E. Michael Jones on John Updike
October 3, 2014
John Updike
E. MICHAEL JONES in the latest issue of his magazine Culture Wars has a fascinating article on John Updike, whom he sees as the personification of what Christopher Lasch called “the Culture of Narcissism.” Updike reinforces one of Jones’s enduring themes, which is cultural revolution as the rationalization of sexual transgression by Western elites. Jones has argued his thesis over the years by focusing on some of the West’s most famous intellectuals and theorizing about how their sexual transgressions influenced their thinking. Here he delves into the life and work of Updike. The novelist was well known for his adulteries and, according to Jones, these led to the growing perversion of his art and his increasing identification with cultural subversion. As an example of Updike’s cynicism when he was firmly established as one of America’s leading literary stars, Jones offers this quote from Updike’s autobiography:
I read and talked into a microphone and was gracious to the local rich, the English faculty and college president and the students with their clear skins and shining eyes and inviting innocence, like a blank surface one wishes to scribble obscenities on.
According to Jones,
Literature used to be a WASP avocation. It is now a Jewish business, and John Updike, because of his narcissism and his moral defections, enabled the transition from the former to the latter state.
You have to pay to get this article, but it is worth the price even if you disagree with some of Jones’s points.
— Comments —
Wanda Sherratt writes:
Regarding the quote from Updike, in which he describes his reaction to the innocent, young faces looking up at him, “like a blank surface one wishes to scribble obscenities on.”
This is not the first time I’ve noticed this lust to defile the innocent in the cultural gatekeepers of our age. G.K. Chesterton identified this as a characteristic of diabolism:
“But without dwelling much longer in these dark corners, it may be noted as not irrelevant here that certain anti-human antagonisms seem to recur in this tradition of black magic. There may be suspected as running through it everywhere, for instance, a mystical hatred of the idea of childhood. People would understand better the popular fury against the witches, if they remembered that the malice most commonly attributed to them was preventing the birth of children.”
Paul T. writes:
So John Updike got all excited about defiling virgins, and was depraved enough to write about it; but what really exercises E. Michael Jones is the notion that literature is a “Jewish business” and that Updike, in some unstated way, facilitated this. In another article on his site (about Woody Allen, or using Allen as a jumping-off point), Jones quotes the French interior minister: “[Last week] was the first time for a long time that people have screamed their hatred of Jews in the street.” Jones adds approvingly, a little further down in the article, “the French know how to put two and two together. The French get it”. Of course, the “French” who are screaming their hatred of Jews in the street are mostly Muslim, but why cloud the issue with facts? Proof-texting from First Thessalonians, Jones claims as the traditional teaching of the Catholic Church the view that Jews are “enemies of the entire human race.” Of course, St. Paul was talking about the Jews who were complicit in the death of Christ and who were trying to hinder Paul in his evangelism. He wasn’t issuing a for-all-time racial fatwa as Jones is, tying in everything from sexual abuse, masturbating girls, the decline of literature and secret control of the French government and laying it all at the feet of the Jews.
Since we’re deep into the world of sweeping generalizations here, let me ask: do all sedevacantists think like this?
Laura writes:
Where do you get the idea that Jones holds the position that the papacy is vacant? Why do you leap to this conclusion or are you just using the term “sedevacantist” as a mindless insult? I have no reason to believe Jones holds this view, even though it is a perfectly legitimate interpretation of recent events.
Secondly, I posted the article on Updike, not the one on Woody Allen, which I haven’t read and am not going to comment upon now. Do you think Jones is incorrect in stating that the literature business became dominated by Jews during Updike’s life? Did you even read his article on Updike?
