my reputation, as much as is possible under the circumstances, from accusations of racism, which might limit the extent of the reach of these ideas Probably in vain, alas, because Jungian Shadows can't be reasoned with. Like the greek Cassandra, I have warned about these shadows in this blog for a while, that one can't deal with them on the rational plane, but that deep psychological work is required in order to integrate them and avoid a positive feedback where one person triggers the shadow in another, and where a mob amplifies all its individuals' shadows. So I realize that the only people who will be able to read this will be ones who have done some inner shadow work.

Also, before we talk about Jews and Blacks, I'd like to talk more about calling out "racists" as defined by cancel culture. I haven't studied it much, but it seems like Stalinism, Maoism, or shunning in anabaptist communities (like Amish, some Mennonites, Hutterites, or Bruderhof) had similar mechanisms, though instead of "racist", they had "capitalist, regressive, bourgeois, class enemy, counterrevolutionary,  English", etc. Perhaps similar also to the reign of terror of the french revolution. Someone is accused of being evil/other, they have to make a public confession, if they don't, the pressure increases (whether by threats on life, livelihood or reputation) and then they are punished in some way, either shunned, sent out to the gulag, imprisoned, tortured or killed. The anabaptists are able to forgive,  less so with the Stalinists or Maoists. Not so sure about the SJWs, are they able to forgive? Also, the SJWs so far have only tried to get people fired or blacklisted, or tarnish people's reputation in some way, not imprisoned or killed (though the mob that went around with baseball bats looking for Heather Heying and Bret Weinstein might have had homicidal intent, and the killer of Marc Angelucci is still on the loose and may have been an SJW). See the caveat at the bottom of this essay.

Many times those making the accusations have righteous anger, which I do not want to dismiss. However the system of giving an immediate benefit to accusers (of racism, sexism, rape, molestation, whatever the lucrative witch du jour is), without a proportional cost, is a system that is unstable to a productive, sustainable and collaborative group structure, instead being taken over by what game theorists like Elinor Ostrom call free riding. Tragedies of various sort ensue: ecological tragedies such as the Tragedy of The Commons and Global Warming, Sociological Tragedies such as Reigns of Terror and Gulags, and economic tragedies such as externalization of costs.

Interestingly, the mechanisms operating in more right wing environments seem to be different, for example in Nazi Germany, ante-bellum south or McCarthyist US. There, it is very clear who belongs to the evil group (Jews, Blacks and Communists in the 3 examples above), whereas in these left wing environments this needs to be sorted out. I think this might be because leftists have more trouble with boundaries than rightists (according to Jonathan Haidt's empirical research), so establishing the boundaries is more messy, and anyone is suspect of not belonging, though everyone is in principle welcome if they just do the right ritual (which usually involves adopting a religion or an ideology and confessing one's sins). Eventually clear self-from-other recognition mechanisms do evolve (perhaps the whole attempt to label all white people as evilly-evil "other" is an example of evolving boundary simplification and self-from other recognition). There are probably analogue mechanisms operating in biological systems with evolution of immune systems. It is also possible that some of the white liberal people who are using "racist" callouts as a strategy are seeking to uphold the status quo and maintain power. This was discussed here https://archdruidmirror.blogspot.com/2017/06/american-narratives-rescue-game.html

The other hypothesis I have is that the leftist movements, being initially much more inclusive, compassionate and egalitarian than the rightist ones, are more prone to be taken over by free riders in the form of dictators, unless (like the anabaptists) they develop some form of punishment or withholding of rewards, and the calling out is an evolution towards effective methods of punishment.

