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PaperclipPerfector  11mo ago (text post)   32518 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of June 12, 2023

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Surely Superman is best-known as an avatar of 'Truth, Justice, and the American Way' - he is a patriotic avatar of American values in a way that is explicitly presented as inclusive of all races and cultures. This does not seem like a radical critique of Gentile identity - on the contrary, it is clearly an affirmation of a particular understanding of American identity that is extraordinarily inclusive of people of different racial or religious origins.

E-X-A-C-T-L-Y. This is exactly what I am talking about. It is a radical critique of Gentile identity because it subverts the identity of America as a white country. I presume you have some sympathies with Israel, what if a bunch of Palestinians somehow had the wherewithal to take control over Israeli cultural institutions, and they made massively-popular superheroes giving moral lessons to Children about how Israel is not a country for Jews?

How did we get to this point where white people are just totally submitted to their own demographic replacement? Slowly, and with propaganda like this. This propaganda was intelligently crafted with a political motivation, it planted the seeds of our current culture.

You can look at many examples- take Captain America. Who could have a problem with him right? He's a macho Aryan who is a role model for children. He was also created by a Jewish storyteller, Joe Simon, and Wikipedia relates:

In 1940, Timely Comics publisher Martin Goodman responded to the growing popularity of superhero comics – particularly Superman at rival publisher National Comics Publications, the corporate predecessor to DC Comics – by hiring freelancer Joe Simon to create a new superhero for the company. Simon began to develop the character by determining who their nemesis could be, noting that the most successful superheroes were defined by their relationship with a compelling villain, and eventually settled on Adolf Hitler. He rationalized that Hitler was the "best villain of them all" as he was "hated by everyone in the free world", and that it would be a unique approach for a superhero to face a real-life adversary rather than a fictional one.

This approach was also consciously political: Simon was stridently opposed to the actions of Nazi Germany and supported U.S. intervention in World War II, and intended the hero to be a response to the American non-interventionism movement. Simon initially considered "Super American" for the hero's name, but felt there were already multiple comic book characters with "super" in their names. He worked out the details of the character, who was eventually named "Captain America", after he completed sketches in consultation with Goodman. The hero's civilian name "Steve Rogers" was derived from the telegraphy term "roger", meaning "message received".

Goodman elected to launch Captain America with his own self-titled comic book, making him the first Timely character to debut with his own ongoing series without having first appeared in an anthology. Simon sought to have Jack Kirby [my note: also Jewish] be the primary artist on the series: the two developed a working relationship and friendship in the late 1930s after working together at Fox Feature Syndicate, and had previously developed characters for Timely together. Kirby also shared Simon's pro-intervention views, and was particularly drawn to the character in this regard.

It is extremely mythologically significant that "Captain America* was engineered by Jewish storytellers in 1940 to fight the Germans. That is not innocuous, it is not a cultural exchange, it is mythmaking and culture-creation for the ethnically-motivated intention of influencing a mass audience. Here's the cover of the first issue from December 1940 when there was essentially a consensus of public opinion against intervention in WWII. Today, Captain America's identity as a "Nazi puncher" is fully internalized by the mass audience.

Last week I posted that secret report from the Polish ambassador in 1939:

The prevalent hatred against everything which is in any way connected with German National Socialism is further kindled by the brutal attitude against the Jews in Germany and by the émigré problem. In this action Jewish intellectuals participated; for instance, Bernard Baruch; the Governor of New York State, Lehman; the newly appointed judge of the Supreme Court, Felix Frankfurter; Secretary of the Treasury Morgenthau, and others who are personal friends of Roosevelt. They want the President to become the champion of human rights, freedom of religion and speech, and the man who in the future will punish trouble-mongers. These groups, people who want to pose as representatives of “Americanism” and “defenders of democracy” in the last analysis, are connected by unbreakable ties with international Jewry.

For this Jewish international, which above all is concerned with the interests of its race, to put the President of the United States at this “ideal” post of champion of human rights, was a clever move. In this manner they created a dangerous hotbed for hatred and hostility in this hemisphere and divided the world into two hostile camps. The entire issue is worked out in a mysterious manner. Roosevelt has been forcing the foundation for vitalizing American foreign policy, and simultaneously has been procuring enormous stocks for the coming war, for which the Jews are striving consciously. With regard to domestic policy, it is extremely convenient to divert public attention from anti-Semitism which is ever growing in the United States, by talking about the necessity of defending faith and individual liberty against the onslaught of Fascism.

It is interesting to compare this political agenda to craft this myth of an Americanism that exists to "punish trouble-mongers" with the character of Captain America who was created only a few months later.

This is an example of how an apparently innocuous cultural symbol was consciously designed in the service of an ethnically-motivated agenda. Now I'm not that interested in arguing with you about the validity of that agenda, it suffices to show mythmaking as ethnically-motivated propaganda consciously designed to influence public opinion. Joe Simon conceived, in 1940, of Hitler as the "greatest villain in the world", and his comic-book villain soon became engrained in our quasi-religious consciousness with that role.

