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VOLUME 18, NO. 2

SUMMER 2018

TABLE OF CONTENTS

________________________________________________ ARTICLES The Pan-Hellenic Struggle for Freedom in the Persian Wars

Guillaume Durocher 3

Authentic Heidegger vs. Inauthentic “Fake News”

Tom Sunic 21

Ted Gold and the Jews of Weatherman

Eric Nemmersdorf 35

REVIEW ESSAYS Steven Pinker’s Anti-Enlightenment Attack on White Identitarians Review of Enlightenment Now: The Case for Reason, Science, Humanism, and Progress by Steven Pinker

Ricardo Duchesne 49

Genesis of the Radical Left Review of Revolutionary Yiddishland: A History of Jewish Radicalism by Alain Brossat and Sylvia Klingberg

Brenton Sanderson 69

REVIEWS Understanding Western Decline Review of The Rhythm of the West: A Biohistory of the Modern Era, AD 1600 to the Present by Michael A. Woodley et al. Greek Biopolitics and Its Fall Review of On the Origins of Greek Biopolitics: A Reinterpretation of the History of Biopower by Mika Ojakangas

Nelson Rosit 97

Guillaume Durocher 103

STEVEN PINKER’S ANTI-ENLIGHTENMENT ATTACK ON WHITE IDENTITARIANS ______________________________________

Enlightenment Now: The Case for Reason, Science, Humanism, and Progress Steven Pinker New York: Penguin Random House, 2018 Reviewed by Ricardo Duchesne PINKER “LOATHES” WHITE IDENTITARIANS With the publication of Enlightenment Now, Steven Pinker has decisively established himself as a leading public intellectual in the United States. On the surface, this book is a data-packed defense of the success of the Enlightenment project defined as a way of living that cherishes the use of reason against dogma; the promotion of healthy, happy, and stimulating lives against “progressophobia” and pessimism; scientific evidence against ideological deception; and empathy for the suffering of others against narrow self-interest. But for me, this book is a calculated attack against White “populists” who are sick of the suppression of facts, the fake news, the irrationalism, and the immoral misuse of Enlightenment ideals by a left-right globalist establishment hell-bent on ramming through immigrant diversity across the Western world without democratic consent. Pinker identifies nationalists, populists, Trump supporters, and the Alt Right as the biggest “enemy” of the Enlightenment ideals of science, reason, and humanism. He does not view Islamic peoples and radical leftists as intrinsic enemies. Islamic nations today are embracing a “new Enlightenment” in line with their own “more tolerant, cosmopolitan, and internally peaceful” history, as compared to that of the “Christian West,” which only started a liberal trajectory with the rise of modern science in the seventeenth century (439). Pinker does not see leftists as intrinsic enemies either. Their problem is lack of appreciation for the progress the Enlightenment has brought to humanity. Leftists sometimes get out of hand in keeping conservative globalists out of universities, but we can only be thankful to “intellectual liberals” for being “at the forefront of many forms of progress . . . such as democracy, social insurance, religious tolerance, the abolition of slavery . . . the decline of war, and the expansion of human and civil rights” (373).

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The Occidental Quarterly, vol. 18, no. 2, Summer 2018

It is the “resurgent” ideology of “authoritarian populism,” ethnic nationalism, and “political tribalism” among Whites that constitute “the most insidious form of irrationality today” (383). I will show in this review, however, that it is Pinker who is the enemy of the ideals of the Enlightenment, misinterpreting these ideals as if they were projects for the creation of a race-mixed humanity on European lands. He complains that the “ideals of the Enlightenment are treated by today’s intellectuals with indifference, skepticism, and sometimes contempt” (6). But it is he who extemporaneously alters the definition of cosmopolitanism to mean that all White nations must become “multicultural and multiethnic.” There is nothing in the Enlightenment requiring European nationalists (who believe in peaceful cultural exchanges among nations) to welcome immigration and diversity. Pinker’s claim that European national pride and ethnic identity led to parochialism and intellectual narrowness can be categorized as a form of irrational indoctrination obscuring the actual origins of Enlightenment ideals within ethnically homogeneous European nations. Pinker compiles an incredible array of statistics and graphs showing that “the world is about a hundred times wealthier today than it was two centuries ago”; that “poverty among racial minorities has fallen”; that “Americans are half as likely to be murdered as they were two dozen years ago”; that “Americans became 96 percent less likely to be killed in a car accident . . . 99 percent less likely to die in a plane crash”; that 83 percent in the world can read and write today as compared to only 12 percent in the early in the nineteenth century; that Americans today work 22 fewer hours a week than they did a few decades ago; that as societies have become wealthier “they have emitted fewer pollutants, cleared fewer forests, spilled less oil, set aside more preserves, extinguished fewer species”; that the “world’s nuclear stockpiles have been reduced by 85 percent”—to list only some of the many numbers he collects from “data scientists.” Enlightenment Now is mostly about demonstrating that “the world has made spectacular progress in every single measure of human well-being” (52). Pinker is at his best in this effort. We identitarians, however, respect the standards of rationality too much to believe that this progress was an achievement “of all of humanity.” We disagree that it is “tribalist rather than cosmopolitan” to emphasize that Enlightenment ideas came uniquely from Europe. It is Pinker, not us, who can be legitimately accused of disrespect against the standing scholarship when he cavalierly writes that “Enlightenment ideals have been articulated in non-Western civilizations at many times in history” (29).

