In my personal opinion, Kaufmann, who I view as a monster, should be put on trial for the promotion of genocide. The rationale is described below. Excerpts from Kaufmann’s despicable screed below, emphasis added, with my replies.
See this.
In this piece, I argue for a new way of conceiving national identity and ethnic relations. This entails a porous ‘melting-pot’ ethnic majority, which is informal and social, within a personalized national identity that includes virtually everyone.
As we’ll see, the “virtually" means that folks like me who disagree are to be excluded, but any other featherless biped, with any “personalized national identity," no matter how petty and absurd, would be included. How convenient for a person of mixed-race like Kaufmann. And how inconvenient for people who want to preserve their people and civilization and who want the freedom to live amongst their own kind.
My view is that nations with ethnic majorities are more stable than polycentric multi-ethnic nations like Trinidad, Kenya, Belgium, or Guyana.
And my view is that nations that are racially homogeneous are more stable that multiracial ones, even those with “ethnic majorities.”
In polycentric nations, ethnicity is the basis for political parties and the ‘normal politics’ of left and right is submerged. Federations which have ethnic majorities tend to endure much longer than those where there is no majority. Higher ethnic diversity correlates with lower economic development, which is a major reason why many sub-Saharan African countries — which are generally the most ethnically diverse in the world — have struggled compared to East Asia.
And how is that criticism of ethnic diversity compatible with “a personalized national identity that includes virtually everyone?”
American Ethnicity
Ethnicity is not the same as race, even if race is sometimes used to tightly demarcate one ethnic group from another, as with the ‘one drop’ rule in the pre-Civil Rights American South, which stipulated that even those with a fraction of African ancestry could not be considered white.
Can you stop talking about the unscientific and absurd “one drop rule” that was specifically formulated to prevent people with fractional Black slave ancestry from being assimilated into free White American society? It is completely irrelevant to any informed and rational discussion of race and ethnicity. By the "one drop" standard, Europeans and Asians are Neanderthals because of the relatively small number of Neanderthal genes those groups have assimilated; they are Neanderthals and not modern humans and are a different hominid species as are those without that low level Neanderthal admixture. What idiocy.
However, in parts of Latin America, the color line was not drawn so tightly.
And how are those nations doing compared to the USA?
Meanwhile, a number of ethnic groups cross conventionally defined racial boundaries.
No, they do not. Kaufmann ironically mirrors the solipsism of the Far Right here; to their “minds,” reality is whatever they say it is, the “Lathe of Heaven syndrome.” “Conventionally defined racial boundaries” – defined by who, Kaufmann?
Some central Asian Turkmen look ‘white,’ others East Asian.
It doesn’t matter what they look like, it matters what they actually are. Want a “conventionally defined racial boundary?” Then White = European, which very conveniently represents a combination of genetic, phenotypic, and cultural-historical metrics all taken together. Thus, “central Asian Turkmen” are not “White,” regardless of what Kaufmann thinks “they look like.”
Some Pashtuns look South Asian and others ‘white.’
Same as above. A South Asian, regardless of what Kaufmann thinks they look like, is not European, as any genetic assay, or genealogical investigation, can definitively ascertain.
Some African Americans pass for white and are only recognized as black when they are known to have African ancestry.
It doesn't matter what Kaufmann thinks they "pass" as, it matters what they actually are.
What is Ethnicity?
Ethnicity is based on a subjective belief in common ancestry, as well as a shared collective memory… In defining ethnicity, ‘objective’ cultural markers such as race, religion, and even language are secondary to the subjective myth of ancestry.
Ancestry is not a “subjective myth.” Ancestry can be traced genealogically and leaves its trace in our genes, which today can be assayed for anyone who wishes it (although one must be careful how to interpret the data). Kaufmann is, in my opinion, being maliciously dishonest. Ethnic groups can be distinguished genetically, at least to some extent, racial groups definitely so.
These markers often blur at the boundaries between groups. Think of the line between light-skinned blacks and dark-skinned whites…
As if skin color is the only marker of race. Do African albinos look White? I realize that Kaufmann has some Jewish ancestry, and thus mendacity comes as naturally to him as breathing comes to all of us, but this is just too much.
…part-Anglo Hispanics with Anglo first names (Ted Cruz, George Zimmerman), and English-speaking Hispanics like former New Mexico governor Bill Richardson…
What do their first names or language have to do with anything? What is this utter nonsense?
