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PaperclipPerfector  10mo ago (text post)   31299 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of November 18, 2024

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Another day, another controversy about what is antisemitism and what is legitimate criticism of Israel.

This time, a German architecture prize was rescinded over the recipient signing a letter condemning Israel.

The Athens-based artist and author James Bridle, [...], was announced in June as the recipient of the Schelling Architecture Foundation’s theory prize, [...]

Bridle was informed in an email that the foundation’s committee had decided unanimously not to award them the prize because Bridle was among the several thousand authors who signed an open letter calling for a boycott of Israeli cultural institutions.

Of course, the Guardian is not quite sure how the founder of the prize is called, oscillating between Schelling and Schilling:

The foundation’s prizes, which have been awarded since 1992, are named after the late German architect Erich Schilling.

The letter in question is here. Key passages:

the most profound moral, political and cultural crisis of the 21st century.

We still have 3/4 of that century to go, but good job being optimistic!

This is a genocide, as leading expert scholars and institutions have been saying for months.

This would at least be debatable.

Therefore: we will not work with Israeli cultural institutions that are complicit or have remained silent observers of the overwhelming oppression of Palestinians.

Fair enough.

the inalienable rights of the Palestinian people as enshrined in international law.

That would be the the general right self-determination of peoples, as mentioned in the UN charter? Does this also apply to the Uighur, the Kurds, the Basques, the Catalans and so on?

Or is the relevant law the limited recognition of Palestine, or the Oslo Accords?

Was the Hamas rule before the Oct 7 a shining example of self-determination?

Personally, I am somewhat sympathetic to calls to stop the IDF from bombing the hell out of Gaza. I am also fine with demanding that Israel should stick to the Oslo accords in the West Bank and dismantle their illegal settlements.

But to demand political autonomy in the context of Gaza is where I get off the train. The force of political autonomy in Gaza is called Hamas. Their primary objective is to sabotage any peace process by murdering random residents of Israel. Asking for political autonomy for Gaza is like asking for political autonomy for Germany in 1946.

Overall, I don't think that the letter is plainly antisemitic. If the author had signed a similar pledge against Chinese institutions for the Uighur genocide, and also demanded self-determination for the Kurds, I would tend to call them a general advocate for oppressed people. If their only political topic is Israel, then that would be a bit dubious.

If, as the right (persuasively) argues, it is racist towards Anglos / French / Germans to flood these countries with migrants, ending their former status as (de facto) ethnostates, then opposition to Israel as a Jewish state is likewise antisemitic. The destruction of Japan by the arrival of a hundred million of the kind of tribesmen who lived there before the ancestors of the Yamato immigrated would be likewise transparently anti-Japanese behavior. I have no opinions on German policy in this area or the awarding of the prize. Nevertheless, advocating a people should no longer be a majority in their sole ethnostate is damning them in a way, whether it’s done to Gauls or Greeks, to Swedes or Serbs, and so on. The Arabs still have many homelands and there was no distinct Palestinian identity before Israeli independence.

Aren’t Palestinians genetically the same people who resided on that land 2000 years ago? Sure there’s Arab admixture, but it seems strange to say this is a matter of ethnicity. Indian🪶Americans who were christianized don’t suddenly lose their ancestral roots to the land. If anything this is a good ol religious war.

On one side you have semites fighting for an artificial state created by the British against a coalition of distinct ethnic groups united by their religion.

And on the other side. Israel.

This whole conflict has always been saturated with a strange form of omnidirectional irony.

God always had a sense of humor.

From what I recall reading, there was a high amount of conversions from Judaism to Islam (and before that Christianity) because Rabbinical Judaism pushed literacy to fully participate in the religion. It’s difficult to be a pastoral and agricultural society and have everyone be literate. Not before the printing press. This means that the ancient Jews who were excluded from the literacy-centric benefits of rabbinical judaism were pressured to convert to alternative religious systems. So the masses of “ancient Jews” stayed in their homeland and became Christian and Muslim, whereas the upper-class rabbinical Jews (descendants of the scribal Pharisees) migrated to urban centers to utilize their literacy skills in trade and moneylending. If this is true, then there’s an interesting class dimension to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict: the privileged classes of ancient Judaism returned home to supplant the working classes of ancient Judaism.

