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John Derbyshire: I’m Even More Of A Homophobe Than I Am A Racist

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John Derbyshire, the National Review writer who has been excoriated the past 24 hours for a racist screed titled “The Talk: Nonblack Version” which he published on a white nationalistic website, in a 2003 interview admitted not only is he a racist, but he’s also a homophobe, and said he’s even more homophobic than he is racist. For anyone who read Derbyshire’s article, two dozen warnings to his children about how to handle black people, you can only imagine how homophobic Derbyshire really is.

READ: What Does Right Wing Intellectual Racism Look Like? Like John Derbyshire

The 2003 interview, excerpted below, was written by Kevin Holtsberry, but all the words below are direct from John Derbyshire’s mouth. Or keyboard.

Over the past few years notable conservatives have publicly withdrawn from their conservative labels and organizations, rebranding themselves as independents, moderates, or preferring to just affix no labels whatsoever. Many say, “I didn’t leave the Republican Party, the Republican Party left me.” It’s safe, certainly for our purposes, to call a conservative a Republican, and so I’ll point to David Frum, Andrew Sullivan, Charles Johnson, just for starters — and that short list does not even include Republican politicians themselves, who, frankly, often leave the GOP only because they know they cannot get reelected in this environment as a “RINO” — Republican In Name Only, but whose positions shift in the wind anyway.

John Derbyshire, although a British American, is an excellent example of where conservatives are today.

He’s made clear he’s been a racist and a homophobe all his life — but now, he’s merely made it very clear. These are the people Michelle Malkin and Andrew Breitbart and Glenn Beck have given license to be “Not Racist, Not Violent, No Longer Silent,” but in fact, are racist — they just were hiding it until now.

John Deerbyshire didn’t hide it very well, but he was deeply entrenched in the conservative fold and didn’t advertise his racism much — until yesterday.

So, from his 2003 interview, here’s what National Review writer John Derbyshire really thinks about gay people and black people:

 

The reason I hang out with paleocons is that on a lot of topics they speak more honestly than “respectable” conservatives can, and I find that very refreshing. Don’t get me wrong: there are good reasons for the self-imposed restraints that “respectable” conservative journalists like me accept–mainly, that we would be crucified byt the liberal media establishment if we broached those limits, and have to give up opinionating and go find some boring office job somewhere. (This is probably going to happen to me sooner or later, actually. I am not very careful about what I say, having grown up in the era before Political Correctness, and never having internalized the necessary restraints. I am a homophobe, though a mild and tolerant one, and a racist, though an even more mild and tolerant one, and those things are going to be illegal pretty soon, the way we are going. Of course, people will still be that way in their hearts, but they will be afraid to admit it, and will be punished if they do admit it. It is already illegal in Britain to express public disapproval of homosexuality–there have been several prosecutions. It will be the same here in 5-10 years, and I shall be out of a job. Fortunately I have marketable skills.) It’s nice to know that there are people braver than we are, though. Kind of like watching the U.S. Marines in action.

(Emphasis ours.)

Derbyshire, the interview’s author noted, wanted to provide “some clarification on these contentious issues” and so offered this explanation — which only digs himself in deeper:

Preface: I am strongly hostile to the hysterical approach to these matters, which unfortunately is the prevailing one at this time. We are all supposed to declare ourselves absolutely free of any negative feelings towards other groups whatsoever, or else we are EVIL! RACIST! HOMOPHOBIC! etc. etc.

Well, fiddlesticks. My model here is the British writer Sir Kingsley Amis.
An interviewer asked him whether he was antisemitic. Sir K replied: “Very,
very mildly.” Asled to explain, he said: “When I’m watching the credits
roll at the end of a TV program, I say to myself–’Oh, there’s another
one.’”

I grew up in England where that level of antisemitism was pretty well
universal. It was perfectly harmless. Jews thrived and prospered.
(Margaret Thatcher’s cabinet was full of them.) Negative feelings on that
level are, I believe, perfectly normal and healthy. I doubt any human being
is free of them. So long as the laws are firm–if you beat me up, you get
arrested for assault and battery, regardless of any group you or I might
belong to–and so long as public authorities do not practice favoritism in
state-supplied goods and benefits, I think people’s prejudices should be
left alone.
I do not support laws against private discrimination. If I do
not want to hire black people (or white people), that should be my right.
If I do not want to let a room in my house to a homosexual (or a
heterosexual, or a Muslim, or a Christian), that should also be my right.
These things are no proper business of the public authorities.

