A new book underlines the desperate straits of the nation qua nation.
By Jude Russo, AMERICAN CONSERVATIVE 10 May 2024
The Unprotected Class: How Anti-White Racism Is Tearing America Apart, Jeremy Carl, Regnery, 256 pages.
The latter decades of the Ottoman empire are occasionally held up as a golden age of pluralism and tolerance; in some respects, they were, particularly after the British put the kibosh on the lion’s share of the Arab slave trade. The empire’s non-Turkish, non-Muslim populations were organized into millets, or “nations,” governed by the laws particular to their religious and national groups. Armenians, Syrian Christians, Greek Orthodox, a variety of Jews, Arab Catholics—all were able to practice their religions and participate in public life with relative impunity under their own leaders, who answered to the sovereign of the sublime House of Osman, sultan of sultans, khan of khans, kalif, padishah, etc., who generally had more pressing concerns than micromanaging the affairs of the millets.
The problem was that the Ottoman state didn’t end up doing the things we expect states to do very well at all. Inefficient revenue-collection techniques and the marginalization of the Silk Road as a central trade route sent the fisc into a long period of decline. The farther-flung polities notionally under the suzerainty of the Sublime Porte did more or less whatever they wanted, including committing various violations of the rights of the millets. (The Iraqi Jewish Sassoons, the great trading dynasty of the 19th century, fled Baghdad for British India because of the depredations of the Mamluks, who were so independent as to wage occasional wars on the central government in Istanbul.) Various Western powers exploited the independence of the millets to meddle in Ottoman internal affairs under the guise of “protection.” This administrative and fiscal chaos meant that the sultan had difficulty doing things like fielding a modern army, which became a serious, even thematic weakness in the First World War.
The aftermath is well known: the last-ditch Ottoman efforts to modernize and homogenize, which featured what are characterized as the first modern genocides; and the failure of those efforts, which led to the collapse of the empire. The secularism, nationalism, and official monoculturalism of the modern Republic of Turkey, particularly the enforcement of Turkish language use irrespective of ethnic background, were ultimately a reaction to the failure of the millet system. The unified nation-state is the way we moderns have balanced the particular and the universal in human society. It hasn’t been perfect, but it has worked.
In one of the characteristic backwards steps from more sophisticated to less sophisticated political systems in the past 60 years, the Western world has moved away from nationalism and embraced milletization, particularly in the face of mass immigration. Western milletization has some peculiar twists, though. First, it is everywhere inflected through the peculiarities of American racial dynamics, even in places where those dynamics are almost unintelligible. (Why were there Black Lives Matter marches in Sweden, where there is no history of African slavery and blacks make up less than 1 percent of the population?) Second, the institutions of the nation are themselves identified with “whiteness,” which is denigrated, but those institutions are then expected to be used to dole out compensatory privileges to historically disfavored millets.
Jeremy Carl, a senior fellow at the Claremont Institute, has addressed the dangerous oddities of the American millet system in The Unprotected Class: How Anti-White Racism Is Tearing America Apart. His argument is that, thanks to the civil rights regime as codified in 1964, America has undergone milletization that is totalitarian—it affects every aspect of public life—and incomplete—as applied, it does not address protections for the declining share of the population that is identified as “white.” His remedies focus on dismantling the legal structures of affirmative action and disparate impact.
It is not a comfortable book to read, but it is important. The central contradiction in our system—treating the characteristics of the American nation, from the Constitution to the English language, as manifestations of “whiteness,” and the consequent direction of institutional power inward against the institutions themselves—threatens the very substance of our shared public life. (The traders in identity politics agree with George Lincoln Rockwell that America is a white nation—they just think that is a bad thing, and use it as cover for attacking America itself.) Carl argues that, while a future in which Americans’ primary identification as American is desirable, the slide toward such conspicuous multicultural success stories as South Africa cannot be arrested so long as whites are a disfavored class and America itself is identified with that disfavor: “As people who, for better or worse, are soon to be just another patch in the American quilt, whites need to be able to speak up unapologetically for their own rights…. If we do not correct the course we are on, I fear we are headed for the civil strife and racial violence that has characterized so many other multiracial countries over the centuries, including, in the past, our own.”
Carl is fundamentally arguing for steps toward renewed national unity, rather than for white identity politics as an end per se: “That I am criticizing the way America has sacralized diversity does not mean I hate the diverse groups of people who call themselves Americans. It means I hate the social dynamics we are creating through anti-white discrimination, unfettered immigration, and a declining focus on cultural assimilation.” This is a worthy goal, but the very problems he identifies make it doubtful that this disclaimer will save him from the usual accusations. They also make implementing solutions difficult. The traders in identity politics, even when they are in power, no longer exactly think of themselves as part of the American body politic; if enough people follow them, there won’t be an American body politic left.
“Being a nation is a baffling thing; for it is wholly subjective,” Enoch Powell, himself a strenuous opponent of the color bar and race-based disparity of legal rights and privileges, wrote, “they are a nation who think they are a nation: there is no other definition.” It may be too late for our shared subjectivity.
Jude Russo is the managing editor of The American Conservative and a contributing editor of The New York Sun.
@Adam talk to South African Jews they will confirm what I said. I met a few that had lived in Israel moved back to South Africa. Many South African Jews have relatives in Israel. Their are a lot of Zionists among them and they are a tight knit community living in either Johannesburg or Cape Town for the most part.
South Africa is a violent place with a very high crime rate. In the interior White Farmers are attacked regularly and some have their lands stolen. In the big cities it is not safe to go out after dark.
My friend (an Israeli) who got her family to move Israel to South Africa about 40 years ago because she had an Aunt who lived there and told her how wonderful it is. Now they are very established there with businesses and it is hard to leave. I corresponded with them recently and they are not planning on leaving. They did visit Israel recently and do so at least once per year.