Duchesne, “Steven Pinker’s Anti-Enlightenment Attack”

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THE ENLIGHTENMENT IS UNIQUELY EUROPEAN The article Pinker cites in support of this claim is “Enlightenment in Global History: A Historiographical Critique” by Sebastian Conrad. 1 I happen to have examined this article in great detail, as a very revealing sample of the way historians today are rewriting the history of the West to promote the idea that all cultures were more or less equal participants in the making of modernity in the context of multiracial classrooms requiring a “sensitive learning environment.”2 It is worth quoting a longish passage from Conrad’s article, both for what it says about Pinker’s misinterpretation of the historical meaning of the Enlightenment and for what it says about his misleading employment of the ideal of cosmopolitanism. Conrad’s arguments must be exposed: not only are they historically false, but they provide us with an opportunity to suggest that the values of the Enlightenment are peculiarly European, rooted in this continent’s history, and not universally true and applicable to humanity. For one thing, these values are inconsistent with Conrad’s style of research. Honest reflection based on reason and open inquiry shows that the Enlightenment was exclusively European. The great thinkers of the Enlightenment were aristocratic representatives of their people with a sense of rooted history and lineage. They did not believe (except for a rare few) that all the peoples of the Earth were members of a race-less humanity in equal possession of reason. When they wrote of “mankind,” they meant “European-kind.” When they said that “only a true cosmopolitan can be a good citizen,” they meant that European nationals should enlarge their focus and consider Europe “as a great republic.” . . . What concerns Conrad, however, is the promotion of a history in which the diverse cultures of the world can be seen as equal participants in the making of the Enlightenment. Conrad wants to carry to its logical conclusion the allegedly “universal” ideals of the Enlightenment, hoping to persuade Westerners that the equality and the brotherhood of mankind require the promotion of a Global Enlightenment. . . . 3 Sebastian Conrad, “Enlightenment in Global History: A Historiographical Critique,” The American Historical Review 117, no. 4 (October 2012): 999–1027. 2 Ricardo Duchesne, “Multicultural Historians: The Assault on Western Civilization and Defilement of the Historical Profession, Part II: The Scientific Revolution and the Enlightenment,” The Occidental Quarterly 13, no. 4 (2013–2014): 3–31. 3 Ibid., 17. 1


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Conrad’s historiographical study is a travesty intended to dissolve European specificity by way of a sophomoric use of sources. 4 In another article, “The Enlightenment from a New Right Perspective,” I explain at length that Enlightenment thinkers were the first to attempt a scientific conception of human nature structured by racial classifications, culminating in Immanuel Kant’s anthropological justification of his “critical” argument that only European peoples were capable of becoming rational moral legislators of their actions and elevating themselves above the causality of nature and the unreflective customs of tribalist cultures. 5 Kant’s cosmopolitan promotion of peaceful relations among nations and opposition to the slave trade can in no way be interpreted as a call for a globalist, race-mixed order in the West. We all know that Western science spread outside the West and that some non-Western countries have successfully assimilated Western technologies in a self-sustaining manner. Pinker is correct that “any reasoning individual” can engage with Enlightenment ideals, but it is a stretch to infer from this that non-Western peoples are equal to Europeans in their inclination to enlightenment virtues or even their capacity for knowledge. 6 Anyone who has walked along the stacks of university libraries and examined the countless books written in the disciplines Europeans singularly originated, will know that Whites are responsible for almost all the high-quality scholarship produced in the world, at least 90 to 95 percent. One has to wonder why Pinker attacks with such vehemence White critics of immigrant diversification, singling them out as the most “insidious enemies” of the Enlightenment, at the same time that he insists that the Enlightenment is well-established in such countries as Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan, even though the enlightened elites of these nations cherish their own ethnic identities and reject immigrant multiculturalism. SELECTIVE DEMONIZATION Why does Pinker insist that European national identity must be civic, Ibid., 24. Ricardo Duchesne, “The Enlightenment from a New Right Perspective,” in North American New Right, vol. 2 (San Francisco: Counter-Currents Publishing, 2017). 6 Many of my publications are efforts to identify and explain why Europeans have been the most creative in all the endeavors of human life since the aristocratic, horseriding, expansive culture of Indo-Europeans in prehistoric times. See, for example, Faustian Man in a Multicultural Age (London: Arktos Media, 2017). 4 5


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based on political values alone, without ever mentioning the ethnic state of Israel 7 with its massive wall and regular deportation of non-Jewish immigrants? 8 At the core of the Enlightenment ideal, he says, is the expectation that one should provide reasons for one’s beliefs. What are Pinker’s reasons for his selective demonization of European identitarians? 9 There is a lot of psychological projection in Enlightenment Now. Pinker projects his own irrational feelings about protecting Jewish identity onto White identitarians, pretending he is the embodiment of Enlightenment ideals, while calling European populists “blatantly irrational” and “tribal,” but never caring to “adduce reasons” as to why populists may want to protect their culture. His portrayal of Nietzsche as a juvenile thinker who “argued that it’s good to be a callous, egoistic, megalomaniacal sociopath” (444) can be categorized as a callous and egoistic treatment of the scholarship on Nietzsche. Why would books on Nietzsche occupy so many shelves across all Western universities, written mostly by academics who are liberal and who embrace Enlightenment values, if he was just some guy calling for “heroic glory by exterminating some chattering dwarves”? One does not have to be a blatant opponent of the Enlightenment to be doubtful of Pinker’s smug pretension he knows what the meaning of life is. I don’t deny the vast majority of humans superficially agree that leading a “long, healthy, happy, rich, and stimulating life” (418) is most important. Refrigeration, electricity, toilets, vaccinations, computers, and air travel are all great achievements original to Europeans. It is hardly surprising that the spread of these European innovations has improved the lives of millions outside the West, and that Pinker was able to come up with statistics demonstrating this. Only the loony left pretends the Third World has not benefited from Western knowledge. But one should not minimize the longing of aristocratic individuals throughout Western A simple question promoters of diversity never ask is: why they identify European ethnic nationalism with “neo-Nazism” at the same time that they praise the ethnic state of Israel as the only democratically free state in the Middle East? 8 Daniel Estrin, “Israel Gives African Asylum-Seekers a Choice: Deportation or Jail,” NPR (February 22, 2018). https://www.npr.org/sections/parallels/2018/02/22/587858424/israel-givessome-asylum-seekers-a-choice-deportation-or-jail 9 Early in 2016 Pinker issued a statement entitled “Against Selective Demonization” condemning the double standards of those who advocate boycotts, divestments, and sanctions against Israel for its policies towards Palestinians but who ignore the “worse” human rights violations of nations such as Pakistan, China, and Russia. https://whyevolutionistrue.wordpress.com/2016/02/28/pinker-opposes-bds-boycott-of-israel-by-american-anthropological-association/ 7


