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Two Lessons in Privilege

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There were two substantial tremblers along the White/jew faultline this week. In both cases a jewess published a public comment concerning higher education which triggered a viral outpouring of fear and loathing, the brunt of which has been directed at Whites.

The first was caused by Susan Patton’s OPINION: Letter to the Editor, at The Daily Princetonian, 29 March 2013. The most controversial part:

When I was an undergraduate in the mid-seventies, the 200 pioneer women in my class would talk about navigating the virile plains of Princeton as a precursor to professional success. Never being one to shy away from expressing an unpopular opinion, I said that I wanted to get married and have children. It was seen as heresy.

For most of you, the cornerstone of your future and happiness will be inextricably linked to the man you marry, and you will never again have this concentration of men who are worthy of you.

Here’s what nobody is telling you: Find a husband on campus before you graduate. Yes, I went there.

An Alumna’s Advice for the Young Women of Princeton: Marry My Son, by Eveline Chao, The Daily Beast, 30 Mar 2013:

In a letter published in The Daily Princetonian on Friday, Susan A. Patton, the president of the class of ’77, offered her “advice for the young women of Princeton.”

One of the more-quoted lines that immediately began zinging across social media read, “Here’s what nobody is telling you: Find a husband on campus before you graduate. Yes, I went there.”

Patton continued: “As Princeton women, we have almost priced ourselves out of the market … You will never again be surrounded by this concentration of men who are worthy of you.”

There was also:

“I am the mother of two sons who are both Princetonians. My older son had the good judgment and great fortune to marry a classmate of his, but he could have married anyone. My younger son is a junior and the universe of women he can marry is limitless.”

The image conjured for most was of a rich, ‘50s housewife who dabbles in eugenics. Unsurprisingly, the blogosphere went nuts.

Patton was also called a “WASP,” “offensive,” and “sheltered.” One person said, “Thank god you didn’t have daughters.” On Twitter, @DesiderioAArnaz tweeted, “Feminism just died at Princeton.” Another user named @dylanmatt appended the link with, “A stirring call for the genetically gifted to band together and form a master race.” I myself am a Princeton alum, and when former classmates posted the link on Facebook, some speculated that it was an April Fools’ joke.

A phone call Friday with Patton confirmed that it was not.

“I’m mortified,” she said of the online comments. But when asked if she would like to clarify or change anything she’d said, she replied, “Not really.”

She also revealed a few details that might not reconcile her with feminists, but which do counter the impression given by her letter.

First, she isn’t a WASP. (“It was intended as advice from a nice Jewish mother. That’s all it was.”)

Second, she isn’t exclusively a homemaker. Patton has run her own HR consulting and executive coaching business in New York City for 20 years. She didn’t work the first five years after her first son, now class of 2010, was born, but has ever since.

And third, she isn’t married to a Princeton grad. In fact, she’s just out of what she calls a “horrible” divorce, after 27 years of marriage. “My husband’s academic background was not as luxurious as mine, and that was a source of some stress,” said Patton. “I think he felt a certain level of resentment.”

What Patton recommends seems to be common sense. An admonition to mate only with someone of the same race would make it even better. The main thing that makes any such advice controversial is jewish influence – whether in favor of womb-shrivelling feminism or anti-White anti-“racism”, in both academia and media. Naturally this consideration goes unmentioned, at least by jews and especially in the mainstream media.

By several accounts the strongest rebuke came the same day Patton’s letter was published. Maureen O’Connor’s Princeton Mom to All Female Students: ‘Find a Husband’ is full of snark and describes Patton as a luddite with a depressing worldview. Five hours later came a sheepish update, Q&A: Princeton Mom Wishes She Married a Princeton Man, in which O’Connor suddenly appears very understanding and even sympathetic. A day before Chao wrote her piece for the Daily Beast, O’Connor had the same conversation, and cited the same “clarifications” for her sudden change in attitude:

Patton spoke by phone from her home in the Upper East Side, where she runs her own business as a human resources consultant and executive coach. She was in the midst of reading responses to her letter when I called. “I’m astounded by the extreme reaction. Honestly, I just thought this was some good advice from a Jewish mother,” she laughed.