…between assimilated Kurds in Turkey and ethnic Turks…
Two different ethnic groups.
…between Italians with German surnames and ethnic Germans with Italian surnames in Italy’s South Tyrol region.
The same.
It’s clear that some critical mass of markers is needed to tell one’s group apart from others. You may not look white, but you act, speak, or dress ‘white.’ Or you may look white, but you dress in a turban and have a foreign accent and surname. Each combination may put you on one side or another of a line. That line may vary depending on the observer. It may change when people talk to you and find out about your ancestry, as with a white-looking person who relates that their father is African American and is thereby accepted as such.
Identity is an overall combination of biological (genetic) ancestry, phenotype, culture, etc. All are important. A “white looking person” with an “African-American father” is not White in the European sense. What is Kaufmann babbling about?
America’s ethnic majority is white American, which is a category that expanded its membership criteria in the 1960s from being white, Protestant and ‘colonial stock’ (British, Dutch, or French Huguenot) to include German and Scandinavian Protestants, as well as white Catholics and Jews. This happened mainly due to intermarriage and a decline in sectarianism, but also because of the growing power of a pan-ethnic white American mass culture.
Does this absolute idiot think that occured in the 1960s? The 1960s? Before 1960, German-Americans were not considered "white American" (ignoring Ben Franklin here)? Is he insane? Dwight Eisenhower was of part German stock - a foreigner! Before 1960, Charles Lindbergh was not considered a "white American?" Really? Was Joe DiMaggio considered not a "white American" before 1960? To the Negro Leagues, Joltin' Joe! I suppose JFK was lucky he ran for President in 1960; in 1956, he would have been not a "white American!" Kaufmann is a ludicrous joke.
And, legally speaking, all of those groups (unfortunately including Jews) were always considered "White" with respect to immigration, citizenship, and intermarriage. As regards popular culture, there was of course disagreement, but I note that baseball's "color line" - dating back to the 19th century - never excluded "White ethnics" and indeed allowed "White-looking" Hispanics (and, strangely enough, pure and mixed Native Americans). Since Kaufmann apparently believes that sports can be an important part of national identity (see below), it would seem that is as valid a marker of popular belief as any other. That is just one example of the fact that most people did not consider any Europeans to be "non-White."
The Civil Rights revolution may have elevated race as a more politically salient marker for northern whites than religion. I think the jury is still out on this, as it is difficult to argue that race didn’t matter prior to the 1960s. I reject the notion, from Critical Race Theory, that Catholics and Jews ‘became white’ because a WASP power elite decided they were useful for shoring up a white power structure. They were already legally and socially white in a way blacks, American Indians, and Asians were not. What changed was that they became part of a newly defined ‘white American’ ethnic majority as well as being racially white. That is, the ethnic majority expanded from being narrower than all racial whites to being coterminous with all racial whites.
It they "were already legally and socially white" - as I argued above - then what is the point of Kaufmann's assertions here and above? A distinction between being "White" and being a member of a "White American ethnic majority?" Does anyone else get the feeling Kaufmann is just trying to confuse and obfuscate White American identity so he can maliciously deconstruct it?
Putting aside the Jewish question, he is making a logical mistake in thinking that it is possible to continuously expand the concept of "ethnic majority" beyond the boundary of race, just because previously it was possible to expand up to that boundary.
Looking ahead to the next century, when a majority of Americans will be mixed-race, I would expect ancestry (having some European background) and culture to eclipse race as the key criterion of membership. This would of course mean that many African Americans (80 percent of whom have European origins) could become ‘white’ if they adopted ‘white’ cultural codes.
This is an excellent example of Kaufmann’s promotion of White genocide. First, he takes it for granted that “a majority of Americans will be mixed-race,” thus likely hoping to convince Whites that this mongrelization is inevitable and attempts at racial preservation are doomed to fail. Worse, he redefines the White American people out of existence. White Americans no longer are a distinct racial group - specifically, European Americans. Instead, we have a reverse “one drop rule” of fractional European ancestry, coupled to some vague expectations of “acting White” (“white cultural codes,” whatever that means). Kaufmann invokes African Americans. Since a majority of these are fractionally European, then they all can be “White” if they “act White” in some mysterious way that meets with Kaufmann’s approval (perhaps if they show up to work on time and if they refrain from having fifty children each before they reach the age of ten).