So we have, going back to native people in Africa, tribes who are nomadic or semi-nomadic. As with most such tribes (not only in Africa), there is a strong bond to the rest of the tribe and the nature around. Life is to be enjoyed in the present, or near future, not the far future at the expense of the present. A big part of the enjoyment comes from relationship with others in the tribe, and with the natural world. This cultural connection to land and tribe of Blacks is mostly severed (by the actions of real racists, not by people whom one might merely dislike and snarl at with the use of the word "racist") upon arrival as slaves in the New World, and into a culture which values the far future (even past physical death into a life of a future in heaven in its theology). The severing of connection to land and tribe is not completed in the rural ante-bellum south, but progresses even more upon immigration to cities and even more as the unifying enemy of the white plantation culture is removed, and many of the men being incarcerated with the remaining men (due to decreased competition for mates) now having incentive to "play the field" instead of commiting to a family (I'm not a fan of monogamous marriage, but I do see it as a stabilizing social force in the kind of culture we find ourselves in the west. Most tribal cultures, including african ones, are not monogamous) . What is left from the vibrant culture of tribe and land, is a present-discounting religion and the pale ghost of a nuclear family, to share food, music, worship, love and conversation with (but no longer work), things that were previously shared with the whole tribe or community. And then, even that last social glue and source of pleasure in the present and near future is weakened by drugs (a source of pleasure in the present, but also of pain in the future, naturally appealing to tribal propensities for present enjoyment) and insufficient availability of good work for most Black men, because that good work, which is limited in present system, mostly goes to white men, who for systemic historical reasons (having nothing to do with genetic racial traits, but do sometimes have a connection to the cultural differences mentioned above, or systemic discrimination like less investment in Black schools) are sometimes more qualified for it (as in most blacks may not be as good at ruthless capitalism, because they care too much about other people, unless they're gangsters), and sometimes not, with the Black men personally (not systemically) discriminated against by white racists. By "good work", I mean work which does not separate a man from his family, allows for self-respect, the expression of natural masculine gifts (such as upper body strength, strategizing, and spatio-temporal skills), and the appreciation of those gifts by family and direct beneficiaries of that work (not only through monetary compensation).

Discrimination against Black women also happens, but is less deadly (as in affecting life and livelihood), and limited to symbolic acts like not being allowed a seat at a restaurant or bus. Racist laws gradually change towards less discrimination, and greater opportunity for Blacks is aided by affirmative action laws. Some Blacks adapt to white culture and get out of poverty.

For sure, systemic and personal racism contributed to this situation (as described in previous paragraph) and still has echoes into the present. But to continue this situation, it is not necessary for white individuals who have anything to do with poor Black people to possess any sort of personal racism against Black people; or for any white person to be more "racist" than a baseline of xenophobia common to Homo Sapiens, that has evolved for thousands of years from living in tribes and coming up against other tribes who saw or did things differently and sometimes threatened or killed our ancestors. It is only necessary for the external economic system and internal poor Black culture that depends on it for survival to continue as before. To ease the pain of poor Black people, liberals tend to want to change the external economic system to a more socialist one, whereas conservatives want to change the poor Black culture (by, e.g. strengthening the family through positive economic myths of bootstrapping and opportunity, and Christian ideology). When liberals see Black people rebelling, their inclination is to feel guilty and afraid, and alleviate those feelings with self-confessions of imagined personal sins and ill-understood subconscious motives. They have a model based on altar calls in protestant churches, or confessions with catholic priests. Whereas conservatives are afraid and get ready to defend themselves. And the SJWs want to back them up against the wall further, ironically creating the very white supremacy they initially were afraid of (See https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S1sJgjG5AF4 for a brief video analysis of this).

That is not the only conservative response to Black rebellion, and the dissatisfaction with life they might feel as their culture, like Black tribal culture, also disintegrates with the relentless onslaught of modernity and the depletion of natural resources that previously helped create abundance. The alt-right also start theorizing about how the frustrated and sometimes violent Blacks might be foot soldiers for some nefarious conspiracy, of.... You guessed it, history's favorite scapegoat, The Dreaded Ashke-nazi Jew (sic, you can't make this s**t up) Cabal of Financiers/Bankers, working to promote the dreaded New World Order, with the help of big (aka "socialist") government, Academia, Feminists, Liberals, the United Nations and Big Liberal Corporations like Google and Facebook. Yes, folks, "They" are coming to take away our freedom, houses, land and livelihoods. I worry that the "a few bad jewish apples in the financial world" meme, might mutate into "kill all the Jews", as it has a few times in the history of western civilization, but my conservative friends assure me it isn't so, or at least I will be spared, especially if I stay away from finance (or any kind of abstract mental activity), keep to agriculture and give them good deals on meat (just kidding about the latter).

Before you liberals shrug off this alt-right way of thinking, consider that the alt-right is not totally crazy, and actually have some intellectuals in their midst. There IS an over-representation of Jews in finance/banking, science, liberals, high managerial posts of big corporations. A taboo subject in today's cultural climate, but one which I want to dig up, shine light on, and integrate into our consciousness, in the Jungian tradition, with the hopes of also unifying the right and left parts of our body politic.

