Auster Projecting, Again

In an entry titled Why do the anti-Semites always deny their own openly stated positions? Lawrence Auster writes (his emphasis):

Wheeler thus exhibits the classic dishonesty of the anti-Israelites which I've discussed many times. They ceaselessly grumble about the fact that they are called anti-Semites and excluded from discussion forums because they "don't subscribe" to Israel, or because they "don't genuflect" to Israel, or because they "don't jump on the Zionist bandwagon," and other similar phrases, as though anyone were asking them to subscribe or genuflect or jump on a bandwagon! These people never have the simple honesty and manhood to say something like, "Auster excluded me because I said that of all the nations on earth Israel alone is cursed and deserves to be the target of terrorism forever."

Why do the anti-Semites, who make such a deal about their own courage, nobility, and honesty in the face of a hostile and hypocritical society, always try to conceal their actual beliefs and the actual reasons that other people reject them? Why do they keep telling such transparent lies? Why don't they take proud responsibility for their avowed principles that get them excluded? Why do they declare a war of perpetual terrorism against Jews, and then claim to have been treated unfairly when Jews simply refuse to talk to them?

In other words, apart from their sick and evil beliefs about the Jews, what is wrong with these people?

We begin by observing that in this post, as he so often does, Auster is projecting his own guilty mind onto others. It is Auster himself who does a daily dance of pretense. He has provided more than enough evidence (which I have pointed out before and will cite and add to below) that he is not clearly and openly expressing his true motives or priorities. He never has the simple honesty and manhood to say something like, "I called for these people to be excluded because my highest priority is to do what I think is good for jews". He's always grumbling that others should take responsibility for their avowed principles even while he distorts what those principles are and regularly violates his own.

For one thing, note how illogical and sloppy Auster's argument above is. Auster leaps from criticizing Wheeler, to all anti-israelites, to all anti-semites. He takes a single brief comment of Wheeler's, the general sentiment of which Wheeler has openly expressed on several occasions in several forms and forums, searches out the longer more specific exchange with himself to which Wheeler referred, interprets the differences between the two as a sign of maliciousness, absurdly asserts that Wheeler is trying to mislead others about what he really believes, and then extends this smear to a broad, amorphous group of other people, claiming that it exemplifies their "sick and evil" beliefs. Auster's thinking here is not only irrational. It is based on precisely the kind of leaps of logic and idiotic generalizations he himself decries when he thinks such tactics are being used against jews.

Auster often misrepresents his own previously stated positions. Here he implies that he believes the only punishment for those he labels "anti-semite" is and should be that jews simply not talk to them. The fact is that he has provided a vast corpus detailing how he really feels about and wants done to anyone "to his right" on jews or israel. In reading this corpus it is clear he hates "anti-semites" and "anti-israelites" with a passion deeper, more emphatically expressed, and less convincingly justified than he puts into anything else he writes about.

Consider the specific example provided by In which circle of hell do the anti-Semites reside? in which he unselfconsciously peddles and projects the "one truth" about which anti-anti-semites like himself obsess (Auster repeats it like a mantra):

Imagine going through life having that one obsessive thought, and believing that this one thought is the truth, the great truth that explains everything, the great truth that will save the world, the great truth that the world is forever suppressing. Having given over their whole being to the idee fixe that the Jews are the source of all evil, the anti-Semites are souls in hell, and, as in Dante's Hell, they don't know that they're in hell, but keep repeating for eternity the same sin that consigned them to hell.

Auster, who so often indulges in guilt-by-association and calls for anyone he labels anti-semite to be censored, is apparently quite willing to associate with and even to provide a forum for Ken Hechtman. This is likely the "Ken H" who comments in the hell thread linked above. There "Ken H" insults Christians as unthinking "true believers" and compares this caricature to Auster's caricature of anti-semites. This really disturbed Auster. Not because it was an insult to Christians, but because he didn't want his condemnation of anti-semites to be diminished in any way. "Ken H" agrees that "[a]nti-Semites are certainly outside the pale of normal civil discourse" after which Auster has nothing to say about his slur against Christians.