So, in theory, the entire population of America can be composed of African Americans, with all European Americans eliminated, and as long as some of those African Americans have “drops” of European ancestry, and as long as they “act White,” then America is an all-White nation! Presto! Who needs actual Whites, living, breathing, European Americans, when we can redefine that group to exclude the actual original group and instead include their replacements? By this standard, Neanderthals are not extinct, since Europeans and Asians have small fractional Neanderthal ancestry, and I can say that some of them “act Neanderthal.” QED.
How about trying this with other racial groups? Let’s convince the Chinese that replacing Han Chinese with Blacks that have fractional Chinese ancestry is perfectly fine, as long as those Black Chinese eat with chopsticks and create plagues to bedevil mankind. Or perhaps we could be so crude as to propose an Israel full of Arabs and Blacks that have small amounts of Jewish blood from the overwhelmed and assimilated original Israeli Jewish population, with that race replacement being acceptable as long as the new occupiers of the territory are dishonest neurotics who wear little hats on their heads.
The new ethnic majority group might even evolve into a twin-stranded ‘American’ ethnic group based on a fusion of Anglo-European and African descent, much like Mexico’s 90 percent Mestizo majority. Most other lineages would be airbrushed out of the collective memory…
Genocide.
Just as the ethnic majority expanded from being narrower than all whites in 1920 to coterminous with all whites in 1970, it will likely expand to being wider than all whites in 2050 or 2100.
Not if we have anything to say about it.
Thus far I have largely discussed American ethnicity. But not everyone must join the ethnic majority: assimilation should be voluntary, and there are other long-established groups, notably African Americans and American (Native) Indians, which are also poles of attraction, with their own melting pots. Some might move between categories or combine them. We need a superordinate category that encompasses virtually all citizens: the nation.
Kaufmann confuses “nation” with “state.” A “nation” presupposes a distinct people, at least on a broad racial basis, not an amorphous mash of every type of hominid currently extant on the face of the Earth.
The American nation must include everyone from the most recent immigrant from Somalia to an Amish farmer from Ohio, an African American in the Mississippi Delta to a Navajo from Arizona or a Mayflower descendant from Oregon. It must bridge an ideological divide between socialists and libertarians, nationalists and cosmopolitans.
It “must?” Why? Simply because Kaufmann says so, because that is what he wants? But there is no objective reason why this dark and twisted – dare I say truly evil – vision of America “must” be actualized. I can say instead that the American nation must include people of European ancestry only and to hell with the rest. Why is that vision objectively less valid than Kaufmann’s? From the standpoint of European American ethnic genetic interests, we can argue that my vision is objectively more valid from the standpoint of biological fitness.
‘Freedom’ and the American Creed are important touchstones, but so are the ‘everyday’ symbols of American nationhood from landscape and history to sports, cars, and place names; regional cuisines and architecture to popular culture. Having people construct their own ‘personal nationhood,’ with no version viewed as the ‘correct’ way of identifying with the nation, will help make nationhood more meaningful, more tolerant, and more cohesive — all at once. Of course, this doesn’t mean that symbolic competition over the meaning of nationhood will cease: each side will push its cherished constellation of symbols, myths, and memories. The conversation over which version of nationhood is a truer reflection of its essence can be cordial; this struggle, as John Hutchinson notes, almost always reinforces the idea of nationhood.
"...sports, cars, and place names; regional cuisines and architecture..." - is this meant to be serious? A retarded middle school student could, I think, make a better argument than this drivel.
By contrast, a compulsory ‘hymn sheet’ civic nationalism flattens the differences in how people meaningfully attach. Many Americans with deep ancestral and cultural ties to the land will not appreciate their identity being defined abstractly in terms of a universalist idea which rejects the importance of the ethnocultural aspects of their Americanism. Other Americans — immigrants or liberals — may view urban cultural diversity as an important aspect of their American nationhood that is flattened by the notion of nation-as-idea. Alienating people through forcing all into a truncated Americanism tends to reduce both freedom and unity.
