December 15, 2008

Bernie Madoff as an "affinity scam"

Because it's so much work to be a Mormon in good standing, Mormons tend to trust other Mormons, making them famously vulnerable to large scams operated by the small number of conmen self-disciplined enough to have spent years piling up credentials as good Mormons.

Bernie Madoff's $50 billion Ponzi scheme was rather like the kind of "affinity scams" that have plagued Mormons. Madoff joined all the right Jewish country clubs and gave to all the right Jewish charities, allowing him to fleece some very deep Jewish pockets.

But the sophistication level of the victims is rather different. While there are rich Mormons, overall Mormons are pretty middling in wealth (depending on whether you measure per capita or per family), while Madoff's victims weren't middling.

Why did members of the Palm Beach Country Club, various hedge fund managers, and major league sports franchise owners fall for what appears to have been a simple, old-fashioned scam in which implausible returns are seemingly delivered, but only by using new investors' cash to pay off old investors? (By the way, the golf scores Bernie reported to the USGA for handicapping were all in the eighties, as remarkably consistent as his reported return on investment.)

One theory (and it's only a theory) is that more than a few of these sophisticated clients assumed Bernie was cheating -- either through insider trading or "front-running" -- and they wanted in on his illicit profits.

They just never dreamed Bernie was cheating them.

And why did Bernie cheat them in particular? Because, these days, as bankrobber Willie Sutton replied when asked why he robbed banks, "That's where the money is."

My published articles are archived at iSteve.com -- Steve Sailer

64 comments:

Anonymous said...

One additional point worth mentioning is that the returns Madoff offered were not enormously implausible; even someone fairly sophisticated might have been willing to believe that he just had some kind of edge.
This is also one of the things that allowed him to keep the scam going for so long. If some Ponzi conman offers 30% annual returns, he's going to run out of new money to pay off the old fairly quickly.

Anonymous said...

The golf scores, between 80 and 89, are not unexpectedly consistent for a 9.8 index player who probably gets given a lot of four footers.

Anonymous said...

steve: couple days ago one of your commenters said 'lone gunman' theory of madoff scandal = lie.

your blog gets major traffic i wonder if it influenced this major finance blogger's entry last night:

http://www.ritholtz.com/blog/2008/12/madoff-story-smells-funny/

maybe no connection. but lurkers at isteve are many... and lurkers who do not admit it are legion.

Anonymous said...

This affair illustrates how greed can blind even the most sophisticated investors. If they can get fleeced, what hope do ordinary investors have?

Anonymous said...

Steve, the lesson to learn here, again and again, is that even smart people are susceptible to the HERDING INSTINCT.

If everyone else you know is doing something, then the INSTINCTIVE response is to assume that everyone is doing the right thing and to follow a long.

This is also why it's so hard for the HBD message to gain traction. The smart herd has gone with the false belief all races are exactly equaly in intelligence and in fact it's EVIL to even investigate otherwise.

Jeff Burton said...

It's more than a theory.

Jeff Burton said...

Sorry, bad link. I'll try it a couple different ways.

Madoff Story

http://finance.yahoo.com/tech-ticker/article/145115/I-Knew-Bernie-Madoff-Was-Cheating--That%27s-Why-I-Invested-with-Him?tickers=%5Edji,&gspc,%5Eixic

Anonymous said...

Is the timing purely fortuitous? Obama's luck holds.

The Blag-gard scandal is now firmly on the back burner.

Antioco Dascalon said...

You can't underestimate the trust-boosting power of his "chairman of NASDAQ" credential. Nor his charitable reputation.

Anonymous said...

What's interesting about this Madoff scandal is the growing list of liberals and neoconservatives who felt that involvement with charities that work to keep the Jewish bloodlines clean are respectable enterprises to be involved with.

How many Jews are castigating whites for the slightest hint of racial identity and then at the same time funding various "keep it Jewish" charities?

Anonymous said...

What is the standard deviation of golf scores for unathletic 70 year old men?

Regarding gimmes, I once read in SI that the average PGAer only makes 50% of puts from 6 feet in competition.

