Whiteness Studies: Noel Ignatiev Also Critiques Jews

This is the first of several posts I intend to write on Whiteness Studies, a recently developed "scholarly" field that is actually populated exclusively with committed, Leftist, anti-White activists.

More disturbing is the widening power these activists and their allies wield through the placement of cadres or fellow travelers within institutions, or other forms of influence like diversity industry "training" (i.e, reeducation) in universities, K12 education, corporations, military, government and the broader society, frequently using public funds.

Noel Ignatiev is one of the Jewish leaders of the Whiteness Studies movement, a co-founder of the journal Race Traitor and the notorious source of several widely-cited, genocidal-sounding quotes. He's not a "hypocritical Jew" since he holds somewhat similar beliefs critiquing Israel, Zionism and anti-Semitism (details below).

Below is the "What We Believe" statement from the homepage of the racetraitor.org site with some particularly incendiary quotes bolded:

The white race is a historically constructed social formation. It consists of all those who partake of the privileges of the white skin in this society. Its most wretched members share a status higher, in certain respects, than that of the most exalted persons excluded from it, in return for which they give their support to a system that degrades them.

The key to solving the social problems of our age is to abolish the white race, which means no more and no less than abolishing the privileges of the white skin. Until that task is accomplished, even partial reform will prove elusive, because white influence permeates every issue, domestic and foreign, in US society.

The existence of the white race depends on the willingness of those assigned to it to place their racial interests above class, gender, or any other interests they hold. The defection of enough of its members to make it unreliable as a predictor of behavior will lead to its collapse.

RACE TRAITOR aims to serve as an intellectual center for those seeking to abolish the white race. It will encourage dissent from the conformity that maintains it and popularize examples of defection from its ranks, analyze the forces that hold it together and those that promise to tear it apart. Part of its task will be to promote debate among abolitionists. When possible, it will support practical measures, guided by the principle, Treason to whiteness is loyalty to humanity.

The editors publish things in RACE TRAITOR because they think that publishing them will help build a community of readers. Editorial opinions are expressed in editorials and unsigned replies to letters.

Here's another aggressive, genocidally-worded exhortation:

Every group within white America has at one time or another advanced its particular and narrowly defined interests at the expense of black people as a race. That applies to labor unionists, ethnic groups, college students, schoolteachers, taxpayers, and white women. Race Traitor will not abandon its focus on whiteness, no matter how vehement the pleas and how virtuously oppressed those doing the pleading. The editors meant it when they replied to a reader, "Make no mistake about it: we intend to keep bashing the dead white males, and the live ones, and the females too, until the social construct known as ‘the white race’ is destroyed—not ‘deconstructed’ but destroyed."

This Occidental Observer editorial disputes Ignatiev's claims of innocence in using genocidal language. He claims to not want genocide against Whites but rather to radically reorder society.

Ignatiev is a Communist desiring the revolutionary transformation of the US.

Here's the conclusion of his pamphlet Introduction to the United States: An Autonomist Political History:

A revolutionary strategy is, in short, a strategy of dual power. It is the treating of revolution as an act for today, as a part of the continuous struggle, instead of a dream to be indefinitely postponed in the interest of "realism".


From what we have said so far it should be evident that we regard the struggle against white supremacy as the most advanced outpost of the new society and the key ingredient in a revolutionary strategy. The waging of that struggle among whites is the main distinctive task of STO, as befits its character as an organization made up of white people.

Here's the Google Book Link. The pamphlet was originally published in 1980 and then reprinted in 1992.

More recently, from an interview conducted on St. Patrick's Day in 1996:

Now if there were five or ten per cent counterfeit whites around—people who looked white but really weren’t—then, I think, the white skin would lose its value. The judge, the school principal, the cop, the social worker, the personnel officer at the plant—and all of the other people who implement and carry out the racial tracking of our society—would no longer be sure about how to perform their function. The white race would undergo some kind of fission or self-destruction, and we would open up to the possibilities that could transform this country from the nightmare that it has been into the dream that it might be.

And from: Abolutionism and "White Studies": (last paragraph)

The task of the nineteenth century was to abolish slavery. The task of the twentieth century was to end legal segregation. The next task facing the American people is the abolition of the white race as a social category. The movement to abolish slavery stimulated women's rights and other reform movements. The Civil Rights movement helped give birth to the counterculture and various oppositional movements. Today nothing offers a greater likelihood of revolutionizing the political climate than a comprehensive challenge to whiteness and its ways.

It should be recognized that although Ignatiev is a self-described non-believing Jew, he forcefully denounces some of the most important Jewish interests as understood by many Jews:

• The right of Israel to exist as a Jewish state
• The use of anti-Semitism accusations to restrict debate about Israel and Jewish influence
• The causes of Anti-Semitism being only evil Gentiles

He loudly condemns Zionism and considers Israel a racist state. His proposed solution is a unified non-sectarian Palestine including both Jews and Palestinians without any legal favoritism for Jews, and with Palestinians having the Right of Return, full legal rights and financial assistance. Obviously very few Jews accept this solution, since it destroys their conception of Israel as a Jewish ethnostate, and, in the real world, Ignatiev's proposed solution would likely lead to the eventual subjugation or genocide of most Israeli Jews. Of course, Israel is in an extremely difficult long-term strategic position no matter what approach they take, particularly with the fast-approaching proliferation of weapons of mass destruction.

Hilariously, he uses the example of South Africa to reassure Israelis to gamble on the good faith of the Palestinians for their survival:

...the establishment of majority rule did not cause the gods to weep or the earth to open and swallow the people...

I wonder why didn't he use Zimbabwe as a heartwarming example of post-racial brotherhood?

Of course South Africa is puttering along behind Zimbabwe by one or two decades but is following the same, drearily predictable descent.

Following are several quotes demonstrating his beliefs:

1) Israel as racial state:

Israel is a racial state, where rights are assigned on the basis of ascribed descent or the approval of the superior race. In this respect it resembles the American South prior to the passage of the Civil Rights and Voting Rights acts, Ireland under the Protestant Ascendancy, and, yes, Hitlerite Germany. But in its basic structures it most closely resembles the old South Africa. It is therefore not surprising that Israel should have developed a close alliance with South Africa when that country was still under apartheid.

2) Jewish Influence in the US:

Is one permitted to say above the level of a whisper that U.S. policy toward Israel has something to do with Jewish influence in the U.S.? Perhaps Nobel Peace Prize winner Bishop Desmond Tutu of South Africa can get away with it: "The Israel government," he observed, "is placed on a pedestal [in the U.S.] People are scared in this country to say wrong is wrong because the Jewish lobby is powerful-very powerful" (Guardian 29 April 2002). Not only does Zionism shape U.S. policy, it stifles discussion of alternatives. To cite a personal example: Two years ago a PBS reporter interviewed me on the eve of the UN-sponsored conference on racism about to be held in S. Africa. I made some remarks about Israel, and afterwards I asked her if she would use what I said. "Of course not," she replied. "I agree with you, and so do all the journalists I know, but we can't run any criticism of Israel without following it by at least ten refutations." Harvard Professor Daniel Pipes and Martin Kramer of the Middle East Forum have begun a website, Campus Watch," to denounce academics deemed to have shown "hatred of Israel." Students are to inform on professors.

3) Sources of anti-Semitism:

If I accomplish nothing else in this talk, I hope to create space for some who are repelled by Israeli actions but are held back from condemning Zionism by a desire not to be antisemitic.

Does what I have just said mean that I dismiss the possibility of a revival of anti-semitism? No, it does not. History shows that anti-semitism ebbs and flows, and that it may return. Time prevents me from exploring that history in any depth; let me instead recommend two books: The Jewish Question by Abram Leon and The Origins of Totalitarianism by Hannah Arendt (in particular the first part, "anti-semitism"). For now I will say only that anti-semitism (or more accurately anti-Jewish sentiment) is rooted neither in human nature or Christian theology; it is the product of social relations, including the historic concentration of Jews as representatives of commerce in non-commercial societies. The peculiar occupational distribution of European Jews led members of the dispossessed classes among the non-Jewish population to direct their animosity toward the Jews as the visible agents of oppression. "anti-semitism," as the 19th-century German Socialist August Bebel put it, "is the socialism of fools." It is not beyond historical explanation (as is implied by a term like "The Holocaust," which takes anti-semitism out of history and relocates it the realm of natural phenomena).

4) His proposed solution to the Israel/Palestine conflict:

What solution, therefore, do I propose? A simple and moderate one: within historic Palestine, the area between the Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan River, live ten million people. I propose that there be established there a single state, in which every person who declares his intention to live there and adopt citizenship be recognized as a citizen and have one vote. I propose further that the special advantages given to Jews be terminated, that the Palestinians who were forced into exile after 1948, and their descendants, be granted the right to live there, and that the state undertake practical measures to make it possible for them to do so by building housing and extending to them to right to rent or buy, if necessary providing funds to help them. I propose further that both Hebrew and Arabic be declared official state languages to be taught in the schools, that all residents be granted the right to publish newspapers and maintain cultural institutions in any language they choose, that the special position of Orthodox Judaism be ended and that the state declare freedom of worship and make no law respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.

Ignatiev has also authored a five-page entry on Zionism for the Encyclopedia of Race of Racism that has been roundly condemned by many Jewish groups. This link contains a critique and a link where someone uploaded a PDF file from a photocopy of the full entry.

Future posts will consider some ideas for coping with the White-hating Left.