Zvi Eckstein has papers on this. From Farmers to Merchants: A Human Capital Interpretation of Jewish Economic History writes —

The transition of the Jews away from agriculture into crafts, trade, and finance occurred in the eighth century mainly in Mesopotamia and the entire Muslim empire, and later in western Europe where the Jews migrated […] The Jewish religion made primary education mandatory for boys in the first century when the high priest Joshua ben Gamala (64 CE) issued an ordinance that "teachers had to be appointed in each district and every city and that boys of the age of six or seven should be sent." In the first century CE, the Jewish warrior and writer Josephus underlined that children's education was the principal care among the Jews […] From the second to the sixth century, Jewish leaders promoted further the learning and reading of the Torah and the recently redacted Mishna and Talmud by degrading the status of those who remained illiterate ("am ha-aretz"). The compulsory education for boys and the reading of the Torah, Mishna, and Talmud became the essence of Judaism. The monumental work of Goitein (1967-1988) from the documents of the Cairo Geniza provides extensive evidence of the full implementation of mandatory primary schooling for boys in the Jewish communities in the Mediterranean at the turn of the millennium.

The model's other important implication is that the cost of children's education for farmers makes a certain proportion of Jewish farmers convert to non-Jewish religions in each generation. The question is whether historically these conversions were significant. According to historians (Baron 1952, 210; 1971) and demographers (DellaPergola 2001), the key demographic fact in the first millennium was the sharp decrease in the world Jewry from about 4.5 million in the first century to about 1-1.5 million in the sixth century. This is the period when Jews worldwide were still farmers and, yet, education became the center of the Jewish religion. At the same time, Christianity emerged as a segment of Judaism that did not assign the same importance to literacy and education. Historical sources indicate that about one million Jews lost their lives during the revolts against the Romans in Judaea (70 and 135 CE) and in Egypt (115 CE). There is also evidence of some forced conversions to Christianity, but the description of these episodes of conversions from the fourth to the sixth century cannot account for the remaining reduction (2 million) of the Jewish population. The model's prediction of a slow process of decrease in the Jewish low-educated population due to conversions is supported by the historical evidence.

The model's prediction regarding migrations is that Jewish farmers with high preference for Judaism would migrate to centers of Jewish life if in their own country economic conditions deteriorate. The large migrations from Egypt and Palestine to Babylon in the second and third centuries provide evidence in favor of this prediction. Another prediction related to migration is that once Jews become merchants (as they did in Mesopotamia where about 70 percent of the world Jewry lived in the second half of the millennium), they would have an incentive to migrate to new urban cities where crafts, trade, and finance provide high returns to their high human capital. The fast migration of Jews during the ninth and the tenth centuries to western Europe and the high standard of living acquired by them in these locations is consistent with this prediction.

All this evidence supports Result 3 (i-iii) that uneducated Jewish farmers with very low levels of attachment to Judaism converted to Christianity (and later to Islam). Other uneducated Jewish farmers did not convert and remained within Judaism, but they became the ammei ha-aretz outcast within the Jewish communities under the influence of rabbinic Judaism from the second century on. The Jewish leaders were not concerned about conversions of the ammei ha-aretz to other religions because they wanted them out of the Jewish fold. Consistent with Result 3 (v-vi) the historical evidence indicates that conversion from Judaism into non-Jewish religions was a slow but significant process that mainly occurred when Jews were farmers, but almost stopped when they became merchants.

I was originally interested in this topic because it has cool implications for ancient Christianity. (Been meaning to write a post about Scott’s last two posts about ancient Christianity…). There’s a theory that an obscure sect of ancient Jews called the “Essenes” influenced Christianity, and this group was at odds with the Pharisees (precursors to rabbinical Judaism), Sadducees (priestly class of ancient Judaism who just sort of… disappeared), and of course Samaritans (surprisingly still around). The Essenes are linked to the Dead Sea community (Qumran etc) and their scroll cache. This is what Josephus has to say about the Essenes:

The Essenes are Jews by birth, and seem to have a greater affection for one another than the other sects have. These Essenes reject pleasures as an evil, but esteem abstinence, and the conquest over our passions, to be virtue. They do not marry, but choose out other peoples’ children, while they are pliable, and fit for learning, and judge them to be their family, and form them according to their own manners. […] These men despise riches and hold their property in common as raises our admiration. Nor is there any one to be found among them who has more than another; for it is a law among them, that those who come to them must let what they have be common to the whole order […] They do not buy or sell anything to one another; but every one of them gives what he has to him that wants it, and receives from him in return what he wants; and although they do not pay, they are fully allowed to take what they want from whomsoever they please […] They condemn the miseries of life, and are above pain…. And as for death, if it will be for their glory, they esteem it better than living always; and indeed our war with the Romans gave abundant evidence what great souls they had in their trials, since, although they were tortured and distorted, burnt and torn to pieces, and went through all kinds of instruments of torment, that they might be forced either to blaspheme their legislator, or to eat what was forbidden them, they could not be made to do either of these things … or to shed a tear; but they smiled in their very pains, and laughed to scorn those who inflicted the torments upon them, and resigned up their souls with great willingness, since they expected to receive them again […] There are also those among them who foretell the future by reading the holy books, and using several sorts of purifications, and being perpetually conversant in the discourses of the prophets; and their predictions are seldom wrong.