The understanding is that being a jewish mother is completely different from being a White mother. Later observers incorporate the jewish mother card into their story from the get go.

Susan A. Patton wrote to Princeton student newspaper urging female students to snag man, Mail Online:

Susan A. Patton, a proud Princeton University alumna and the living affirmation of the meddling Jewish mother stereotype, raised some eyebrows this week

A WASP could expect the recriminations and condemnations to eventually be accompanied by tangible sanctions. A jewess raises eyebrows and inspires some ambiguous finger-wagging about jewish stereotypes.

James Taranto didn’t do either. Instead, he quickly rode to Patton’s defense. Why? Well, Susan Patton Told the Truth. Oh, and:

It took some bravery for the young Miss Patton to go to Princeton, for she was not a legacy and was anything but a daughter of privilege. As she explained in a 2006 article for Princeton Alumni Weekly, her mother was a survivor of Auschwitz, a German death camp in Poland; her father, of Bergen-Belsen, a concentration camp in Germany.

The irony here is in Taranto insisting Patton isn’t privileged just before explaining how she is. He plays the camp survivor card right up front, presumably because he regards it as relevant to his point, which is that Patton is a righteous hero so these stupid/crazy/evil critics should back off.

Alyssa Rosenberg took a different tack, explaining The Real Problem With Susan Patton’s s ur-Jewish Mother letter to the editor is the Daily Princetonian:

Patton’s letter is exactly the kind of thing that is tremendously clicky, to the extent that it was probably worth it financially to the Daily Princetonian to publish it even if the site ended up offline because of the massive influx of readers.

All in all, it’s a very successful, cynical execution of a well-established strategy.

Rosenberg’s argument makes little sense except perhaps as a projection of her own obsession with clicks, money and cynical strategy.

Miraculously, Patton got some time to explain herself on television. When Megyn Kelly asked Patton to respond to the crux of the controversy, which is “elitist snobby Ivy League people [who] think they’re better than we are”, Patton did not play the jewish mother card. Instead she lied, claiming, “I’m not suggesting that anybody’s better than anybody”.

Except she did. In two different ways. The controversy concerns her letter where she used the term “worthy of you”, and explicitly acknowledged, “Yes, I went there.” She was talking about intelligence, not even race, but it was considered as such, at least at first. That changed as soon as she quickly played the jewish mother card, which is the second way she suggested somebody is more worthy.

At the heart of the “jewish mother” trope is the quite conscious concern that:

The only option in life for her children is college and (for the girls) marrying a nice Jewish boy (often parsed even more with “A nice Ashkenazic boy” or “A nice Ashkenazic doctor” or “A nice Ashkenazic doctor with an apartment in New York and plenty of frequent flier miles to visit your mother whom you never cawl anymore”). Likewise, a Jewish son is expected to bring home a nice Jewish girl. No matter how nice, however, this girl will not be good enough. Heaven forbid he marries a Shiksa Goddess.

As long as critics considered her White Patton’s suggestion of intellectual superiority was regarded as beyond the pale. That changed as soon as she played the jewish mother card. Being a “good jewish mother” implies group superiority. Though for a White mother this would only be regarded as more damning, for jews it miraculously serves to blunt the attack, and shifts the focus elsewhere.

It’s interesting to consider how this story might have unfolded differently if Susan Patton were White. Would she have written such a letter? Would it have been published? Would James Taranto have lept to her defense? Would feminists now be organizing a boycott of her business?

On the same day that Susan Patton’s letter was published, the Wall Street Journal published a letter from Suzy Lee Weiss, To (All) the Colleges That Rejected Me:

If only I had a tiger mom or started a fake charity.

For starters, had I known two years ago what I know now, I would have gladly worn a headdress to school. Show me to any closet, and I would’ve happily come out of it. “Diversity!” I offer about as much diversity as a saltine cracker. If it were up to me, I would’ve been any of the diversities: Navajo, Pacific Islander, anything. Sen. Elizabeth Warren, I salute you and your 1/32 Cherokee heritage.

