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The Slaughter of Cities: Urban Renewal as Ethnic Cleansing
In his meticulously documented book, Jones focuses on four cities to prove that urban renewal over the past decades had more to do with ethnicity that it ever had to do with design, hygiene, or urban blight.
668 pages, Hardcover
First published June 1, 2002
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736 people want to read
About the author
E. Michael Jones
69 books363 followersCatholic writer, former professor at Saint Mary's College in Indiana and the current editor of Culture Wars magazine.
E. Micheal Jones is controversial for his criticism against judaism.
E. Micheal Jones is controversial for his criticism against judaism.
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
February 13, 2019
It's easy to forget (especially now, when popular culture is the only common culture), but all of what appears to be interracial conflict in America is intra-racial battles occurring mostly between people of English descent. In fact, a pretty straight line can be drawn from the purity movements of the 16th and 17th century to modern forms of zealotry like gender and anti-racist politics ("Albion's Seed" would be a good place to start in one's intellectual journey, if they're curious about the way things actually work, and the whys and wherefores behind the behavior of our rulers).
E. Michael Jones's "The Slaughter of the Cities" addresses the story of how the elite in America used everything from the Second World War to the Great Migration in order to increase their own power and marginalize any threats while the upstarts were still incipient.
And the main threat?
The "ethnics" as E. Michael Jones would have it (I'm sure the WASPs, Quakers, and eventually Jewish element of the ruling contingent would have less flattering names for these people), those people from the Old Countries, whose parochial loyalties and more literalist religious beliefs weren't really compatible with central planning from on high (particularly from the Ivies and from Washington, D.C., the fonts from which we all still tend to receive our collective marching orders).
"Slaughter of the Cities" is best when it focuses more on the granular details than on the macro-picture of how concepts like "blight" and "renewal" were used as proxies to block-bust ethnic communities and drive these people away from one another and their parish priests, and toward the burbs, where television, long hours of motoring, and mindless consumerism awaited them.
The book is at its most poignant when following the story of a one Dennis J. Clark, a lapsed Catholic who sloughed off his faith (or tried to) as a bunch of baggage and superstition, in order to advance himself politically and to enrich himself financially, only to find his life (and the lives of his children) forfeited in the bargain. His story is Faustian on the one hand, and a modern retelling of Job on the other.
On the negative side of the ledger, E. Michael Jones, while a brilliant man, is not the most organized thinker, or writer, and there is a lot of repetition and a sort of cyclical rather than linear tenor to his writing. I've had my issues with his style in the past (see my review of "Libido Dominandi") but this book is so important (and I don't throw that word around lightly) and its caste of characters so compelling (sometimes odious) that my usual complaints about Jones and his obscurantist cast of mind melted away.
It will be tempting for anyone picking this book up to dismiss Jones's thesis as either a post hoc teleology or even a conspiracy theory. The problem with that, of course, is the mountain of evidence that he has compiled, sifted, and parsed (literal boxes of everything from diaries to letters are listed in the citations) is too formidable for the central insight of "Slaughter of the Cities" to be ignored.
There was, and is, an ongoing battle for the soul of the Nation, and it's been a rout for the little guy since day one, even when our betters claimed to have been acting on behalf of the downtrodden or marginalized. And since the trends are only accelerating (centralization no longer about ending federalism and local scale government, but literal global hegemony) "Slaughter of the Cities" is probably more important than ever. But, yeah, it is a dense, sometimes frustrating read. Still, unequivocally recommended.
E. Michael Jones's "The Slaughter of the Cities" addresses the story of how the elite in America used everything from the Second World War to the Great Migration in order to increase their own power and marginalize any threats while the upstarts were still incipient.
And the main threat?
The "ethnics" as E. Michael Jones would have it (I'm sure the WASPs, Quakers, and eventually Jewish element of the ruling contingent would have less flattering names for these people), those people from the Old Countries, whose parochial loyalties and more literalist religious beliefs weren't really compatible with central planning from on high (particularly from the Ivies and from Washington, D.C., the fonts from which we all still tend to receive our collective marching orders).
"Slaughter of the Cities" is best when it focuses more on the granular details than on the macro-picture of how concepts like "blight" and "renewal" were used as proxies to block-bust ethnic communities and drive these people away from one another and their parish priests, and toward the burbs, where television, long hours of motoring, and mindless consumerism awaited them.
The book is at its most poignant when following the story of a one Dennis J. Clark, a lapsed Catholic who sloughed off his faith (or tried to) as a bunch of baggage and superstition, in order to advance himself politically and to enrich himself financially, only to find his life (and the lives of his children) forfeited in the bargain. His story is Faustian on the one hand, and a modern retelling of Job on the other.
On the negative side of the ledger, E. Michael Jones, while a brilliant man, is not the most organized thinker, or writer, and there is a lot of repetition and a sort of cyclical rather than linear tenor to his writing. I've had my issues with his style in the past (see my review of "Libido Dominandi") but this book is so important (and I don't throw that word around lightly) and its caste of characters so compelling (sometimes odious) that my usual complaints about Jones and his obscurantist cast of mind melted away.
It will be tempting for anyone picking this book up to dismiss Jones's thesis as either a post hoc teleology or even a conspiracy theory. The problem with that, of course, is the mountain of evidence that he has compiled, sifted, and parsed (literal boxes of everything from diaries to letters are listed in the citations) is too formidable for the central insight of "Slaughter of the Cities" to be ignored.
There was, and is, an ongoing battle for the soul of the Nation, and it's been a rout for the little guy since day one, even when our betters claimed to have been acting on behalf of the downtrodden or marginalized. And since the trends are only accelerating (centralization no longer about ending federalism and local scale government, but literal global hegemony) "Slaughter of the Cities" is probably more important than ever. But, yeah, it is a dense, sometimes frustrating read. Still, unequivocally recommended.
June 8, 2023
Scholarly account of how and why the Northern Big City neighborhoods were "Ethnically cleansed" in the 60s and 70s. Jones is a Catholic writer, and spends a lot of time on response of the Catholic Church.
My only criticisms are (1) Jones underrates the desire of people in the 60s to live in the Suburbs with a big house, regardless of other factors and (2) he underrates how the lack of political power by the Big City Ethnics hurt their cause. They'd broken the New Deal alliance with the South, and as a result got little suppport from Southern Democrats in Congress. What comes around, goes around.
My only criticisms are (1) Jones underrates the desire of people in the 60s to live in the Suburbs with a big house, regardless of other factors and (2) he underrates how the lack of political power by the Big City Ethnics hurt their cause. They'd broken the New Deal alliance with the South, and as a result got little suppport from Southern Democrats in Congress. What comes around, goes around.
August 10, 2024
Why isn't his recent book The Holocaust Narrative on this site? What are they afraid of?
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews