I’ll be discussing “Into the Cannibal’s Pot: Lessons for America from Post-Apartheid South Africa,” with Chuck Wilder, who “continues in the tradition of the late George Putnam with his daily ‘Talkback.'”
Date & Time: Fri Oct 21,1:05 to 2:00 PM Pacific Time. Do call in.
Anti-Semitism, Fascism, Ilana Mercer, Individualism Vs. Collectivism, Israel, Judaism & Jews, Literature, Race, Racism, Reason, South-Africa
“Compassionate Fascist” has reviewed Into the Cannibal’s Pot: Lessons for America from Post-Apartheid South Africa on Amazon. Here is my reply:
AUTHOR REPLIES TO A REVIEW BY A SELF-PROFESSED RACIST AND ANTI-SEMITE. “Compassionate Fascist” was indeed expelled from this author’s moderated weblog, after a long “tenure” as the resident racist and anti-Semite. That’s how much I value free speech. This character openly admits to hating Jews qua Jews and blacks qua blacks, in opposition to the philosophy of individualism. On 09.24.11, “Compassionate Fascist” wrote on Barely a Blog: “I intend to live long enough to see the power of organized Jewry broken, and Israel off the map. Have a nice day.” He was forthwith expelled for advocating the eradication of Jewish Israelis.
Up until his expulsion from Barely a Blog’s comments section, I had imagined, naïvely, that by extending my hospitality in cyberspace to “Compassionate Fascist,” and letting him vent his disdain for Jews openly, he would come to see the error of his collectivist, contemptuous ways. After all, did not his “theorizing” about the evil of Jews as a group fly in the face of the generosity and hospitality this frustrated man was receiving from a Jewish individual (me)? Of course it did.
Historian Alan Charles Kors once observed that avoiding self-contradiction is the touchstone of truth; being mired in self-contradiction, the touchstone of error. To the Greek philosophers, to be mired in self-contradiction was to be “less than human, less than coherent, less than sane.” Malevolent, irrational individuals like “Compassionate Fascist” have no qualms about falling into self- contradiction, and being “less than human, less than coherent, less than sane.”
THE FASCIST’S LIES. “Mercer,” writes “Compassionate Fascist,” above, “does make a few admissions about the leading role of Jews-including, not to put too fine a point on it, her father and herself-in bringing down the White regime.” This is a ridiculous claim; it is simply untrue. This so-called admission is nowhere in the book under review. Read “Into the Cannibal’s Pot” to see for yourself.
THE FASCIST’S LITERARY RECOMMENDATIONS. I don’t know much about the unfortunately named Revilo P. Oliver, except that he was, according to Wikipedia, “an editorial advisor for the Institute for Historical Review, an organization devoted primarily to … Holocaust denial.” In promoting myth and conspiracy under the guise of scholarship, “the nutball Institute for Hysterical Review” is hostile to the truth. And I care a great deal about standards of truth and honest inquiry. Of course, it is quite possible to deny the historic truth about the Holocaust and, at the same time, write well on other issues.
KEVIN MACDONALD. Profound? I doubt it. You’ll get more truth about Jews from watching Woody Allen films than from MacDonald’s Fe-Fi-Fo-Fum Science of Jews and their intellectual habits. For example, MacDonald claims somewhere in his elusory analysis that Jewish women are oppressed. He has clearly not met many Jewish women. I refuted some of his silly, discursive stuff in a column called “BLAME THE JEWS.”
*****
Get a glimpse into another not-so-Wonderful Mind by reading my response to Avery Morrow’s review of Into the Cannibal’s Pot: Lessons for America from Post-Apartheid South Africa:
ILANA MERCER (Author) replies: This is a baffling review as it impugns the scientific method. In other words, according to the reviewer (Avery Morrow), the book’s deductions, drawn as they are from a critical mass of data, are unreliable–even iffy–because the author (me) has not divulged more about herself. The claim is that I ought to have introduced more personal bias into the data for these to be believable. This is how bad the miseducation of America has become! OFFERING PROOF IN SUPPORT OF ONE’S CASE IS TAKEN AS EVIDENCE AGAINST THAT CASE! The truth is the exact opposite of this reviewer’s gripe. A one-case study does not a rule make. The point about the scientific method is to prove your case beyond doubt. Of course, as was stated subtly in the Introduction, “In the interstices of this polemic, the reader will find my story and the story of those I love and had to leave behind” (p. 10). And more about crime vis-à-vis my family is on pp. 12-13. Like almost every other member of South Africa’s minority, so have they been brutalized by barbarians. The book is studded with the personal stories of South Africans, some my own. But no, the reviewer wants the author on Oprah’s couch; writhing in a vulgar, uniquely American display. Good schools once taught that good writing was understated, not hysterical or excessively personal, and that using the “me, me,” imperial “I” was plain self-indulgent, piss-poor prose. The bumper crops of ignoramuses our educational institutions now disgorge are ignorant of these eternal verities-and are, in fact, taught the exact opposite.
