Stephen Kinzer on the racist roots of American imperialism

The first wave of American "regime change" operations, which lasted from 1893 to 1911, was propelled largely by the search for resources, markets, and commercial opportunities.  Not all of the early imperialists, however, were the tools of big business.  Roosevelt, Lodge, and Captain Alfred Thayer Mahan were moved by what they considered to be the transcendent imperatives of history.  Expanding, they believed, was simply what great nations did.  In their minds, promoting commerce and defending national security fused into what one historian has called "an aggressive national egoism and a romantic attachment to national power."  They considered themselves nothing less than instruments of destiny and Providence.

The missionary instinct was already deeply ingrained in the American psyche.  From the time John Winthrop proclaimed his dream of building a "city upon the hill" to which the world would look for inspiration, Americans have considered themselves a special people.  At the end of the nineteenth century, many came to believe they had a duty to civilize needy savages and rescue exploited masses from oppression.  Rudyard Kipling encouraged their missionary spirit with a famous poem published in McClure's Magazine as the debate over annexing the Philippines began.

Take up the White Man's burden

Send forth the best ye breed,

Go bind your sons to exile

To serve your captives' need;

To wait in heavy harness

On fluttered folk and wild,

Your new-caught sullen peoples,

Half-devil and half-child

Americans have a profoundly compassionate side.  Many not only appreciate the freedom and prosperity with which they have been blessed but fervently wish to share their good fortune with others.  Time and again, they have proved willing to support foreign interventions that are presented as missions to rescue less fortunate people.

When President McKinley said he was going to war in Cuba to stop "oppression at our very doors," Americans cheered.  They did so again a decade later, when the Taft administration declared that it was deposing the government of Nicaragua in order to impose "republican institutions" and promote "real patriotism."  Since then, every time the United States has set out to overthrow a foreign government, its leaders have insisted that they are acting not to expand American power but to help people who are suffering.

This paternalism was often mixed with racism.  Many Americans considered Latin Americans and Pacific islanders to be "colored" natives in need of guidance from whites.  In a nation whose black population was systematically repressed, and where racial prejudice was widespread, this view helped many people accept the need for the United States to dominate foreign countries.

Speeches justifying American expansionism on the grounds of the white race's presumed superiority were staples of political discourse in the 1890s.  Senator Albert Beveridge of Indiana described expansion as part of a natural process, "the disappearance of debased civilizations and decaying races before the higher civilization of the nobler and more virile types of man."  Representative Charles Cochrane of Mississippi spoke of "the onward march of the indomitable race that founded this Republic" and predicted "the conquest of the world by the Aryan races."  When he finished his speech, the House burst into applause.

~ Stephen Kinzer, Overthrow: America's Century of Regime Change from Hawaii to Iraq, pp. 83-84

Mike Whitney on how Zionists view the Arab population

As an American, diversity might not seem like such a big deal.  But to many Israelis, it’s pure strychnine.  Zionists, in particular, see growth in the Arab population as a “demographic time-bomb” that threatens the future of the Jewish state.  And that’s what the Gaza fracas is really all about; getting rid of the people but keeping the land.  In fact, the last 75 years of conflict can be reduced to just 8 words, “They want the land, but not the people.”

[...] 

Demographics are considered a national security issue, an existential issue, and an issue that will decide the future of the Jewish State.  Is it any wonder why the reaction has been so extreme?  Is it any wonder why people refer to the fact that there is a large population of Palestinians in Palestine as the “Arab problem”?  And, of course, once the indigenous population is regarded as a “problem”, then it is incumbent on the political leaders to conjure-up a solution.

So, what exactly is the solution to the Arab problem?

Why fewer Arabs, of course.  Which is why the idea of expelling the Palestinians has a long pedigree in Zionist thinking dating back a full five decades before the establishment of the Jewish state.  As it happens, the Arabs were always a problem even when the Jews represented less than 10 percent of the population.  Go figure?  Check out this comment by the ideological father of political Zionism himself, Theodor Herzl, who wrote the following: 

We shall try to spirit the penniless population across the border by procuring employment for it in the transit countries, while denying it any employment in our own country… expropriation and the removal of the poor must be carried out discreetly and circumspectly. 