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history for great deeds, what Spengler and Hegel called a drive for immaterial recognition, no matter the hardship and dangers involved, the pain and material sacrifices. This aristocratic spirit explains why Europeans have been responsible for almost all of the greatest accomplishments in history. Ordinary individuals also want something more than pleasure and longevity, though they may not always articulate this longing in the opinion surveys Pinker relies on for his “scientific” conclusions. Pinker has to admit that “more than two-thirds of Americans deny that they are very happy, around the same proportion as seventy years ago” (325)—despite the fact that over these years, Americans experienced dramatic progress “in every single measurement.” He tries to downplay the rising American suicide rate over the last decades by averaging suicide rates across three countries in the West. But whichever way one cuts it, one would expect Americans (and Europeans) to be many times happier if it is really true that humans value increasing comfort and longevity absolutely. He really can’t explain why drug addiction has remained steadily high among Americans over the decades, and why the group with the highest rates of drug overdose is “middle-aged, less-educated, non-urban white Americans.” His only answer is that they are “globalization’s losers.” DECLINING PSYCHOLOGICAL WELL-BEING Many of the measures of human well-being Pinker analyzes concern the obvious benefits that modernization has brought to formerly pre-industrial, or pre-affluent societies: the spread of Westernization. The statistics on the state of psychological well-being in affluent societies with more comforts, a few extra months of life, increasing globalization, and more bathrooms are not very good, actually. Some of these trends were predicted by critics of the idea of progress, such as Nietzsche and Spengler. Here are some trends with links to sources: • “Chronic loneliness is a modern-day epidemic.” 10 • “Rates of depression and anxiety among teenagers have increased 70 percent in the past 25 years.” 11

Laura Entis, “Chronic Loneliness Is a Modern-Day Epidemic,” Fortune (June 22, 2016). http://fortune.com/2016/06/22/loneliness-is-a-modern-day-epidemic/ 11 Geraldine Bedell, “Teenage Mental-Health Crisis: Rates of Depression Have Soared in Past 25 Years,” The Independent (February 22, 2016). 10


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• “Since 1999, there has been a staggering rise in the prevalence of obesity. The United States will not be escaping the obesity epidemic crisis anytime soon: Nearly 40% of adults and 19% of youth are obese, the highest rate the country has ever seen in all adults.” 12 • “Declining testosterone levels in men not part of normal aging.” 13 • “Sperm counts among Western men have halved in last 40 years— study.” 14 • The civil rights movement notwithstanding: in 1940, Black illegitimacy stood at 14 percent; in 1965, it stood at 25 percent; today, 75 percent of Black children are born to single mothers. White rates have gone up from 3 percent in 1960 to 29 percent today.15 • Incarceration has increased over 500 percent in the United States over the last 40 years. 16 “The number of black men in jail has grown fivefold in the past 20 years, to the point where more black men are behind bars than are enrolled in colleges or universities.” 17 • There has been “an across-the-board collapse of standards in

https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/health-and-families/features/teenagemental-health-crisis-rates-of-depression-have-soared-in-the-past-25-yearsa6894676.html 12 Victoria Larned, “Obesity Among All US Adults Reaches All-Time High,” CNN (October 13, 2017). https://www.cnn.com/2017/10/13/health/adult-obesity-increase-study/index.html 13 “Declining Testosterone Levels in Men Not Part of Normal Aging,” Science Daily (June 23, 2012). https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/06/120623144944.htm 14 Nicolas Davis, “Sperm Counts Among Western Men Have Halved in Last 40 Years—Study,” The Guardian (July 25, 2017). https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2017/jul/25/sperm-counts-amongwestern-men-have-halved-in-last-40-years-study 15 Walter E. Williams, “The True Black Tragedy: Illegitimacy of Nearly 75%,” CNS News.com (May 19, 2015). https://www.cnsnews.com/commentary/walter-e-williams/true-black-tragedy-illegitimacy-rate-nearly-75 16 “Fact Sheet: Trends in U.S. Corrections,” The Sentencing Project (January 01, 2016). https://sentencingproject.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/01/Trends-in-US-Corrections.pdf 17 Fox Butterfield, “Study Finds Big Increase in Black Men as Inmates Since 1980,” New York Times (August 28, 2002). http://www.nytimes.com/2002/08/28/us/study-finds-big-increase-in-black-menas-inmates-since-1980.html

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The Occidental Quarterly, vol. 18, no. 2, Summer 2018 American education over the last 40 to 45 years.” 18 • “Suicide in the United States has surged to the highest levels in nearly 30 years, with increases in every age group except older adults.” 19 • Deaths from opioid use have skyrocketed in recent years, now claiming over 60,000 mainly White working-class people and causing a decline in life expectancy. 20

