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David Brooks: The Great War for National Identity
I found myself smirking while reading this dreck:
“This historical story was America’s true myth. When we are children, and also when we are adults, we learn our deepest truths through myth.
Myths don’t make a point or propose an argument. They inhabit us deeply and explain to us who we are. They capture how our own lives are connected to the universal sacred realities. In myth, the physical stuff in front of us is also a manifestation of something eternal, and our lives are seen in the context of some illimitable horizon. …
And so along come men like Donald Trump and Stephen Bannon with a countermyth. Their myth is an alien myth, frankly a Russian myth. …
We are in the midst of a great war of national identity. We thought we were in an ideological battle against radical Islam, but we are really fighting the national myths spread by Trump, Bannon, Putin, Le Pen and Farage. …”
Here’s the truth: millions of Jews came to the United States during the Great Wave. Much of the early 20th century is the story of how these Jews rose from working class occupations into the American middle class before ascending into the highest levels of the American elite.
By the mid-20th century, America’s traditional Anglo-Protestant elite was being replaced by a more cosmopolitan New York-based Jewish elite. This new elite wasn’t and never has been exclusively Jewish (it included, for example, Catholics like the Kennedys), but was predominantly so, enough for Jewish intellectuals to have a major impact on American culture.
Around the mid-20th century, Jewish intellectuals began to change American culture and rewrite American national identity. They introduced new concepts like “racism” and new taboos like “anti-Semitism.” They concocted the myth that America was “a nation of immigrants.” Previously, Americans had no clue that there even such a thing as “racism,” or that “anti-Semitism” was immoral, or that “we are all immigrants.” As Jews became more concentrated in culturally sensitive institutions (i.e., the elite news media, top universities, the entertainment media), they introduced an entirely new moral code.
The Statue of Liberty is one my favorite examples:
“The Statue of Liberty myth provides a good case study of the shift to a post-WASP, consensus-liberal version of America. In current parlance, the Statue of Liberty is viewed as a symbol of the openness of America to immigration, and the plaque at its base by Emma Lazarus, which urges other nations to “Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses,” is believed to be organically connected to the statue and its liberal-universalist narrative. Unfortunately, reality is not so simple. Lazarus’s poem was not present when the statue was inaugurated in October 1886. Nor did President Grover Cleveland make any mention of the statue’s significance for immigrants in his acceptance speech.
Some Americans, especially Protestant clergymen, greeted the gift of the statue cautiously. In addition, the statue was often viewed less as a beacon for immigrants than as a guardian of American purity. As for Emma Lazarus’s oft-quoted poem, it was first erected on the interior wall of the immense statue in 1903 owing to the financial contribution of one Georgina Schuyler. Schuyler had donated the bronze plaque in memory of Lazarus, an obscure poet of Jewish ancestry whose work she admired. Not until the 1930s did the contemporary myth of a statute to immigrants arise – exactly the period in which the cosmopolitan ideas of America’s organic intellectuals were starting to win wider elite acceptance. In turn, this attitude change prompted officials to relocate Lazarus’s obscure poem to its current position at the base of the statue. …”
You can read all about this and much more in Eric P. Kaufmann’s excellent book The Rise and Fall of Anglo-America. I highly recommend it.
The Statue of Liberty was sent to the United States as a gift from France to commemorate the American Revolution. In the 19th century, it was seen as “a guardian of American purity.” It faced Europe like a sentinel defending the United States from a perceived subversive threat.
In the hands of David Brooks’s forebears, a group known as the New York Intellectuals, the Statute of Liberty became a symbol of immigration and cosmopolitanism. It became about THEM. Indeed, America itself was redefined as a “Nation of Immigrants.” The phrase “Nation of Immigrants” was popularized by John F. Kennedy in a pamphlet he wrote for the ADL in 1958.
See, the truth is that the mid-20th century was kind of a unique epoch in American history. It was a time when the mass media (radio, film, television, publishing) was become highly concentrated in the hands of David Brooks’s ethnic group. There were only a handful of television channels in the 1950s and 1960s. Jews like David Brooks had virtual total control over what we now call The Narrative.
Not anymore! We’re having this “great war of national identity” because our New York-based Jewish elite no longer has the power to control the Narrative. The fake news Lügenpresse has steadily lost its legitimacy. Thanks to the internet, the smartphone and social media, they are losing control over everything from radio to publishing to video. I now have the capability to fire an Alt-Right cruise missile of truth from rural Alabama right back at David Brooks in New York City.
Newsweek used to be a highly influential national magazine. In 2010, it was sold by The Washington Post for $1 dollar. I find it symbolic of David Brooks’ predicament. He’s writing for The New York Times, but in the Wild West world of social media that doesn’t count for much anymore.
Note: Is it anti-Semitic? I don’t really care. Everything I said above is the truth. Feel free to read up on the subject and tell me what you think in the comments.
Source: http://www.occidentaldissent.com/2017/02/03/david-brooks-the-great-war-for-national-identity/
