The Jew in American Politics (part 1)

Mencius Moldbug notoriously attempted to blame native-born American elites for the leftism/radicalism of his co-ethnics:

As for the Jews, being no suckers, they realized that they should assimilate into the most socially prestigious branch of the American tradition - the progressives. Again: done.

If you find the above excuse clever rather than hilariously inept, I encourage you to work on correcting your lack of basic knowledge of American and Jewish history. As a start, some excerpts from Nathaniel Weyl's 1968 book The Jew in American Politics (a shorter excerpt was posted here):

Problem and Paradox

American Jewish political behavior is an anomaly and a contradiction. The American Jewish community is overwhelmingly middle class and upper middle class. American Jews are more highly educated than any other national or religious group in the U.S. population. They are concentrated in entrepreneurial, professional, scientific and aesthetically creative occupations. Their income is much higher than the national average. Their contribution to the economic, political and creative leadership of the nation is much greater than their numerical strength would indicate.

Yet in their political attitudes, they are overwhelmingly liberal-to-radical and this despite the general rule of political behavior that the higher a group stands in status, income and education, the more it tends to prefer a conservative to a liberal philosophy. Thus, despite the fact that the intellectual community in the United States has in recent years tended to be preponderantly liberal, a majority of college graduates has consistently supported the Republican Party and taken a conservative stance on most controversial domestic issues. This was partially confirmed, as far as education is concerned, in the wake of Senator Goldwater's 1964 presidential defeat one that gave the Republican Party a smaller proportion of the total popular vote than it had obtained in any of the previous six presidential contests. Even after this massive setback, one segment of the population remained loyal to the GOP according to the evidence of public opinion polls. That last steadfast group was the college-bred, the element which William James considered the only true American aristocracy.

Two years later, a Gallup Poll revealed that 59% of the college-trained had supported Republican candidates in the 1966 elections as against 4l% who voted Democratic. By contrast of those with less than a grade-school education, 6l% backed Democratic, and only 39% Republican, candidates. The Republicans had the support of 58% of the business and professional voters, 52% of the white-collar workers and 50% of the farmers, but only 39% of the manual workers.l

A positive correlation apparently exists between wealth, income education and status, on the one hand, and conservatism, on the other. [. . .]

Jewish Liberalism: the Allinsmith Study

The degree of commitment of American Jews to liberalism is different from the degree of that commitment among other religious groups. The difference is that the Jewish devotion to liberalism is not correlated with economic or educational status. This was demonstrated almost 20 years ago by Wesley and Beverly Allinsmith.2

Toward the close of World War II, the Allinsmiths asked 8,820 members of eight religious denominations whether they believed that the most important postwar task of the U.S. Government was to provide opportunity for people to get ahead on their own or "to guarantee every person a decent and steady job and standard of living."

Nationally, 47% of the people questioned preferred security to opportunity. As the percentage of manual workers in each denomination increased, the proportion favoring security rose. Status, education and income were inversely related to the choice of security. As one proceeded from Congregationalists to Presbyterians to Episcopalians to Methodists to Lutherans to Baptists and finally to Catholics, the preference for security steadily increased from 26% to 58%.

The Jews were the only exception to this rule. Although they were a very high status group ranking first in occupational level, third in educational level and fourth in economic level, 56% of them preferred security to opportunity. This was almost as high as the Catholic preference for security.

Moreover, within each of the eight religious denominations, the preference for opportunity was greatest among those with most education, highest status and best occupational level. Again, the Jews were the only exception.

The 1944 presidential vote also revealed this marked difference between Jewish and Gentile political behavior. The upper-class and upper-middle-class Christian denominations voted heavily against Roosevelt and in favor of Republican standard-bearer Thomas Dewey. Only 31.4% of the Congregationalists, 39.9% of the Presbyterians and 44.6% of the Episcopalians backed Franklin Delano Roosevelt. The more working-class denominations, however, voted heavily for him, particularly the Catholics who were 72.8% in his favor. In terms of their combined educational, occupational and status rank in the Allinsmith survey-that of second place-the Jews might well have been expected to vote Republican. Actually, they were 92.1% for Roosevelt. This overwhelming support was greater than that of any of the Christian denominations. [. . .]

However, in the 1952 elections, despite the fact that the Republican presidential candidate, Dwight D. Eisenhower, had led the Western coalition to victory over the Nazis, 75% of the Jewish voters supported Adlai E. Stevenson, a man who had played no role of any importance in World War II. There was no difference in the attitude of the candidates toward Jewry or the state of Israel. The issue was clearly one of moderation vs. liberalism. In a situation where American voters as a whole gave decisive support to Eisenhower, three-fourths of the Jews backed his Democratic opponent. Moreover, interviews in depth of Boston voters showed that only 30% of the Gentiles with high socioeconomic status, as against 60% of those with low socioeconomic status, backed Stevenson. Among Boston Jews, 72% of those with high status voted for Stevenson.

Evidently we are dealing with a political phenomenon that is unique and not explicable in the standard terms of public opinion analysis. The aberrant political behavior of American Jewry has deep roots in the religious, economic and political history of the Jewish people. It is related to their centuries-long struggle to find institutions and socioeconomic forces which would give them equality of opportunity and security from the specter of persecution which has so often haunted them.

This aspect of the political behavior of American Jews is not, I believe, realistically related to their experience in the United States. Attitudes have been absorbed from their heritage in Czarist Russia, from their relationship to the revolutionary movements against Czarism and, more recently, from the holocaust which European Jewry suffered under the Nazis. A Jewish syndrome has arisen in America and elsewhere, which magnifies minor slights and injuries from conservative groups, while largely overlooking the global threat to Israel and to Western civilization posed by Soviet and Chinese Communism and by the strident, racist nationalisms of the new, impoverished states of the Asian and African world. Above all, Jews in general have refused to recognize themselves as an elite group with an immense stake in the existing social order and a great political role to play in the orderly evolution of the world toward the institutions of Western civilization, institutions which have alone thus far given man both order and freedom.