Homophobia: I described myself as “a mild, tolerant homophobe.” This means that I do not like homosexuality, and I think it is a net negative for
society. As a conservative, inclined to give the benefit of the doubt (when
there is doubt) to long-established practices, I cannot help note that there
has never been a human society, at any level of civilization, that has
approved egalitarian (that is, adult-adult) homosexuality. Male-male
buggery has been proscribed in every society that ever existed. I am
inclined to think that there are good reasons for these universal
prohibitions. To say the least of it, male homosexuality is very
unhealthy–much more so than, for example, cigarette smoking.A lot of the
people who howl “Homophobe!” at me whenever I write anything about this
topic are people who have to swallow a bucket of pills eight times a day
just to stay alive. Is it any wonder I have trouble taking them seriously?
Homosexuality both male and female is also antisocial, in a profound sense.
I do not believe that any stable society can be founded on any basis other
than heterosexual marriage. Under modern conditions, I think you would have
to add “monogamous,” too.

That’s the “homophobe” part. Now here’s the “mild, tolerant” part. I think
homosexuals should be left alone by the state. While I do not think, as I
have said above, that private discrimination against them (or any other
group) should be outlawed, I do not believe that homosexuality should be
criminalized. Where it currently is criminalized, I should like to see it
de-criminalized. I think homosexuals who are willing to give normal life a
try should be offered all possible encouragement and support, public and
private. Those who are determined to live as homosexuals, or who feel they
have no choice in the matter, should just be left alone. It goes without
saying–I hope–that I would like to see anyone found to have beaten up a
homosexual to be charged with assault and battery, and dealt with
accordingly.

Racism: All I mean there is that I believe that race is real, and
important. Nowadays, that makes you a “racist.” Again, I consider myself
mild and tolerant here–I don’t believe in any discrimination by public
authorities, and of course I am familiar with the awful historical record of
the United States in the matter of race slavery. I take individual people
as they come, as I believe every sane person does. I can imagine
circumstances where I would certainly practice private discrimination; but,
as I have said, I don’t see anything wrong with that.

It seems obvious to me that race is a fact of human life, and that in
certain situations it needs to be taken into account. Races are just
common-ancestry groups. In the words of that Belgian author whose name
escapes me, they are “extremely large extended families that interbreed to
some extent.” They are, of course, very fuzzy around the edges–I see that
across the breakfast table every morning. (My children are, as they are
sick of hearing: “Half English coal-miner, half Chinese peasant, one hundred
percent American.) But that is true of all sorts of common categories:
“age,” for example, or “height.” It doesn’t stop those categories being
real, and even occasionally useful. (There is a good article in the current
Scientific American about how racial classification is useful in guiding
doctors towards proper drug treatments.)

Unfortunately, most of the truths about race are statistical truths. This
makes them hard for ordinary people to grasp, as most people can’t
understand statistics, even at the most elementary level. If you stand up
in a room full of people and say: “On average, men are taller than women,” I
guarantee–I GUARANTEE!–that some person will stand up and say, in great
indignation: “What about Jenny? She’s taller than you, she’s taller than
most men.” People just don’t GET statistical truths. Statistics makes them
angry. (Let me tell you, as the author of a pop-math book, there are people
made angry by just ordinary math!) You see this in the obloquy that now
attaches to the word “stereotype.” In fact, stereotypes are very useful as
a way of organizing the world. Human life would not be possible without
them! I wrote an article about this.

To take an actual example from the world of race: I have spent most of my
life mixing with Chinese people. It seems obvious to me that Chinese people
are, on average, a bit smarter than white Europeans. A great deal of work
by professional psychologists seems to confirm this impression; I don’t know
of any that contradicts it.

What are the consequences of a truth like that? (Supposing it IS a truth.)
Well, if East Asians are indeed smarter, on average, than the rest of us,
they will be disproportionately represented in our best colleges and
universities (as they are). They will gravitate towards certain high-paid
jobs demanding high intelligence (they do). Since they are, as a group,
distinguishable by the naked eye, this will lead to a certain amount of
social grumbling and demands for quotas–to social friction and political
demands.

