IN A PREVIOUS entry, I quoted Kidist P. Asrat on the ugliness of Asian urban neighborhoods in Toronto. Readers noted that by comparison they are no worse than the trashy architecture pervasive in Canada and America, a point to which I responded.

Jay from Goshen adds to the discussion:

If a municipality wants to take the trouble, it can pass ordinances that even McDonald’s has to follow. That is why in some locales, McDonald’s restaurants look not only inconspicuous, but attractive. My family and I drove a long distance once in a very isolated part of the southwest. We finally found a McDonald’s. Normally I hate the place, but in that instance, it was comforting and reassuring. It was constructed of local materials and that normally garish golden arch was small, and attractive, under the circumstances.

I’ve also had experiences ducking into a McDonalds to buy a tea, or a salad, during my business trips to New York City (as rare as possible), and have been pleasantly surprised at the decor. In one, there was even classical music playing. Someone must have read the research that classical music keeps out the riff-raff. The restroom was spotless. It was a nice place to gather my thoughts for very little money.

But Chinatown …. that’s a different story. I used to enjoy the place, when it was small and tucked between what used to be Little Italy, and the Lower East Side. No more. It’s bursting at the seams, and it’s a mess. It’s loud, crowded, and utterly filthy. The stench and the garbage are overwhelming. You feel as if you are in downtown Somewhere-in-China, and not New York City. A crowded, hideous mess. The attitude of the people is very odd. It’s hard to explain, but they look at you, or rather don’t look at you, as if you are an alien from outer space.

My business takes me to all sorts of places (very “diverse”), and it is always interesting to note the reactions to a middle-aged, tall, skinny white guy.  The attitude of the Chinese is by far the most hostile. It’s not violent, but it’s decidedly hostile. They make it clear that though they tolerate you for your business, they despise YOU. I wonder if any of your other readers have the same feeling.

In any case, their design sense is horrific.

—- Comments —-

Alex writes:

The photo of a section of New York’s Chinatown has led my thoughts in a different but related direction. One of the signs in the photo says “Law Office of David A. Bredin.” Strange name for a Chinaman.

No matter how badly things deteriorate for the native people in any Western country, no matter who replaces or outright conquers the natives – Chinamen, Africans, Mexicans, Moors, modern Muslims, space aliens, sentient apes – David A. Bredin and his co-ethnics will always adapt and prosper. Maybe this is why they have no intrinsic interest in preserving the traditional character of the countries of their diaspora in the West, and indeed are happy to help in its destruction. It results in a better position for them, with less competition.

I started noticing these things after reading Lawrence Auster’s thoughts about Jews in the West which he published at VFR in the last days of his life.

Karl D. writes:

I completely agree with Jay’s statement. A close friend of mine is retired NYPD and his beat was Chinatown. He could tell you stories that would make your hair curl. Mainly, it was the sheer indifference and coldness towards others’ suffering that got him. Flushing in Queens is just as bad as Chinatown now. I remember seeing a crab scuttling across the street once and wondering where on God’s green earth I was. I have had some experience with Chinese as I had two Chinese landlords. The two big things I learned about them is that when it comes to money, all bets are off. They will do or say anything to make a buck. Lie, cheat, steal you name it. All with a smile on their face. The other thing is the family/clan. That is the center of their universe. Anyone outside of that clan is suspect and fair game. And if you are not Chinese? As we say in New York, “Forget about it!”

The last place I lived in Manhattan (before I fled), was Chinese-owned and occupied almost exclusively by Asians. Besides myself there was only two other round eyes in the building. Myself, a white guy next door and an old Italian widow who had been in the building since the 50s, before it was bought by the Chinese. It was a five-story walk up with four units per floor. All glorified studios. Every apartment had no less than four to five people crammed in them complete with bunk beds. The doors were almost always open because they were constantly cooking and the heat was unbearable. Not to mention the smell of rice, oil and seafood that wafted throughout the entire building. Like clockwork, every evening when I returned home from work I would climb those five flights to my studio and I would see eyes peering out at me from the cracks of the door. As soon as I made eye contact the doors would abruptly be shut. I lived in that building for close to eight years. In that entire time I never came to know any of them except the other white guy, the old Italian woman and a Japanese lady. They were some of the most paranoid and insular people I have ever come across.

P.S. I would often see the little old Italian woman (Cecilia or “Ciel”) struggling to get her groceries upstairs. Naturally, being a decent human being I would help her up with them. I can’t tell you how many times I would see the other Asian tenants just blow by her without even a glance.

Jay writes:

I am one of David A. Bredin’s co-ethnics and I do not like mass immigration one bit.