To those claiming that I am bitter—you bet I am! An underachieving selfish teenager making excuses for her own failures? That too! To those of you disgusted by this, shocked that I take for granted the wonderful gifts I have been afforded, I say shhhh—”The Real Housewives” is on.

As with Patton, controversy ensued. Suzy Lee Weiss: ‘Entitled’ high school senior sparks firestorm after writing biting open letter to the Ivy League schools that rejected her, Mail Online, 4 April 2013:

The article outraged many, who accused her of being entitled, self-indulgent and even racist.

‘Entitled little brat,’ one Twitter user said, as another said: ‘Choking on the petulant privilege of Suzy Lee Weiss & hoping she matures out of her ignorance rather than being bolstered by a book deal.’

Another directed a message to Weiss, saying: ‘Your letter reveals your republican homophobic leanings and hatred of others not exactly like you. Grow up.’

Despite the criticism Weiss, like Patton, was given television time to explain herself. On Today she claimed it was a joke, satire, that she was poking fun at political correctness. This contradicted her story that before writing she cried to her mother about it and then her sister. Weiss added that diversity is “a wonderful thing” and admitted that her letter led to job offers.

If you’re wondering how a whiny high schooler got their letter printed by the Wall Street Journal in the first place, it helps to know that her sister Bari Weiss, is a former Wall Street Journal editor. Bari is also now a senior editor at Tablet Magazine. Like Susan Patton, Suzy Lee Weiss is visibly jewish. Unlike Susan Patton, who played the jewish mother card early, the only mention I’ve found of Suzy Lee Weiss’ jewish identity is an article at Tablet, Suzy Lee Weiss Fires Back on the Today Show:

A story we’ve been following closely–how could we not? she’s mishpucha

Because they can’t yet have the internet and ban us from using it too, Whites who are curious about bits of tribal code can still read things like The Yiddish Handbook, which suggests 40 Words You Should Know:

mishpocheh

Or mishpokhe or mishpucha. It means “family,” as in “Relax, you’re mishpocheh. I’ll sell it to you at wholesale.”

That strikes quite a different tone than Weiss’ deprecatory reference to herself as a “saltine cracker”.

Commentary Magazine, the neocon journal of the American Jewish Committee, provided two supportive editorials. After decades of non-stop jewish propaganda downplaying race, in particular by reducing it to skin color, in When Will Universities Understand Real Diversity? Michael Rubin complains:

The sad fact is that universities—both private and public—are essentially racist: They will gladly boil down diversity to the color of skin.

It’s Not Only the Colleges that Weren’t Honest with Suzy Weiss, by Seth Mandel comments on the Today interview mentioned above:

Guthrie then looks at Weiss and says: “I mean, for one thing, some people read this and they say you are being very cavalier about the importance of diversity.” Weiss dismisses the attempted shaming by saying the piece was satire. But here Weiss isn’t giving herself enough credit. The problem with the section of Weiss’s op-ed about diversity was that it wasn’t an exaggeration: had Weiss followed her joking suggestions, she very well might have been accepted by any number of universities whose admissions officers probably cringed at the op-ed because Weiss was describing actual applicants they happily accepted over Weiss.

Guthrie may have seen Weiss’s words as cartoonish, but here’s the point: they accurately describe the attitudes of the deans at America’s top universities. Weiss didn’t lampoon them so much as expose them to a wider audience.

Weiss can shrug it off because she knows she has a network of unflinching support. Diversity doesn’t change that. And anyway, jews understand “diversity” is code for less White. The problem, and the reason for all the beating around the bush at Commentary, is that jews, especially “conservative” jews, want to be seen as “white” by Whites, but they also want to be seen as “diverse”, or at least exempt from any cost of “diversity”.

The conflation of Whites and jews as “white” is deliberate. Julie Gerstein, writing at The Frisky, provides one example. In Entitled High School Senior Suzy Lee Weiss Makes Me Sad For The Future Gerstein writes about Weiss’ “screed” and “failure”:

Maybe the lesson for Ms. Weiss isn’t that she’d have gotten into college if only she’d “worn a headdress to school,” but that colleges are no different than the general population: They don’t like assholes. And they, like the rest of us, don’t appreciate deep-seated resentment, mild racism and selfishness in potential friends, mates and students.