Months later Auster focused directly on Ken Hechtman. From Hechtman's thoughts alone Auster's readers judged him to be a liberal jew. Concerning Hechtman and his thoughts Auster wrote:

You're beyond the left. You're off in some fantasy land of your own.
. . .
his agenda is not to preserve our existing society, but to advance Muslim power and influence in Canada and America as step toward building One World
. . .
It may seem, as I said earlier, that Ken Hechtman's views are so extreme that they cannot be seen as representative of even the usual (i.e. the radical) pro-large-scale immigration, pro-open-borders position, such as that of the people who supported the Comprehensive Immigration Reform.
. . .
You want to destroy Canada, the U.S. and Europe. You want to destroy everything the West and the Western peoples have been.
. . .
KH's ideas are simply a formula to destroy everything that we are, and should be identified as such.
. . .
These leftists live in an unreal world and are hyper-alienated from anyone who doesn't share their unreality.

After all that Auster didn't dehumanize Hechtman or other hyper-alienated pro-open-borders leftists who want to destroy the West by saying they are sick, evil, or have consigned themselves to hell. He never called for any of them, or Hechtman himself, to be censored. Instead he wrote:

I hope Mr. Hechtman doesn't feel he's being ganged up on here

Ever since this exchange Mr. Hechtman has been an occasional guest of Mr. Auster's. Auster meticulously copies and pastes Hechtman's comments onto his blog just like any other he hand selects for inclusion. Without any mention of his hyper-alienation and anti-West sentiments. Why is that?

Here's another example. In Anti-Semites: the evil and stupid party Auster writes:

The central assertion of the anti-Semites who have been posting at the American Renaissance website for the last week is that "Zionist Jews" (as distinct from non-Zionist Jews) are the main threat to Western culture. This idea is so moronic that anyone who says it should be excluded from a discussion forum on that basis alone.

By the way, one of the absolute proofs that someone is an anti-Semite is that he describes anti-Semites as people who are merely "asking questions" about the Jews, or who are merely "criticizing" Jews, and therefore it's terribly unfair to call them anti-Semites. This is the parody of rationality I've often mentioned. When I talk about the difference between rational criticism of Jews and anti-Semitism, I'm talking about something real. When the anti-Semites try to do the same thing, they are merely playing their endless game of trying to get themselves legitimized.

Now sit back for a moment and try to imagine the frustration of these anti-Semites. They are in possession of the one truth that explains all the ills of the world (the Jews are doing it) and that would cure all the ills of the world (kill all Jews in the world), but no one will listen to them! Instead, they are despised, called names, excluded, utterly shunned. Which only proves to them that the Jews are not only destroying the world, but are successfully repressing the only people who can save the world. Which shows how demonically evil and powerful the Jews really are.

According to certain Eastern teachings, the souls of persons who have died suddenly, "before their time," remain in this world, not knowing that they have died, and so continually seeking the satisfaction of the same desires that they had in life. But they cannot satisfy these desires because they no longer have physical bodies with which to pursue and experience them. The anti-Semites are like that. They have ceased to live as human beings, and all they have left is the single obsessive desire, never satisfied, to get themselves recognized by normal people as legitimate participants in the discussion, and to have the chance--at last!--to prove that the Jews really are the source of all the ills of the West.

There he goes again dehumanizing "anti-semites".

Against all reason let's take Auster's description of the explicitly constrained criticism of jews at AR at face value. How then is the idea that zionism is the main threat to Western culture "moronic"? How can anyone decide what threatens them, or how much, unless all sides of the argument can be openly and fully voiced? Nobody can come to an informed view if discussion is declared "moronic" and forbidden. His correspondents have called Auster's attention to Whiteness Studies, but he has never called that moronic, nor has he called for its proponents to be excluded from anything.

Auster discusses threats. He even criticizes jews. In How Jews can end the fatal contradiction between supporting Israel and supporting Muslim immigration into the West he acknowledges that zionist jews do pose a threat:

If you address your questions to pro-Israel Jewish neocons and liberals, you will not get an answer. They will go into a fog-like state or change the subject. They cannot acknowledge that through the non-discriminatory immigration policy that they support like a religion, indeed, that they support as the very definition of Jewishness, America has brought the Jews' mortal enemies into this country.

This is all about the threat jews pose to themselves. Auster cares a great deal about muslim immigration, because they are the mortal enemies of jews. As always his criticism of jews is based on what he believes is good for jews. It is not based on what is good for Whites or the West in general, but it's easy to see from his words how someone might think so. It certainly isn't difficult to believe that the immigration jews "support like a religion" is more of a threat to Whites. The non-muslim aliens flooding into the West are just as effectively genociding indigenous Whites as the muslim immigrants are.

It is self-serving and arrogant beyond words that in Auster's view the more anyone he labels an "anti-semite" struggles to reject censorship and make rational arguments, the more they only prove themselves irrational and worthy of silencing. His logic is circular. His arguments are made in bad faith. His ridicule and scorn boomerangs back on himself.

