Are Jews White?

Yes, But It Doesn't Matter.

Certain people on the Dissident Right have an instinctive answer to this question while others have long pondered for whether or not the Jews are White. It is, without doubt, a complex issue—one that demands careful consideration. First there’s genetics, then there’s culture, then identity and finally the all encompassing friend enemy distinction through which this discourse is ultimately being framed. I will address all of these pressing aspects while offering a unique perspective that is often overlooked by those who sincerely grapple with it.

This is probably going to be the best take on the matter you will read so far, especially the portion that is behind the paywall.

Friend and Enemy Framing

Most of the people who are approaching this question apply the friend-enemy distinction to the White/non-White binary. In their mind whoever is White is “right” and whoever isn’t is therefore the enemy. If the Jews are White, then they are one of us, if the Jews aren’t White then they are our enemies.

This is a common subconscious White nationalist framing that misses one crucial aspect that is immediately followed by another one but in relation to Jews that I will talk about near the end of this essay.

The crucial point is that while many of our most determined adversaries happen to be White themselves and certainly at the elite level they number a majority. Furthermore, the majority of the White population remains largely apolitical, though a good plurality of them are at least sympathetic to our cause.

At the end of the day, if we are not looking at Generation Z, White nationalism enjoys a marginal single to double digit public support depending on how you define “White Nationalism".

Would you consider Whites that are actively passing repressive legislation against right-wing parties and advocating for open borders among other standard left-wing positions as the in-group “friend”? Would you consider the left-wing activists within the Episcopalian Church refusing to resettle South African White refugees fleeing persecution into the United States as an “in-group”? I certainly would not.

The left-wing, anti-natalist trans activists who share our ancestry are actively promoting our demise, all while believing they have no real connection to us, unless they want to lecture us about our “unearned privilege”.

Sure, we share biological and and even cultural similarities, but at the end of the day, if your blood relative has done something horrible, you are not obliged to support them or act in their interests, especially if they are actively harming you.

Therefore, the friend-enemy distinction should likely not hinge on racial lines, regardless of how broadly or narrowly those lines are defined. Whether someone is a fourth or fifth cousin should have no bearing on how you assess their actions.

Origin of Debate and Genetics.

Perhaps the best way to start this is to address the question of genotypical and phenotypical aspect of the question. Do Jews fit under the White umbrella or do they not?

If you were to ask this question to American racialists of the XIXth and early XXth century, they would answer in the affirmative, for immigration restrictions for non-Whites did not apply to Jews, as they also did not apply to other historically marginalized Ethnic Whites such as Slavs, Italians and the Irish. Because the Jews were considered White, they had no problems acquiring citizenship and naturalizing.

Partially that has to do with the fact of what constitutes a White person for American immigration and racial classification system. It includes people from Morocco, Egypt, Syria and other places on the Mediterranean but does not include Spanish people (they would be included into a Hispanic category which is a new invention). Nonetheless, unlike Armenians, Syrians and Indians there was never a legal debate over the Whiteness status of Jews in American history.

That being said, the American legal definition of a White person is being of a Caucasian descent, thus including North Africans, Europeans, Middle Easterners and other Caucasoid groups. Culturally, and phenotypically these people are not recognized as White, nor do they belong to the European culture.

Because of this the absolute majority of White nationalists (in addition to most lawmakers in the EU, Canada and Australia) equate Whiteness to being of European descent. Below is the famous genetic distance map of various Caucasoid populations.

Europeans are depicted on the left, whereas middle easterners find themselves on the right. Various Jewish populations cluster between Europeans and Middle Easterners, with only the Ashkenazi Jewish population managing to fit right in with other Southern European non-Spaniard populations.

The first European population is 0.021 genetically distant to an average Ashkenazi Jew from Belarus while the first non-Turkish Middle Eastern (Alawites) population is 0.062 or as three times genetically distant.

Out of interest, the direct descendants of Ancient Israel - The Palestinians are four and a half times more genetically distant to Ashkenazi Jews than are Italians from the province of Campania. Mizrahi Jews fare slightly better.

Now, if I were to divide the European population, it would be divided into three genetic clusters; Northern Europeans including Northern Slavs, Finns, Scandinavians, Balts and Western Europeans. South-Western Europeans, including Iberians and other ancient (and quite remote) European populations like the Sardinians and Basques and finally Mediterranean or South East Europeans including: Greeks, Balkans, Italians and Ashkenazi Jews. This last cluster exists in between the European genetic cluster and the Middle Eastern genetic clusters with a big tilt towards Europe.

The online “general wisdom” suggests that Jews are genetically about 50% European and 50% Middle Eastern. This largely depends of what we regard as the proper sample of Middle Easterners and Europeans, because all Whites have significant Middle Easterner admixture themselves. Afterall, there isn’t one European population that is more than 92% European genetically speaking.

One of my Russian friends has created a genetic map with ancient populational components of various ethnic groups. The Blue color indicates ancient European admixture, Red color indicates Caucasus, Middle Eastern and Anatolian ancient populations, the yellow color indicates Asiatic admixture while the Black color indicates Sub-Saharan African and South Indian admixture. Balts are probably the purest White ethnic group those in transition between European and Middle Eastern population such as Cypriots Greeks are the least.