ENLIGHTENMENT PROGRESS, “FUNERAL BY FUNERAL” Enlightenment Now was written directly as a counterweight to populism. Pinker identifies populism as an ideology that “looks backward to an age in which the nation was ethnically homogeneous” (334). He groups together the ideas of Trump’s “uneducated voters” with the ideas of Nietzsche, Heidegger, and Schmitt in arguing that the “counter-Enlightenment” is a movement that does not respect truth and science. Throughout the book, he takes shots at Trump for “demonizing immigrants” and Muslims, and for employing a “tribalistic” discourse in his mobilization “of an aggrieved and shrinking demographic” (lower-middle-class and rural White Americans). But rather than offering any statistics on the supposed benefits diversity has brought to the “losers of globalization,” he tells his readers that globalization requires immigration, and that globalization “is a tide that is impossible for any ruler to order back” (337), as if the rest of the globalizing world is committed to racial diversification. What is worse, he glowingly looks forward to the demographic decline of Whites across the West as the one trend that will eventually defeat populism and make the Enlightenment unstoppable. After noting that most of the Trump voters who singled out “immigration” and “terrorism” as the most important issues were “uneducated” and aging White males, and that support for Trump, Brexit, and European populist parties “falls 18 Marc Tucker, “Why Have American Educational Standards Collapsed?” Education Week (April 23, 2015). http://blogs.edweek.org/edweek/top_performers/2015/04/why_have_american_education_standards_collapsed.html 19 Sabrina Tavernese, “U.S. Suicide Rates Surges to 30-Year High,” New York Times (April 22, 2016). https://www.nytimes.com/2016/04/22/health/us-suicide-rate-surges-to-a-30year-high.html 20 Rob Stein, “Life Expectancy Drops Again as Opioid Deaths Surge in U.S.,” NPR (December 21, 2017). https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2017/12/21/572080314/life-expectancy-drops-again-as-opioid-deaths-surge-in-u-s


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off dramatically with year of birth” (because “education exposes people in young adulthood to other races and cultures”), Pinker disparagingly says, “Populism is an old [White] man’s movement . . . sometimes society advances funeral by funeral” (341–43). On the other hand, he looks forward to the mobilization of “African Americans,” “Hispanics,” and immigrants in future elections to uphold the highest ideals of the Enlightenment, “respect for vetted fact and reasoned argument.” The Alt Right has a “youngish membership,” but in the face of these demographic trends, it will remain an “electoral nonentity.” One would think that, in tying the Enlightenment project so closely with diversity, Pinker would bring up statistics addressing specifically the ways immigration has promoted science and humanism. But because he relies primarily on statistics measuring long-term trends, and because the arrival of Third World immigrants only started in earnest two to three decades ago, he averages out of existence many of the statistical maladies identitarians have noted about diversification in Europe. One needs shorter time series data to detect trends associated with immigration per se. One should also avoid statistics informing us about average national crime rates, welfare spending, and rapes, including general surveys about a nation’s “racist, sexist, xenophobic, homophobic, and authoritarian” attitudes. By his own leftist criteria, one has to ask: Have Muslim and African immigrants really contributed to a “less racist, sexist, homophobic, and authoritarian” Europe? It is revealingly odd that someone who claims to be deeply concerned with “humanity” and “truth” does not care to offer a single figure about the systematic raping of White girls by migrants, the massive costs immigrant integration21 has entailed, the continuously low educational attainments of certain ethnic groups, 22 the incredibly deceptive efforts of “Enlightenment” historians to rewrite the histories of European nations as immigrant nations, 23 the increasing reality of no-go zones across various 21 Soeren Kern, “Germany’s Migrant Rape Crisis: January 2017. Tolerating a “Rape Culture” to Sustain a Politically Correct Stance on Mass Immigration,” Gatestone Institute (February 13, 2017). https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/9934/germany-rape-january 22 Nima Gholam Ali Pour, “Welcome to Sweden: Eldorado for Immigrants!” Gatestone Institute (February 18, 2017). https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/9901/sweden-migrants-costs 23 Katrin Elger, “Survey Shows Alarming Lack of Integration in Germany,” Spiegel Online (January 26, 2009). http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/immigration-survey-showsalarming-lack-of-integration-in-germany-a-603588.html

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European countries, 24 and the number of mainstream journalists and academics who have disgracefully remained silent over the prevalence of child grooming rape gangs across Britain. 25 WILLFUL NEGLECT OF DATA Pinker relies on a quantitative study by Esteban Ortiz-Ospina and Max Roser, “Trust,” 26 to argue that increased education has made Westerners “more enlightened,” “more likely to vote, volunteer . . . belong to civic associations . . . and community organizations” (235). This study informs us that in educated countries such as Norway, Sweden, and Finland, “more than 60% of respondents think that people can be trusted,” whereas in less educated countries “such as Colombia, Brazil, Ecuador and Peru, less than 10% think that is the case.” It was likely on the basis of this one contrast that Pinker tried to portray Westerners today as more trusting and civic-minded. But when we look at trends inside Europe, this study actually says that “the percentage of the population in OECD [Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development] countries (mostly Western countries) reporting confidence in the national government went down every year in the period 2009–2013.” When it comes to the United States, this study says that “today, trust in the government in the US is at historically low levels. . . . people in the US seem to trust each other less today than 40 years ago.” Pinker wants us to believe that diversity is correlated with increases in trust and participation in community associations. But this study says that in the UK “associations with voluntary organisations declined significantly . . . the percentage of the UK population that is active with one or more organization fell from 52% in 1993 to 43% in 2012.” Pinker claims that his book is all about demonstrating through the sheer use of data that “the Enlightenment has worked.” Why does he overlook what the actual data say? I have no problem accepting generally 24 We now have a book on a topic establishment academics and politicians continue to pretend is a non-topic: Raheem Kassam, No Go Zones: How Sharia Law Is Coming to a Neighborhood Near You (Washington, DC: Regnery Publishing, 2017). 25 The mass-raping of British White girls is not some past phenomenon restricted to Rotherham, but a widespread reality in multiple localities, in Rochdale, Oxfordshire, Telford, and other places the media prefers to ignore. See Douglas Murray, “The BBC’s Shameful Silence on the Telford Sex Scandal,” The Spectator (March 12, 2018). https://blogs.spectator.co.uk/2018/03/the-bbcs-shameful-silence-on-the-telfordsex-scandal/ 26 Esteban Ortiz-Ospina and Max Roser, “Trust,” OurWorldInData.org (2016). https://ourworldindata.org/trust