Next: The evidence the reader doubts comes from the painfully politically correct “Bureau of Justice statistics, Criminal Victimization in the United states, `Victims and Offenders,'” report of 2005. (And, contrary to the reviewer’s assertion, blacks are not 20 percent of the US’s population.) Read about “Sexual Subjugation” on p. 37: “Every year, approximately 37,460 white women are raped by blacks. As the BJS’s 2005 `Criminal Victimization Statistical Tables’ reveal, blacks, at 12.3 PERCENT OF THE POPULATION [emphasis added], were responsible for thirty-six percent of the 111,490 incidents in which whites were raped. And blacks committed 100 percent of the 36,620 incidents in which blacks were raped. …” But, for reporting these facts, the author is maligned!
Finally, the reader fails to offer a citation in support of his claim that I implied, “East Asians don’t volunteer at African hospitals in large numbers.” On page 181 I addressed a South African hospital only. “Baragwanath,” I wrote, is “the only hospital in South Africa’s biggest township. Now as then, the staff members ministering to the multitudes in Soweto are supervised and mentored by selfless Christian and Jewish medical men and women.”
UPDATE (Oct 18): Contemplationist: For someone whose name often appears in BAB’s Comments Section your question shows laziness or a lack of retention. Ad nauseam have I moderated and indulged discussion on what you and your ilk refer to as the “Jewish Question.” Apparently, you are unwilling or unable to search this blog’s archives (sidebar, under “Categories,” dah), especially, and those of the mother site under the relevant search categories. (Gosh, let me see: neoconservatism, Jews & Judaism, ilana mercer, South Africa, etc., get the drift?)
The following mental exercise is probably beyond the ken of our typical “gritty” Jew-focused “thinker.” How about we discuss the role of Jews in the freedom movement, the disease-conquering (or medicine) movement, the invention sphere, or the general-beneficiaries-of-humanity cabal? Hmmm: What might we conclude from that small exercise? (Insert Beavis and Butthead grunts here.) That a lot of Jews rise to to the top in society, and that many do untold good and many a good deal of harm, as individuals. Like a lot of other left-liberals, progressive Jews can do things we hard rightists view as bad. (I know one thing; most Jewish parents would never feed their kids fairy tales so that they come within an inch of losing their lives, as in the example in “Sacrificing Kids To PC Pietism.”
A Jewish parent, liberal or conservative, would have taught the kid as follows: “I don’t care what you learn at school, you klutz; but If I ever catch you jogging through THAT neighborhood again, I’ll … I’ll … Forget about the allowance and inheritance. Get that?” You get the drift.
Conservatism, libertarianism, Literature, Neoconservatism, Political Philosophy, Pseudo-intellectualism, Republicans, Ron Paul, South-Africa
Readers often conflate popularity with quality. Periodically, a reader who’s recently stumbled upon the commentariat’s dirty little secret—libertarians who’ve been writing predictive op-eds for over a decade—will suggest that this writer petition one of their favorite, famous, thoroughbred neoconservatives for an audience. “Show your latest book,” the well-meaning reader will urge, to this or that NYT best seller neocon, pseudo-conservative, know-nothing.
Take the “portfolio,” goes the well-meaning chap’s advice, and seek a pat on the head from a particular dufus whom my reader, for some reason, considers to be a Delphic oracle.
Of course, in the larger scheme of things, “Into the Cannibal’s Pot: Lessons for America from Post-Apartheid South Africa” should survive long after the various neocon books.
Liberals this; liberals that; Bush was great; Cheney too, the world is dead without America; Europe sucks; we’ve discovered that debt and big government are bad now that Obama’s in power:
If you don’t already know that these titles and their authors all have precious little to impart for posterity—you should!