Shockingly, Herzl wrote those words in 1895, 50 years before Israel declared its statehood.  And many of the Zionist leaders who followed him shared that same world view, like Israel’s first prime minister David Ben-Gurion who said: 

You are no doubt aware of the [Jewish National Fund’s] activity in this respect.  Now a transfer of a completely different scope will have to be carried out.  In many parts of the country new settlement will not be possible without transferring the Arab fellahin.  Jewish power [in Palestine], which grows steadily, will also increase our possibilities to carry out this transfer on a large scale. (1948) 

And here’s Ben-Gurion again in 1938:

I support compulsory transfer.  I don’t see anything immoral in it.

See how far back this line of reasoning goes?  The Zionists were tweaking their ethnic cleansing plans long before Israel had even become a state.  And for good reason.  They knew that the numbers did not support the prospects for an enduring Jewish State.  The only way to square the circle was through compulsory resettlement, otherwise known as “transfer.”  And while that policy might have been repugnant to a great many Jews, a far larger number undoubtedly believed it was a cruel necessity.

~ Mike Whitney, "The War in Gaza: It's Not About Hamas. It's About Demographics," The Unz Review, December 16, 2023

Tim Pool on the racism of the American Left

I'm not a big fan of racial collectivism.  The problem is most human beings in the world, some 90% plus, are.  That's a reality.  The American Left?  Absolutely.  No question.  Probably the most racially collective group of people and ideology I've seen anywhere is the American woke Left, where they want race to be everything.

~ Tim Pool, "The truth is that most people on the Left are just racists," TimCast.com, 16:50 mark, December 5, 2023

Gad Saad on racism and progressivism

Most people are not rabid racists, haters, and miscreants.  Today's racists espouse critical race theory cloaked in the robe of "progressivism."  Don't buy into it.  Treat people as individuals.

~ Gad Saad, tweet, April 24, 2021

Noah Pollak on systemic racism

"Systemic racism" is such a perfect Marxist formulation.  It delegitimizes an entire society without blaming anyone in particular, so it generates little opposition.  It signifies everything and nothing simultaneously.  It can't be proven or disproven.  It's genius propaganda.

~ Noah Pollak, tweet, April 21, 2021

(Pollak tweeted reacting to President Biden's comments following the Derek Chauvin guilty verdict in the George Floyd murder trial.)

Fraser Myers on the race industry

Many of the ideas about race being pushed by BLM – particularly the ubiquity of structural racism – are now part and parcel of corporate culture and the white-collar workplace.  Race experts are invited to give workshops and training on diversity and inclusion.  Employees are tested for their unconscious bias. An entire race industry worth billions has mushroomed.  The most famous and sought-after race entrepreneurs, like Robin DiAngelo and Ibram X Kendi, can earn vast sums of money in the corporate sector – sometimes tens of thousands of dollars per hour.  Those BLM protesters setting fire to police stations were not radical revolutionaries — they were more like the militant wing of the human-resources department.

~ Fraser Myers, "Why big business loves Black Lives Matter," spiked, April 13, 2021

Robby Soave on anti-racism

Nonracism—the idea that skin color should be overlooked—has lost popularity among progressive activists, and anti-racism—the idea that skin color matters a great deal—is in vogue.

~ Robby Soave, "Why Dr. Seuss is Worth Defending," Reason.com, March 8, 2021

Dwight D. Murphey on progressivism and the civil rights movement from the early 1900s to 1930s

[Modern] liberals in the United States did not provide conspicuous leadership to a movement for racial and ethnic equality until the issue came to life during and after World War II.  Most Americans will be amazed to hear that it was the Progressives who were most instrumental in establishing the Jim Crow system in the South; they did so after the Populist movement created a fear of the potentially corrupting effects of a movement that would combine blacks and poor whites.  Theodore Roosevelt is reputed to have made an embarrassingly bigoted comment about Negroes at the time of the Brownsville Affair.  Woodrow Wilson originally wanted to include blacks in his administration, but backed off when this led to criticism from his Southern supporters.  Franklin Roosevelt did not make civil rights legislation for blacks a significant part of the New Deal. 