Anonymous said...

You know things are very, very bad in the economy when Jews start devouring their own.

A sad spectacle to behold.

Anonymous said...

We may be taking "ponzi scheme" too literally. Is there more to this story?

Anonymous said...

up yours new yawk said

What's interesting[...]is[...]liberals and neoconservatives who felt that involvement with charities that work to keep the Jewish bloodlines clean are respectable enterprises

Holocaust. Whatever the question is, that's the answer.

Anonymous said...

It wasn't an "affinity" scam, it was a scam based on Madoff's credentials, reputation, and track record. The idea that a bunch of investors would throw money at a Jew just because he donates to Jewish charities is ridiculous. They invested with Madoff because he was a former Nasdaq chairman, and a respected investor, and because he cleverly underplayed his hand: he turned investors away from his fund to increase its allure, and he didn't fudge incredible returns -- he just fudged respectable returns.

The boneheaded move on the part of these investors was not getting suspicious when they got account statements from Madoff himself, rather than from the custodian of the assets.

Incidentally, despite giving money to a charity that supports efforts to prevent Jewish assimilation, Madoff's niece and compliance officer married a WASP, Eric Swanson (who, perhaps not coincidentally, was also a former SEC official).

As for the perennial lamentations by some here that white nationalists can't start an organization to promote white ethnic interests without being the subject of opprobrium, can you think of why that might be? If not, let me give you some ideas:

1) Previous white exclusionary or supremacist organizations (e.g., the Klan) left a bad taste in most Americans' mouths.

2) Race-specific organizations are unnecessary to promote key white grievances such as illegal immigration and affirmative action; the most successful advocacy groups have been explicitly non-racist, e.g., Numbers USA.

3) Given 2), people might be wary of folks who insist on forming a whites-only advocacy group; given 1), they aren't willing to give you the benefit of the doubt.

Hope that helps.

- Fred

Anonymous said...

Is the timing purely fortuitous? Obama's luck holds.

Who would have ever guessed that a news story would break out within a week of his first scandal. Normally in a week's time NOTHING EVER HAPPENS.

Anonymous said...

up yours new yawk said...

What's interesting about this Madoff scandal is the growing list of liberals and neoconservatives who felt that involvement with charities that work to keep the Jewish bloodlines clean are respectable enterprises to be involved with.

How many Jews are castigating whites for the slightest hint of racial identity and then at the same time funding various "keep it Jewish" charities?


I'm reminded of Faulkner's Flem Snopes, the wily, energetic man of shady origins -- the patriarch of the Snopes family was named "Ab" (Abraham?) -- who, over the course of three novels, moved from clerk to bank president, attempting to obtain respectability in the town of Jefferson while simultaneously destroying the town's way of life.

"...customers who had traded there for years, mostly serving themselves and putting the correct change into the cigar box inside the cheese cage, now having to deal for each trivial item with a man whose name they had not even heard two months ago, who answered Yes and No to direct questions and who apparently never looked directly or long enough at any face to remember the name which went with it, yet who never made mistakes in any matter pertaining to money."

-- Faulkner, The Hamlet

Of coures, I'm also reminded of Jay "The Great" Gatsby aka Jimmy Gatz.

Anonymous said...

Nobody seems to be asking about Madoff's motive in running this fraud. It just doesn't make any sense. He was already extremely rich, had an outstanding reputation, was widely trusted and highly regarded inside and outside his field. What did he have to gain, here?

Was it just a craving for more money? Did he even end up making a lot of money from this scam? He kept a Ponzi scheme going where the scam was to cover losses in bad times with incoming capital instead of giving excessive profits, right?

Was he using the control of that money to do something else? (To fund other businesses that would otherwise have failed? To throw around so much weight using the hedge fund billions that he could affect investments he cared about?)

That's the thing about the story that just doesn't add up, to me.

Anonymous said...

affinity scams = Stuff Semitic People Like?

Anonymous said...

In related news, we'll be soon hearing less and less about the philantrophists and hailes pillars of various communities...
Do No Disagreement

Anonymous said...