That such an interesting group of ancient Jews, known to Josephus in the first century, is omitted by the gospel and first Christians is striking. But it would make sense if the Essene community is what influenced or even created the Christian religion; there’s no need for Christ to have a discourse with the Essenes if he is the Essenes. Note that the desert sea scrolls are known for their emphasis on the “teacher of righteousness”, and how closely the above passage by Josephus vibes with what we know about Christ’s actual blood relatives. Anyway, an Essene-origin theory of Christianity would explain why they critiqued the Pharisees and scribes, while elevating the status of the poor and ignorant. We begin to see a divorce between the lower/middle class Jews and the upper class Jews. There’s the economically universal religion and then an exclusive, literacy-focused religion. When Islam came around, they took on this “universal religion” aspect of Christianity which would result in even more conversions.

As a last point, Eckstein’s theory is kind of an argument against the authenticity of Zionism. If literate Jews willingly left the holy land to accrue wealth in foreign lands, serving foreign kings, then how much did they really value the holy land? The historical evidence does not support the story that every Jew was exiled from the ancient lands of Israel and forbidden from returning or anything like that. If you willingly sell your land and move overseas to make more money, the revealed preference is that you’re not actually attached to your old land. Ironically, the continuing Palestinian presence indicates a greater affection to their homeland. And the agrarian Palestinian lifestyle has much more in common with the ancient Jewish lifestyle: Noah, David, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and Joseph were all agrarian workers and pastoralists. Agrarian metaphors are the universal language of the Old Testament.

Very interesting, thank you for the response.

If, as the right (persuasively) argues, it is racist towards Anglos / French / Germans to flood these countries with migrants, ending their former status as (de facto) ethnostates, then opposition to Israel as a Jewish state is likewise antisemitic.

I agree that anti-Zionism is fundamentally anti-Semitism, sorry to say to so many "anti-Zionists" who want to make the distinction, but you also need to decide if not supporting the Jewish state is the same as opposition. Does Israel give huge amounts of military aid to the US and England to preserve its ethnostate? Don't make me laugh. The thrust of Zionist influence in the West has been vehemently pro-mass third world immigration with organizations like the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society, of which our DHS Secretary was on the board...

There's also the argument that it's not "racist" to oppose a state that opposes me. Israel doesn't support my right to live among other White people, and Jews are likely, especially in the face of this election, the demographic and political force that is the most pro-mass third world immigration to the West in the entire world. Why is it racist for me to oppose them when they oppose me?

You just want us on the Right to be suckers, to support Zionism with no expectation of reciprocity. You want us to support them even as they throw all of their own economic and political and cultural influence on opposing us in the West.

If Zionists oppose keeping the US and Europe White the Right should not be suckered into political support for keeping Israel Jewish.

That comparison might make more sense if white people had been a minority in every country for c. 2,000 years, been treated as second-class citizens when tolerated, expelled whenever the majority needed a scapegoat, and then subjected to attempted extermination with everyone prescient enough to try to escape refused entry by every country they tried to flee to.

Unless and until that happens, I see no contradiction in asserting that Jewish people are entitled to a state in which they are a majority, while white people are not.

I agree that Jews should have a majority state, but I don’t think it follows that other groups should be prevented from such a state. The list of genocides in history is long and the subjects are totally random. The unifying theme is that groups that fall out of dominance are at risk of genocide. It’s reasonable, then, for every group to desire a clear majority territory in order to decrease their risk of being genocided. It’s unreasonable to say, “because this group has already been subject to genocide, they should have an eternal homeland”, because that’s an arbitrary rule that favors the groups that happen to survive the genocide. It arbitrarily hurts the groups who are totally eliminated (now or in the future), or who lack the global capital and political pull to demand an ethnostate post-genocide. (It’s not as if former genocided peoples have commiseration for other genocided peoples; Israel refuses to recognize the Armenian genocide last I checked). Ironically, this standard favors the groups that are least likely to be genocided in total, because only an already-influential group can demand an ethnostate and then supply the necessary funds to establish it. (Eg, the richest family in the world supplied the funds for Zionism). If our wish is to decrease the number of genocides, then a preventative approach is better than a survivorship bias approach.

I don’t think it follows that other groups should be prevented from such a state.

That follows from the principle of "Ethnonationalism Considered Harmful" leading to the notion that, usually, it is not justifiable to take coercive measures to keep certain ethnicities in the majority.

The list of genocides in history is long and the subjects are totally random.