I don’t have a pat solution to this. I do, however, feel sure that our
current approach–which is, to deny that race exists, and that there are
differences between races in things other than mere physical appearance–is
wrong-headed and counter-productive. I don’t believe you can get anywhere
by denying reality. You have to find some way to face it, to deal with it.
We haven’t. We haven’t just haven’t, we seem to have made a collective
decision to pretend that there is no problem, or that the problem is
“cultural” (whatever that is supposed to mean). This isn’t going to get us
anywhere.

So I believe race is a real thing, that races differ–statistically–in
important ways, and that private racial discrimination is not immoral, and
certainly should not be illegal. In the current American climate, I think
that makes me a “very mild, tolerant racist.”

(Emphasis ours.)

Derbyshire demonstrates the real ignorance and small-mindedness of some of today’s conservatives — sadly, and dangerously, the ones who control the Republican Party, internally or externally.

Rather than try to understand what goes into making a person gay (genetics) or able to perform better than others (genetics, upbringing, socio-economic factors, schooling, a million other factors) he just deals with what’s on top, what’s on the surface, what he can see, what he’s been told and has confirmed through his racist, homophobic lenses.

I, for one, am glad Derbyshire has “marketable skills.” He may need them soon. Of course, the National Review doesn’t seem in a rush to fire him. Which speaks volumes to their brand’s credibility.

 

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News

‘Antisemitic’: Trump Blasted for Attack on Jewish Democrats

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Donald Trump is attacking Jews who vote Democratic, barely days after the criminally-indicted ex-president threatened there would be a “bloodbath” if voters do not put him back in the Oval Office. His remarks, which include claiming Jews Democrats “hate” Israel and their own religion, were quickly labeled antisemitic.

“I actually think they hate Israel,” Trump on Monday told far right wing radio host Sebastian Gorka, who alleged the Biden administration and Democratic Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer “hate” Israeli Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu.

“I think they hate Israel. And the Democrat Party hates Israel,” Trump, upping the ante, responded. Gorka is his former White House aide who served briefly in the Trump administration before reportedly being “ousted.”

“I really believe they hate Israel,” Trump also said, and accused Majority Leader Schumer, a Democrat who has represented New York for the past quarter-century, of appearing to hate Israel, for “votes.”

READ MORE: ‘Easy Mark’: Why Trump’s $464M Bond Failure Makes Him a ‘Massive National Security Risk’

“I think it’s votes more than anything else, because he was always pro-Israel. He’s very anti-Israel now,” Trump continued, before declaring: “Any Jewish person that votes for Democrats hates their religion. They hate everything about Israel and they should be ashamed of themselves because Israel will be destroyed.”

Haaretz reports, “Trump’s comments follow similar comments made during a Fox News interview, where he accused Israel of ‘being loyal to a fault’ for hoping to maintain bipartisan support within the United States.”

Trump, under tremendous fire for his “bloodbath” remarks, was immediately denounced for his comments.

“Another day, another depraved antisemitic screed from Donald Trump, who has repeatedly vilified the overwhelmingly majority of American Jews,” observed Halie Soifer, CEO of the Jewish Democratic Council of America. “He first called us ‘uninformed or disloyal’ in 2019 and essentially repeated it today. The feeling is mutual. 79% of Jewish voters have an unfavorable view of Trump according to @pewresearch.”

The Times of Israel’s Sam Sokol writes, “Trump said that ‘any Jewish person that votes for Democrats hates their religion.’ That’s a majority of US Jews. Gentiles don’t get to decide who is a good Jew. That kind of rhetoric is in itself antisemitic.”

The Biden campaign was quick to post a clip of trump’s remarks. Watch below or at this link.

READ MORE: ‘How Fascism Came to Germany’: Historian Warns Trump ‘Knew Exactly What He Was Saying’

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COMMENTARY

‘Easy Mark’: Why Trump’s $464M Bond Failure Makes Him a ‘Massive National Security Risk’

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National security, legal, and political experts are lining up to sound the alarm about the potential national security risks swirling around Donald Trump, and those warnings are getting stronger.

One month after Trump descended the Trump Tower escalator in 2015 to announce his run for president, CNN reported on the real estate mogul’s repeated claims of great wealth. At one point Trump told supporters he was worth “well over $10 billion.” At other points Trump says, “I’m very rich,” and “I’m really rich.” CNN’s John King noted, “some voters see this as a virtue, in the sense that they think politicians are too beholden to special interests.”