The great Taki was swindled by Madoff!

takimag.com

So Taki was naive enough to get sucked into the scam in the first place, but then he claims he knows it is a family job and not a one man scam.

Anonymous said...

How many Jews are castigating whites for the slightest hint of racial identity and then at the same time funding various "keep it Jewish" charities?

Um, all of them?

What's great about this scandal are two things:

1) Having spent years reading stories about Mormons getting swindled by other Mormons, it's nice to see a Jew doing it to other Jews - and probably for more money than all the great Mormon scandals combined (except, natch, for the biggest swindle of all - tithing).

2) This is one scam where one of the victims - Spielberg - is in the position to make a movie about the crime. Question: will Spielberg make Madoff Jewish, or will he make him effectively Gentile?

Anonymous said...

Motive and Opportunity? Motive might have been to give money to Israel. Where else could it all have gone? Opportunity was there because someone in the SEC had to be in on the scam. There were too many obvious clues for the Commission to miss.

Anonymous said...

I've noticed to acts of censorship on the web in relation to this story. One is the wikipedia entry on Bernie Madoff that no longer mentions that his niece's husband is Eric Swanson, and the other is here http://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/news/the-man-who-conned-the-world-1128194.html . According to one comment by Uri, this article in the Independent previously raised the possibility that Madoff sent his loot to Israel. That part of the article has now been redacted.

Anonymous said...

Don't rich Gentiles like to have a Jew managing their money because of the stereotype of Jews as being both obsessed with money and good at making it? Similarly, I think I've read of one Gentile threatening another "I'll set my Jewish lawyer on you". It's quite common for an ethnic minority to try to turn the majority's stereotype of them to its advantage.

Anonymous said...

Here's a small, legit hedge fund manager on the obvious red flags that the regulators and investors missed with Madoff: Negligence and Culpability. Here's an excerpt:

"There are three key points that should have stopped people from investing with good ol Bernie:

1)He held custody of his own money. Every financial fraud of recent memory all had one thing in common, the person committing the fraud had possession of the money. There are simply too many conflicts of interest when the person managing the money possesses the money and there are no safeguards.

2)His auditor was a firm no one ever heard of. Not only that but it had three employees, one of whom apparently worked in a tie die shirt for 15 minutes a day. Not only do I have a big name auditor, who is expensive, but I actually have three different accountants from different firms. One is my auditor, one is my administrator and the other approves whenever I, personally, withdraw money. These are all safeguards for investors, so that they know there are procedures and many eyes making sure everything is picture perfect."


- Fred

Anonymous said...

Argent Paladin said...
You can't underestimate the trust-boosting power of his "chairman of NASDAQ"

I'd say the “ex-Chairman of NASDAQ” hooked most. Plus wanting to rake in crooked money. We tend to assign more gravitas to senior positions than what they deserve. There were many other places to invest that kind of money, including building a factory or a school. But the returns in infrastructure were meagre compared to Hedge Funds so these kinds of people would not even think along those lines. One of the great things about this crash is that general infrastructure has become an investment issue again.

Anonymous said...

Nice to see the Jew-haters are out in full force.

There is in Judaism a concept known as "Hillul HaShem," which means literally "desecration of G-d's name." Madoff's actions are a particularly loathsome example of this.

Anonymous said...

This post starts off with reference to Mormon scams, but I for one don't particularly recall any. Can you Steve provide an example? Something that garnered at least a bit of national pub? Wouldn't be fair now to assert something without at least one example, would it? Not saying they don't exist, but I don't remember any.

Anonymous said...

John of London wrote:

"Don't rich Gentiles like to have a Jew managing their money because of the stereotype of Jews as being both obsessed with money and good at making it?"

Madoff's clients seem to have been largely Jewish. Also, John, where do you reckon stereotypes come from? I don't know what the PC party line on this is - the stereotype fairy? The evil inherent in the white race? Because as we all know, only white people ever think in stereotypes. No one has ever heard of them in India, China, Africa or anywhere else like that. By the way, if it's the second, doesn't it violate the race-denialist principle of political correctness?