It is indeed frustrating witnessing Auster so casually project his twisted mentality onto myself and others. The man who simplistically and disingenuously blames virtually every ill on "liberals" and "liberalism" (when he's not blaming "anti-semites") imagines his cartoonish "anti-semites" are stupid and evil because he thinks they believe themselves to be "in possession of the one truth that explains all the ills of the world (the Jews are doing it) and that would cure all the ills of the world (kill all Jews in the world)". In none of the posts I have read has he quoted anyone professing anything close to this, much less claiming that these twin beliefs are their "one truth".

I call Auster and those who behave as he does anti-anti-semites because they concern themselves so strongly with defining, ferreting out, and attacking anti-semites. For them anti-semitism is not only the extreme claim that jews are the cause of all the problems in the world or that one wishes to kill them. For some anti-anti-semites it is the belief that jews deserve any portion of blame at all. Or any criticism of jews not made in their best interests. The simple act of discriminating Whites from jews or reversing the liberal norms of capitalizing proper nouns can be grounds enough for condemnation.

Labeling someone an anti-semite justifies all further demeaning, dehumanizing, and demonizing of them, and the explicit purpose is to discredit and silence them. Anti-anti-semites do not argue that jews alone should not talk to "the anti-semites", as Auster claims, they call on anyone who wouldn't like to suffer the same treatment as them to treat them just as anti-anti-semites do. To the chagrin of anti-anti-semites this doesn't always happen, but surely they desire it and try hard to make it so.

This "one truth" mantra is one of a handful of pat formulas Auster and other anti-anti-semites use to caricaturize anyone who criticizes jews or israel. They treat even the mildest critcism as a foot in the door, the camel's nose in the tent as their semitic cousins might say, and assume the source is a single-minded focus on jews. This is a reflection of their own views. They know everything bad that happens to jews is preceeded by criticism of jews. They know everyone knows this is true. Therefore anyone who criticizes jews must want bad things to happen to jews. In every conflict between jews and non-jews these jew-obsessed minds (those of anti-anti-semites that is) place the blame entirely on the non-jews. They claim jews are forever the blameless victims and non-jews are forever the evil victimizers, filled with a hate for jews which springs from nowhere. It afflicts all non-jews (and a few "self-hating" jews) like some cosmic constant across time and space. In their view it is not being attacked, ridiculed, silenced, and then accused of being a hate-addled and insane aggressor that drives non-jews mad with righteous indignation. It is because the non-jews are simply morally and mentally flawed to begin with, prone to scapegoating jews for being successful, envious of jewish superiority.

Or at least that's how many anti-anti-semites rationalize their bigotry.

Most jews believe it's wrong to make generalizations about groups. Most are also perfectly comfortable generalizing about the anti-semitism of anti-semites. Some jews even believe that philo-semites are anti-semites who like jews. Talk about one truth.

What demonstrates to me how "powerful the jews really are" is how they have imparted their one-sided views on anti-semitism to Whites. That and their overrepresentation in media, academia, politics, law, and finance, and how effectively and consistently they have used their wealth and positions of authority and control to squelch any criticism of themselves or their power. Many use their verbal dexterity first to deny, then to make blatantly disingenuous arguments about their small absolute numbers, or cite their positive contributions, as a group, knowing full well that the point is their disproportion, as a group, in key positions and the deleterious effect this has empirically had on "the majority" (ie. Whites) for whom most also know full well they harbor animosity. If and when these ploys and pretenses fail, and sometimes before, more than enough jews are willing to punish the critic, or call for others to punish them, using the economic, political, and legal power they claim not to have.

A few days ago, in The anti-Semites and me, Auster criticized Majority Rights. He deems the discussions there unfairly hostile to jews and especially himself:

Overall it is the usual whacked-out anti-Semitic take on me that is seen in those quarters, namely that my real purpose is not to defend the white race and its civilization, the very existence of which is threatened by the West's continuing openness to mass non-Western immigration, but to undermine the white race in order to protect and empower the Jews. According to the anti-Semites, my entire work--everything I've written about immigration, race, culture, liberalism, and neoconservatism--has been motivated by, and is a cover for, my concern for the Jews. From the anti-Semitic perspective, it couldn't be otherwise. Since I am of Jewish origin, everything I do must be determined by, and focused on advancing, the Jewish agenda.

