“So the relevant question is how society got to that point.”

The principle of non-discrimination, which shouldn’t be confused with tolerance, wasn’t broadly accepted by elite liberals in the 1920s. This had changed by 1945 when the United Nations was founded. In the 1920s, only the far left communist fringe in the United States consistently opposed racial discrimination.

“In answering that question, we must accept the sincerity of liberal ideas and deal with them as such, as Mr. Auster recommends.”

“Sincerity” is not an explanation. Of course contemporary liberals believe that non-discrimination is true and good. The same is true now of gay marriage, but that wasn’t always the case. Why did they change their minds?

“Blithely dismissing a bunch of college kids’ liberalism as status-driven is one thing, but blithely dismissing our society’s dominant liberal beliefs (that created the context for college kids to view liberalism as a status symbol) as such is quite another, and is quite beside the point.”

Status competition amongst elite liberals explains (in large part) why fringe causes eventually enter mainstream American political discourse.

I incline more to the Sailer view. The typical white liberal doesn’t just feel morally or factually correct when denouncing the “racism” of White Nationalists, which would leave room for rational debate, but morally superior  to his/her non-liberal Other, which is immediately associated with pavlovian stereotypes, so much so that nine times out of ten he will entertain no argument from the other side, since doing so is obviously beneath him. While the liberal truly does believe in racial equality, I find that this is almost always less of a consideration that the perception that “racists” are just unseemly, indecent people afflicted with a nasty form of moral leprosy.

Eight years of experience debating the issue has left me convinced that the average American almost never gives much thought to his racial beliefs. He is not really motivated by or interested in truth. As far as he is concerned, “racism” is immoral and that is the end of the matter, which is why the debate rarely progresses beyond epithets. He believes this is a self-evident moral truth that doesn’t require rational justification. The typical American was never taught even how to reason. Instead, he was taught and disciplined how to obey.

Where did Americans get these strange ideas? From their elites and authority figures: their friends, family, co-workers, neighbors, preachers and priests, teachers and professors, entertainers and reporters, favorite authors and rulers. Every institution around them is broadcasting the anti-racist message. Few Americans believed in racial equality until their elites started to expect them to. This is clearly seen in the seventy years worth of polling data on white racial attitudes. Public opinion followed elite opinion in every region of the country after about twenty or thirty years of socialization.

Why then do racialists still exist at all? It is mostly because of differences in intelligence and personality types. The extremely introverted dismiss status concerns as irrational/irrelevant and enjoy testing their ideas. They ask critical questions which simply do not occur to other people . . .

- Why am I supposed to believe ‘racism’ is immoral?

- Why did Americans once believe otherwise?

- Is the evidence for racial equality convincing?

- Who benefits from the widespread belief that ‘racism’ is immoral? Who doesn’t?

… and so on.

On the other hand, you have the gutter racist types who dismiss public opinion either out of sociopathy or lower intelligence.

The anti-racism of the masses is best explained by patterns of dominance/submission, status seeking, and brainwashing, but that doesn’t explain why the prevelance of anti-racism amongst the American elite. The big capitalists and Jews are motivated by self-interest. Historical flukes and coincidences, the sheer drift of time explains much of the rest.

- Having followed the WN scene for about eight years now, I can say that in all that time I have never heard a white racialist argue that whites are genetically partial to sound ideas (quite the contrary), so I fail to see what WNs in particular should have to answer for in this case.

- Any given individual, white or nonwhite, is capable of entertaining a bad idea. Why have whites alone come to see their own race replacement as morally justified?

- Humans are social beings. We also rely upon authority figures to discern truth from falsehood. The vast majority of humans are not independent thinkers. They mimic elite opinion in order to preserve their own social status. At the moment, white racial consciousness is deeply taboo and associated with low social status. This explains why 90% of non-elite whites feel the way they do about race.

- Why then has white, Western elite opinion come to associate “racism” and “anti-Semitism” with low status?