People get comfortable and stay in-spite of the risks.
Currently there is nothing but the decision to say I am leaving and plan where to go standing in the way of Jews or anyone else migrating from South Africa.
Adam see the link it has the phone number and procedure on how to make aliyah from South Africa to Israel. Jews have been doing it for a longtime. https://israelcentre.co.za/aliyah/
My very very good friend who made aliyah from South Africa in 1990s says some people she knows are too set in their ways to leave in-spite of how violent and dangerous it is.
Here is an article about people who have been making Aliyah from South Africa in the last few years. https://www.sajr.co.za/whats-driving-sas-record-aliyah-numbers/
I still think, despite Bear Klein and Peloni’s reassuring words, that Israel needs a plan for moving as many South Africans as possible out of the country as quickly as possible. The ideas that each Jewish South African family can assure their own safety by themselves without outside help, and that the South African government does not not discriminate against Jews strikes me as unrealistic and untrue. Once the pogroms start, and inevitably they will, everyone will realize that this is a false concepzia.. We Jews still have a lot of trouble facing the fact when we are in danger from antisemites. Like the German Jews who imagined that the Nazis were only a passing fphase, or that they were only using antisemitism as a demagogic ploy in their election campaigns, and would drop it once they were securely in power. Or the view by nearly everyone in Israel that Hamas was not a seriuous threat to the state and people of Israel, but could be bought off by giving them some money from time to time. We have seen how these optimistic assumptions have worked out. We will soon find out that our optimistism about South African Jews is just as absurd.
@Adam
South Africa does charge an exit tax, but so does the US. It isn’t based on religion or race, but only on a person changing their status from a resident to non-resident. It is a form of capital gains tax, sort of a last bite at the apple by the tax man.
Regarding the emigration of Jews out of South Africa, John Beshe wrote an article six months before October 7 on the situation of Jews in South Africa. While there has been some movement of Jews out of SA, most of them are moving to other cities in SA. But that was a year ago, so I would be interested to know if anyone has any input to enlighten us on the mood and sense of security of the Jewish community in SA today.
Bear-that was the situation in 2021. But perhaps the situation has changed since South Africa accused Israel before the ICC of “genocide.” Certainly there have been incidents adversely affecting the South African Jewish community since that time, such as vandalism of Jewish-owned businesses, synogogues and Jewish community centers, I think it would be a good idea if you would check with someone you know who is in South Africa to see if the government has made iit more difficult for Jews to leave the country. For example, imposing an exit tax on people departing, Some countries do that to people who belong to some group the government dislikes.
@Adam I visited Cape Town for a few weeks about 1 1/2 years ago to visit an Israeli friend. I also have Israeli friends in Israel who made aliyah from South Africa.
Any Jew who wants to buy a ticket to go to Israel or elsewhere is free to leave. No reason to do an Ethiopian rescue plan.
Most South African Jews have moved elsewhere generally to Australia or Israel for a long time already. So it is simply a matter of desire to leave and put up with the hardships of moving anywhere.
Most South Africans Whites (Jews or Goyim) have a plan to leave or are formulating one. Unfortunatedly some will not leave and are at risk.
Israel should should formulate and carry out a plan to rescue the South African Jewish community and fly them to Israel. Modelled on the rescue of the Ethiopian Jewish community from Sudan many years ago. Rescueing the South African Jews should be an easier operation than the two major ones to rescue the Ethiopian Jewish community.
The Turks moved to expel or exterminate outright the the non-Muslim millets as the empire declined. There is no possibility that white Americans in present-day America will attempt anything similar. Even though the race-baiters sometimes make this allegation.
One aspect of the Turkish millet system was that Muslims were not a millet but the ruling group, The analogy of white Americans with the Muslims uunder the Turkish empire seems dubious to me. Muslims in the Turkish empire almost universally regarded the millet communities with disdain and imposed discriminatory laws on them. White Americans, at least in the past thirty years ago, have not shown the same disdain for the U,S, minority communities .. In the past, perhaps, especially in the Southern states, but not recently.
I didn’t know this about Tutu. I am still naive enough to be shocked.
@Adam
But of whom Alan Dershowitz wrote in JNS:
“He did much good in fighting Apartheid, but he also has a long history of ugly hatred toward the Jewish people, the Jewish religion and the Jewish state. He not only believed in anti-Semitism, he actively promoted and legitimated Jew-hatred among his many followers and admirers around the world.”
The South African town where the apartment building under construction collapsed
had the somewhat odd name, for South Africa, of “George,” I’ve noticed that all of the construction workers are from countries other than South Africa and speak languages not spoken in South Africa. Interesting, in view of South Africa’s huge unemployment rate, especially among young men. Presumablt the South African government could require all construction companies operating in South Africa. But it has done no such thing.
Ted and Peloni, once again I have to rescue my most recent post about corruption and injustice in South Africa, and enter it in this comment space.
Currently resue operations are in progress in the Western Cape province of South Africa to rescue somehere around seventy or eighty construction workers who were buried al when the building they were working on suddenly collapsed. 37 have reportedly been resued by workers for a privately owned charity (not the South African government) are continuing search and rescue operations at the construction site. But there is little hope of finding any additional survivors and the forty or so workers still missing.
This collapse is one of many similar incidents since “Majority rule” in South Africa was implemented in 1994. The injustices of the apartheid period havebeen replaced by equally or even worse injusted imposed by the majority rule” government since 1994. The late Bishop Desmond Tutu, who was awarded a Nobel Prize for his leadership many years ago, publicly denounced the post-apartheid governments for perpetrating even worse than the apartheid regime. He made this allegation around 2007. but ever retracted it prior to his death last week.
Whatever one may say about South Africa, it is not a multicultural success story.