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the claim that “the Enlightenment has worked”—as long as we separate the Enlightenment from the emerging anti-Enlightenment statistical trends associated with immigrant diversification. This act of misinterpreting data about declining trust speaks loudly about the supreme aim of Enlightenment Now: promote the idea that ethnic diversification is founded on truth and science. Conversely, promote the idea that opposition to ethnic diversification is founded on irrationalism and Nietzschean sociopathology. Pinker really likes surveys, but why did he ignore the most extensive survey yet conducted on the effects of diversity on trust and civic participation, Robert D. Putnam’s 2007 “E Pluribus Unum: Diversity and Community in the Twenty-first Century”? 27 Was it because, after conducting 30,000 interviews over a five-year period, Putnam concluded that the greater the diversity, the greater the distrust; the more diversity, the less civic engagement? The Enlightenment defined as increased ethnic diversity is not working. This is no longer an isolated study. In “Diversity Is Destroying the Cohesion and Social Capital of Western Nations,” I assessed the merits of many studies coming after Putnam’s. 28 A key point in this article was that the entire research establishment is dedicated to the “successful” completion of diversification and that the academics working on these studies are servants of the state, terrified at the thought of affirming their White identity; and yet the evidence coming out is not looking good for diversity hacks. I also observed in this article an inverted anti-White logic in the way the evidence is interpreted: negative reactions by Whites against the effects of diversity are not counted as negative evidence if the diversification is seen to benefit non-Whites. Rather, negative reactions by Whites count as evidence that Whites are not accepting diversity and that they need more education and more diversity against the perils of racism. Below I will offer a short, annotated bibliography of additional studies. Keep in mind that diversification is still a relatively new experiment; Europe 27 Robert D. Putnam, “E Pluribus Unum: Diversity and Community in the Twentyfirst Century,” Scandinavian Political Studies 30, no. 2 (June 2007): 137–74; Michael Jonas offers a very good summary of Putnam’s findings in “The Downside of Diversity,” Boston.com News (August 5, 2007). http://archive.boston.com/news/globe/ideas/articles/2007/08/05/the_downside_of_diversity/ 28 Ricardo Duchesne, “Diversity Is Destroying the Cohesion and Social Capital of Western Nations,” Council of European Canadians (November 10, 2017). http://www.eurocanadian.ca/2017/11/diversity-destroying-cohesion-social-capital-whites.html

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only intensified mass immigration after 2000–2001; the studies coming out are still looking at diversification in its early stages; and yet the verdict emerging is that Pinker’s interpretation of the Enlightenment is not working, and moreover, that increasing diversity in Europe (and America) is confirming Putnam’s conclusions. • “Does Ethnic Diversity Have a Negative Effect on Attitudes Towards the Community? A Longitudinal Analysis of the Causal Claims within the Ethnic Diversity Social Cohesion Debate.” 29 The abstract notes that prior studies “demonstrate a negative association between community ethnic diversity and indicators of social cohesion (especially attitudes towards neighbours and the community), suggesting diversity causes a decline in social cohesion.” The finding of this article is that “changes in community diversity do lead to changes in attitudes towards the community . . . Increasing diversity undermines attitudes among stayers [those who stay in the community].” By contrast, “individuals who move from a diverse to a homogeneous community report improved attitudes.” • “Ethnic Diversity and Social Trust: Evidence from the Micro-Context.” 30 “We argue that residential exposure to ethnic diversity reduces social trust.” • “Ethnic Diversity and Its Impact on Community Social Cohesion and Neighbourly Exchange.” 31 According to this study of Australian suburbs in Brisbane: “Our results provide at least partial support for Putnam’s thesis.” • “School Ethnic Diversity and White Students’ Civic Attitudes in England.” 32 Two highlights of this article are: “Diverse schools do not make White British students more inclusive in their attitudes on immigrants” and “diverse schools reduce trust in people of one’s 29 James Laurence and Lee Bentley, “Does Ethnic Diversity Have a Negative Effect on Attitudes Towards the Community? A Longitudinal Analysis of the Causal Claims within the Ethnic Diversity Social Cohesion Debate,” European Sociological Review 32, no. 1 (2016): 54–67, 54. 30 Peter Thisted Dinesen and Kim Mannemar Sønderskov, “Ethnic Diversity and Social Trust: Evidence from the Micro-Context,” American Sociological Review 80, no. 3 (2015): 550–73, 550. 31 Rebecca Wickes, Renee Zahnow, Gentry White, and Lorraine Mazerolle, “Ethnic Diversity and Its Impact on Community Social Cohesion and Neighbourly Exchange,” Journal of Urban Affairs 36, no. 1 (2014): 51–78, 51. 32 Jan Germen Jaanmat, “School Ethnic Diversity and White Students’ Civic Attitudes in England,” Social Science Research 49 (January 2015): 97–109, 97.