It’s simply false that “Jews” as a group do. While I admit and decry that the phenomenon of Jewish liberalism, I don’t think it’s essentially Jewish. Jews picked it up from the self-hating Puritan environment in liberal America. Sweden is doing a great job of destroying itself without Jews.

The parliamentary district that sent Mrs. Thatcher to the House of Commons was heavily Jewish. Edwin Rubinstein, the numbers cruncher for VDARE, is Jewish. And so on.

This is a complicated issue and can’t be resolved or even scratched upon in a blog exchange. I just wanted to register my side of the issue. A significant minority of Jews is against mass immigration.

To Karl: The Chinese temperament is the strangest I have ever encountered. By comparison, I find the Japanese to be positively warm and engaging. Japanese are diffident, but not cold. I’ve never felt so alienated as around the Chinese. I cannot, simply cannot, understand why a white man would marry a Chinese woman. Japanese, yes, but Chinese? The thought gives me the creeps. That’s why I am frankly suspicious of John Derbyshire. Of course I supported his right to speak honestly about race, but I can’t trust a man who is married to a Chinese woman.

Paul T. writes:

Alex wrote: “David A. Bredin and his co-ethnics will always adapt and prosper. Maybe this is why they have no intrinsic interest in preserving the traditional character of the countries of their diaspora in the West, and indeed are happy to help in its destruction. It results in a better position for them, with less competition.”

Apart from the giveaway overgeneralization, it seems hard on Mr. Bredin to accuse him of undermining the West – all we know about him is that he maintains a law practice in Chinatown. I also don’t understand how the decline of the West helps Mr. Bredin in running his business. Perhaps we could write him and solicit his opinion, rather than talking about him behind his back?

It was pretty sneaky of Alex to invoke Auster’s name. Mr. Auster could certainly be ‘Judeo-critical,’ but he never had any time for Jew-baiters. Perhaps it would be more honest for Alex to invoke Kevin MacDonald’s name. Or Alex Linder’s?

 Laura writes:

Stupidly, I missed the phrase “and his co-ethnics” when I initially read Alex’s comment. I thought his point was that there will always be businessmen or professionals who will prosper in transformed parts of the West and who could care less about what’s happening around them. This is true (although we do not know if it is true of Mr. Bredin), and it is also true that Jews often adapt and prosper. As to his point that Jews consciously seek to destroy the West because it’s good for business, this is a distortion of Auster’s points about Jews and multiculturalism.

The liberal Jew and the liberal pseudo-Christian both support a society that becomes progressively more commercial as the spiritual vacuum widens. They lose the civilization in which both have roots. Jews do have an intrinsic interest in preserving the traditional character of the West but cannot further this interest unless their opposition to Christian civilization (and Jews must to some degree always be opposed to Christian civilization) is contained by a strong and confident Christianity. The greatest threat to the West is not the anti-Christian, it’s the pseudo-Christian.

Jay writes:

Although I’m glad to see that the phrase “and his co-ethnics” escaped your attention, I do not mind in the slightest if sentiments like Alex’s are expressed in open forums. Walking on eggshells of this day gets us nowhere. [Laura writes: I would not have banned Alex’s comment.]

I am also glad to see that others disagree with Alex on other issues than the supposedly amazing ability of Jews to prosper no matter what. This isn’t true. I’ve already referred to the stark demographic split in the Jewish community between strictly observant Jews and non-observant, who are shrinking and disappearing. If Jews are injecting a killing poison into the host society, it would appear that they themselves are its prime victims.

From my perspective as a Jew who was raised non-observant, and who moved towards observance, liberalism is a modern disease that affected Jews disproportionately (because Jews are a minority group), and is now killing them off. It is not a disease that Jews “sicced” on the Gentile majority. My G-d, I have clients who are good Catholics, and whose churches are now housing illegal aliens, and it’s all I can do to keep my mouth shut when I am around them. Are these churches becoming incubators of America’s demise because of the Jews? No, it’s because Catholics picked up something here, and it interacted with the Catholic teachings on charity and concern for the poor. The upshot is masochism. But that’s not essentially Catholic. Is it?

This is relevant to the shocking white demographic collapse that the WaPo article you linked to highlighted. One of the problems with “white identity” is that there is nothing to unite around. People with white racial consciousness share Alex’s views, and for obvious reasons I can’t have anything to do with them. In any case, they don’t think that I’m white. Your late treasured friend and mentor, Lawrence Auster, wasn’t white, to them.