Maybe, Ms. Weiss, you were rejected because your piss-poor attitude of entitlement and privilege seeped out of every word you wrote on your college application. No one “lied to you” about what colleges want. They want you to “be yourself,” as long as the “you” in question isn’t a smug jerk who believes you’re entitled to get everything you want just because you want it. And that, Ms. Weiss, is where you went wrong.

Entitled, “To (All) the Colleges That Rejected Me,” the piece is a good old fashioned spiteful rant, flinging glasses of white whine into the eyes, not only of every college that denied her admission, but also every person who has ever been accepted into a college, ever.

It’s possible that Gerstein doesn’t recognize Weiss as a jew, but not likely. What she’s definitely doing is aiming a spiteful rant at “whites” that would not likely have been written, much less published at The Frisky, if it had been about jews.

Suzy’s mistake, it seems, was interpreting the advice “Just be yourself” literally. Like perhaps someone told her, “Applying to colleges? Ah, just be yourself,” and she accepted this as an instruction to pursue no activities other than being herself.

Being yourself is not a talent.

Unless of course you’re a jewish mother. Being jewish worked for Weiss and she didn’t even have to play that card herself. With a little help from the WSJ and Today she’s enjoying the privilege of being a jewish-looking girl with a jewish-sounding name that a jewish media outlet or two regard as family. Whether she was whining about her jokes or joking about her whining it all worked out well enough. At least for her. Meanwhile, Gerstein and others are busy slagging “whites” over it.

Kirsten West Savali, writing at Clutch Magazine, which is explicitly targeted at black women, provides an example of the desired effect. For Middle-Class White Girls When Being Privileged Isn’t Enough:

Suzy did what any self-respecting privileged, young, white woman would do — she used her familial connections with the WSJ to pave the way for her brilliant od-ed, which otherwise may have languished in darkness, never to be seen by human eyes. This literary phenomenon, which places the blame squarely on the shoulders of those pesky black and brown people who don’t deserve to go to college because, well, they’re black and brown, has exposed the world’s best-kept secret: “If it ain’t white, it ain’t right.”

See how that works? A jewess complains. She gets press and benefits. Whites get the blame. Savali, in her budding wisdom, at least gets a bit of the crying/joke:

Weiss, in her budding wisdom, exposed the mantle of white privilege for what it should be: Proud, unapologetic and unconcerned with anyone not blessed to posses it. She offered herself up as the scape-goat to be ridiculed. Though she did receive job and internship offers for her take-down of reverse racial discrimination, that was never the point.

The point was to reveal the face of the forthcoming post-racial state of America. A place where white students are rewarded for mocking the tenuous foundation of equality on which this country is built and education remains a coveted club to which only middle-class white students are entitled.

Equality is a delusion which mainly afflicts Whites. The point is that today jews and jewish interests rule academia and media, among other things. The fact that Whites get the blame for what jews do is evidence of jewish privilege, not “white” privilege, and certainly not White privilege.

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Lawrence Auster is Finally Dead

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I shared my thoughts about Auster’s legacy in Auster’s Personal Announcement, when he first announced his illness in August 2011, and then again two weeks ago in Assessing Auster. Today one of Auster’s “vile sycophants”, Laura Wood, announced his death.

LAWRENCE AUSTER: JANUARY 26, 1949 – MARCH 29, 2013:

But the blogging career that stands out on the Internet and in the history of American letters as a tour de force of philosophical and cultural insight is over. Mr. Auster entered a state of sedated and sometimes pained sleep the next day, after a night of agony. He spoke no more than a few words during the next two days and died peacefully this morning after about ten hours of unusually quiet and mostly undisturbed rest.