Not totally random. Some groups have been dis-proportionally targeted; this pattern becomes more visible with a data-set that includes sub-genocidal persecution.

It’s reasonable, then, for every group to desire a clear majority territory in order to decrease their risk of being genocided.

No, because not every group has the same risk.

It’s unreasonable to say, “because this group has already been subject to genocide, they should have an eternal homeland”

That's not what I'm saying. I'm saying that "Because this group has been subjected repeatedly to genocidal and lesser persecutions, and were turned away and sent to their deaths when they tried to flee the most recent attempt, they should have a homeland as long as there is widespread animus against them and government control over immigration."

If the passengers on the MS St. Louis, and all the other Jewish people fleeing the Nazis, had been allowed into America, there would have been a lot less impetus for the formation of a Jewish State.

If all other countries had open borders, showed no sign of any desire to change this, and that situation continued for several decades, it would be reasonable to urge Israel to follow suit.

(Often cast is the accusation of wanting 'open borders for every country except Israel'. I think a better description, at least of those whose political opinions reside on Level 1, would be open borders for every country, with Israel bringing up the tail end of the process. [Those on Level 3, on the other hand, {if their social circle consists of the kind of people in the Respectable Media} will oppose immigration enforcement in the U. S. because their friends do, support Israeli policies because their friends do, and give no more regard to resolving any apparent contradiction in their ideas than they would give to ensuring that their ideas are expressed in sentences ending in words with an odd number of letters. {The same applies to people whose social circle consists of college radicals yelling "From the river to the sea" without any knowledge of the bodies of water to which that slogan refers.}])

The principle “usually, it is not justifiable to take coercive measures to keep certain ethnicities in the majority” has a big exclusion for “unless it prevents genocide”. Just a cursory look through the annals of history shows that every group which lacks dominance over a territory risks genocide, and that these happen at mostly unpredictable times. Therefore, it is justifiable to take coercive measures to keep an ethnic group in the majority of some territory (or subsection thereof) to prevent its genocide, as this is the best way to protect against genocide. To reiterate my original point, it’s silly to only have a principle in place for when a genocide is currently ongoing, because at that point annihilation has the greatest odds, and surely our interest is in reducing the amount and extent of genocide in total. With all this said, there are ways to reduce the amount of coercion involved in majority-fying a territory, like with payments and subsidities. Additionally, we frequently supersede the right to property when there is a distinct majority interest as in the case of eminent domain, and there is no majority interest greater than not being genocided.

”It’s reasonable, then, for every group to desire a clear majority territory in order to decrease their risk of being genocided.” No, because not every group has the same risk

If Jews have the greatest risk of genocide, it doesn’t follow that we should ignore the 90%+ of genocides which will happen to other groups (going by history). There’s so much randomness that it’s impossible to divine who will face genocide. Who would have guessed that Anatolian Greeks would have been genocided, or the Armenians? The Iraqi Turkmen had no expectation of genocide by ISIS, or the Darfuri people. You can’t go by pure “number or recency of past genocides” because this has little predictive value. For instance, it’s only recently that white people have lived alongside other people in racially-blind democracies, so the absence of past white genocides doesn’t tell us about the future. South Africa does not exactly paint an optimistic future of what happens if they become a minority.

That's not what I'm saying. I'm saying that "Because this group has been subjected repeatedly to genocidal and lesser persecutions[…]”

This is an argument for why, if we had to pick one group to give a homeland to, we should all pick Jews getting one. But this is not an argument for why other groups should not get a homeland. Because again, if you look at a list of genocides in history, the vast majority of genocides happen unpredictably to formerly safe populations which aren’t Jewish. If we only protected Jews from genocide, going by history we would be allowing 90%+ of genocides. Shouldn’t our interest be in reducing genocides down to 0%?

The principle “usually, it is not justifiable to take coercive measures to keep certain ethnicities in the majority” has a big exclusion for “unless it prevents genocide”.

The exception is more 'unless a group has been repeatedly been persecuted by many other groups, to a degree greatly above background, and given no refuge when they tried to escape a mad-man bent on their extermination.'

Just a cursory look through the annals of history shows that every group which lacks dominance over a territory risks genocide, and that these happen at mostly unpredictable times. Therefore, it is justifiable to take coercive measures to keep an ethnic group in the majority of some territory (or subsection thereof) to prevent its genocide, as this is the best way to protect against genocide.

But this is not an argument for why other groups should not get a homeland. Shouldn’t our interest be in reducing genocides down to 0%?

Such a plan would be very destructive to human freedom and well-being; furthermore, even if it had been accomplished fifty years ago and every ethnic group had their own country, the division between ethnicities is not a constant throughout history.