In the real world stereotypes are the best source of info on anything sociological. I like statistics as much as the next guy, but you just can't get statistics on a lot of interesting topics.

No single person has ever succeeded at creating a stereotype. They're like a force of nature - the collective wisdom of the people. Thousands of independent judgments, looking at an issue from thousands of different angles and slowly converging on a generalization - a veritable treasure for anyone genuinely interested in humanity and in how it works.

Unknown said...

That whole "Jews control the financial world" meme is looking a bit less likely these days after Lehman and now Madoff...

Anonymous said...

Steve, I'm having a good time. You need to write more on Blago too.

Anonymous said...

Val Southwick is a recent example of a Mormon scam artist preying upon other Mormons.

Anonymous said...

"It's quite common for an ethnic minority to try to turn the majority's stereotype of them to its advantage."

Well, sure. But how did the majority get the stereotype in the first place? Because of the minority doing these things often enough for the stereotype to arise.

Frank said...

"reference to Mormon scams, but I for one don't particularly recall any"

Here's a story about affinity fraud from the Mormon Times:

http://www.mormontimes.com/around_church/general_authority/?id=2411

Here's an example of a Baptist scam:

http://www.nysscpa.org/cpajournal/2003/0703/dept/d075003.htm

being an ex-Catholic from the east coast, these scams could be found in my former faith. Here's a story from the BC Catholics:

http://bcc.rcav.org/07-10-15/index2.htm

Anonymous said...

"Nice to see the Jew-haters are out in full force.

There is in Judaism a concept known as "Hillul HaShem," which means literally "desecration of G-d's name." Madoff's actions are a particularly loathsome example of this."

Well, when can we expect to hear the hue and cry, loud and clear, far and wide, of crowds of Jews, especially in media, denouncing Madoff's actions as immoral and unbecoming of Jewishness?

Hmmmm????

The "Jew haters" will pipe down when the Jews take responsibility for policing their own bad apples.

Because I see a whole lot of mainstream media, run by Jews, either delicately not mentioning the Jewishness of the perp or hurling "Antisemite" smears on Gentiles who criticize a Jew, hence enabling bad apple Jews to engage in the very kinds of icky behaviors that tends to land Jews in pogroms.

Anonymous said...

"Anonymous" says he can't think of any Mormon scams. Just do a Google search on "Morman con man" or "Mormon scam" and you'll find a number of articles.

Here is one:

Scams and the Latter-day Saints

Rick Branch

Arlington, TX

For years, Utah, which has a population of over 70 percent Mormon, has fought against the stigma of being called the Scam Capital of America.

In 1984, Ken Thornberg, Director of the Better Business Bureau office in Idaho, said he believed that, "...a majority of the nation's illegal investment scams originate in Utah.

"`I would say - and I am not exaggerating - that 75 percent of the country's major investment schemes are hatched in the Salt Lake City-Provo area,'" (Ogden Standard-Examiner, 26 March 1984, p. 10A).

Whether the statistics are completely accurate or not, Thornberg is not alone in his assessment that the "majority" of the scams and fraudulent organizations are created in Utah.

"As early as 1969 the Wall Street Journal called Salt Lake City `a locus for shell operations.'

"Then in 1974 the infamous `stock fraud capital' moniker was awarded Salt Lake City in a page one Wall Street Journal article on February 25, 1974. The headline: `Dubious Distinction; Salt Lake City Gains Reputation for Being a Stock Fraud Center,'" (Utah Holiday, October 1990, p. 26).

This downward trend continued to be noticed and ten years later in 1984, Newsweek magazine wrote, "Utah, the land of the Mormons, has earned itself another name: the Stock-Fraud Capital of the Nation," (Ibid, p. 27).

With such national notoriety, people in Utah must have known the con artists were working their area.

Thus, the question begs to be asked, what is the cause of such a phenomenon?

Perhaps the February 6, 1984 issue of Business Week provides an insight into the problem.

"Many (LDS) church members are likely to accept without question an investment recommendation made by another Mormon. Hucksters try to exploit this tendency by trying to bring church officials into investor groups or by portraying themselves as good church-going Mormons," (Utah Holiday, October 1990, p. 27).