- This was not always the case. Up until the 1920s, “racism” and “anti-Semitism” were not taboo in the West, but the transformation was complete by 1965. Why did white, Western elite opinion change during this time period?

- A combination of reasons:

#1. The revulsion against Nazi racism in the West during the Second World War.

#2. The victory of the Allies in the Second World War and the rise of the United States to an interventionist world superpower, which spread the triumphant anti-racism around the world to countries like Ireland and Sweden..

#3. The anti-racist ideology of the Soviet Union. In order to compete with the Soviets for influence in the Third World, Western elites adopted the anti-racism of the USSR as their own.

#4. The reigning liberalism of the day in Britain and America explains their negative reaction to Nazi racism.

#5. The attack on “racism” by insurgent Jews in the social sciences (anthropology, sociology, psychology) undermined the scientific basis of “race.”

#6. “Anti-Semitism” became taboo in the West after WW2. Afterwards, the barriers to Jewish professional advancement began to fall. Jewish enrollment at Ivy League universities exploded. As Jews became more powerful in the U.S. and other countries, they used their wealth and power, especially their influence in the media and other elite institutions, to attack and stigmatize white racial consciousness.

#7. Racial distinctions were always a nuisance to the sheer greed of Western capitalists, who aligned themselves with anti-racist white liberals and upwardly mobile Jews.

#8. The rise of the anti-racist “conservative movement” of William F. Buckley and National Review in the United States, which quickly became and has remained the false opposition to the liberal status quo ever since.

#9. The revolutionary impact of modern telecommunications (radio, television, internet).

#10. The equalitarian strain within Christianity in the context of 1 - 8.

#11. Higher enrollment at American universities since the GI Bill after WW2.

#12. The degenerate, unnatural living environment of suburbia which three generations of whites have been raised in.

#13. The ideal of expressive individualism promoted in the media which is corrosive of all collective affiliations.

#14. The racial homogeneity of the areas where anti-racism has sunk the deepest roots, such as the American Deep North, insulates anti-racist whites from the consequences of their bad ideas.

#15. Disciplinary institutions like the SPLC and ADL which maintain the status quo by threatening the income and social status of dissident whites and their organizations.

#16. Generations of bad ideas and the hyperindividualism of American racialists continues to stiffle their attempts to form an effective resistance.

#17. In some countries, ethnic opportunism has been a factor: white ethnics (Slavs, Italians) siding with non-whites (other ‘outsiders’) against the native white majority (’insiders’).

#18. The vast majority of whites still feel like ‘insiders’ in their countries. This inhibits their ability to develop a feeling of alienation from the status quo and explains their attachment to organizations like the GOP.

Zmirak at Takimag:

“One tries to wash away the taint that your opponents have attached to you by finding someone within your own movement who is more distasteful, more extreme, more socially maladroit, then denouncing him. Best of all if you can lead the chorus of ostracism. That renders you yourself ritually pure, at least for a while – and joins you securely to the community that has now been purged.”

Update: A good description of Ian Jobling too.

The United States was founded as a “white man’s country.” Outside of New England, Americans didn’t believe in the political equality of the negro. Here are the dates that individual states took legislative action to disenfranchise negroes:

Virginia (1723, 1762, 1830, 1850)
Georgia (1777)
South Carolina (1716, 1790, 1810)
Delaware (1792)
Kentucky (1799)
Maryland (1801, 1810)
Ohio (1802)
New Jersey (1807, 1844)
Louisiana (1812)
Indiana (1816)
Mississippi (1817)
Connecticut (1818)
Illinois (1818)
Alabama (1819)
Missouri (1821)
New York (1821)
Rhode Island (1822)
Tennessee (1834)
North Carolina (1715-1734, 1835)
Arkansas (1836)
Michigan (1837)
Pennsylvania (1838)
Florida (1845)
Texas (1845)
Iowa (1846)
Wisconsin (1848)
California (1850)