Auster is concerned with protecting jews. He demonstrates it every time he takes time away from his criticizing of liberals, muslims, and blacks to condemn as "sick and evil" a subset of non-liberal Whites who largely agree with him on immigration, muslims, and blacks. He criticizes them all for the same reason: a perceived threat to jews. This priority overrides any defense he makes of Whites or our civilization. For example, he correctly identifies mass non-Western immigration as an existential threat to the West, but as noted above he does so primarily because he believes it is a threat to jews. When an argument is made that immigration and the many other ways in which jewish efforts to do what they believe to be good for themselves or "minorities" in general (eg. economic and cultural Marxism, Freudian psychoanalysis, Boasian anthropology, feminism, civil rights, anti-White anti-racism) have undermined and harmed the West in general, and specifically Whites, Auster declares such thoughts "moronic", "stupid", "sick", or "evil". He refuses to acknowledge the common roots of these jewish-led movements, the common anti-White anti-WASP anti-Christian and anti-Western motives driving them. Instead he attempts to pathologize and silence any such criticism, not because it is mistaken, but because it could harm jews.

Clearly if someone calls himself an X it is perfectly normal for him to also claim to be and act as if he is pro-X. I am White. I am explicitly pro-White. I think and say and do what I do because I am pro-White, not because I hate jews or any other group of non-Whites. I criticize them to the extent I perceive them to have harmed or are harming the interests of myself and my extended family. I understand and respect those who are openly pro-jewish or pro-israel.

Auster however is a charlatan. A poseur. A dissimulator. He acts superficially as if he is pro-Christian, pro-White, and pro-American, but he focuses much more time and energy seeking out and attacking anti-jewish or anti-israel sentiments than he spends seeking out and fighting anti-Christian, anti-White, or anti-American sentiments. He conflates the interests of jews with "whites" and America. He refuses to distinguish these interests and he attacks those who do.

I don't think any regular writer here or at MR believes Auster is trying to "undermine the White race". Such can only be a deliberate error coming from someone who so often preens about how carefully he parses others' thoughts and phrases his own. Why does Auster distort the true criticism? Why is he unable to state it accurately much less answer it, even when he points right at it?

Prozium has made the criticism clearly enough. He notes how and why Auster dodges it.

Auster is more pro-jew than he is pro-White. I've said this before and Auster's predictable response was to call it an "anti-semitic attack". He got angry at Gates of Vienna for not censoring me when he said they should.

Auster is pro-"white", subject to constant caveats and reservations. He views jews and Whites as one inseparable "white", except of course when he's expressing his concerns for the wholly separate and special interests of jews. He scoffs at the suggestion he is duplicitous, even as he constantly projects his own deceit and ill-will onto others. When my writing first came to his attention he responded with I am attacked for not being an anti-Semite, a title which misrepresented my criticism of him in a way that actually reflected his pro-jewish priority:

Now, a person who is not an anti-Semite and who disapproves of anti-Semitism would want to explain clearly that he is not an anti-Semite. A person who declares that he's indifferent to whether people call him an anti-Semite is announcing either that he is an anti-Semite, or that he has no problem with anti-Semitism.

Auster thinks I should be concerned about the smears he and others direct at me. He deliberately mistakes my clearly stated distain for indifference and assumes his misinterpretation substantiates his smears.

I reject Auster's tautological idiocy, but since it's his I certainly think it's fair enough to apply it to himself. Therefore his scoffing should be interpreted as an announcement that his real purpose is not to defend the white race and its civilization but to undermine it. That everything he's written about is a cover for his concern for jews. If he had a problem with this understanding he would have said as much rather than just repeating it with such indifference.

His post Should Auster be ostracized? contains a similar announcement. Here he reproduces part of a comment I wrote at Hesperado (the [sic] business reflects, once again, his priority in opposing even the slightest slight he perceives as anti-jewish):

I would prefer Auster aim all his criticism and advice at the jewish [sic] community he obviously cares so much for, and stop issuing commands and attacking "the majority" that he obviously values only to the extent we serve jewish [sic] interests.

Once again this was aimed directly at Auster but he referred to it as "anti-semitism". He then took "both Hesperado and Mangan to task for allowing a loony anti-Semite to post at their sites" (just as he did at GoV). Rather than claiming he does this because he hates Whites I think it's because he loves jews. It's simply ironic that he left off the first and especially relevant half of my comment, the whole of which was made in response to an Auster fan:

Lawrence Auster is a shining example of an astute mind, one unencumbered by the malaise of political correctness. His contribution to traditional conservative values, and conservatism in general, is invaluable, in my estimation.