Days later Politico ran with this headline: “Donald Trump’s new pitch: I’m so rich I can’t be bought.”

Fast forward nearly a decade later.

Donald Trump’s attorneys declared in court documents Monday that 30 companies all refused to secure a $464 million bond for Trump, which he owes the State of New York after losing his civil business fraud trial.

The sirens are now wailing.

READ MORE: ‘How Fascism Came to Germany’: Historian Warns Trump ‘Knew Exactly What He Was Saying’

Citing a Washington Post report, MSNBC’s Steve Benen writes, “it’s now ‘expected’ that Manafort will be hired” to work on the Trump 2024 presidential campaign, “at least in part because the former president is ‘determined to bring Manafort back into the fold.'”

Manafort is Paul Manafort, Trump’s former 2016 campaign chairman who in 2017, “surrendered to the F.B.I. and pleaded not guilty to charges that he laundered millions of dollars through overseas shell companies,” according to a New York Times report in October of 2017.

The Times also noted that Special Counsel Robert Mueller had “announced charges … against three advisers to President Trump’s campaign,” including Manafort, “and laid out the most explicit evidence to date that his campaign was eager to coordinate with the Russian government to damage his rival, Hillary Clinton.”

In 2019, NPR reported, almost as a footnote, that “a court filing that was inadvertently unsealed earlier this year, revealed that Manafort shared polling data with a business associate who has ties to Russian intelligence services.”

In his MSNBC report, Benen noted, “the Republican-led Senate Intelligence Committee concluded that Manafort ‘represented a grave counterintelligence threat‘ in 2016 due to his relationship with a Russian intelligence officer.”

“’The Committee found that Manafort’s presence on the Campaign and proximity to Trump created opportunities for Russian intelligence services to exert influence over, and acquire confidential information on, the Trump campaign,’ the Senate report added.” Benen also reported: “When the Senate Intelligence Committee’s report literally pointed to a ‘direct tie between senior Trump Campaign officials and the Russian intelligence services,’ it was referring in part to Manafort ‘directly and indirectly’ communicating with an accused Russian intelligence officer, a Russian oligarch, and several pro-Russian oligarchs in Ukraine.”

Benen reinforced his thesis, writing on social media: “When the Senate Intelligence Committee pointed to a ‘direct tie’ between the Trump campaign and Russian intelligence services, it was referring in large part to Paul Manafort — who’s reportedly now headed back to Team Trump.”

Add to all that this plea from The Atlantic’s Tom Nichols, a retired U.S. Naval War College professor and expert on Russia, nuclear weapons, and national security affairs.

READ MORE: ‘Next Up – Property Seizures’: Experts Analyze ‘Unbankable’ Trump’s $464 Million Bond Crisis

“According to reports last week, the U.S. intelligence community is preparing to give Donald Trump classified intelligence briefings, a courtesy every White House extends to major-party candidates to ensure an effective transition. An excellent tradition—but not one that should be observed this year,” Nichols wrote at The Atlantic in a piece titled, “Donald Trump Is a National-Security Risk.”

“Indeed, if Trump were a federal employee, he’d have likely already been stripped of his clearances and escorted from the building.”

After discussing “Trump’s open and continuing affection” for authoritarian dictators, Nichols notes, “even if Trump could explain away his creepy dictator crushes and clarify his byzantine finances, he is currently facing more than half a billion dollars in court judgments against him.”

“That’s a lot of money for anyone, and Trump’s scramble to post a bond for even a small portion of that suggests that the man is in terrible financial condition, which is always a bright-red light in the clearance process.”

Political strategist Simon Rosenberg on Monday warned: “If Trump is given access to national security briefings he will now have someone with a proven history of selling stuff to the Russians on his team to help facilitate the movement of our intel to our adversaries.”

Also on Monday, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) wrote on X: “We cannot emphasize this enough: Trump’s mounting court fines make him a massive national security risk.”

“After multiple losses against E. Jean Carroll and New York Attorney General Letitia James, Donald Trump is facing judgements that could end up costing him upwards of $600 million,” CREW reported February 29. “But these rulings are more than a financial headache for Trump, they are an unprecedented opportunity to buy influence with a leading presidential candidate and a sitting president should he be re-elected.”

Diving deeper, CREW notes, “Trump left the presidency with at least $1.1 billion dollars in debt tied to the COVID-weakened commercial real estate market, the vast majority of which would come due in a hypothetical second term in office. These rulings would make that number 50% higher.”

