Gilad Atzmon
Introduction by GA: In this interview, Aedon Cassiel (Counter-Currents) focuses on the most problematic and controversial aspects in my work. We spoke about Jewish power in the context of race, biology, genes and eugenics. We delved into Jewish survival strategies, controlled opposition, the identitarian dystopia and nationalist nostalgia. We also looked at The Bell Curve and cognitive partitioning. Cassiel didn't cut me slack. He criticized my work form right wing vintage. I must admit that I had a lot of fun with his questions. In your work, who do you consider yourself to be speaking to? If you don't have a specific audience in mind, then my question is: if only one group of people could hear your message, who would you choose, and what would you have them do about it?This is important to me. I do not intend to speak to people of any specific persuasion. I am not an activist and have zero interest in political involvement. I am engaged in an intellectual search. Jews fascinate me - their troubled history, their survival strategies, their overrepresentation in media, politics, banking, the Manhattan Project, the list of the
one hundred worst landlords in New York City, academia, and their dominance in political lobbying. I am trying to identify the cultural roots at the core of all that. In short, I am interested in the metaphysics that forms the Jew rather than the Jew himself. I am after culture and ideology.
The final third of Being in Time focuses on the idea of "controlled opposition" - specifically, on the idea that Jews tend to both lead and manage criticism of Jews, even of criticism promulgated by other Jews, which has the effect of pushing non-Jews out of the sphere of the debate. Are your efforts another form of attempting to create a controlled opposition? Why or why not?Thanks for raising this crucial point. If Jewish survival strategy is as sophisticated as I try to suggest, then you and others must take extra caution with Jewish ideologists and ideologies. And yes, I suppose this applies to me, too. My work must be subject to criticism, including the criticism the book itself applies, and hopefully it will stand the test of reflexivity.
What do you mean when you say that Jews "are certainly not a race, nor even an ethnicity"? What do you understand these two terms to mean? Is it that Jews consist of too many different unrelated groups to be fairly considered as a single collective, or do you mean to suggest that race and ethnicity are meaningless categories in general?Despite the fact that many Jews insist that they belong to one race and share one father, it is more likely that Jews have not formed a single continuum as far as ancestry, genetics, or biology are concerned. However, it is clear to me that despite the fact that Jews do not form a racial continuum, their politics are always, and I really mean always, racially oriented.
You ask whether I believe that race and ethnicity are meaningless categories in general? Not at all. However, I am not an evolutionary scientist or an anthropologist, and the study of race or ethnicity isn't my domain. I dig into some philosophical questions having to do with Jewish identification.
You discuss at length the sociological implications of extensive cognitive partitioning in Jewish society over time, and as a historical cause of this phenomena you talk about the practice of selective breeding in Jewish rabbinical culture. In fact, this is one of the key points to which your work repeatedly comes back. Yet, you seem to want to shy away from claiming that genetic influences are part of the explanation behind why these patterns persist. How could the cognitive partitioning in Jewish society involve genealogy without involving genes? It seems odd to specifically identify breeding patterns as being responsible for this development, and yet - as you seem to - deny that heredity is the method of transmission. What, then, do you think is the mechanism behind this phenomena's historical persistence?I have no doubt, as I state in
Being in Time, that the European Jewish rabbinical meritocratic system can be understood as a eugenic project. I would be delighted to find out that an evolutionary scientist has decided to look into my theoretical model and produce a scientific study that would verify or refute my theoretical assumptions. Kevin MacDonald has produced the most important work on this topic to date, and the gross animosity he is subject to suggests that he is an Athenian truth-teller - a critical philosophical mind.
You prefer to talk about "ability" as a general term rather than using IQ as a specific instance or measurement of ability. What theories do you have about what is at the core of the superior average "ability" of Jews?In my work I do not provide facts or statistics. I am raising issues and you, the reader, my listener, are the facts. I produce an interpretation or analysis of a given situation, a set of problems in our current reality, and it is down to you to examine it, play with the ideas, and eventually make a judgment.
I am troubled by IQ measurement without regard to scientific debate over how to measure IQ. "Ability" can be judged by a person's achievements or merits. John Coltrane achieved more than any other saxophonist. I do not need to see his IQ results. Would Donald Trump score a higher result than Hillary Clinton on an IQ test? I doubt it somehow. Yet he was certainly more "able" to win the election. The reason I refer to ability is because for me, the crucial insight made by Richard Herrnstein and
The Bell Curve was that they discerned that America was heading towards a cognitive partitioning. Herrnstein was an academic genius with significant ability.
The Bell Curve could have saved the American people, but the book was effectually burned by the favorite "Left" icons: people like Noam Chomsky, academic fraudster Stephen J. Gould, and others. I allow myself to argue that Gould, Chomsky, and those others who trashed
The Bell Curve bear direct responsibility for the dystopia in which we live. For me, the issues of the validity of IQ measurement and comparisons between races were side matters.
The Bell Curve's prophetic warnings about cognitive partitioning addressed a topic that has become the core of the oppressive reality in which we live.
Would you say that it's rational for Jews of higher "ability" to want to keep their society focused towards increased cognitive partitioning?I find it hard to verify whether it is the result of any conscious decision. What I argue in
Being in Time is slightly different. I contend that since America and the West have evolved into cognitively divided environments, and since (Ashkenazi) Jews are accustomed to these conditions, it is hardly surprising that the Jewish Ashkenazi elite is prominent.
In the book, you frequently express a wish to see a return to manufacturing. I agree that this has to be a part of the picture, but presumably you wouldn't advocate sending academics out to work in factories and fields, for example. So in your view, what precisely would the full dissolution of cognitive partitioning entail, in practical terms? What would we have to do, and how long would it take, and what would the main difficulties be?I believe that the structure of society will change radically. I do not think that society needs millions of unemployed Gender Studies graduates. For society to be functional, production and agriculture must be reinstated. Higher education must be free for those who are qualified. A functional society must decide what are its primary needs, e.g., how many new doctors are needed, how many engineers, philosophers, feminist scholars, or saxophonists? Academia should be set to provide this education for free and at the highest possible level. This would mean planning. This also suggests that academia wouldn't continue to operate as a self-serving industry. And yes, if industry, manufacturing, and production are starting to roll, we may find some very intelligent people involved. I do not see this as a negative development. Quite the opposite; society will once again be diverse for real. Isn't that what the progressives have been promising us for decades?
How extensive do you think the historical influence of identity politics would have been in an American society that never invited Jews in?Good question, but unfortunately I have no answer. However, I would mention that identity politics operates as a cosmopolitan, revolutionary ideology. In other words, you do not need to be present in a place to spread the ideology.
Would American society have freed the slaves, or given women the vote as quickly, without the influence of Jews? Would feminism have become as radical and divisive?We have to be careful here. We have to differentiate between political acts that unite us as humans and those which break us up into tribes. The abolition of slavery was an American political project that was partially motivated by ethical reasoning. The same applies to women's rights. However, radical feminism and lesbian separatism are as separatist as Jewish identity politics (Zionism as well as "anti"). They are biologically-oriented identitarian thoughts that are set to maintain a fragmented, sectarian social environment.
Without identity politics, would black-white relations hold as much tension as they do today? And if Jews both helped press the legitimate form of early identity politics to achieve their aims faster, and held on by the skin of their teeth as identity politics outlived its purpose and became toxic, how can we even begin to analyze the net impact of these two diverging phenomena?I guess that this is exactly what I attempt to do in
Being in Time: I try to dissect the corrosive factors that broke us into sectors.
Your analysis seems to be that Jews have been a leading force in promoting identity politics as a conscious or subconscious means to divide and fracture society in order to normalize the sense of homelessness throughout society that they feel, to ensure that no one else is allowed to have any stronger sense of "belonging" than they do. If the root behind the effort to promote this kind of division is the Jewish sense of homelessness, then why isn't giving Jews a home - to take away that underlying feeling of homelessness - not a viable answer to the situation?I actually believe that allocating a national homeland for the Jews was a great idea. I argue that early Zionism was a consistent and coherent movement that was highly effective in its ability to diagnose the Jewish problem and cultural symptoms. Yet, the failure of Zionism suggests that planet Earth may not be a suitable place for such a homeland. Zionism has proven that, despite its initial promise to turn the Jews into "people like all other people," the Israelis didn't manage to develop an empathic notion of otherness. Their treatment of the Palestinians proves this point beyond doubt. Israel also fails to love its neighbors. In fact, along with its dedicated Jewish lobbies (AIPAC, CRIFF, CFI, etc.), it relentlessly pushes for global conflicts (Iraq, Libya, Syria, Iran, etc.). Let me make it as clear as I can, though I am accused by some Zionists of reopening the "Jewish question": I fully acknowledge that I do not have a solution for the problems above, nor am I going to try to solve these problems.
Let's talk about how intentional you think these Jewish tendencies towards fomenting division are. For instance, Tim Wise is an anti-racist activist who travels around lecturing about giving up white privilege, and challenging everyone else to give up their privileges as he has given up his own. Wise never openly identifies as a Jew, and he speaks about himself as if he were of white European origins. Is it meaningful to talk about someone like Tim Wise, who is of Jewish descent but identifies himself neither religiously nor politically as a Jew or as Jewish?In
The Wandering Who?, I restricted my analysis to those who identify themselves primarily as Jews. This was a relatively easy task, and it helped to clarify that the Zionist and the so-called "anti" are one. In
Being in Time, I extended my scope. I am, once again, talking about the Athens/Jerusalem dichotomy. Jerusalemites always know what is kosher and who is
treif (basket of deplorables). Progressives behave as a bunch of Jerusalemites who subscribe to secular chosenism. They attribute to themselves a special sense of superiority and at the same time look down on the so-called "reactionary." Tim Wise and other prog-preachers should self-reflect. He should ask himself why he thinks in racial categories. He should wonder why he subscribes to binary thinking that resembles the Jew/Goy, Kosher/
Treif. Can he love his "white" neighbor? While Jerusalem is a form of obedience, Athens is a task, it is a hard job. It involves constant dynamic conceptual shifting intellectually, mentally, spiritually, and ethically.
Do you think someone like Tim Wise is either consciously aware of, or consciously intending, to create the divisive outcomes caused by his style of identity politics? To what extent is any of this conscious?I really do not know. My role as a philosopher is to refine the questions rather than dictating answers. I certainly believe that these are the kind of questions that Wise should ask himself and that others are entitled to ask of him. In fact, these are the kind of questions each of us ought to ponder.
This question isn't as focused inside your main line of argument as my others are, but it crossed my mind as I was reading. Is there any reason why Jewish influence over divisive forms of feminism, for example, would be as significant as it was, and yet Jews have not - or to my knowledge, they haven't yet - co-opted the so-called men's rights movement, or men's rights activism? Why would involvement in feminism serve Jewish interests, but not involvement in MRA ideologies?Great question. Otto Weininger insisted that the Jewish man was actually a woman. Maybe this is the answer to your question. Maybe the reason I decided to stop being a Jew was because I didn't want to be a woman. I probably have to look into that for a while.
Initially the only 'thing' there is to reject is truth - as the positing and position of a partiality in self-specialness - calling on the nature of its own image to support and enable it to prevail, or even persist (survive).
The division or splitting off - and splitting of mind, is the idea of taking off with one's living inheritance - as if your father was dead - or dead to who you now define and assert yourself to be. Though mythically expressed, this is the idea of killing the father to raise a false son or the lie and the father of the lie. The false son (what we take to be our self or mind and its world) is like in kind to its father, as the same segregative denial of its source in self-assertive co-option of its own mythic or narrative identity.
The substitution for Source with the lens (mind) in imaged symbol and derivative concepts entrances such a focus of attention and intention to a sense of freedom in self-specialness that embodies the ideas of the 'chosen' or the 'elect' - and sets a framing narrative for the sense of being rejected, persecuted and denied - as the source of (self) righteous rage as a presumed and largely unconscious identity that manifests as hatred of others, of life and nature (born existence) except in terms of domination fantasy over it or in the sense of 'special' persecution under it - for hatred and power are fused as the idea of 'righteousness'. A jealous and angry god (self-idea) of exclusivism in survival and control - in place of edgeless and flowing or unfoldment and effulgence of being.