During all those years the many liberals connected with the liberal journals as editors and writers, while favorable to Negroes and horrified by lynchings, made no move to make "civil rights" a priority issue.  As we look back from the ethos of the 1980s and '90s, we tend to think, racial, ethnic and sexual equality have held a place in the pantheon of liberal philosophy from the beginning.  But that is just not so.

~ Dwight D. Murphey, Liberalism in Contemporary America, p. 19

Louisville Metro Police sergeant on the killing of Breonna Taylor and the mayor's unwillingness to release information that would have exonerated the police officers

This had nothing to do with race.  Nothing at all.

[...]

A lot of (the) flames that have come up, a lot of this stuff could have been diverted. Now, would people still have a problem with it? Yes. But I think with the truth coming out, then you wouldn’t have as much distrust.

[He pointed specifically to claims that Taylor was asleep, that officers were at the wrong home or that Taylor didn’t know Jamarcus Glover, Taylor's ex-boyfriend who was a main target in the narcotics investigation the led to the attempted search of Taylor's home, which he said would have been possible to clarify without harming the case.]

It fell on deaf ears, and politics, in my opinion, played a big part of it.  There’s a reason that the fire wasn’t put out early, that he (Mayor Fischer) let it simmer until it got to where it was at, and then it got out of control, and I don’t think he knew how to reel it back in.

~ Jonathan Mattingly, Louisville Metro Police sergeant, "'She didn't deserve to die': Louisville officer involved in Breonna Taylor case speaks out," USA Today by way of Louisville Courier Journal, October 21, 2020

Kevin Duffy on the race industry

Sadly, "racism" has become a lucrative industry, transferring wealth and privileges from one group to another, making careers for those arranging the transfer.  Of course those on the receiving end have a vested interest in keeping "racism" alive, which is why they never shut up about it.

~ Kevin Duffy, Facebook post, October 7, 2020

Jason Riley on the causes of racial inequality

Civil rights groups spend most of their time scouring the nation for sightings of Confederate flags and use of the "n" word by white people. In most of our discussions about racial inequality today, the assumption is that racism, by and large, explains racial disparities. That's the starting point. Many people have convinced themselves that evidence of ongoing racial bias proves beyond any doubt that racism in America today remains the major barrier to black progress. Whether other factors play a bigger role is a question seldom asked, let alone investigated with any rigor. In fact, to even ask such a question is enough to earn the wrath of those who believe racism is an all-purpose explanation for bad black outcomes in America today. 

~ Jason L. Riley, "Barriers To Black Progress: Structural, Cultural, Or Both?," Manhattan Institute conference, 2:47 mark, February 11, 2019

Jason Riley on the penalty for disagreeing with the racism narrative

Many whites fear being called racists. And many black leaders have a vested interest in blaming black problems primarily on white racism, so that is the narrative they push regardless of the reality. Racism has become an all-purpose explanation for bad black outcomes, be they social or economic. If you disagree and are white, you're a bigot. If you disagree and are black, you're a sell-out. 

~ Jason L. Riley, from a speech given at Hillsdale College's Allan P. Kirby, Jr. Center for Constitutional Studies and Citizenship in Washington, DC as part of the AWC Family Foundation Lecture Series, January 31, 2015

Jason Riley on the race industry in America

We're not post-racial, but I'd argue that the Left has no interest in being post-racial. They claim they want to be post-racial, but they really don't. They want to keep race front and center in our national conversations, because it serves their agenda that racism is the all-purpose explanation for what ails black America. There are a lot of people making a lot of money on that narrative, and they want to keep it out there. There are political parties who gain and keep political power with that narrative out there, and they want to keep talking about it.