My argument is no stronger than assigning credit to our popular culture for our popular social movements, and you cannot acknowledge that basic fact without considering the underlying motivations of Jews who have heavily influenced this culture with race-conscious aims.

it's because they fear being victims again?

They fear being victims again, so they cannot allow white racial consciousness or advocacy for the ethnic interests of white people. Their sincerity does not at all alleviate the conflict that is staring us in the face, the conflict that they are conscious of and my co-ethnics are not because they "learned their lessons" from Superman and Captain America, if not from St. Paul and Christ.

E-X-A-C-T-L-Y. This is exactly what I am talking about. It is a radical critique of Gentile identity because it subverts the identity of America as a white country. I presume you have some sympathies with Israel, what if a bunch of Palestinians somehow had the wherewithal to take control over Israeli cultural institutions, and they made massively-popular superheroes giving moral lessons to Children about how Israel is not a country for Jews?

I have no particularly strong feelings about Israel one way or the other.

That said, I don't think it's any sort of 'radical critique of Gentile identity' to take the position that people of many different races and religons should be welcome and equal in America. Many Jews believe that, yes. But also most non-Jews in American believe that now, and the social forces that led to that change, that led to the broadening of American identity, don't seem to have had anything particularly special to do with Jews.

See, once again what you're doing is just vaguely gesturing towards the idea that anything that happened in a place that any Jews lived that you don't like is the result of a Jewish conspiracy.

I would say again that you are clearly moving goalposts. You asserted that narratives created by Jews, of which you regard Superman as an example, are used to critique Gentile identity. I reply that Superman firstly is clearly a confident defender of American identity and patriotism, and secondly frames this in a way that regards all races as equally welcome. This sure seems like as a literary creation Superman is firstly pro-American-identity and secondly anti-ethno-supremacy. This is directly contrary to the picture you just painted of Jews as ethnosupremacist and alien from their countries! If you read Superman as metaphor for the Jewish experience (which is only one of many valid ways to read Superman), the thrust of that metaphor is that Jews can be fully assimilated Americans.

How did we get to this point where white people are just totally submitted to their own demographic replacement? Slowly, and with propaganda like this. This propaganda was intelligently crafted with a political motivation, it planted the seeds of our current culture.

Are you asserting that Siegel and Shuster in the 30s and 40s were part of a deliberate, conscious attempt to destroy 'white' American culture?

You can look at many examples- take Captain America. Who could have a problem with him right? He's a macho Aryan who is a role model for children. He was also created by a Jewish storyteller, Joe Simon, and Wikipedia relates:

How is it remotely suspicious that a superhero created and drawn and published by Americans in the 1940s was opposed to one of 1940s-America's greatest overseas enemies?

Okay, sure, Jews in 1940s America didn't like Nazi Germany much. I concede this. What is that supposed to show?

This is the frustrating thing about this entire argument from you - your entire strategy is to pick some totally innocuous incident in history and just because it involves a Jewish person, you present it as if it's clear evidence for some pan-historical Jewish agenda to destroy the white race.

What's missing from all of this is, well, any evidence for anything whatsoever. Okay, Joe Simon didn't like the Nazis and made a hero to fight them. He felt that Hitler was an enemy of everyone in the free world, and Captain America represents that commitment. But there are many conceivable reasons why a Jewish-American in 1940 might hate Hitler that do not amount to a deliberate Jewish racial plot to destroy white people.

They fear being victims again, so they cannot allow white racial consciousness or advocacy for the ethnic interests of white people. Their sincerity does not at all alleviate the conflict that is staring us in the face, the conflict that they are conscious of and my co-ethnics are not because they "learned their lessons" from Superman and Captain America, if not from St. Paul and Christ.

What conflict is this?

We've gone from "Jewish people don't want the Holocaust to happen again" (entirely obvious and reasonable) to "therefore Jewish people want to destroy white racial majorities" (do they?) to "SecureSignals' co-ethnics are in a conflict with Jews" (who? how?).

I really wish you'd just be straightforward with all of this - if you could just say it as plainly as "multiculturalism is a deliberate, conscious plot by the Jewish people to destroy whites".

If you read Superman as metaphor for the Jewish experience.. the thrust of that metaphor is that Jews can be fully assimilated Americans.

If Superman were about the actual assimilation of our Kryptonian hero, Kal-El (the Kryptonian name of Superman), that would make for a very boring story. Of course Superman is not about that- he cannot assimilate.

The most he can do is adopt an alter-ego in his daily interactions with humans by changing his name from Kal-El, meaning "Voice of God" in Hebrew, to the Gentile name Clark Kent. He changes his appearance, puts on a suit, goes to work as a media reporter (!) with everyone else none the wiser to his true identity.