Mark Steyn’s freshly presented tired ideas are one of many such examples. Steyn is an entertaining writer and fun to read. However, The “One-Man Global Content Provider’s” epistolary razzmatazz should never be confused with unconventional analysis, as explained, by way of an example, in “Beck, Wilders, and His Boosters’ Blind Spot.”
As for this writer and her relationship with mainstream neoconservatives: Been there done that. I may one day write about the almost-flirtatious sweet nothings some big-name neocon-cum-conservatives whispered in my e-ear when I first appeared on the US scene. There were dinner invitations too, one at least was even attended.
All that was before I registered, on Sept. 19, 2002, the first of many principled objections against their war of choice on Iraq. That was before the neocons discovered I was not an S. E. Cupp, a Margaret Hoover, or a ditzy Dana Perino.
After that fatal date, I became a political persona non grata.
The neocon modus operandi is to ignore and vilify truth-tellers such as Ron Paul, so long as the truth is unpalatable. After a period of time has passed—say five years hence—Ron Paul’s economic and foreign policy prescriptions (or my analysis of the New democratic South Africa and its lessons for America) will become quite kosher because it will no longer be possible to deny reality. Then the usual gasbags will proceed to “borrow” ideas they have not originated.
Seldom will originators be credited, not by neocons, at least.
When it comes to Machiavellian machinations, however, neocons are originators second to none.
Democracy, Ilana Mercer, Literature, Political Economy, Political Philosophy, South-Africa
Dr. F. Roger Devlin has reviewed “Into the Cannibal’s Pot: Lessons for America from Post-Apartheid South Africa” in the August 2011 issue of the American Renaissance. Dr. Devlin’s review is not a critical review, but a contents-driven one. And a good one at that, as he distills the facts of the book at a furious pace. Intelligently so too.
Unlike the many factoids that marred the skewed, diasporic, Jewey emphasis (utterly absent in my book) of Prof. Paul Gottfried’s review of “Into the Cannibal’s Pot” (a copy of which was captured here on BAB), Dr. Devlin cleaves to the facts of the book. (Incidentally, rather than correct the Gottfried review so that it vaguely captured “Into the Cannibal’s Pot’s” impetus, the reviewer and editor showed their “courtesy” by simply removing the thing from Taki’s Magazine. My mother used to use the adjective “peruvian” to describe incivility. I believe that word was removed from the dictionary because politically incorrect.)
In any event, unexamined in Dr. Devlin’s review are interwoven points of political philosophy. What do I mean? As a classical liberal, for example, my complaint against apartheid is not that it “disenfranchised” or “denied the majority its democratic rights,” since “citizenship rights, after all, are not natural rights.” Rather,
It is natural rights that the law ought to always and everywhere respect and uphold. In its police state methods—indefinite detention without trial, declarations of a state of emergency—apartheid destroyed the individual defenses of equality before the law, the presumption of innocence, habeas corpus and various other very basic freedoms. That the apartheid regime contravened natural justice by depriving Africans of rights to property and due process is indisputable as it is despicable. Nevertheless, denying people political privileges does not amount to depriving them of natural justice.
(Into the Cannibal’s Pot, 2010, p. 231)
Dr. Devlin’s tack is conciliatory and is perfectly congruent with AR editor Jared Taylor’s surprisingly non-confrontational, data-driven journalism. (I intend to post about Mr. Talyor’s latest book at a later date.)
Perceptively, Dr. Devlin highlights one of the crucial points my book makes about democracy:
A prerequisite for parliamentary democracy is that majority and minority status should be fluid—that the ruling majority party should, at each election, be almost as likely to become a minority as to retain its majority. In a multiracial polity this does not happen. Parties represent racial groups rather than different philosophies of government, and elections become racial headcounts.
You can order this issue of American Renaissance here, where Dr. Devlin’s review is summed up as follows:
“In Into the Cannibal’s Pot, author F. Roger Devlin reviews an important new book by columnist Ilana Mercer entitled Into the Cannibal’s Pot: Lessons for America from Post-Apartheid South Africa. Mrs. Mercer, a South African emigré, has sounded a ‘fire bell in the night’ with her sobering analysis of a once thriving First-World nation that is now descending into the abyss of savagery, genocide, starvation, and hopelessness. Mr. Devlin also summarizes her critique of raw numerical democracy and her effort to set the record straight on the Apartheid system—and most poignantly, her warning to the people of the United States.”