~ Jason Riley, "Black Americans Failed by Good Intentions: An Interview with Jason Riley," 17:22 mark, Reason TV, September 3, 2014

Stephen A. Smith on the Brooklyn Nets hiring Steve Nash as head coach

Ladies and gentleman, there's no way around this.  This is white privilege.  This does not happen for a black man.  No experience whatsoever on any level as a coach?  And you get the Brooklyn Nets job?

~ Stephen A. Smith, "Stephen A. reacts to the Nets hiring Steve Nash as the next head coach," First Take on YouTube, 2:00 mark, September 3, 2020

Vasko Kohlmayer on reverse discrimination in America

Here is the crux of the matter: Racism activists claim that America is a racist society that systemically discriminates against black people, but they fail to submit any genuine evidence in support their claims. In the absence of such evidence, it has to be concluded that their allegations are untrue. On the other hand, it is quite obvious that there exists reverse discrimination all throughout our society that favors black Americans. This observation can be easily backed up with hundreds of genuine real-life, documentable examples of social and institutional practice.

~ Vasko Kohlmayer, "The Myth of Systemic Racism: In America, Reverse Discrimination is the Norm," LewRockwell.com, August 21, 2020

Vasko Kohlmayer on racially motivated police brutality

Notice this: Fewer blacks die in the hands of police than would be expected given the crime ratios. Even though more than half of violent criminals are black, they constitute about one quarter of suspects shot by law enforcement. In other words, black criminals are disproportionally less likely to be killed than white criminals.

~ Vasko Kohlmayer, "The Myth of Systemic Racism: In America, Reverse Discrimination is the Norm," LewRockwell.com, August 21, 2020

Vasko Kohlmayer on the false narrative of racism in America

The claim that the United States is a racist society is thus completely at variance with reality. It is simply not true. One of the countless examples one could mention to illustrate this is the spectacular rise of Barack Obama who was elected to the highest office in America even though his prior accomplishments would – in the words of one commentator – barely fill the back of a postage stamp. A community organizer with a past about which he did not want to speak, Mr. Obama’s main qualification for becoming President of the United States was apparently the fact that his skin was black. Needless to say, the bulk of the votes that catapulted Mr. Obama into office was cast by white people. Could anything like this ever happen in a racist country?

~ Vasko Kohlmayer, "The Real Target of 'Anti-Racism' Protests: Western Civilization and its Values," LewRockwell.com, August 17, 2020

Tom DiLorenzo on Princeton's racism problem

Princeton does indeed have a racism problem. The problem is with the racist “faculty of color” and their supporters who espouse the notion of “systemic racism” which condemns white people solely on the basis of skin color, the exact definition of racism. Martin Luther King, Jr. himself would not be welcomed at Princeton today by these letter writers with his old-fashioned notion that people should be judged not by the color of their skin but by the content of their character. Such language would be investigated by that new Stasi-like “investigative committee” and denounced as the words of an “Uncle Tom” and a race traitor.

~ Tom DiLorenzo, "Princeton's Racism Problem," LewRockwell.com, July 24, 2020

Booker T. Washington on the race grievance industry

There is a class of colored people who make a business of keeping the troubles, the wrongs, and the hardships of the Negro race before the public. Having learned that they are able to make a living out of their troubles, they have grown into the settled habit of advertising their wrongs-partly because they want sympathy and partly because it pays. Some of these people do not want the Negro to lose his grievances, because they do not want to lose their jobs.

~ Booker T. Washington, 1911

Booker T. Washington
1940

Dr. Steven Jones on the anti-racist litmus test for Hollywood

Is it racist or is it anti-racist? It's anti-racist if the outcomes of the decisions create greater representation of Black people. If decisions and policies keep the status quo — or create a greater inequity — then your systems are racist. We need white people in the industry to stand up and to have a zero-tolerance policy for racism. That's different to me than a cancel culture. It's about a commitment culture, a commitment to dismantling racism.

~ Dr. Steven Jones, founder of JONES & Associates, a company of organizational psychologists that has worked with Universal Music Group and Valence Media (parent company of The Hollywood Reporter), "Race-Equity Consultants in Demand in Hollywood: 'Never Once Have We Been So Busy'," The Hollywood Reporter, July 13, 2020