This is poison to any kind of rational approach to our catastrophic situation. While we whites (and I sure do think of myself as white, especially when I visit minority neighborhoods as part of my job) shrink and disappear, white nationalists play whiter than thou.

And that’s what depresses the life out of me (when I focus on these issues). I do not see that white Americans will unite, because we are simply too scattered geographically, too diverse and the concept is so taboo it only attracts loonies. I’ve concluded that we’ll just have to muddle through as best we can and wait for the day when the U.S. cracks up. Perhaps our grandchildren will migrate to a sane part of the country which is majority white. I’m looking at that right now. I’m thinking long term. I do not think that this society will survive in its present form for three more generations – if that. What do you think?

Laura writes:

You write:

It is not a disease that Jews “sicced” on the Gentile majority.

Some of the most influential liberals have been Jews. But their views would not have been accepted if Christians didn’t believe and embrace them.

A society united purely around race is repellant and not desirable. However, racial consciousness and pride among whites is necessary to save Western civilization and recreate anything close to the stability America once had. This will take a very long time, perhaps 150 years, but I am confident it will emerge.

Alex writes:

Jay writes:

If Jews are injecting a killing poison into the host society, it would appear that they themselves are its prime victims.

Always victims, no matter what. Even if they “are injecting a killing poison into the host society,” even if they are doing just fine if not better than everybody else, they are still the victims. How convenient.

Are we allowed to notice this pattern, or would it be non-PC?

Jews are quite capable of agency. To gentiles, the perpetual victimhood just looks like a club Jews use to beat down any criticism, and it feeds anti-Semitism. But of course without anti-Semitism, Jews would lose victim status, and being a victim group, like blacks, makes them uncriticizable.

Jay, I am not sure the split between religious and non-religious Jews, which you present as a bad thing for Jews as a whole, can be seen as such, unless the total Jewish population is diminishing, which you don’t seem to imply. Even if the former are not reproducing, the latter seem to at least make up for it (I have no idea; I’m going by your words). And if this results in a larger proportion of the religious among Jews, which seems to be the case, won’t it make Jews as a group stronger?

It’s something to admire in Jews, this refusal to allow that they could ever be guilty of anything. It makes them strong. Other whites would benefit by adopting this attitude instead of their white guilt and self-hatred.

The Jews I criticize are those in the West, and I criticize them because, in my opinion, the actions, or at least the results thereof, of Western Jews as a whole (and of course I grant Jay’s exceptions) often hurt their host countries. I grant that this is because Jews subconsciously feel that a less-traditional, more-liberal society will be safer for them as a persecuted (in the past) minority, not because they consciously seek to destroy the host society driven by their financial interests, even though they do seem to always come out on top. At least this is what I believe thus far into my thinking about the matter, which only started when I read Lawrence Auster’s article published in March. I had never seen a reason to criticize Jews before that.

I fully support Israel and wish it the very best. I wish it could wage real war on the barbaric Muslim hordes surrounding it and win total, permanent victory. Lawrence was Jewish by origin and I loved him. He made me doubt my atheism and seek faith, and if I come to God, which is the greatest hope and desire of my life now, it will be because of him, Laura and Bruce Charlton.

Nothing in this comment should be construed as an apology. If anything I wrote in this or the previous comment offended anyone, my advice to him is to open his eyes, and if he is Jewish, to stop playing the victim card.

Laura writes:

Your former comment was not “Jew-baiting” nor did you bring up Auster’s writings in a deceitful way, although the presence of Mr. Bredin’s sign in Chinatown was not a particularly good example of the phenomenon you are trying to pinpoint.

You write:

I grant that this is because Jews subconsciously feel that a less-traditional, more-liberal society will be safer for them as a persecuted (in the past) minority, not because they consciously seek to destroy the host society driven by their financial interests, even though they do seem to always come out on top.

I think a significant number of Jews consciously feel that a less-traditional, more-liberal society would be safer for them and are opposed to traditional mores because of this. Thus they attack the very society that has embraced them. One can see this in the hostility of many Jews toward Evangelical Christians or “fundamentalists,” even those Evangelical churches who have sent millions of dollars to Israel.

You write:

Jews are quite capable of agency. To gentiles, the perpetual victimhood just looks like a club Jews use to beat down any criticism, and it feeds anti-Semitism. But of course without anti-Semitism, Jews would lose victim status, and being a victim group, like blacks, makes them uncriticizable.

But there is anti-Semitism, alive and well, that is not justified by any Jewish sensitivity to criticism. Anti-Semitism is the maniacal obsession with and belief in a Jewish plot to overthrow the West. Many non-liberal Jews would happily give up victim status to see this phenomenon disappear.