Only extreme incapacitation could have brought that career to a close. For many of us, it was a marvel, a form of essential daily food. No man gave more to his readers. No writer responded more energetically to the people who took in his words and either approved or rejected them. No thinker, except perhaps Plato, jousted more ably with his students or left such an elegant and finished record of philosophical conflict and resolution. He was philosopher, journalist, guru and cultural psychoanalyst in one. And no writer on culture and politics had sounder judgment about the world around us, or more brilliant observations.

The relationship between Mr. Auster and the hundreds of often-anonymous correspondents who wrote to him over the years was like that between a boxing coach and his fighters. He trained his followers in the art of intellectual combat — and the price was a staggering workload as he edited the debates that have appeared here over the years. He paid tireless tribute to the fight for truth. But, as he insisted, he wasn’t a hero. He was just doing what came naturally. He was doing what he had to do.

Sadly, as of today, View from the Right, except for an entry about his funeral and possibly more on his death, will become inactive. He wanted it that way. VFR could not continue beyond Mr. Auster’s death because it is the creation of an utterly unique personality and mind.

The site will, however, remain online permanently, as long as the Internet exists. There are also plans to collect his writings, both those found here and those unpublished, in book form. At the time of his final siege of illness, he was working hard to make that happen.

His work will continue to be read and appreciated. The number of “vile sycophants” will grow. Falsehoods will for many years more be overturned by those who have come in contact, directly or indirectly, with Mr. Auster. I am certain of that.

It means all the more for a friend and supporter like Wood to so clearly note Auster’s guru-like, psychoanalyst-like traits, as well as the sycophancy he attracted and cultivated. These are recurring patterns in jewish intellectual movements which Auster’s nemesis Kevin MacDonald has identified and discussed.

The “movement” around Auster will dissolve without its Energizer Bunny guru. True to his jewish heritage, Auster was a totalitarian bolshevist control freak. This was evident in the meticulous editing and pasting required to fit each individual comment from private email into the public, micromanaged “debate” on his blog. It was also evident in the way he would regularly inform other bloggers which commenters or topics were anathema.

The essence of Auster’s project, his “View from the Right”, was to inform others how to see the world, the “right” way to think about it. His two most frequent themes were “anti-semitism” and “liberalism” – with the underlying connection between these, and most of his other topics, being his and his sycophants’ overriding concern for the best interests of the jews.

Auster attempted, in a way, to do to White racialism what Norman Podhoretz and his Trotskyite “liberal” jew inner circle did to American conservativism – replacing White priorities with jewish priorities. Auster wanted “whites” to think about race to the extent it entailed criticism of or even separation from muslims, blacks, or mestizos. But at the prospect of Whites regarding jews likewise Auster’s usual pretense at principle and reason and decorum suddenly reverted to the unhinged pathologization and demonization so perfectly typical of his tribe.

Today the White race lost a self-professed jewish fifth columnist. Hallelujah!

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Arizona Bans Non-Jews Teaching Resentment and Hate

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Arizona Allowed to Ban Hispanic Studies, 18 Mar 2013:

Arizona state officials have won a significant legal battle in a long-running saga over a controversial Tucson schools ethnic-studies program, with a federal judge ruling that a law designed to ban it is constitutional. Authorities instrumental in the law’s passage said Monday that they feel vindicated in their efforts to ban what they deemed to be racially divisive courses in public schools.

HOUSE BILL 2281 – Arizona State Legislature (PDF):

15-111. Declaration of policy

THE LEGISLATURE FINDS AND DECLARES THAT PUBLIC SCHOOL PUPILS SHOULD BE TAUGHT TO TREAT AND VALUE EACH OTHER AS INDIVIDUALS AND NOT BE TAUGHT TO RESENT OR HATE OTHER RACES OR CLASSES OF PEOPLE.

The centerpiece of jewish anti-White resentment and hatred is specifically exempted:

15-112. Prohibited courses and classes; enforcement

F. NOTHING IN THIS SECTION SHALL BE CONSTRUED TO RESTRICT OR PROHIBIT THE INSTRUCTION OF THE HOLOCAUST, ANY OTHER INSTANCE OF GENOCIDE, OR THE HISTORICAL OPPRESSION OF A PARTICULAR GROUP OF PEOPLE BASED ON ETHNICITY, RACE, OR CLASS.