I have not read everything Jones has written so I won’t claim to defend all he says, but I know that he does not criticize Jews racially. It is Judaism, the religion, the rejection of the Jewish Messiah, which leads to practical atheism, to the desire to create heaven on earth, and to cultural revolution, that Jones attacks. Your claim that he has issued a racial fatwa against Jews is just plain outrageous, a truly slanderous accusation. St. Paul was racially a Jew. Jesus was racially a Jew. The rejection of Christ leads to the desire to subvert Christian civilization. That is his point. Again, I haven’t read all he has said on the subject, but I have read enough to say he does not make a racial argument.
Finally, to be fair to Updike, he was apparently not talking about defiling virgins, but of destroying the mental innocence of his students.
Oct. 4, 2014
Laura writes:
[Update: I revised the comments below after getting the chance to look more closely at the Woody Allen piece though I have still only reflected upon it briefly.]
I have now read the Woody Allen piece and I think Paul misrepresents Jones’s statements when he says Jones has issued a “racial fatwa.” The article was published in March of this year. Jones, when he spoke of anti-Jewish demonstrators, was not referring to Muslim protesters against Israel. He was referring to those among the Manif Pour Tous protesters against “same-sex marriage,” who blamed Jews in the government and media for the opposition to France’s marriage traditions. He wrote:
One protester, Alain, 67, a businessman, said: “Valls thinks that he can contain these protests by painting us all as dangerous extremists. When I was young, every left-winger was accused of being a communist. Now, to this government and the mainstream media, every right-winger is a fascist.”
The Jewish support for gay marriage has created its political opposite: radical Catholics who now hold the Jews responsible for the moral corruption they have spread through France. The Independent thinks that Alain Soral is behind this convergence, but as Soral has pointed out, the government itself is responsible. When asked why the government called him an anti-Semite, he responded by saying that the Hollande government was controlled by Jews. The proof lay in the accusation. Duh.
When Jones writes, “The French get it,” he was speaking of marriage. He was referring to the French, not Muslim immigrants. The French also “get” the strong Jewish support for novelties that destroy civilization:
The thing the Jews fear most is not racism or anti-Semitism, which is a form of racism, but a Catholic repudiation of the failed experiments of Vatican II and a return to the traditional teaching of the Church, as expressed by St. Paul (I Thess 2) when he referred to Jews as “enemies of the entire human race.” But as St. Augustine indicated, even those who hate the Logos, become, through the cunning or reason, pawns of the Logos they hate. The Jews, in other words, are bringing about the very thing they fear the most. Catholics in Poland and France are not becoming anti-Semites; they are waking up to the fact that the Jews control their respective countries and are using “gender ideology,” i.e., gay marriage, sex education, pornography, performance “art,” etc., as the main form of social control. Sexual liberation is political control, and the plan on how to control a culture through sexual license was written by Jews, Jews like Wilhelm Reich. Is it surprising that people are waking up to this fact? [emphasis added]
The Douay Rheims Bible translates that quote of St. Paul from 1 Thessalonians 2:15 as:
Therefore, we also give thanks to God without ceasing: because, that when you had received of us the word of the hearing of God, you received it not as the word of men, but (as it is indeed) the word of God, who worketh in you that have believed. 14For you, brethren, are become followers of the churches of God which are in Judea, in Christ Jesus: for you also have suffered the same things from your own coutrymen, even as they have from the Jews, 15Who both killed the Lord Jesus, and the prophets, and have persecuted us, and please not God, and are adversaries to all men… [emphasis added]
When St. Paul speaks of Jews being adversaries to all men, he means they are adversaries to themselves as well because of their rejection of Christ. He was speaking also of open persecution of the early Christians by Jews. It is dangerous, however, for Jones to go around speaking of “enemies of the entire human race.”
Do Jews control Poland and France? They are highly influential. To say that the West is controlled by Jews is overstatement. François Hollande, for one, was raised a Catholic. Also sexual liberation was not a conscious plan to control a culture. It was not a plot or conspiracy. Yes, many of the most influential sexual revolutionaries such as Freud and Reich were Jews but they weren’t hatching a plot. They were acting upon their own principles, their own hatred of the Logos and animus against the moral law.