In a United Press International article, this rationale was again reiterated.

The UPI said, "Major reasons for the success of scams in Utah are the highly organized, tightly knit structure and trust-oriented doctrines of the Mormon Church," (Ibid).

Apparently realizing the problem, in 1984 Utah's "Governor Scott Matheson appointed a new Securities Task Force, including (Hugh) Pinnock, in part to confront what experts were calling a `Mormon connection' to many of the schemes," (Ibid).

Hugh Pinnock had been a member of the Mormon Church's General Authorities since 1977 when he was appointed to the First Quorum of the Seventy.

According to the March 11, 1985 Forbes magazine interview with Pinnock, "...Utahans were now wiser to swindlers. `They just aren't as unsophisticated as they once were," (Ibid).

However, it would be this same Hugh Pinnock that would feel the sting of a con artist a few years later, at the hands of the infamous Mark Hofmann.

Pinnock would help Hofmann secure a $185,000 "...signature loan at the bank where Pinnock was a director - a loan to buy documents that did not even exist," (Ibid).

In 1986, the San Diego Union provided further information on the scam game.

No longer was the media simply reporting about Utah being the Fraud Capital of America. Now, it was Mormons taking advantage of Mormons.

"In recent years, Utah has been called the fraud capital of the United States, and many defendants in fraud cases have been Mormon officials who used church connections to victimize other members," (5 October 1986, p. A-25).

The problem increased to the point where the Ogden, Utah paper reported:

"The cultural emphasis in the Mormon Church that equates financial success with spiritual success, and an unquestioning allegiance to authority figures, may partly explain why 10,000 Utah investors have been swindled out of more than $200 million during the past decade," (Ogden Standard-Examiner, 26 August 1989, p. 3C).

Not only did the scam artist attract the favor of the LDS families, the elderly, the uneducated and the General Authorities, they also conned the fraud watcher himself.

"Washington, D.C.-based columnist Jack Anderson, A Utah Mormon, admits that he foolishly sent off $12,000 after hearing of [what turned out to be a Utah-based scam] from a friend back in Salt Lake," (Forbes 20 June 1983, p. 33).

The problem seems to be twofold.

First, because of the tight-knit LDS social structure, con artists prey and breed in this atmosphere.

Second, because of the willingness of Mormons to follow blindly an authoritarian structure, con artists are able to use this to their advantage.

The solution to the problem is one that is applicable not only to Latter-day Saints, but also to anyone considering an investment.

As Forbes magazine explains, "Never take people solely at face value, and don't invest your money without checking carefully first," (Ibid, p. 34).

Anonymous said...

It seems at least once every year, usually at the State Fair, I see someone wearing a T-shirt advertising a business, real or fictional, which claims,

We cheat the other guy and pass the savings on to you.

Most of these investors didn't realize they were "the other guy".

Anonymous said...

1) Previous white exclusionary or supremacist organizations (e.g., the Klan) left a bad taste in most Americans' mouths. --anonymous Fred

E.g., the Democratic Party.

Of course, in recent years they've changed their colors. Not their stripes, mind you, just their colors.

Anonymous said...

Previous white exclusionary or supremacist organizations (e.g., the Klan) left a bad taste in most Americans' mouths

What evidence is there for this? My own belief is that their negative reputation is mostly due to relentless demonization. Recall the Bob Jones University affair and the sudden very selective media feeding frenzy. No evidence was ever presented that Bob Jones U had wronged anyone in a positive sense. OTO, Madoff has done immense positive wrong to people, but his racial politics are basically being ignored by the MSM. This isn't really about historical wrongs. Believing that it is is a Freudian rationalisation for hypocritical behaviour.

Anonymous said...

The "Jew haters" will pipe down when the Jews take responsibility for policing their own bad apples.

I'll be sure to get right on the case. Hopefully my employer won't miss me while I'm off to police Madoff and other Jewish "bad apples."

Anonymous said...

Oops, didn't realize I had to apologize for every crime committed by someone of my religion, ever.