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Assessing Auster (with Kevin MacDonald and Carolyn Yeager)

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Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Kevin MacDonald’s assessment of Auster, Lawrence Auster on the Role of Jews in Disestablishing White, Christian America, in a nutshell:

Despite his awareness of the forces that have dispossessed White America, Auster is very concerned to deflect anti-Semitism, even though he understands that anti-Jewish attitudes are completely expectable.

This is true, but too charitable. Auster often writes about “whites”, seemingly sympathetically. His overriding concern, however, is for the jews. Auster has called out jews, but only to deliver a proverbial slap on the wrist. He ultimately excuses jews of any real wrong-doing vis-a-vis Whites. He faults jews mainly for not doing what’s he thinks best for themselves. He accompanies most of these critiques with far more venomous words aimed at White “anti-semites”.

Auster frequently distinguishes jews from Whites, and invariably puts jewish interests first. At the same time he condemns Whites who distinguish Whites from jews, even those who only unconsciously or inadvertently put other interests ahead of those of jews. Auster’s critiques of jews are innoculative. He offers strong-sounding but fundamentally weak arguments that could be made more forcefully, especially if made from the point of view of Whites. His efforts are preemptive and proscriptive, the effect if not intent being to discount and discredit a truly pro-White position. He has regularly incited “the majority” to “assert itself”. Meanwhile he attacks even the most mild-mannered White opposition in which he detects a whiff of “anti-semitism”.

As Auster says about neocon Norman Podhoretz, he “does not regard non-Jewish Americans as his people. In effect, he sees America as ‘one nation, many peoples’—which is, of course, the multiculturalist view of America.”

Auster’s analysis of others can often be mapped onto himself or jews in general. For example, Auster does not regard Whites as his people. In effect, he sees only “whites”, deliberately conflating jews and Whites, similarly to how he says Podhoretz sees “America”. Jewish rhetoric is often aimed at a broader collective, at least until they feel the specific needs of jews are better served by speaking more directly in terms of jews.

As I noted in Auster’s Personal Announcement, he has never forgotten who his people are. The First Law of Jewish Influence demonstrates how shallow his big ideas are and how transparent his dissembling is.

MacDonald contrasts Auster with Alan Dershowitz, noting:

Jews like Dershowitz are completely unable to see the situation from the perspective of those he condemns. Unfortunately, Dershowitz is entirely within the mainstream of Jewish opinion and activism among American Jews and certainly within the organized Jewish community in America.

The key difference is that jews like Auster are able to see the situation from the perspecitve of those they condemn. They may wander farther afield, but they remain part of the jewish whole and play their own part in its fight against “anti-semitism”. Whereas mainstream jews like Dershowitz openly identify themselves as jewish warriors, jews like Auster insinuate themselves among us, dissembling and dissimulating, posturing in ways that fool some Whites, at least for a while.

I’ll be appearing with Kevin MacDonald on Carolyn Yeager’s Saturday Afternoon with Carolyn Yeager tomorrow at 2PM ET to discuss Auster. Join us then.

UPDATE 16 Mar 2013: the White network – MacDonald and Tanstaafl on Auster and Jewish Influence (mp3)

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Of Popes and Jews

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Dennis Mangan asks, Is the Pope Catholic?, and notes:

Some conservatives and Catholics seem to believe that non-Catholics shouldn’t criticize the Pope and his opinions.

I made several comments there before realizing it was more appropriate to recast them, and some further comments, into a post here.

The trick is to frame your critique in moral terms, taking for granted that the sensibilities and interests of your group trump all others. It also helps if the media is in your pocket and takes your side.

Revised Catholic prayer troubles some rabbis, Sun Journal, Feb 2008.

Pope under fire for Yad Vashem speech, Jerusalem Post, May 2009.

US Jewish leaders denounce Catholic sermon, The Guardian, Apr 2010.

Jews Worried By Vatican Gesture To Traditionalists, Huffington Post, Sep 2011.

Anti-Semite is among papal candidates, MiamiHerald.com, Feb 2013.