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own age.” “Ethnic Diversity, Economic and Cultural Contexts, and Social Trust: Cross-Sectional and Longitudinal Evidence from European Regions, 2002–2010.” 33 “Using survey data from the European Social Survey 2002–2010 merged with immigration figures from the European Labour Force Survey, this study [reveals] . . . an increase in immigration is related to a decrease in social trust.” “Volunteering Hits Lowest Rate in More Than 10 Years.” 34 “As of September 2013, 25.4 percent of all Americans 16 and older had volunteered with an organization at least once in the prior year, according to a new report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. This is the lowest rate of volunteering the annual report has found since it was first conducted in 2002.” “Ethnic Diversity and Social Trust: A Critical Review of the Literature and Suggestions for a Research Agenda.” 35 “In this chapter we critically review the empirical evidence for a negative relationship between contextual ethnic diversity (measured locally within countries) and social trust. We cautiously conclude that there are indications of a negative relationship . . .” I suggest they must be cautious for fear they will be fired. “Does Ethnic Diversity in Local Areas Residential Areas Erode Trust in Other People?” 36 “The results show that interethnic exposure in

33 Conrad Ziller, “Ethnic Diversity, Economic and Cultural Contexts, and Social Trust: Cross-Sectional and Longitudinal Evidence from European Regions, 2002–2010,” Social Forces 93, no. 3 (2015): 1211–40, 1211. 34 “Volunteering Hits Lowest Rate in More Than 10 Years,” U.S. News (February 26, 2014). https://www.usnews.com/news/blogs/data-mine/2014/02/26/volunteeringhits-lowest-rate-in-more-than-10-years 35 Peter Thisted Dinesen and Kim Mannemar Sønderskov, “Ethnic Diversity and Social Trust: A Critical Review of the Literature and Suggestions for a Research Agenda,” in The Oxford Handbook of Social and Political Trust, ed. Eric M. Uslaner (forthcoming): 1– 31, 1. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/316059676_Ethnic_Diversity_and_Social_Trust_A_Critical_Review_of_the_Literature_and_Suggestions_for_a_Research_Agenda 36 Peter Thisted Dinesen and Kim Mannemar Sønderskov, “Does Ethnic Diversity in Local Areas Residential Areas Erode Trust in Other People?,” Carlsberg Foundation (February 5, 2016). http://www.carlsbergfondet.dk/en/Forskningsaktiviteter/Research-Projects/Other-Research-Projects/Does-Ethnic-Diversity-in-Local-Residential-AreasErode-Trust-in-Other-People


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immediate residential surroundings—down to a few hundred metres within the place of residence—reduces social trust among native Danes.” There are many additional studies showing that greater diversity increases mistrust and reduces social cohesion. 37 It should not be surprising that some studies challenge Putnam’s conclusion. Yet, as I argued in “Diversity Is Destroying the Cohesion and Social Capital of Western Nations,” none of these studies have demonstrated that diversity increases social cohesion. At most, they have produced some evidence that ethnic diversity “does not, with any certainty, erode social capital.” 38 This is a rather lame conclusion considering the endless paeans to multiculturalism and the vast resources dedicated to diversification. It bears repeating that one of Pinker’s central claims is that diversity is essential to the successful completion of the ideals of the Enlightenment. He says that “the claim that ethnic uniformity leads to cultural excellence is as wrong as an idea can be” (450). How about the claim that the Enlightenment was singularly the product of White males in European nations with zero diversification programs? The following studies may hesitate in their conclusions due to an obvious political climate that maligns any overt criticism of diversity, but their overall message is that diversity has a negative effect on community cohesion: Bram Lancee and Jaap Dronkers, “Ethnic, Religious and Economic Diversity in Dutch Neighbourhoods: Explaining Quality of Contact with Neighbours, Trust in the Neighbourhood and Inter-Ethnic Trust,” Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies 37, no. 4 (2011): 597–618; Dora L. Costa and Matthew E. Kahn, “Civic Engagement and Community Heterogeneity: An Economist’s Perspective,” Perspective on Politics 1, no. 1 (March 2003): 103–11; Jan Delhey and Kenneth Newton, “Predicting Cross-National Levels of Social Trust: Global Pattern or Nordic Exceptionalism?” European Sociological Review 21, no. 4 (September 2005): 311–27; Edward Fieldhouse and David Cutts, “Does Diversity Damage Social Capital? A Comparative Study of Neighbourhood Diversity and Social Capital in the U.S. and Britain,” Canadian Journal of Political Science 43, no. 2 (June 2010): 289–318; Marc Hooghe, Tim Reeskens, Dietlind Stolle, and Anne Trappers, “Ethnic Diversity and Generalized Trust in Europe: A Cross-National Multilevel Study,” Comparative Political Studies 42, no. 2 (February 2009): 198–223; Tom W. Rice and Brent Steele, “White Ethnic Diversity and Community Attachment in Small Iowa Towns,” Social Science Quarterly 82, no. 2 (June 2001): 397–407; Perola Öberg, Sven Oskarsson, and Torsten Svensson, “Similarity vs. Homogeneity: Contextual Effects in Explaining Trust,” European Political Science Review 3, no. 3 (November 2011): 345–69. 38 Vilius Semenas, “Ethnic Diversity and Social Capital at the Community Level: Effects and Implications for Policymakers,” Inquiries Journal 6, no. 4 (2016). http://www.inquiriesjournal.com/articles/888/ethnic-diversity-and-social-capitalat-the-community-level-effects-and-implications-for-policymakers 37