Paul T. writes:

Alex’s further response was more thoughtful and I apologize to him for the references to Kevin MacDonald and Alex Linder.

However, he still overgeneralizes wildly in suggesting that Jews lack any self-critical faculty. If he is basing this on the bloviations of people like Abe Foxman and other paid spokesmen for the Jewish community, his view is understandable. But he wouldn’t have to look far to find ‘Judeocritical’ thinking in literature by North American Jews: Think Budd Schulberg’s What Makes Sammy Run?, Mordecai Richler’s The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz, virtually anything by Philip Roth, and arguably, much of Isaac Bashevis Singer’s work (notably Satan in Goray). (Predictably, all these authors have been accused of anti-Semitism).

To put all this in perspective I’ll quote the (non-Jewish) Polish novelist Zygmunt Miłoszewski:

 “I have always thought that if you want to be the scion of your nation, you can only be proud of its moments of glory when you own up to its inglorious moments of vile behavior. The Poles like to think of themselves purely as victims and heroes — which, by the way, makes us pretty similar to the Jewish race.”

Sounds like Alex’s beef may ultimately be with fallen human nature.

None of this is to deny that an embarrassingly disproportionate number of Jews have been, and are, liberals, and that the most influential among them have a lot to answer for.

Laura writes:

Add the Jewish comedians to your list of self-critical Jews.

In my admittedly casual observations of anti-Semitism on the right, I have found no recognition of the existence of the Jewish seeker. There are only scheming Jewish businessmen. Anti-Semitism — and again, by anti-Semitism I do not mean any criticism of Jews, I mean the obsession with the Jews and the belief that they are plotting to overthrow the West — is fed by illiteracy, the sort of cultural illiteracy that does not involve the inability to read.

JUNE 15,2013

Alex writes:

Laura writes:

Anti-Semitism is the maniacal obsession with and belief in a Jewish plot to overthrow the West.

If that’s what anti-Semitism is, then I must admit I’m not there yet…

Laura writes:

I think a significant number of Jews consciously feel that a less-traditional, more-liberal society would be safer for them and are opposed to traditional mores because of this. Thus they attack the very society that has embraced them. One can see this in the hostility of many Jews toward Evangelical Christians or “fundamentalists,” even those Evangelical churches who have sent millions of dollars to Israel.

…unless you keep pushing me closer like this!

Laura writes:

[T]he presence of Mr. Bredin’s sign in Chinatown was not a particularly good example of the phenomenon you are trying to pinpoint.

It seems to me that it is. A hostile alien race invades and occupies a large and growing chunk of a city in a white Western country of the Jewish diaspora, making the native people feel unwelcome there, in their own country. I would even say that they drove the natives out to claim the living space for themselves. Who adapts and prospers by providing services to the alien invaders hostile to the native people? A Jewish lawyer. And think about this: the aliens probably have their own law men, or other means, to settle matters among themselves, so the Jewish lawyer likely serves on their side against the natives, such as helping them take advantage of affirmative action in employment, welfare and other benefits, and serving the aliens in any lawsuits between aliens and natives.

Paul, I have no idea who Kevin MacDonald and Alex Linder are. This whole Jewish business is not something that is really important to me. As I said, it’s just that I started noticing certain things, and stopping to think, after reading Lawrence Auster. That’s the depth of my Jew-hating so far.

Paul T. writes:

However, he still overgeneralizes wildly in suggesting that Jews lack any self-critical faculty.

I was imprecise. I meant that Jews don’t allow others to criticize them. Of course they are capable of self-criticism, but they keep it mostly to themselves, as a necessary means of ensuring that any problems arising within their community are timely identified and solved. (This, of course, is rational and commendable behavior, which other whites, regretfully, have rejected.) It’s criticism by others that they meet with hostility. Or “Judeocritical” Jewish thinking that the community perceives as going too far or exposing Jews to outside criticism by providing ammunition for gentile critics, which threatens to weaken the community’s position in society.

However, there does seem to be a degree of belief on their part that they are always in the right, and this kind of self-assuredness does give strength to those who have it.

Paul wrote:

If he is basing this on the bloviations of people like Abe Foxman and other paid spokesmen for the Jewish community, his view is understandable.

That’s the case, yes. Not being deeply preoccupied with this matter, I only hear the loudest voices, which are invariably the angry, threatening voices of the Jewish inquisition. “Not a peep of criticism or you’re an anti-Semite!”

It’s my impression that the Jewish community as a whole, or in its majority, holds the owners of these voices as their legitimate spokesmen, but I may be mistaken. Even if I am, I’d still say that this is the impression of most people.