All of the above can also be expressed in terms of identity fruiting from relational awareness that is embodied in the phrase "Behold it is Good (of God), or asserted identity as a wish to be the determiner of the good - that by definition generates the shadow of the rejected that becomes the basis for the experience of evil. In seeking to edit, bias or usurp our own Cause, (Father), we blind (mask off) with self-specialness - and its implicit ruling OUT love's recognition as the politic of divide and rule OVER. The carrot of self-specialness in gratifiction, drives the stick of pain. loss and guilt, that becomes the carrot of mitigated pain as a higher place in the 'food chain' of predation upon life as the hidden reality belief. But if you read with discernment, you will see it is a choice that generates its own 'reality experience' of distortion, limitation and reversal - and no more true than your sacrifice of true being to it - for the carrot of subsuming consciousness to the stick of an anti-life fantasy from which no escape or 'rival' seems possible. For all opposition or resistance only feeds it - and therefore the developing of new polarities of fragmented and conflicting identity are the taring up of its harvest.
All are called but few choose to listen, is the nature of truth within the exploration of mind-choice in place of creative freedom. The growing and structuring of a world of abilities is not set by the purpose that generated them, but by the purpose and use to which you give them and accept true for you. To 'resist not evil' is to choose not to feed it - or the hidden lie of which it operates as the perfect diversion from recognizing upstream to our otherwise directed thinking.
No one can change a choice they are unaware of making or actively disowning by projecting to the mind and intention of the Other. Nor will they while they believe it is their survival under threat to NOT open to question or look within.
The term 'goyim' may have derived from 'golem' - for the fragmented and reactive conditioning of that which is denied light and kept in darkness - within a template or script of narrative compulsion is the use of the Other that is kept 'other' by its 'attack' on the very right to existence of self-specialness as Power. So it accuses in the Other - what it does, to then justify hate as righteous vengeance - and there is the signature of a personal sense of possession - vengeance.
To get from the Other (Life othered) is not receiving but taking and elicits the expectation of being taken back or taken from. And the belief one is diminished by such reflection in another is the drive to get even AND to to do by reversing the roles.
The drive for vengeance of a self-specialness has no receptivity to the richness and depth of the uniqueness of every moment - and all within it - which is recognisable as the signature of true being. No one need do anything to become uniquely themselves - but we each and together are the gift of the opportunity to unfold and explore all that we are in context of the same movement of being in all. That we are entangled in the fear-beliefs of who and what we are NOT is part of that movement - and not the true cause or purpose of our felt will.
A surrogate 'will' is a protector-mind that separates and limits to defend against re-living trauma.
If you sense any of what I write - will it be for the release of what does not and can not truly fulfil you to align in a prior and true intimacy of being? Or to gather more 'intelligence' for better masking disguise to leverage with better ammunition of deceit, so as to isolate in fantasy perfection, un-defiled (unmoved) by anything living and thus revealed at its starting point - unchanged - and unable to move without true cause?
The illusion of control is the passing gratification of a 'hit' at expense of wholeness. Power for its own sake corners the market on the 'right' to self-gratify, 'above the laws imposed on others'. Becoming the thing we hate is the law of love operating in the semblance of reversal. For what we give energy and attention to, we feed, grow, strengthen and share in ourselves - what is extended to others as the invitation in like kind. Once you know you are being deceived, it is an awakened responsibility to be vigilant against deceit - and this is in-sight or looking within. But even here the deceiver can feed self-specialness with truths framed falsely. Discernment is not a mental process - but a direct recognition. Releasing investment in mental process as the driver or determiner of truth, self or good, opens the space of discernment as a true willingness. True power is hidden or masked in 'evil' for fear it makes us nothing, but it is fear that 'nothings' (limits, divides and denies) a true feeling awareness of being.
We have an appointment with all we deny in ourself - for nothing can be eradicated or excommunicated but then drives from within - as shadow power - of unconscious denials seeking acceptance, recognition and re-integration. War on symptoms as external causes is the wish to place cause outside self and kill, control or replace it - so as to persist in an out-of-true dissonance and 'get away with it' some more by evasion and displacement of consequence. Until the reversal itself is recognized and instantly corrected. There is no process to recognizing true - but there is a process over time of reintegrating all that was falsely framed to its true cause and nature. For Life (God) is not coercive upon but unconditionally embracing of all that lives - as recognizably Good. How this could be so is an endless diversion, but "it takes one to know one' applies equally to rejecting hate as to love or abiding with. I cannot 'pluck out' the hatred in another - but I can refuse to feed it by recognizing and releasing such resonance in myself that self-honesty allows to be seen.
Or persist in unconscious bot-net of golem addiction to false narrative defended by outrage and refusal to open or listen to anything but my own thoughts planted in others.