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EXPLOITING EUROPEAN SYMPATHIES TO PROMOTE OUT-GROUPS Pinker employs the Enlightenment idea that humans have a natural inclination toward social sympathy for the misfortune of others as a moral weapon to persuade Whites that they have an obligation (in this age of affluence and education when this inclination can flourish) to “consider humanity as a whole” and welcome millions of immigrants into their nations. Pinker does not mention this book, but Gertrude Himmelfarb argues in The Roads to Modernity: The British, French, and American Enlightenments that “the distinctive feature of the British Enlightenment” was the idea that humans have a “moral sense” rooted in their nature “derived neither from self-interest nor from reason . . . a moral sense that inspired sympathy, benevolence and compassion for others.” 39 This idea underpins Pinker’s The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined. 40 This book argues that violent behaviors gradually declined over the centuries, with the post-Second World War era being the most peaceful time ever, because the spread of the Enlightenment nurtured this moral sense and promoted empathy in combination with human reason. Clearly, however, it is one thing to say that our sense of sympathy, our circle of compassion, has expanded with our global awareness of people in faraway lands; it is another to say that we have nurtured an innate capacity to spread our sympathy equally across the world. This is an argument Pinker has formulated specifically for Whites. He even says that Westerners, “as citizens of the world,” should be prepared to make sacrifices in their own interests for the sake of a wider humanity outside their homelands. He admits that “the world’s poor have gotten richer in part at the expense of the American lower middle class,” and he is aware that this class of rural Whites has lost against the importation of cheap immigrant laborers, and that this group has the highest drug addiction rates. But he does not seem to have much empathy for these Whites. Instead, he says that sacrificing rural Whites should be seen as an enlightened “trade-off” by those who are reasonable, urbane, and truthful: “As citizens of the world considering humanity as a whole, we have to say that the trade-off [getting the world’s poor and immigrants richer] is worth it” (113). It is indeed strange that someone widely known as a critic of the leftist

Gertrude Himmelfarb, The Roads to Modernity: The British, French, and American Enlightenments (New York: Random House, 2004). 40 Steven Pinker, The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined (New York: Viking Books, 2011). 39


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academic orthodoxy, principally for his “subversive Darwinian claims” 41 in The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature that human behavior is substantially shaped by evolutionary psychological adaptations, is now so strongly against any form of “tribalist” in-group behavior in favor of a cosmopolitan ethic. 42 It is worth quoting this passage: Given that we are equipped with the capacity to sympathize with others, nothing can prevent the circle of sympathy from expanding from the family and tribe to embrace all of humankind, particularly as reason goads us into realizing that there can be nothing uniquely deserving about ourselves or any of the groups to which we belong. We are forced into cosmopolitanism: accepting our citizenship in the world. (11) He wants us to believe he is not suggesting we should change human nature to overcome in-group tribalism, but only that we can “expand” our naturally based circle of sympathy from the tribe to the globe. He dismisses as a “crude version of evolutionary psychology” the idea that individual humans have been selected “to sacrifice their interests for the supremacy of their group” (448). He identifies the idea of in-group preferences with “neo-Nazi parties,” “Romantic nationalism,” and theories of group selection among evolutionists (“survival of the fittest group”). This is possibly the most questionable claim of Enlightenment Now. First, as should already be clear to readers of this review, Pinker is not merely saying that we should sympathize with the suffering of others, in the way the already enlightened and urbane Japanese and Israelis presumably do. He is saying that Europeans should expand their circle of fellow-feeling from their nations to the world to “embrace” millions of immigrants. We need to be aware that he is holding Whites, and only Whites, to this moral standard. THE SCIENCE OF EUROCENTRISM Secondly, Pinker is wrong that the science of in-group preferences and out-group derogation is without merit. We all know that Europeans tend to be more individualistic, less collectivistic in their ethnic awareness, and that they have a unique capacity to think in universal moral terms, which is why they originated the Enlightenment, a rational system of law, and These are the words of the renowned cognitive psychologist Daniel Dennett. Steven Pinker, The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature (New York: Penguin Group, 2002). 41 42


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the method of modern science. Non-Europeans are more collective and racially aware and more inclined to practice ethnic nepotism. 43 Pinker is clearly making the most of this European inclination. Nevertheless, numerous scientific studies have been coming out in recent years supporting the view that humans generally have a preference for their ethnic in-group, and that such altruistic dispositions as sharing, loyalty, caring, and even motherly love, are exhibited primarily and intensively within in-groups rather than toward a universal “we” in disregard for one’s community. It is not that in-groups needlessly seek to attack out-groups; nor is it that in-groups have an inborn disposition to hate others. The focus is much more on positive behaviors within the in-group. In general, ingroup members concentrate on altruism and cooperation within the group rather than aggression towards outsiders, unless the competing out-group comes to be seen as a threat. The research also shows that conflict escalation between ethnic groups is lower when physical barriers exist between them, 44 and much higher when different groups inhabit the same national territory.45 As Carsten K. W. De Dreu et al. observe in their widely cited article, “Oxytocin Promotes Human Ethnocentrism,” the tendency for in-group members is to favor their own rather than to hate outsiders: [T]here is good reason to believe that the in-group prejudice effect is far more basic to human life than is the out-group hate prejudice effect, and research on human ethnocentrism supported this positive-negative asymmetry of social discrimination . . . showing that oxytocin creates intergroup bias primarily because it motivates ingroup favoritism and not because it motivates out-group derogation. 46 43 Frank Salter, “J. P. Rushton’s Theory of Ethnic Nepotism,” Personality and Individual Differences 55, no. 3 (July 2013): 256–60; Tatu Vanhanen, “Ethnic Nepotism as a CrossCultural Background Factor of Ethnic Conflicts,” Open Journal of Political Science 4, no. 3 (July 2014): 143–55. 44 Alex Rutherford et al., “Good Fences: The Importance of Setting Boundaries for Peaceful Coexistence,” PLOS (May 21, 2014). http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0095660 45 Tatu Vanhanen, “Domestic Ethnic Conflict and Ethnic Nepotism: A Comparative Analysis,” Journal of Peace Research 36, no. 1 (January 1999): 55–73. 46 Carsten K. W. De Dreu, Lindred L. Greer, Gerben A. Van Kleef, Shaul Shalvi, and Michel J. J. Handgraaf, “Oxytocin Promotes Human Ethnocentrism,” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 108, no. 4 (January 25, 2011): 1262–66. There is a rapidly