So, to Kaufmann, even an aracial civic nationalism is too restrictive! Everyone will simply have their own version of what is means to be an American, and all of these racially alien, and mostly mongrelized, “Americans” will “cordially” disagree with each other, and that will form the basis of an inclusive national identity. That is not only profoundly subversive and destructive from a prescriptive standpoint, but is absurd from a descriptive standpoint. What in American history, particularly today’s extreme division, makes anyone believe that an inclusive and stable sense of national identity can be forged from racially disparate peoples with competing personal (and often petty and superficial) versions of “nationhood?” This idea is really particularly stupid. Once there would be no binding ties of race and ethnicity, no ties of blood and of a shared historical civilizational history, then the ONLY thing left is the idea of nationhood, and even this Kaufmann rejects. Can he really be so stupid as to not realize when those ideas are the only means of identity self-expression then the differences between them will become existential, and the focus of enmity and hatred? There will be nothing tying the nation together other than a paper citizenship and the fact of sharing the same territory. That is a recipe for unending bloodshed. Kaufmann's intellectual mediocrity, and/or mendacity, is on full display here. It should be transparently obvious that such a "nation" is doomed to fail. And note his lack of self-awareness:
Many Americans with deep ancestral and cultural ties to the land will not appreciate their identity being defined abstractly in terms of a universalist idea which rejects the importance of the ethnocultural aspects of their Americanism.
Yes, and "Americans with deep ancestral and cultural ties to the land" will also "not appreciate" rootless mongrels like Kaufmann redefining White American racial identity to include any person who claims to have a "drop" of European blood and who "acts White" according to Kaufmann's mysterious standards. Kaufmann's whole agenda rejects the "ethnocultural aspects" of White "Americanism," so he can criticize himself. His essay is so breathtakingly sloppy and inconsistent that he does nothing but reinforce racialist stereotypes about the racially admixed.
Minorities’ identification to the nation differs symbolically from the way majorities identify to the nation. That’s fine. There should be no one way to be American.
So, not only will “Americans” have no binding ties of blood and race, they won’t even have any common symbols or beliefs. It’ll just be a territory full of disparate peoples and mongrels of every hue and race and face, each with their own distinct and equally valid definitions of nationhood. That’s a nation? That’s stable?
There are limits to the national menu. Those who reject equal treatment under the law and individual rights should be seen as violating a condition of national membership.
Because Kaufmann says so. Policy as personal fiat. There is no actual argument to support that position.
But this stipulation should be drawn loosely, allowing room for ideological differences to be accommodated. All but the most extreme antisocial dissenters and anti-liberals should have a way of being American.
In other words, White nationalists and others who reject Kaufmann and his genocidal vision should not be accommodated and should not “have a way of being American,” but some afro-mongrel who defines Americanism as rap music and Afrocentrism should be so accommodated.
Immigration is also pertinent here. Immigration tends to increase diversity while ethnic assimilation reduces it. As diversity increases, the anxiety of members of the ethnic majority who care about unity and continuity with the past grows. In survey experiments, telling conservative American or British voters that immigrants will melt into the ethnic majority, leaving the country little-changed, tends to reduce opposition to immigration. Telling them that the majority is shrinking and that the country is becoming ever more diverse, and that these are great things, tends to heighten anxiety and sow divisions.
You see, the entire agenda is how to trick the White majority to accept their racial dispossession and destruction. What matters to Kaufmann is not that the ethnic majority is actually preserved, but only that they wrongfully believe that they will be preserved as they are actually being replaced. Thus:
Calibrating the immigration rate to the assimilation rate is important for national unity. Doing so permits voluntary assimilation through intermarriage and acculturation to take place, which tends to increase the size of the ethnic majority. By contrast, rapid immigration tends to reduce the share of the population comprised of the ethnic majority. The problem is that it typically takes several generations for deep assimilation to take place. When it happens, as in America in the 1960s when ethnic neighborhoods began to dissipate and intermarriage took off, it happens very quickly. This is mathematical: the children of mixed offspring are automatically mixed, and so the curve of mixed-race population is exponential. The share of mixed-race Americans will still be a minority in 2100 but will be a clear majority of at least 75 percent by 2150.
This is genocide, the replacement of the unmixed population with racially alien mongrels. Kaufmann is a proponent of genocide.
State integration policies can do little to accelerate the process, and there are few if any examples of state policies that do more good than harm. This means that periods of rapid increase in the foreign-born share, as today or a century ago, should be followed by periods of immigration reduction — such as that of 1924-65 — which slow down the rate of change. When assimilation takes off, the immigration taps can be loosened once again.
Note that last sentence. First, lull Whites to sleep, then open the floodgates to genocidal race replacement immigration.