Therefore, to prevent genocides from occurring, the best method is to

  1. establish a principle that members of ethnic minorities ought to be treated as equals, and that the relevant subject of moral/ethical concern is not 'a group of people defined by distant¹ blood-relation' but 'an individual human being', and
  2. establish that if an individual is at risk of being murdered by the country they live in because their neighbours have decided that their ethnic group are undeserving of life, other countries ought to let them in.

Once this has been accomplished, and the ideas that 'an individual is less worthy of concern because they are of a different ethnicity' or 'we have the right to send an individual back to a country where they will be murdered rather than risk them causing some inconvenience² to us' are taken no more seriously anywhere among the Nations than the idea that '2.00 + 2.00 = 5.00', then we can discuss whether the State of Israel is justified in limiting the number of Arab citizens to less than the number of Jewish citizens.

¹'Distant' meaning 'far enough apart that even the Medieval Church wouldn't object to them marrying.'

²Such as 'they're poor enough that they might cost us money in social support', 'letting in 10,000 of them might contain one or two people who might wish us harm³', or 'we can't distinguish which ones are in actual danger, so avoiding type II errors (deporting someone who will then be murdered) will cause type I errors (some people might move here for economic opportunity, even if we have told them not to!).

³During the interbellum period, some Unitedstatesian opinionists opposed the admission of Jewish refugees on the grounds that Germany might hide saboteurs among them.

Let’s suppose that Jews do indeed have the greatest past history of genocide, and that this makes them the most liable to be genocided again, and that as a consequence they ought to be first in line for a homeland. I can follow this line of thinking. What I fail to see is why any white person would be persuaded to abstain from forming their own homeland. It is reasonable to think as follows: genocides are the worst event that can happen to you; genocided nations eagerly wish to create a majority homeland; history tells us that 90% of genocides cannot be predicted (imo); without an influential and wealthy diaspora, it is difficult to create a homeland post-genocide. Given this, why would anyone abstain from forming a majority homeland? Genocides can happen to white people, history tells us they are hard to predict, and they are the worst thing that can happen. So, it’s entirely reasonable to hedge against an apocalyptic threat that can happen to your people.

Such a plan would be very destructive to human freedom and well-being

But, as in the case of Israel, this is justified on the grounds of protection against genocide. Let us say that Israel has an 80% chance of protecting against a 500-year-storm genocide. Well, white people have no way to know their own risk of genocide because “gradual minority status” is new to them. Certainly, South Africa doesn’t look too good. I would say that a homeland is justified even if protects against a 5% chance in a 500-year period. After all, it’s the worst thing that can happen to a population. So I fail to see why Israel’s uniquely strong interest in a homeland in any way negates white people’s very apparent interest in a homeland. A starving man should get food, and he should get food first, but this has nothing to do with my interest in eating for my nutritional needs.

furthermore, even if it had been accomplished fifty years ago and every ethnic group had their own country, the division between ethnicities is not a constant throughout history.

Sure, but this applies to Israel as well. Perhaps in a century, some subsection of Israeli Jewish society will no longer be considered Jewish. It’s hard to predict this stuff. What if DNA finds a hiccup in the maternal line?

More comments

Personally I am very tired of powerful interest groups saying it’s okay to be hypocritical because of how oppressed they’ve been. If you’re not being oppressed now I don’t give a damn.

On the subject of Israel, I am happy to support the Jewish ethnic homeland exactly to the extent that they support mine. To the best of my knowledge, this is no support at best, but who knows? That could change.

how oppressed they’ve been

It's not 'how oppressed they've been', per se, so much as 'how likely are they to be oppressed in the future'.

The former is largely relevant as evidence of the latter.

I am happy to support the Jewish ethnic homeland exactly to the extent that they support mine

This would be reasonable if there were a danger, supported by historical precedent, of your ethnic group, if a minority in every country, being declared unwelcome in your country of residence, denied admission to other countries, and then targeted for mass murder. (I don't know what ethnicity you are, so I cannot say for certain that that is not the case. If it is, than your group would also be justified in wanting its own country in which it is the majority. 'White people', on the other hand, do not fit this criterion; if that were to change, then you would have an argument for wanting to live in a white-majority country.)

I mean, do you really think there’s going to be another Holocaust? Antisemitism is a joke among westerners who matter; you’d be surprised how quickly attendees at E Michael Jones lectures drop it at the slightest excuse.

Iran officially calling for another Holocaust is an irrelevancy. Jews will be safe in the west for the foreseeable future, at least as much as ‘white people’(and BTW I agree with you that ‘white people’ are not a group that has a solid argument in favor of needing an ethnostate, although I suppose some white ethnic groups probably do, but not whites as a whole).

do you really think there’s going to be another Holocaust? ... Jews will be safe in the west for the foreseeable future ....