-- A Jew (not even related to Madoff!)

James Kabala said...

"Well, when can we expect to hear the hue and cry, loud and clear, far and wide, of crowds of Jews, especially in media, denouncing Madoff's actions as immoral and unbecoming of Jewishness?"

Over in the real world, every article or TV feature on this guy is portraying him as one of the greatest creeps who ever lived.

Some pieces mention his charitable work and previously good reputation, but as a way of highlighting the horror of the reality of his crimes, not as a way of mitigating them.

He's being portrayed as a sort of Jewish version of Robert Hanssen, the outwardly devout Catholic who was actually a Soviet spy. (In that case, it ultimately transpired that rather than being the Jekyll-and-Hyde the media delighted in depicting, Hanssen was actually a sexual pervert in private life as well. Similarly, I would be far from surprised if it turns out that Madoff was fleecing some of these charities as well. The fact that most of his victims were Jewish already casts doubt on his supposed "ethnocentricity.")

Anonymous said...

"oops, didn't realize I had to apologize for every crime committed by someone of my religion, ever".

Welcome to the club.

That whole alphabet soup of leftist organizations like SPLC, ACLU, NOW, has long expected me to apologize for every crime, real and imagined, committed by someone of my religion (Catholic), my race (white), my sex (male), my class (middle), my nationality (American), ad nauseum...

Anonymous said...

There is an interesting twist on the 'affinity scam' meme when it comes to Madoff.

When I hear about how Spielberg and various Angeleno Jews have been conned I wonder if its the lack of Jewish women in the household that has affected the financial gullibility of the victims.

I also notice how few famous Jewish women seem to have been among the victims.

Anonymous said...

"Oops, didn't realize I had to apologize for every crime committed by someone of my religion, ever."

Well, turnabout is fair play. It seems my coracialists all have to apologize for what some of my coracialists did. My kids have to sit through a month's worth of Holocaust every year in public school, and spend about 4 weeks in 8th grade ONLY learning U.S. Revolutionary history and Constitution.

Anonymous said...

James Kabala wrote:
The fact that most of his victims were Jewish already casts doubt on his supposed "ethnocentricity."

That he put self-preservation ahead of his victim's investments doesn't necessarily cast any doubt on his ethnocentricity. It only means there was a conflict of interest. I can't really know his thought processes at this distance, but I've personally known one man who wiped out his wife's inheritance by making risky stock picks, without her knowledge. He didn't hate his wife, and he didn't intend to lose the money. It happened because he dug himself deeper and deeper into a hole, all the while hoping to dig himself out, rather than deeper.

Anonymous said...

"Over in the real world, every article or TV feature on this guy is portraying him as one of the greatest creeps who ever lived."
"He's being portrayed as a sort of Jewish version"

As I said, mainstream media, mainstream media, mainstream media is being very careful to leave Bernie's ethnicity delicately unmentioned. I don't get your argument that he's being portrayed as a Jewish version of something.

Is Bernie's ethnicity mentioned here? Why, it is left delicately unmentioned.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/28212191/page/2/

Is his ethnicity mentioned here? Why, no. Although his age is apparently relevant. Quote: The 70-year-old Madoff (MAY-doff), well respected in the investment community
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/28226910/

Ethnicity mentioned here? No, but again, age must be supremely relevant, as it was cut-and-pasted from another article, clearly. quote: The 70-year-old Madoff (MAY-doff), well respected in the investment community
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/28251051/

Anonymous said...

When I hear about how Spielberg and various Angeleno Jews have been conned I wonder if its the lack of Jewish women in the household that has affected the financial gullibility of the victims.

In the case of Speilberg, Amy Irving already took him for 100 million in their divorce settlement. I guess he figured if he got robbed again by a Jew, at least it wouldn't be by his wife.

Anonymous said...

"There is in Judaism a concept known as "Hillul HaShem," which means literally "desecration of G-d's name." Madoff's actions are a particularly loathsome example of this."

Yeah, but G-d for Jews is representative of Jews - he's the fill in, the personification, so of course Madoff's actions are a loathsome example of Hillul HaShem - he bilked other Jews AND he got caught.