In his 1916 essay, ‘Trans-National America,’ Bourne urges his fellow WASP Americans to shed their ethnic identity and find the ‘cosmopolitan note.’ On the other hand, he warns Jews and other immigrant groups not to become assimilated ‘cultural half-breeds’ but to ‘stick to their faith.’ The conceit that ethnicity is wonderful for minorities but toxic for majorities spread widely with the 1960s countercultural explosion as universities and television expanded. Meanwhile the anti-WASP animus of left-modernist intellectuals has morphed into anti-white sentiment. It has since become de rigeurfor elite whites to repudiate their own group and encourage minorities to assert an oppositional form of identity. What Matthew Yglesias terms the ‘Great Awokening’ involves a surge, since 2014, in the share of white liberals who believe racism and white supremacy are major problems in American society.
I’m not sure why Kaufmann is painting all of that in negative terms since what he promotes is a natural extension of those ideas.
Going forward, slower immigration and continued assimilation through intermarriage can make the vision of an inclusive-majority-within-an-inclusive-nation a reality.
In other words, boil the White frog slowly so it doesn’t realize it is being killed. What a despicably evil creature this Kaufmann is.
Moving from the state-led assimilation drives of the past to voluntaristic multivocalism is the best way to make this model work in the twenty-first century. This can help erode the historically high diversity which has both increased conservative anxiety and emboldened left-modernism.
Erode diversity by making everyone into coffee-colored “White-acting” mongrels? Or will the "nation" tear itself apart before it reaches that point?
A prerequisite for change, however, is to shrink the outsized influence of left-modernism in the meaning-making center of U.S. society. This ideology, which has reached a peak of influence since its inception more than a century ago, encourages minorities to adopt a hostile posture toward the ethnic majority and national traditions while simultaneously teaching whites to repudiate their heritage and wallow in guilt. The net result is to stoke cultural division and populist backlash, all of which underpins today’s increasingly toxic level of affective polarization.
Kaufmann must really be stupid if he thinks that stopping “teaching whites to repudiate their heritage and wallow in guilt” is going to lead to the aracial future he wishes. Suvorov’s Law says otherwise. So, while Kaufmann is, in my opinion, an unspeakably evil monster, he can also be a useful idiot as long as Whites don’t drink the Kool-Aid and instead just concentrate on the legitimacy of majority group expression. Then we’ll see where that leads.
Let us now consider Kaufmann’s criminal responsibly vis-Ã -vis genocide.
See this.
UN Genocide Convention [Note: Parts particularly relevant to Kaufmann's culpability emphasized]:
Article I The Contracting Parties confirm that genocide, whether committed in time of peace or in time of war, is a crime under international law which they undertake to prevent and to punish.
Article II In the present Convention, genocide means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such:(a) Killing members of the group; (b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group; (c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part; (d) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group; (e) Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.
Article III The following acts shall be punishable:(a) Genocide; (b) Conspiracy to commit genocide; (c) Direct and public incitement to commit genocide; (d) Attempt to commit genocide; (e) Complicity in genocide.
Article IV Persons committing genocide or any of the other acts enumerated in article III shall be punished, whether they are constitutionally responsible rulers, public officials or private individuals.
Let’s consider Julius Streicher. Streicher was put on trial, convicted, and executed at Nuremberg for “incitement to genocide”; in other words, his crime was his ideas, writings, and speeches that promoted Jewish genocide, rather than any direct, physical actions promoting that goal.
Let us consider together. Let us perform a thought experiment. Imagine a Nazi German propagandist named Kek Pepeler. Herr Pepeler was making the following arguments to the German people: “Don’t worry about all of those full-blooded Jews disappearing from the national community. Remember, according to the Nuremberg Laws,1/4 (or less) Jewish ancestry is considered to be German, so we still have in our community people with fractional Jewish ancestry, some of whom may be acting Jewish! So, nothing has changed! Full Jews, quarter Jews, what’s the difference? Let’s keep on with the process of changing our national demographics with the gradual elimination of the full Jews.”
Now, what do you think the Allies would have done with Herr Pepeler after the war? The answer is obvious. Pepeler would have been considered akin to Streicher and would have been put on trial, convicted, and executed in like manner.
Now, carefully consider Kaufmann’s work and its implications and carefully consider Kaufmann’s potential criminal responsibility with respect to the UN Genocide Convention.
