200 Years Together

Within the pantheon of time, places and people memorial and immemorial there are bicentennials.
Some are celebrated and cherished, while others are perhaps best forgotten?

Came across the blog of Kevin MacDonald, Professor of Psychology at California State University–Long Beach, today as I scoured the web (briefly) as well as my own internal one (but that should go without saying). He reminds us today of another "important" Alexandr Solzhenitsyn tome, 200 Years Together (Full Title: Two Hundred Years Together: Russo-Jewish History, Vol. 1: 1795-1916) that has "unfortunately not been translated into English," though, [of course] the process is beginning (reasons why the process seems to be overall quite slow is speculated about here. Hint: Antisemitism).

An (apparently) Russian site (ethnopoliticsonline.com) or "hub" responsible for posting content of the book online comprising (mostly rough) translations can be followed here with Chapter 1 also having been completed (by "two Christians that share a common theological outlook and (in consequence) a substantially common outlook on culture.") found here.

An interesting interview (2003) with the late author revealing his own thoughts and feelings about Dvesti let vmeste (200 Years Together) can be found here.

Interviewer, Lydia Chukovskaya, from The Moscow News concludes in her afterword:

"Solzhenitsyn's is a different, above-the-fray vantage point. His is a different objective, totally devoid of writer's vanity: Not really needing our approval, Solzhenitsyn seeks to act as a kind of referee in a protracted historical debate. He does not seem to care even whether there is still anyone left in the ring or whether Russian Jews, having acquired the Russian language and culture, have fully assimilated. Meanwhile, anti-Semites, for want of something better to do with their narrow minds, will keep harping on their tune, even if not a single Jew, so hateful to them, remains on the planet.
With his book, comprising evaluations of tsars, Khrushchev, Beria, Galich,and Zhabotinsky, and quotations from Lenin to Stalin to Grigory Pomerants to Lydia Korneevna Chukovskaya, Solzhenitsyn stepped into the minefield of the Jewish issue. And he walked across it confidently - maybe because there is no longer a mine that could blow up his authority.
"Russian Jew. Jew. Russian. How much blood has been spilled, how many tears shed over this; what untold suffering there has been, and at the same time how much joy in spiritual and cultural growth. There were, and there still are, many Jews who bore this brunt - being a Russian Jew and Russian at the same time. Two loves, two passions, two struggles - isn't this too much for one heart?"

As for The Occidental Observer, the mission statement (with fund raising appeal) must be noted here:

"The Occidental Observer will present original content touching on the themes of white identity, white interests, and the culture of the West. Such a mission statement is sure to be dismissed as extremism of the worst sort in today’s intellectual climate—perhaps even as a sign of psychiatric disorder. Yet there is a compelling need for such a site. A great many other identifiable groups in the multicultural West have a strong sense of identity and interest, but overt expressions of white identity and white interests (or European-American identity and interests) are rarely found among the peoples who founded these societies and who continue to make up the majority . . . . "

I don't know about any of that (and I'm "white").

"Touching on" such theme may be okay as long as there is some humility, as well (for certain), persistence, consistency and balance in the presentation of ideas.

As history, conscience and "God" (and granted, to some possible degree, even "evolutionary psychology"; though "group *evolutionary* strategy" remains suspect) must ever be our guide, then let THEM speak, too.

This article in the Encyclopedia of Chicago by David R. Roediger, professor of history at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC) who reportedly "writes from a Marxist theoretical framework," may be of some use in the pursuit of that. Or perhaps this one from the same source on "Our Common Hurtage."

With all of his books and articles, Professor MacDonald has been called a lot of names over the last few years, including the "Marx of Anti-Semites," possibly first coined in this 2003 article from The American Conservative.

Summaries and reviews of his books on Judaism appear on his own website here.

A pattern or "group strategy" emerges, possibly.

Motivations remain, seemingly, ever complex and mysterious in any case.

So many academics relegated to the dustbin, so little time (and good material) for distance learning . . .

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And now for something completely different.

Richard Pryor as "Rev. James L. White":