But when Clark Kent tears open the shirt, he affirms that underneath the disguise he was always Superman. He holds sentimental feelings towards humanity as his adopted family, but in his heart of hearts he is a diasporan son of Krypton and he will never be them- he is a superior being and he must protect them and guide them.

This is extremely sophisticated storytelling. It provides perceptive Jewish audiences with a sense of identity, and yes superiority, it is a myth that tells them they cannot assimilate even if they change their name and appearance such that nobody around them knows who they truly are, they will always be Kryptonian underneath the surface. At the same time, there is compelling content for Gentile audiences that internalize the Ethos espoused by the ass-kicking superhero.

Are you asserting that Siegel and Shuster in the 30s and 40s were part of a deliberate, conscious attempt to destroy 'white' American culture?

My point is that ethos is downstream from mythos. So those who have special talents in creating mythos likewise are in a strong position to influence the ethos of the collective consciousness. Siegel and Shuster's Superman telling children that being American means being anti-racist in 1950, not 30 years after the United States passed legislation intending to wind back the clock on demographics to the 1800s, is an example of this, as-is Captain America.

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This is exactly what I am talking about. It is a radical critique of Gentile identity because it subverts the identity of America as a white country.

This is perhaps a well-worn point by now, but it bears repeating if you're going to insist on this 'white country' framing; without wishing to be too Whiggish about this, does not, surely, the extension of American identity to all racial groups simply represent the final stage of the steady expansion of the range of that identity to non-Anglos and freed slaves in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries? That the 'white country' idea ever emerged among anyone at all is itself testament to the fact that the nativists had had their day long before the middle decades of the twentieth century and before even you could impugn Jewish influence.

Last week I posted that secret report from the Polish ambassador in 1939:

And as last week, uncritically handing us what a contemporary thought is not evidence of anything, even if it is his real thoughts.

The report from the Polish ambassador is relevant here because the agenda he perceives takes on a mythological form of a comic book hero and a comic book villain. It shows how an ethno-political agenda consciously takes the form of myth and storytelling. Captain America is absolutely evidence of the narrative-framing identified by the Polish ambassador, and you saying "it's not evidence of anything" is just wrong, because it certainly is evidence that the ambassador's perception is correct.

This is perhaps a well-worn point by now, but it bears repeating if you're going to insist on this 'white country' framing; without wishing to be too Whiggish about this, does not, surely, the extension of American identity to all racial groups simply represent the final stage of the steady expansion of the range of that identity to non-Anglos and freed slaves in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries?

According to Superman it does, being racist is un-American!

We live in a country where you will be de-personed if you ethnically advocate for white people or are critical of Jews in any capacity. It is easier to ponder questions like 'white country' than explain the reality of the present culture without tying it to the actual culture, which was created in the 20th century and beyond.

Can you explain why all of our prevailing cultural institutions will consider you evil if you advocate for white people specifically in the way you would for Jews? The Whig view of history is the myth, that we just got some enlightenment that this was the path of moral behavior, and Superman just got it right a couple decades faster than the rest of us. Nope, we internalized myth and propaganda developed with conscious political motives, the Whig view of history is just believing the myth rather than the truth of what forms our perception of reality.

Captain America is absolutely evidence of the narrative-framing identified by the Polish ambassador, and you saying "it's not evidence of anything" is just wrong, because it certainly is evidence that the ambassador's perception is correct.

If I understand you correctly, then I don't think anyone would disagree with the fact that myth-making of that kind occurred, the point is whether the Polish ambassador is correct in his assertion of the 'unbreakable ties' of such things to 'international Jewry', which I would dispute and here is the relevance of my next comment re;

Can you explain why all of our prevailing cultural institutions will consider you evil if you advocate for white people specifically in the way you would for Jews? The Whig view of history is the myth, that we just got some enlightenment that this was the path of moral behavior, and Superman just got it right a couple decades faster than the rest of us. Nope, we internalized myth and propaganda developed with conscious political motives, the Whig view of history is just believing the myth rather than the truth of what forms our perception of reality.

Ignoring the rather tiresome strawman of Whig history that appears to have become common currency these days, the point is not necessarily that the expansion of American citizenship represented some natural endpoint of the 'path of moral behaviour', but that once the extension of the American nation beyond the Anglo, or at most Nordic/Germanic/Saxon etc. character, which was well before any one could assert any notion of Jewish influence, the only possible next resting place was a universal definition. Those trying to stop the growth of American citizenship no longer had plausible ground to stand on; if a freed black slave, Irishman, Pole or Italian could become a citizen in every sense, on what basis was a Chinaman to be denied that same citizenship? And so forth. Whether or not this was a good or bad development is besides the point, which is that the trajectory was set before any possible Jewish influence.

Can you explain why all of our prevailing cultural institutions will consider you evil if you advocate for white people specifically in the way you would for Jews?

Because in an American context 'whites' is a meaningless and unhistorical category; what are white interests?

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