“Giving the highest and most powerful office in the land to someone deeply in debt and looking for ways to make back hundreds of millions of dollars he lost in court is a recipe for the kinds of corruption that aren’t theoretical when it comes to Trump. There’s a reason that you can’t get a job in the military or the financial services industry, or even referee a major sporting event, if you have a massive amount of debt. And you certainly aren’t getting a security clearance because you become too big of a target for corruption.”

Bloomberg Opinion senior executive editor Tim O’Brien, an MSNBC political analyst and author of “TrumpNation: The Art of Being the Donald,” observed, “Trump’s financial trap — he can’t come up with the cash to appeal his $454 million civil fraud judgment — may ravage his business. More directly: It intensifies his threat to national security by making him an easy mark for overseas interests.”

“There’s no reason to believe that Trump, whose businesses collected millions of dollars from foreign governments and officials while he was president, won’t have a for-sale sign out now that he’s struggling with the suffocating weight of court judgments,” O’Brien continues at Bloomberg. “Trump is being criminally prosecuted for allegedly misappropriating classified documents and stashing them at Mar-a-Lago, his home in Palm Beach, Florida. Without a trial and public disclosure of more evidence, Trump’s motivations for taking the documents are unknown, but it’s reasonable to wonder whether he pondered trying to sell them. Monetizing the White House has been something of a family affair, after all. His son-in-law, Jared Kushner, has been busy trading financially on his proximity to the former president, for example.”

O’Brien concludes, “the going is likely to get rough for Trump as this plays out, and he’s likely to become more financially desperate with each passing day. That’s going to make him easy prey for interested lenders — and an easy mark for overseas interests eager to influence US policy.”

READ MORE: FBI Agent Furious Over MAL Search Thought Trump Would Return Classified Docs if Just Asked

 

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News

‘How Fascism Came to Germany’: Historian Warns Trump ‘Knew Exactly What He Was Saying’

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Award-winning presidential historian Michael Beschloss sounded the alarm after Donald Trump’s “bloodbath” threat over the weekend, warning that his remarks echo those that led to the rise and installation of fascism in pre-World War II Germany and Italy.

“That’s how fascism and totalitarianism and in Germany’s case the Holocaust came to Germany, which had been a country where there were big institutions of democracy until, as you well know, the early 1930s,” Beschloss said on MSNBC Monday to “Morning Joe” co-host Mika Brzezinski (video below). “In a way of Donald Trump has done us all a favor, because if you and I had been talking, Mika, let’s say 20 years ago, and they’ve been talking about what would have seemed like a very abstract and distant subject of how fascism and dictatorship might come to America, you probably would have been more wiser.”

“I would have said, you would have had some smiling person pretending to be a normal candidate like all the candidates for president who had gone before all the way back to 1789. And suddenly, after getting elected, that person would use the enormous powers of the presidency, that are given to that person, by their constitution,” Beschloss continued.

READ MORE: ‘Next Up – Property Seizures’: Experts Analyze ‘Unbankable’ Trump’s $464 Million Bond Crisis

“In a way Donald Trump has made it easier because when he tells you he’ll be a dictator for a day, we all know that dictators don’t resign after a day. When he uses the word bloodbath. Yes, it was in the context of an automobile industry speech, but he knew exactly what he was saying, When he talks about suspending the Constitution, or migrants as animals, this is him. He’s telling you what this choice is,” He continued, adding there is no “precedent for this.”

“I hate it when people treat this race as if it’s just one more presidential campaign. And there was lots of jokes, you know, both sides, you know, flaws and both candidates. Yes, these are two old candidates. One of those that is mentally stable, Joe Biden, whom I saw give a great speech at the Gridiron Dinner on Saturday night. Donald Trump, if you look at one of his speeches of these rallies, this is not someone who seems to have all his marbles.”

Beschloss says, “it’s important to know as we talk about this campaign, as it unfolds, we have never seen anything remotely like this in American history: a major party candidate is saying, you elect me, there’s going to be dictatorship, bloodbath, violence, retribution against my political enemies, that equals what we saw in Italy, in Germany and other places. If Americans do not get that if they choose that voluntarily, then this country has changed in a way that I do not understand.”

Watch below or at this link.

READ MORE: ‘Bloodbath’: Psaki Slams Trump Over ‘Embrace of Political Violence’

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