The western Jews (ashkenazi, and the sephardics who did not migrate to the muslim world), like the american Blacks, also have a unique cultural story. After being expelled from Israel about 2000 years ago, some were able to find a niche making a living during the middle ages by lending money, which was a forbidden occupation for Christians at the time. They also were frequently ousted and were not able to bring many belongings with them, so money and jewelry were convenient for a high value to weight ratio. Not allowed to own land and sometimes not allowed to join craft guilds, they instead developed more intellectual occupations, lived more often in cities and developed a more cosmopolitan outlook, whose natural outcome is towards a globalist outlook, whereas Jews that have become settled on land (e.g. in Israel and in Brooklyn;-)) tend to become more parochial and sometimes more conservative as well, and the "best" Jews are the one who experienced both worlds, since then they can empathize with both conservatives and liberals and be peacemakers and unifiers. Women were unusually (for the times) respected and valued not just as breeders or family peacemakers, but also for their intellectual gifts. And the Jews had, even before the diaspora, a culture which valued scholarship and intellectual debate (more accurately, collaborative dialectic conversation) as a way to hone the intellect and improve the search for truth, a precursor to the scientific method (which also includes observation and experimentation). There need not be genetic components to this constant intellectual improvement; cultural mechanisms of variation, heredity and selection may suffice. There might be genetic components to "Yidishe Kopf" as well (though I am not aware of evidence for a genetic component to intelligence), which would benefit from inter-breeding and having the smartest men (rabbis) bred to the most fertile women (as well as strong community support for the rabbi's family), both cultural practices in Jewish culture. IQ tests do not establish anything about genetics, and cultural mechanisms (and sometimes biases in how the questions are phrased, or what kinds of questions are picked) are sufficient to explain variation among cultures, but I wanted to include the possibility that there are genetic factors operating as well, hopefully without upsetting liberals. So we see that all these conversationally taboo aspects of Jewish culture have mundane explanations and that allowing for variation among cultures is not racist at all.

Besides the polarizing and potentially violence-inducing aspects of the 3 witch hunts discussed here, the problem with witch hunts in general is that they distract from solving real problems, instead giving a momentary relief. The real problems I see with our culture are the following (7 deadly sins):
Economic:
1. Depletion of cheap petroleum (inability of renewables to power industrial levels of consumption)
2. Overpopulation (too many individual and social resources going towards competition over scarce natural resources)
Social
3. Too much inequality, which has been shown to lead to social strife and instability, and to psychological stress in certain primate species such as H sapiens. You might still think this is at its root caused by Blacks, Jews or racists, but this essay is a first step to refuting that belief.
4. Not enough community to commune with, and to provide meaning to one's work
5. An educational system that does not promote deep historical learning, so as to enable avoiding repeating mistakes of the past
Ecological
6. feedbacks for human actions are too long and too slow, allowing for externalization to others, or others and oneself in distant future. Global warming is an example. Would be better to have local feedbacks because they affect the people causing the disturbances in a fast and direct way, allowing for correction.
Psychological
7. Unprocessed trauma (ideologies that promote a lack of personal responsibility to process it, and unavailability of local community to help individuals process it through grief rituals), leading to Jungian shadows and their projection unto mutually created and imagined enemies

Given all this, I would hope that SJWs would stop focusing on racism and consider other sources for their own problems and those of poor Blacks, that poor Blacks would think about other options besides turning the tables of wealth and privilege within the current economic system (as in creating alternative systems to become independent of current system, including learning from their ancestral tribal cultures), and that alt-right people would stop fearing Blacks and the alleged cabal of Jews, and instead focus on recreating some of their heritage village cultures. I would also hope that more Jews would learn more about how globalization has hurt many people and whether its disadvantages might outweigh its advantages, or perhaps think about how to address the disadvantages while keeping at least some of the advantages.

A supporting video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pHGt733yw3g

Caveat: I am using the terms SJW and cancel culture in a non-derogatory way here, contrary to the common usage. I do not condone demonizing/zombifying these human beings (that would be hypocritical, since the whole series of posts argues against witch hunts), though I think they are currently hurtful and destructive, ignorant of world history, and seem ideologically possessed, without offering a constructive, practical alternative. They over-simplify a complex external, multi-causal situation by finding one cause, systemic racism (or white privilege, patriarchy, colonialism, etc), for the present problems of poor black people (or our civilization in general), that is easy to rally around, and one common enemy, personal racists (or white supremacists, men, Europeans, etc). So much easier than trying to understand the complexity of the situation and then from that understanding to do something to actually change the lives of poor black people (or all of us) for the better. Or to understand their own internal shadows that they project onto the "racists" (and the other "enemies") . Still, I think a human to human conversation with them is possible if they are separated from the mob.