In 1900, would anyone have thought the Shoah would have been started by Germany?

If you brought someone forward from that era, told them that there would be a persecution and mass murder of Jews on an un-precedented scale, and asked them to guess what country it would come from, I suspect most people' first guess would be Russia, possibly followed by France.

I would’ve guessed Russia or the Ottoman Empire was fairly likely to do mass killings of Jews in 1900 and that Jews living in the pale of settlement would be at risk due to a continental war between Russia and Germany, which is predicting that Jewish genocide might be a thing. I wouldn’t have guessed ‘camps run by Germany’ but it’s kind of irrelevant whether totenkopf or Cossack does the mass murder; the point is ‘Jews in Eastern Europe having near to mid term future genocide risk’ was foreseeable at the time.

On the contrary, there is not a major jewish population with a foreseeable near or mid future genocide risk today(you can, I’m sure, name one that not-delusionally-histrionic-about-antisemitism people can agree is in danger or genocide or ethnic cleansing if you disagree).

Unless and until that happens, I see no contradiction in asserting that Jewish people are entitled to a state in which they are a majority, while white people are not.

I mean, you can maintain that position, but younger generations of Right Wingers are just going to not support Israel no matter how much you harp about Jewish oppression. The tap of Ecclesiastical support of Israel from the brainwashed Christian Right is going to run dry and you are going to be left with a generation of people wondering why we should support Israel when Israel doesn't support us. And your answer is far from convincing to us.

The US took in the Jews and didn't treat them as second-class citizens, but apparently that didn't earn the US any claim to maintain a White population in your mind? It certainly failed to earn the ethnic loyalty of Jews to White Americans. Loyalty is a two-way street, you can't demand loyalty and give none in return. The US just has to support Israel while accepting that Zionist Jews are going to agitate for demographic replacement in all the political and cultural institutions they control? No thanks. Oh, they need aid from the US? Pound sand.

That's not realistic in the short term, but younger generations are skeptical of Israel and this equilibrium consensus of "nobody question Israel" is going to change very fast, especially with growing pressure from the Right Wing along with the Left Wing from different angles of critique.

AOC recently tweeted about AIPAC. Taboos can fall fast and hard, and they are going to in this case. You can't cling to "you have to support us unconditionally because we're so oppressed" for much longer.

but younger generations of Right Wingers are just going to not support Israel

IME young red tribe normies(far and away the most important demographic for determining what ‘younger generations of right wingers’ support) often don’t think the events of eighty years ago oblige us to pick any particular side, but usually have a superstitious terror of opposing Israel as bad juju/bringing the curse of God, or are prejudiced against Israel’s enemies, or support the outpost of capitalist democracy even if they don’t want to pay for its wars, or….

The US took in the Jews

Except for the ones on the MS St Louis.

and didn't treat them as second-class citizens

Except when they did.

but apparently that didn't earn the US any claim to maintain a White population in your mind?

No. You're not supposed to treat people as second-class citizens, just like you're supposed to take care of your children and not end up in gaol.

Furthermore, even if white Americans had shown supererogatory virtue, that would still not entitle them to an ethnic majority, because, in the general case, 'being entitled to an ethnic majority' isn't a thing. We make an exception in the case of Israel and the Jewish people due to their long history of being regularly persecuted, combined with the post-WWI implementation of modern border controls. (If I had a magic 'open borders, for everyone except horrifying predatory criminals [judged on an individual basis], in every country including Israel, I would at least be tempted to press it, knowing that Jewish people facing anti-Semitic persecution would always be able to leave any country which persecuted them. However, in a world in which countries claim a general right to refuse entry for any or no reason, it is anti-Semitic to expect Jewish people to bet their lives on the hope that the Nations will be feeling generous.)

It certainly failed to earn the ethnic loyalty of Jews to White Americans.

Ethnic loyalty? No, largely because Jewish people sympathetic to ethno-nationalism mostly live in Israel! Jewish Americans sympathetic to civic nationalism show loyalty to American ideals such as the Constitution.

No, largely because Jewish people sympathetic to ethno-nationalism mostly live in Israel! Jewish Americans sympathetic to civic nationalism show loyalty to American ideals such as the Constitution.

There is a factual disagreement here that can be resolved: How common are influential Jews outside Israel that support Zionism but oppose White nationalism?

There is a difference between supporting Zionism because "we'd rather stay here, but just in case they decide they don't want us here..." and supporting Zionism because "the normal purpose of a country is as a home for a specific ethnic group; we were born with an un-changeable primary duty towards our group's homeland."