In fact, Greek Cypriots are predominately genetically Middle Easterner and are generally less White than Sephardic Jews, but more White as Mizrahi Jews (who we don’t regard as White).

Most Europeans are equally Red and Blue. Ashkenazi Jews are 78% Red and are about 20% Blue or Northern European which is consistent with their genetic clustering with other European populations of similar Blue genetic component such as South Italians and Greeks.

Their Palestinian and Jewish Mizrahi cousins meanwhile are only about 1% Northern European.

It is not surprising considering that most of the Jewish admixing has occurred during the Roman Era. If we take a look at the genetic relatedness of Ashkenazi Jews to ancient populations, they are much more the descendants of Rome than they are the descendants of Ancient Israel, for over 80% of their matrilineal line is ethnically European.

This comports with the very recent study, specifically tailored to examine admixed populations, using the “LAI model that can account for the genetic heterogeneity in recently admixed populations”. Their contribution to the debate surrounding the ethnic makeup of Ashkenazi Jews is the following:

Here we mapped our Ashkenazi Jewish as primarily Italian (ITA, 68%), followed by Levantine (LEV, 16.6%), Iraqi, Iranian, Caucasian & Turkish (ICT, 7.2%), Greek & Balkan (GBK, 2.4%) and Eastern European (EAE, 1.7%). This largely agrees with several reports based on both modern and medieval Ashkenazi Jewish DNA.

In other words, the study suggests that Ashkenazi Jews are 72% genetically European and 28% genetically Middle Easterner, including about 17% Ancient Israelite.

Upon examining the non-Ashkenazi Jewish populations below, it becomes evident that they exhibit little to no admixture with Ashkenazi, Italian, or broader European groups. As such, their genetic makeup aligns more closely with Levantine origins, and by extension, with Iraqi-Iranian, Caucasian and Turkish-like ancestries. Whereas more distant Jewish communities in India, Yemen, Ethiopia and North Africa have underwent a similar intermixing with even more distant local populations, in some cases diluting their original Levantine ancestry to about one percent. This diversity suggests that in many regards a broader Jewish identity is fake for it is composed out of multiple foreign groups with only imagined common descent that became diluted over years of intermixing with locals, but this is a topic for later.

One can definitely make the argument that Southern Italians, Sardinians and by extension all Greek islanders in addition to Ashkenazi Jews are not European. Whether or not this is a fair argument to make, the practical implication of that is that it creates further confusing lines of demarcation, given that all Western and Central Europeans share large amounts of Anatolian and other Middle Easterner ancestry, whereas it would be much simpler to regard every European looking ethnic group with enough “Blue” ancestral contribution to have evolved in Europe as White.

At the same time, acknowledging the Middle Eastern component in all European populations risks classifying Middle Easterners and Caucasoids as White. Thankfully there are geographic, cultural but also further genetic justifications to argue against such a proposition for they don’t have any Northern European, WHG or “Blue” admixture.

In any event, at least genetically Ashkenazi Jews fit well within the transitional European populations that carry Mediterranean genetics within themselves like South Italians and Greeks. Most crucially however:

all Ashkenazi Jews can trace their ancestry to a “bottleneck” of just 350 individuals, dating back to between 600 and 800 years ago.

That bottleneck took place in Europe—put differently, it marks the period during which Ashkenazi Jews emerged as a distinct ethnic group. Their ethnogenesis. And it roughly coincided with the expulsion of Sephardic Jews out of Europe.

Having explained genetics, let’s talk about the Jewish phenotype. I will of course skip the nose obsession and look into things that can be measured. Below are two maps depicting the distribution of light hair and blue eyes among various European populations:

The map roughly matches up with the “Blue” Northern European component I pointed towards earlier, however it does not show Jews. For this I could not simply resort to my personal experiences recalling many Jews with blonde hair and blue eyes, so I managed to dig up the only study on the topic, conclusively establishing that among German Ashkenazi Jews 19% have blue eyes and 33% of them have blonde or red hair.

Thus, the Jewish phenotype is moderately Whiter than of European populations which are in transition with the Middle East such as Southern Italians, Greeks, Bulgarians and others.

Finally, I managed to dig up a certain hereditary gene combination for blue eyes that is highly European coded. It appears that 52% of Israelis (including Israeli Arabs and Mizrahi Jews) carry it. If I were to speculate then about 70-80% of Ashkenazi Jews seem to carry that particular gene combination.

Here is a similar map I found for blonde hair:

TLDR: When it comes to genetics and phenotype Jews can be classified as “White” as long as we reduce the definition of White to the following:

1. Recent ethnogenesis occurred in Europe

2. Noticeable amount of North-European (Blue) admixture

3. Existing within the European populational cluster (and close to other European populations)

4. Not containing noticeable trace of Asiatic, South Indian or Sub-Saharan admixture

5. Looking phenotypically European

Ashkenazi Jews appear to fit under all of these five requirements, Sephardic Jews comply with about one or two and Mizrahi Jews fit none.

Now, you can finish the article here, or get a paid subscription to learn about the big fat BUT that is about to unfold next…