JEWS: NOT A NATION OF IMMIGRANTS

Jews, like Luis de Carvajal y de la Cueva, were 

in the New World long before most Anglos

by David Yeagley

America is not a nation of immigrants. America is a nation of White Anglo-Saxon Protestants. Everyone else is an immigrant. Even the early Celtic add-ons were not part of the foundations. The later Irish Catholic immigrants were most definitely not part of the foundations. The social order, that is, the government of the colonies, and that system which distilled into the Declaration of Independence, was created by White Anglo-Saxon Protestants. The Constitution of the United States of America is the work of Englishman who separated themselves, by war, from their home country.

Modern descendants of the Scots, the Irish, the Germans, the Italians, the Jews, etc., are first to declare that America is a nation of immigrants. This is their self-protection. Therefore this is their talking point when it comes to addressing the issue of immigration in general. But their mantra ‘America is a nation of immigrants’ only justifies their own presence here. The fact is, these people are all additions, not founders. All of the early immigrants, besides the Jews, have of course blended themselves into the founding sentiments. It was easier for the Scots than anyone else, because they were “British” anyway.

Nationhood is an ancient concept. Again, Aristotle observed that immigrants, foreigners, or add-ons generally bring perpetual discontent, no matter how early they engrafted themselves into the history of the nation. Speaking of causes of discontent, he says:

Then there is difference of race or nation, which remains a source of dissention until such time as the two groups learn to live together. This may be a long process; for just as a state cannot be made out of any and every collection of people, so neither can it be made at any time at will. Hence, civil strife is exceedingly common when the population includes an extraneous element, whether these have joined in the founding or have been taken on later.

This was observed by the famous pupil of Plato in the later part of the 4th century BC. Aristotle, The Politics, trans. Sinclair (Penguin: 1962), BK V, Ch.iii (p.196). The Jowett translation puts it this way:

Another cause of revolution is difference of races which do not at once acquire a common spirit; for a state is not the growth of a day, any more than it grows out of a multitude brought together by accident. Hence the reception of strangers in colonies, either at the time of their foundation or afterwards, has generally produced revolution.

And so we see that “immigration” is a fundamental concern of any nation. It is a development, and also a threat. It represents growth, but also change. Change is the concern of the nation.

From the American Indian point of view, the foreign invasion of various Indian nations can all be summarized as a “white” invasion. The White Anglo-Saxon Protestants certainly had no intention of becoming part of any Indian nation. That isn’t why they came here. Nor did the WASP people intend to create a substitute European environment, with different nations of Scots, Irish, Germans, Italians, or Polish people. Everyone was to be white and Protestant, and to speak English. It was an Anglo-Saxon nation that was created on Indian land, not an Irish Catholic nation, or an Arab Muslims nation.

Interestingly, the Jewish roots in America are quite different from the modern public impression. The original Jews in America were sephardic, originating from Western Europe. They were not Russian Communists, and they didn’t come in 1910.

They came in 1655. They came from Holland.

The Jews had been expelled from Spain in 1492, and from Portugal in 1496. Don Luis de Carvajal (a “murrano,” or cryptic Jew) first came to New Spain (Mexico) in 1568. He later got the largest land grant in history from Philip II, and was appointed governor of The Kingdom of Leon in 1579. This isn’t exactly American history, but, the point is, Jews were here on this continent, very early in its European, or non-Indian history. Jews were all over the Gulf. Friar Juan de Torquemada wrote in 1615 that West Indians (Caribbeans) looked like Jews, and their languages abounded in Yiddish words! Monarquia indiana (Seville, 1615). This story is all told so well in Harriot Rochlin’s Pioneer Jews (Houghton Mifflin, 1984).

Portugese Jews had migrated to Brazil as well as to England, then Holland. They obviously were in search of freedom from religious persecution. Remember that English Puritans were taking refuge in Holland as well. Amsterdam to be exact. Jews took part in Dutch commercial enterprises, and found themselves in New Amsterdam (New York) as early as 1654-55. (This group had actually gone to Recife, Brazil, but fled again when the Portugese recaptured the city in 1654.) The Jews were part of the changing world scene, and camped out in Newport, Rhode Island. These Western European Jews are America’s founding Jewish population, not the later Eastern, ashkenazim.

Dr. Abraham J. Karp said in 1976 that Jewish people in America were guided by “the conviction that Jewish interests coincided with American well-being.” (See, The B. G. Rudolph Lectures in Judaic Studies, “Jewish Perceptions of America: From Melting Pot to Mosaic,” March, 1976. Perhaps a self-protecting platitude, but, the Jewish issue focuses the immigration issue like no other element can. In the Jewish management of ethnic identity there is the clearest articulation of the definition. The Jewish community must advocate pluralism for its own survival, yet, must also advocate freedom to maintain its own separateness. The Jew cannot afford to blend any too much.

This is why the later Communist Jew created such a critical influence. Communism is all about blending, about removing distinctions. Communism is about “equality.” An ethnic Jew (or “Hebrew,” as Ilana Mercer calls herself, rather than a non-practicing Jew) is perfectly safe in Communism–as long as he doesn’t practice any form of Judaism. Communism was about hiding Judaism. Communism was about blending, or, erasing Judaism. Only in this way, the ethnic Jew might survive. Realizing this maneouver was at least part of the reason David Horowitz parted ways with the movement. This was around the time he became acquainted with Isaac Deutscher, the Polish Jew, the Marxist ideologue who said the Sino-Soviet split was Marxist blasphemy. Nationalism, which indicated market competition, was not allowed in true Communism. See, David Horowitz, Radical Son (Free Press, 1997), p. 142, f. Communism meant no Judaism. This is why, in America, home of so many “liberal” Jewish Communists, the new Jewish Right developed. Jews had freedom to be Jewish here, and they preferred to preserve that identity, despite the chaos the multiculturalism and pluralism that self-protective “Hebrews” had advocated.

The White Anglo-Saxon Protestants welcomed Jews, even in the early colonial days of America. The WASP cultural identity was in fact based on Judaism, on Biblical social customs and values. How could the Jew not be welcomed? That there are organizations like the ACLU and the ADL today only indicates a lingering, nagging uncertainty about “To Be or Not To Be A Jew,” as Rabbi Milton Steinberg put it (1941). At this point, the argument that other non-WASP groups must be nurtured and honored by the Jew, in order for the Jew to protect himself from persecution, is a dangerous argument, and really ought to be dropped. It invites anti-Americanism. This in turn invites anti-Semitism.

The secret of successful immigration, at least conceptually, is first to preserve the national ethos, which is White Anglo-Saxon Protestant. Secondly, any different, foreign group must never, ever appeal to the tax dollar for support, or even protection. “Congress shall make no law” for any such purpose. The excess of foreign elements has distorted the intent of the 1st Amendment entirely.

America has become a kind of international bazaar, or buffet, where all the ethnicities and religions of the world come to market their novelties. This is fairly ridiculous in human history, and sounds the death knell of the nation. A nation is not a business. A nation is a family. A family is a sacred thing. If not managed uprightly, the children become monsters–a threat to themselves and to society. This is the final effect of multiculturalism.

Ask any Indian nation how it preserves itself. It isn’t by letting anyone and everyone claim to be Indian. There are exceptions, but they are not the rule.