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Pinker demonizes Europeans who show loyalty to their in-group, but the cross-cultural data collected by Elizabeth Cashdan “provide no support for the proposition that out-group hostility is a necessary concomitant of in-group loyalty.” 47 Favoring one’s own ethnic group at the expense of other groups finds expression in a wide variety of human behaviors, 48 from voting patterns 49 to school choice, 50 from marriage partners to choice of neighborhoods. 51 There is also extensive evidence that ethnocentrism is common throughout the animal world, 52 including plants.53 Humans favor their own ethnic group because this attitude is evolutionarily adaptive. This behavior is rooted in biological evolution. It is not a growing number of papers on the relationship between oxytocin and ethnocentrism. Chinese academics are starting to be very curious about this relationship. In a recent study by Xiaole Ma et al., “Oxytocin Increases Liking for a Country’s People and National Flag But Not for Other Cultural Symbols or Consumer Products,” it is stated that “Cultural bias and prejudice provides both the glue which binds large social groups together as well as laying the foundations for intergroup conflict.” Perhaps an interesting academic situation is emerging with Western academic studying oxytocin to find ways to decrease ethnocentrism among Whites while Chinese academics eagerly wanting to find out whether oxytocin can be used medically to ensure Chinese cultural solidarity and hegemony in a cucked White world; see Frontiers in Behavioral Neuroscience. (August 5, 2014) https://doi.org/10.3389/fnbeh.2014.00266 47 Elizabeth Cashdan, “Ethnocentrism and Xenophobia: A Cross-Cultural Study,” Current Anthropology 42, no. 5 (December 2001): 760–65. 48 Miles Hewstone. Mark Rubin, and Hazel Willis, “Intergroup Bias,” Annual Review of Psychology 53 (February 2002): 575–604. 49 Alec Tyson and Shiva Maniam, “Behind Trump’s Victory: Divisions by Race, Gender, Education,” Pew Research Center (November 9, 2016). http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2016/11/09/behind-trumps-victory-divisions-by-race-gender-education/ 50 Beatrice Schindler Rangvid, “School Choice, Universal Vouchers and Native Flight from Local Schools,” European Sociological Review 26, no. 3 (June 2010): 319–35. 51 Tom Jacobs, “‘White Flight’ Remains a Reality,” Pacific Standard (March 6, 2018). https://psmag.com/social-justice/white-flight-remains-a-reality 52 Ivan D. Chase, “Cooperative and Non-Cooperative Behavior in Animals,” The American Naturalist 115, no. 6 (June 1980): 827–57. 53 Meredith L. Biedrzycki and Harsh P. Bais, “Kin Recognition in Plants: A Mysterious Behavior Unsolved,” Journal of Experimental Botany 15, no. 1 (October 2010): 4123–28. The authors of this study write: “Biologists have long accepted that diverse animal species have evolved means to recognize and interact with other members of their species, often specifically kin members to enhance their survival. More recently, studies have shown that various microbes, some of the simplest life forms, also have the ability to recognize their kin. So why is it surprising that studies have shown that plants, too, can recognize and interact with their kin?” (4123).


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pathology and should not be seen as defect that must be engineered or legislated out of existence. Pinker’s argument carries little appeal among non-Whites, including Jews. Non-Whites enjoy promoting universalism among Whites while following their own in-group interests. We have in the Western world a situation in which millions of immigrants from collectivist cultures are arriving to compete with a native White population that is less collectivist and that is continually under intense pressure by a left-right globalist establishment to avoid any signs of “xenophobic” in-group preferences. Whites, rather, are expected to encourage non-Whites to affirm their particular ethnic identity under the benevolence of multicultural humanitarianism. This asymmetrical scenario is leading to the ethnocide of Whites. 54 There is scientific evidence showing, on the basis of “recent agent-based computer simulations,” 55 that in a social setting consisting of in-groups and out-groups, the ethnocentric strategy of favoring one’s group at the expense of other groups “dominate” the “selfish strategy of constant defections,” the “traitorous strategy of cooperation with outgroup, but not in-group, agents,” and the “humanitarian strategy of indiscriminate cooperation.” Another study, based on computer simulations, shows that ethnocentrics dominate humanitarians with a wide circle of sympathy “by virtue of directly exploiting” the humanitarian inclination “to cooperate across group boundaries.” The humanitarians are easy to exploit by ethnocentrics because humanitarians are willing to provide benefits to out-group agents at a cost to their own in-group agents. This study shows, actually, that European humanitarians can “thrive in the absence of ethnocentrism”—that is, in the absence of ethnocentric out-groups inside their homelands. Whites were uniquely responsible for the Enlightenment. It was a strategy they developed for themselves in order to overcome the extremely violent age of religious wars between 1560 and 1715, during which Europe witnessed only thirty years of international peace. Without the ethnocentric collectivism of non-White groups, the humanitarian idea of enlarging one’s sympathy for Europeans at large was quite successful in Ricardo Duchesne, Canada in Decay: Mass Immigration, Diversity, and the Ethnocide of Euro-Canadians (London: Black House Publishing, 2017). 55 Max Hartshorn, Artem Kaznatcheev, and Thomas Shultz, “The Evolutionary Dominance of Ethnocentric Cooperation,” Journal of Artificial Societies and Social Stimulation 16, no. 3 (June 2013). The words and phrases within quotation marks all come from this article. 54

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minimizing conflicts, both between European nations and among different ethnic European groups in America, Australia, New Zealand, and Canada. But the Enlightenment was infiltrated by alien, cultural Marxist principles after the Second World War, though its origins can be traced back to before this war. Pinker’s Enlightenment Now may be seen as an ethnocentric strategy to use the Enlightenment against the humanitarian tendencies of Whites, a strategy now employed by multiple immigrant outgroups to “receive the benefit of humanitarian cooperation while donating nothing across” their own in-group lines.