'being entitled to an ethnic majority' isn't a thing. We make an exception in the case of Israel and the Jewish people

Sovereign is he who decides on the exception. "We" didn't do anything. I do not acknowledge your "exception" and young people are skeptical of it. The Right Wing shouldn't support a people that don't support them, and none of your "Jews are so oppressed" or "we made an exception" lines of dialogue are remotely convincing for why I should support Israel.

Ethnic loyalty? No, largely because Jewish people sympathetic to ethno-nationalism mostly live in Israel!

This is a hilarious lie, Jews are overwhelmingly sympathetic to Israel. If accepting them and handing them power failed to earn their loyalty to the ethnic stock that took them in, you should wonder why they were expelled so much throughout history. As if handing them the levers of power would have won them over- we know now apparently not. In fact, it's silly to even fathom that Jews would show loyalty towards the people that brought them in and gave them power.

The Right Wing shouldn't support a people that don't support them

Many Jewish people do support the right wing, at least the more idea-focused parts. More might have done so if they didn't get the impression (whether accurate or not) that "You support us, we'll support you" meant something along the lines of "You obey and agree with us in every way, and we'll grudgingly let you live in the crappiest parts of our land instead of leaving you to be slaughtered, as long as you acknowledge us as your superiors."

Also, not everything ought to be transactional. Sometimes, one should help people not because they have done or will do something for you, but because it is the right thing to do.

Jews are overwhelmingly sympathetic to Israel.

Sympathy is not the same as loyalty. Many Jewish American citizens have sympathy towards Israel, because they have relatives there whom they know personally, and because they need there to be a place where they are allowed to exist even if every Gentile doesn't want them.

(Also, some people complain that Jewish U. S. citizens don't have enough loyalty to Israel.)

If accepting them

Grudgingly, when at all.

and handing them power

The Jewish people were not 'handed power' as a group. They were, in fact, often systematically kept away from power.

failed to earn their loyalty to the ethnic stock

Or don't consider an 'ethnic stock' to be a thing one can be loyal to.

you should wonder why they were expelled so much throughout history

My hypothesis is that a religion founded on arguing with G-d, and which has a big book consisting of centuries of arguments by its clergy over every minute detail of Scripture, is likely to be inconvenient for any person or group whose agenda relies on being able to say that black 0.4–0.7 μm albedo < 0.01 is white 0.4–0.7 μm albedo > 0.99 and have everybody reject the evidence of their own eyes and ears. This would explain the rise of anti-Semitism among the wokists SJWs PJFTMWTIAATUftSSaPCYDs.

However, I don't think it matters why they were not welcomed. What matters is that millions of human beings, each with hopes, dreams, feelings, people they loved, eyes, hands, organs, senses, dimensions, were denied a safe place to live, and sent back to be slaughtered.

That is why Jewish people are justifiably not confident that they are safe if they are a minority in every country; the same logic does not apply to white people.

You using the holocaust as a card to justify the extinction and mistreatment of whites who are currently hated and targeted give special treatment of the Jews at expense of other ethnic groups is precisely why what you are doing ought to be criminalized.

It should be a crime for people to use slavery, holocaust, colonialism, or "We are unique at being at threat of oppression" bullshit narratives to excuse a permanent boot to their ethnic outgroup's neck or their destruction, and for their favorite group to lord over others.

To the extend we need to protect people from malicious racists, we got it backwards, we need to destroy the disgusting racist holocaust lobby. Which includes creating an environment where people like you wouldn't have the opportunity to make these arguments. At least not for long.

Obviously the idea that whites aren't at threat of being treated rather badly when they become minority is preposterous. They are already mistreated and those who hate them have shown intensions to intensify things in the future. It isn't even true that multiple white ethnic groups haven't been victimized through genocide and mass murder. Including by Jews in eastern europe. Or blacks in Africa. Or by foreign ethnic nationalists such as Turkish nationalists and muslims as in Greeks who were subject to genocide in Anatolia along with other Christian groups.

Even subject to genocide by other Europeans and even by the Nazis. But even the Germans were also subject to genocide as well.

Even if someone did find a group that was historically more lucky than the Jews, which isn't the case here with all groups in white category in modernity, that wouldn't justify this repulsive argument. Being more lucky historically does not justify, OBVIOUSLY, this idea that you aren't at threat, or don't have a right to exist and should accept your own extinction.

It's why any distinction of what you are selling with the worst woke extremist is completely fake.

This idea that fuck whites, they have no right to not go extinct, or of national self determination because they can't be oppressed like Jews (and if you disagree with the narrative of Jewish oppression you are evil of course out to murder Jews) is obviously disgusting in general, but shouldn't be tolerated especially in any white society.

