“(1) Like Boas, Lévi-Strauss rejected biological and evolutionary theories. (2) He theorized that cultures, like languages, were arbitrary collections of symbols with no natural relationships to their referents. (3) Lévi-Strauss rejected Western modernization theory in favor of the idea that there were no superior societies.”

(I added the sentence numbers).

– The first sentence shows that his approach wasn’t scientific.

– The third sentence means that he played a role in pushing multicultural relativism.

– The second sentence sums up some of the claims made by Lévi-Strauss. I think his theory of structural anthropology can be presented like this :

Every human language has its own word for everything. It is very arbitrary. Why is the same animal called dog in English, chien in French, perro in Spanish, and so on? Every language also has its own arbitrary system of vowels and consonants which are used as building blocks to create words. Each language gives different meanings to collections of sounds that mean nothing in themselves.

Lévi-Strauss said that the same kind of thing can be seen in human cultures. The building blocks of human culture are not sounds, as in language, but cultural practices: the way we dress, cook, and behave in all sorts of ways. For example, wearing a tie doesn’t mean anything in itself, but western society gives it a particular meaning, in the same way that the English language gives to the letters d-o-g, the meaning of “furry animal who likes to bark”.

My conclusion is that Lévi-Strauss talked a lot of rubbish. Actually, it makes little sense to compare cultures to languages. But Lévi-Strauss had no problem writing whole books on the subject. The examples he used to illustrate his theory are ridiculous.

As for his field work among the Amazonian Indians, I think it is dubious whether he really learned to speak their language.

It would not have mattered that Lévi-Strauss was pushing multicultural relativism if his place in French intellectual life had not been so prominent. Jewish “intellectuals” like him were able to change the Zeitgeist because they were all over the media and also took over the universities. More than the promotion of multicultural relativism, what I find remarkable is all the gobbledygook. Jewish charlatans like Lévi-Strauss, Boas, and Freud took the place of legitimate European intellectuals and replaced the European public debate with Jewish quackery.

K.MacDonald again: “In turn, Lévi-Strauss was very influential in France, Dosse (…) describing him as “the common father” of Michel Foucault, Louis Althusser, Roland Barthes, and Jacques Lacan.”

I guess Foucault, Althusser, Barthes, and Lacan were charlatans too. They were smart charlatans. Their quackery was interspersed with intelligent remarks. That is why we hesitate to call them charlatans. On the one hand, they talk a lot of nonsense. On the other hand, they frequently make intelligent remarks, they receive a lot of praise, and are rarely denounced as charlatans. So, maybe there is something to their theories, after all? But actually no! It is just rubbish interspersed with intelligent remarks here and there.

Many university teachers must have realized that Lévi-Strauss was a charlatan, but it didn’t affect his status in the media as a great intellectual.

Today, we still have lots of charlatans, but it seems to me we no longer have chief-charlatans like Lévi-Strauss, Boas, and Freud, who were revered as gurus by the lesser charlatans.

They could appropriately form part of the curriculum of a future Racial Consciousness University for whites only.

Donation on the way (symbolic amount only, I’m afraid).

Keep up the good work. Your productivity is inspirational.
I realize that both you, Carolyn and Hadding must invest significant portions of your time and energy into TWN.

“The Jew cries out as he gets your enemy to strike you.” 🙂