Why the new pope matters to Jews, Fox News, March 2013.

Jews will be even less of a priority for the next Pope, Haaretz Daily Newspaper, March 2013.

You should never be put off from criticizing another group just because you don’t belong. But remember you can always join a more universalist group to pursue your more particularist agenda from within.

The role of Jewish converts to Catholicism in changing traditional Catholic teachings on Jews, The Occidental Observer.

I have spoken before about the important distinction between universalism versus particularism (Morals, Morality and Moralizing and Universalism and Particularism).

One particularly popular jewish trope is that the jews have no pope. Like most jewish tropes about jews, this is a distortion of reality. The relationship between jews and popes is fascinating, and telling, specifically because the pope supposedly isn’t a jew, because of the pretense that jewishness is entirely about religion (ideology) not peoplehood (biology), and because the usual jewish rhetoric about mutual respect and tolerance is, in practice, entirely one-sided.

First of all, the fact that the Catholic pope isn’t a jew does not keep jews, big or small, from criticizing him, or other religious leaders for that matter. The underlying presumption is that even non-jews can and should be doing more to serve the best interests of jews. Second, there is organized jewry, a vast collective network that is in many ways more powerful, and more likely to use that power to promote particularist ends, than organized Christianity is. More broadly, there are thousands of jews who act, with and without the consent of organized jewry, as if they were superpopes, in the sense that they advocate more tirelessly and vociferously for the best interests of their group than any recent pope does for his.

Consider, for example, Alan Dershowitz, the author of the letter to the editor in the Miami Herald linked above. Dershowitz is usually described as a lawyer or professor and claims he isn’t particularly religious. Yet his passion and efforts in favor of his own people (as a people, not as a religion) is so strong that, like thousands of other jews, he feels morally capable, entitled even, to publicly pass judgment on Christians and their leaders. In the minds of jews like Dershowitz, no Christian or pope comes before, or even equates, to them or their group.

New pope, Jorge Mario Bergoglio of Argentina, has Jewish connections, JTA Jewish & Israel News.

A good pope, from the shamelessly particularist point of view of jews, should have “a personal connection to the Jewish people”.

Note that JTA, aiming at a jewish audience, didn’t pretend it was about a spiritual connection to the jewish faith.

This is just one jewish answer to the question, implicit in this case, “Will this new pope be good for the jews?” Right now many other jews are undoubtedly asking and answering this same question more or less explicitly. Two jews, three opinions about what the pope could do to better “connect with the jewish people”.

Society of Jesus, Wikipedia:

Although in the first 30 years of the existence of the Society of Jesus there were many Jesuit conversos (Catholic-convert Jews),[50] an anti-converso faction led to the Decree de genere (1593) which proclaimed that either Jewish or Muslim ancestry, no matter how distant, was an insurmountable impediment for admission to the Society of Jesus.[51] The 16th-century Decree de genere remained in exclusive force until the 20th century, when it was repealed in 1946.[52]

The Jesuits, Jew or Not Jew:

The Jesuits, a Catholic order that was established in 1534, emphasized education, and tried to draw the brightest academics. (You know what that means: Jews!) They welcomed conversos with open arms, and, as a result, many prominent early Jesuits had Jewish heritage. The list includes Juan Alfonso de Polanco, the secretary and ghostwriter of the order’s founder, as well as the second Superior General, Diego Lainez.

“Conversion” didn’t used to fool Christians into thinking that jews stopped being jews. It still doesn’t fool the editors at Jew or Not Jew.

I think it’s safe to say that the influence of crypto-jews/conversos/marranos, whether on Jesuits or Christianity as a whole, has been greater than most contemporary Christians are aware of. The Occidental Observer article linked above makes a good case that the relatively recent shift in popular perception of morality, specifically in favor of jews, is both evidence of and a product of jewish influence.

The image source is GreenKeit hits the Vatican?, Jewlicious THE Jewish Blog. Paranoia disguised as mockery, or vice versa, this is yet another perfectly typical example of jewish attitudes regarding popes and Christians. HaShem is a reminder how distinct the jewish and Catholic conceptions of god are.