I'm not saying the whole God=Israel=Torah equation is wrong - it's quite intelligent, and obviously makes sense. I'm just saying that when some Christian dope, for whom God is a magic dude with a beard in the sky, hears Jews talk about "God", he thinks they mean the same thing as he does. They don't.

Anonymous said...

Oops, didn't realize I had to apologize for every crime committed by someone of my religion, ever.

You, personally, don't, but your community does. You don't seem to know much about Judaism:

To this day orthodox Jewish ethics has remained in its essence national rather than individual, and this accounts, incidentally, for the otherwise incomprehensible legal theorem of the common responsibility of all Jews for the deeds of each.--Salo Wittmayer Baron (1895–1989), a preeminent scholar who revolutionized the study of Jewish history during his lengthy tenure at Columbia University. [From page 10 of Baron's "A social and Religious History of the Jews", published by Columbia University Press, 1957
ISBN 0231088388, 9780231088381.]

Anonymous said...

"Previous white exclusionary or supremacist organizations (e.g., the Klan) left a bad taste in most Americans' mouths"

"What evidence is there for this? My own belief is that their negative reputation is mostly due to relentless demonization."

Let's see: the Klan tied black men up to tries, cut off their fingers and penises, and then hanged them, or set them on fire. And your belief is that the Klan's bad rep is due to "demonization"?

"E.g., the Democratic Party."

It's a fair assumption that, for most of its history, Klan members were Democrats. But most Southern racists migrated to the GOP after Johnson signed the Civil Rights act. Some (e.g., Robert Byrd) remained loyal to the Dems.

"That he put self-preservation ahead of his victim's investments doesn't necessarily cast any doubt on his ethnocentricity. It only means there was a conflict of interest."

It's always impossible to falsify a claim made by someone who's Jew-obsessed. If a Jew cheats non-Jews, he's an ethnocentrist; if he cheats Jews he's an ethnocentrist.

"Is Bernie's ethnicity mentioned here? Why, it is left delicately unmentioned."

Generally, the only times an accused criminal's ethnicity is mentioned are when he's on the lam and it's relevant to his description, or if he was accused of a crime motivated by ethnic bias, e.g., "Dr. Baruch Goldstein, a Jewish radical, murdered dozens of Palestinians in the al-Aksa mosque", or, "The perpetrator, described as a light skinned black man approximately 5'10" tall, is suspected in other rapes in this South Bronx neighborhood". But of course, you knew this already, right?

- Fred

Truth said...

"This post starts off with reference to Mormon scams, but I for one don't particularly recall any."

That's because when they got your money, they were using Nigerian names.

Anonymous said...

If you think about it, Madoff's twisted actions were socialistic/communistic in a way - he redistributed billions from very, very rich individuals to numerous charities which benefited many less wealthy Jews, etc...only there was a catch: you had to be Jewish to receive said charity.

Anonymous said...

Let's see: the Klan tied black men up to tries, cut off their fingers and penises, and then hanged them, or set them on fire. And your belief is that the Klan's bad rep is due to "demonization"?

Obviously he isn't referring to the Klan. After all, the whole idea behind the KKK or any other terrorist organization is demonization. You are the one that lumped all white exclusionary organizations into a category with the Klan, and thus demonizing them all, proving the commentator's point. I guess I could ask you how the Klan is different from Irgun, but that wouldn't really be fair, would it?

Anonymous said...

Well, turnabout is fair play. It seems my coracialists all have to apologize for what some of my coracialists did. My kids have to sit through a month's worth of Holocaust every year in public school, and spend about 4 weeks in 8th grade ONLY learning U.S. Revolutionary history and Constitution.

On behalf of Jews everywhere (since, according to most of the Anonymouses here, we Jews are a single coherent mass), I hereby absolve you of any duty to apologize for the Holocaust, unless, of course, you actually were a Nazi during WWII (in which case, you got some splainin' to do).

Tanstaafl said...