Oh yes, I particularly cherish the traditional conservative value of denouncing people as anti-semites and insisting they be shunned and censored.

I would prefer Auster aim all his criticism and advice at the jewish community he obviously cares so much for, and stop issuing commands and attacking "the majority" that he obviously values only to the extent we serve jewish interests.

Auster did not explain clearly that he objects to my description of his motivations. Thus he announces his agreement.

In Reply to Gottfried Auster plays the innocent victim, complaining a fellow jew is attacking him, and resorting to a series of dishonest rationalizations that provide a window into his mind (his emphasis):

According to Gottfried, I am such a monster that I call people anti-Semites, the most damaging thing you can say about someone, simply for disagreeing with me. In reality, I call people anti-Semites who express and invoke hatred against the Jewish people, who with an evil indifference to truth demonize Jews as Jews, who see Jews as the enemy of mankind, who see the Jews as the source of all ills. In fact, I'm so precise in my use of the word anti-Semitic that I don't even describe outright enemies of Israel as anti-Semitic, unless there is specific proof of the latter. For example, as I've explained many times, though Patrick Buchanan is an inveterate bigot against Israel, I've never called him anti-Semitic, because he has never attacked Jews as Jews. Similarly, prior to today, I didn't call Taki anti-Semitic, I called him an Israel-hater, which he undeniably is. But today I called him an anti-Semite, when he turned Bernard Madoff into a symbol of Jewish perfidy and wrote:

Israel can now safely be called the Bernie Madoff of countries, at it has lied to the world about its intentions, stolen Palestinian lands continuously since 1948, and managed to do all this with American tax payer's money. Every American taxpayer, starting with George W. Bush, has Palestinian blood on their hands thanks to the butchers that run Israel.

Nobody called Auster a monster. And of course he doesn't call people anti-semites simply for disagreeing with him. He generally reserves that label for those who disagree with him about jews. He acknowledges the power of the label, "the most damaging thing you can say about someone", preens again about how precisely he chooses his words, then very precisely dances around the fact that he does apply the label to people, like myself, who do not fit the criteria for anti-semitism that he so precisely states here.

Auster plays even more precise word games with people like Buchanan. In Are neoconservatives "Trotskyites"? Auster writes (my emphasis):

In my view, anti-Semitism must involve an attack on Jews as Jews, or an invocation of hostility against Jews as Jews. Buchanan, as I've said before, is self-evidently an anti-Israel bigot. He always puts Israel and Israeli self-defense in the worst light, wants to see Israel destroyed, and takes the side of terrorists. His motives for this may well be an animosity against Jews; I personally believe that he probably does have such an animosity and such a motive.

How magnanimous of Auster. He didn't once call Buchanan an "anti-semite". He doesn't do it again in Buchanan's White Whale, an article Auster filled with all sorts of mind-reading tricks. Criticizing Buchanan for "protesting too much" against anti-semitism, for hating israel, and worst of all, turning "anti-Semitism into a matter of opinion". (That must be why there so many standards! It's all Pat Buchanan's fault.)

Auster's treatment of Steve Sailer is another example of bizarre denial. Auster regularly pats himself on the back for not calling Sailer an anti-semite. Sure he assumes Sailer is revealing a secret desire to see israel destroyed whenever he makes flippant baseball analogies, just like I do by spelling israel with a small i. I wrote a bit about this in Suicide vs. Competition. Here's how Auster explains himself:

I did not say that Sailer is a bigot against Jews. I said that he is a bigot against Israel and Jewish neocons.

Now, many people today consider someone who is a bigot against Israel to be an anti-Semite by definition. I've argued at length why I think that's incorrect.

Auster thinks anti-semitism is a matter of opinion. In his expert opinion neither Buchanan nor Sailer is an anti-semite. Buchanan hates jews because he said - er, well, he didn't actually say anything of the sort, but Auster claims he thinks it. What Buchanan did say - er, well, he didn't say this either, but Auster claims he thinks this too - is that anti-semitism is a matter of opinion. What Buchanan actually did complain about is how critics of israel are often smeared as anti-semites. Obviously this is the kind of delusion only an israel-hating imagination could conceive.

Clear as mud, isn't it? How could anybody believe Auster is a hypocrite who changes his positions and isn't being honest about his priorities? I mean, sure, here's yet another example, this one highlighting Auster's smearing of WASPs and then editing it out.

I could go on and on, but this post is already too long.