A Night on the Line

Sunday, March 18, 2007

The anti-Jewish "Terrorist Next Door" is, most likely, non-white

Daniel Levitas, on the website of his book, The Terrorist Next Door, has posted a copy of a book review of Gods of the Blood, an outstanding book about radical right-wing religious organizations and their beliefs. In his somewhat negative review, which makes no note of the fact that this book is perhaps the most comprehensive one yet written about the subject, he condemns the author, Mattias Gardell, in his concluding paragraph for "characteriz[ing] anti-Semitism as a 'marginal' phenomenon" and then proceeds to state the fact that a "recent survey" by the Anti-Defamation League [in 2002] found that "35 million Americans (fully 17% of adults)" held "strongly antisemitic beliefs." He then proceeds to chastize the author for "believing that the activities of white supremacists and neo-Nazis do not constitute a bona fide social movement because their efforts lack solidarity, common purpose, and collective action." [1]

The problem with all this, is that, according to the ADL survey, only a fraction of those "35 million Americans" belong to the race that is eligible for membership in white supremacist and neo-Nazi organizations: Whites.

A copy of the survey can be found on the ADL website. Here are its "findings in brief" (highlights my own):

The findings in brief … Strongly anti-Semitic:
17% of Americans
35% of Hispanics
35% of African-Americans
3% of U.S. college and university students [2]

After doing some quick math utilizing statistical data accessed from Wikipedia [3], the totals of Americans by racial group that hold "strong antisemitic beliefs" are as follows:
African-Americans - 12.2 million
Hispanics - 14.5 million
Which leaves us with a total of 26.7 million, which means that of that "35 million Americans" that Levitas cites who hold "strong antisemitic beliefs," a little more than 8 million Americans from a combined group of "Non-Hispanic Whites" (ie, Whites), Asians, Native Americans, and Pacific Islanders, hold such beliefs. Being that around 92% of this 8 million are White, this brings us to a grand total of 7.4 million Whites who hold "strong antisemitic beliefs," or less than 4% of the total White population.

To summarize, the greatest threat to Jews, according to the ADL survey, are the two largest minority groups in the United States, Hispanics and African-Americans. So why does Levitas ignore this fact and act as if all 35 million of those Americans are Whites? I'll leave that to you to decide.

1. http://www.terroristnextdoor.com/index.php?option=content&task=view&id=39
2. http://www.adl.org/PresRele/ASUS_12/4109_12.htm
3. As of this blog entry, Wikipedia found that there were 34.9 million African-Americans, 41.3 million Hispanics, 12.5 million Asian-Americans, 2.4 million Native Americans, .4 million Pacific Islanders, and 192.6 million Non-Hispanic Whites living in the United States
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_the_United_States
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_American
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hispanic

Saturday, March 17, 2007

The Great Global Warming Swindle

I'm back! I arrived via C-17 on 2 Mar... I've been taking compensatory time off and I'll begin blogging again soon. Until then, here's an excellent documentary debunking the latest religious craze: "global warming."