It's always impossible to falsify a claim made by someone who's Jew-obsessed. If a Jew cheats non-Jews, he's an ethnocentrist; if he cheats Jews he's an ethnocentrist.

We don't know who got cheated yet, the schemers or taxpayers, so you might want to check your own jew-obsessed claims.

Jewish ethnocentricity is revealed by who Madoff was catering to before the collapse, and how they knowingly enjoyed (or thought they were enjoying) the benefits of an exclusive too-good-to-be-legal "jewish bond".

Anonymous said...

I guess he figured if he got robbed again by a Jew, at least it wouldn't be by his wife.

Except that interestingly enough, Amy Irving isn't Jewish. She was partly of Jewish descent on her fatheer's side, but Welsh and Cherokee on her mother's, and was raised a Christian Scientist. (By the way, Hank Paulson is a Christian Scientist too--I've not seen anyone explore that aspect of the Bailout Master).

She has however been one of those gentile actors who seemed to make a living playing Jews, along with F. Murray Abraham and the late Jerry Orbach.

Anonymous said...

"On behalf of Jews everywhere (since, according to most of the Anonymouses here, we Jews are a single coherent mass), I hereby absolve you of any duty to apologize for the Holocaust, unless, of course, you actually were a Nazi during WWII (in which case, you got some splainin' to do)."

Thanks. Now could you please write a letter to the National Education Association, the U.S. Dept. of Education and Steven Spielberg to tell them to get off my kids' backs? Appreciate it.

Signed:
Just another anonymous

Anonymous said...

Anonymous+Fred:

I tried to reply but Steve didn't let my last post through so here's another slightly redacted shot at it.

Anonymous I was partly refering to the Klan since Fred brought them up. I aver that whatever the Klan did or didn't do, most of their present day reputation is due to a continual campaign of demonisation. For example the ADL has recently sponsored a lynching photographs exhibit, but I would not expect them to similarly fund, say, a communist atrocities exhibit, or a black on white crime police photographs exhibit. So we have the deliberate creation of an imbalanced historical picture, which is what I meant when I said that most contemporary feelings about the klan are the mostly the result of concious demonisation rather than some (more natural sounding) "aftertaste". Fred's language is consistent with the general trend of calling deliberately chosen social policies (like open-borderism) forces of nature. That being said I don't deny that Fred is trying to link UN-PC Americans with the Klan, and thereby demonise UN-PC conservatives.

Anonymous said...

Fred wrote:
It's always impossible to falsify a claim made by someone who's Jew-obsessed. If a Jew cheats non-Jews, he's an ethnocentrist; if he cheats Jews he's an ethnocentrist.
This reminds of how how in the Knoxville "robbery gone bad" case the prosecutor said it couldn't be a hate crime because one of the black killers had romantic involvement with a white. Just noting some paradox (i.e an apparent contradiction) does not an argument make.

Anonymous said...

"That being said I don't deny that Fred is trying to link UN-PC Americans with the Klan, and thereby demonise UN-PC conservatives."

Thanks for acknowledging that you were at least partly referring to the Klan. That seemed to be the logical assumption, since you copied and pasted my comment where I specifically referred to the Klan. For what it's worth, DissidentMan, I happen to be against open-borders, and fairly un-PC myself. I have no interest in demonizing the un-PC; I was just explaining why white supremacist/exclusionist groups have bad reps. It's worth bearing in mind that minority supremacist/exclusionist groups don't always have great reps either, e.g., Black Muslims, the JDL, etc.

- Fred

Anonymous said...

"It's worth bearing in mind that minority supremacist/exclusionist groups don't always have great reps either, e.g., Black Muslims, the JDL, etc."

Let me know when the SPLC and ADL get worked up about them...Meanwhile, they constantly release a torrent of press that there are Klan members and skins under the bed. Funny thing is, if anything nobody(and that includes blacks and Jews) is in any real danger from a Grand Dragon or skinhead...

Anonymous said...

Just Another Anonymous:

Write your own letters (I trust this won't be your first crackpot letter writing campaign), but feel free to attach a copy of my comment as proof of your kids' absolution.

Best,

Anonymous