It falls completely under categories such as treason, genocidal racist extremist rhetoric, absurdly intense racist hatred, hypocrisy, etc, etc. And it threatening in a murderous way since currently Palestinians are defined by Jews as an illegitimate ethnic group while the Jews doing so are happy to support attrocities against them. If whites are not a legitimate ethnic group, and you deny any of their historical suffering, trying to greedilly concetrate all suffering just to the Jews, perhaps you are willing to support and are after for even worse things.

Perhaps you aren't sincere when you claim that whites won't be mistreated as a minority but you expect them to be mistreated, and are just out to support and deny it. The general concept of X ethnic group not existing of X group never having suffered, and not being capable to suffer, (especially when they demonstratably are and you are denying the truth) makes future mass violence towards such group a much more likely possibility.

This is the ethnic version of the Trotskyist idea that the people of the revolution can do no wrong and classifying other classes as oppressors that can't be wronged. There is no fixing this and no way to have a peaceful, prosperous world if this rotten ideology of genocidal antiwhite Jewish supremacy is not rooted out. Same applies to other versions of this disgusting ideology with a different ethnic group on top as the exception.

The idea of destroying other nations except the Jewish one is an insane megalomaniac ideology that ironically shares plenty with pop culture idea of Nazism. Albeit you are a bit more sneaky about it.

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If, as the right (persuasively) argues, it is racist towards Anglos / French / Germans to flood these countries with migrants, ending their former status as (de facto) ethnostates, then opposition to Israel as a Jewish state is likewise antisemitic.

This is funny to me because I usually approach the thought experiment here from the other side: If, as the left (IMO not completely persuasively) argues, that it is The Right Thing (tm) for the residents of Springfield, Ohio to accept a bunch of Haitian refugees seeking asylum granted by a far-off government and to think otherwise is obvious bigotry, then why can't we tar Palestinians who reject living next to Jewish refugees (who were in 1948 fleeing far greater persecution than Haitians in 2024) granted part of the land by a far-off government (the UN in New York) similarly? Surely only an antisemite doesn't appreciate whatever the Israeli equivalent of a taco truck is!

Of course, in the real world these things are more nuanced, and I don't really find either case completely compelling: there are legitimate arguments against poorly-controlled immigration, but IMO far fewer in favor of violent ethnic cleansing campaigns against immigrants. Although the parallel between Hamas and the Klan as anti-immigrant militias seems at least interesting to consider.

Surely only an antisemite doesn't appreciate whatever the Israeli equivalent of a taco truck is!

Lol

But seriously, beyond the usual "these rules don't apply to non-whites" position that many leftists implicitly or explicitly hold, one way I've seen people try to resolve this cognitive dissonance is that they claim that Arabs voluntarily took in and sheltered large numbers of Jews escaping from the Holocaust, and only later decided they wanted to kill all of them because the Jews started oppressing them, or something.

This is funny to me because I usually approach the thought experiment here from the other side

Same here. I also find it instructive to note how certain individuals will argue that Ukraine should simply acquiesce to the obviously superior military, cultural, and economic might of Russia only to suddenly rediscover the concept of "nuance" when the same arguments are applied to Arabs in the Levant.

Its almost as if they're treating arguments as soldiers/ammunition instead of sincerely trying to test an idea.

As one of the people you're ostensibly talking about (given that I both think Ukraine should surrender to Russia immediately and that Israel should stop the genocide and either adopt a one or two state solution) I feel like that's not actually how I'd present those arguments. I think that Ukraine and Israel are in extremely different circumstances that make the comparison fruitless. Russia is a much larger and much more powerful state than Israel, and Israel faces a lot of serious problems that Russia simply does not. There's no state on Russia's northern border peppering them with so many missile attacks that large numbers of civilians are forced to abandon their homes and jobs to stay in Moscow hotels, and there's no group of rebels disrupting shipping to Russia to the point that major ports go bankrupt.

There's no state on Russia's northern southern border peppering them with so many missile attacks that large numbers of civilians are forced to abandon their homes and jobs to stay in Moscow hotels

Growth Mindset!

I was referring to Lebanon - if you've got evidence of something similar happening to Russia right now I'd love to see it.

I know you are, and I'm cracking a joke about Ukraine firing missiles into Russia.

Out of these examples, the flooding of Japan by hundreds of millions of, let's say, cloned Ainu and the surrender of Israeli territory to Palestinian Arabs are the two that strike me as different and more justifiable, and I suspect that I may not be alone in that view.

It's not hard to come up with a fairly coherent principle that rationalises this pattern: if your homeland gets seized by another people, your people get a perpetual moral claim to reconquer it from the people that seized it, but not from anyone else that may further seize it from those people and thus has not perpetrated a direct injustice against you and yours. This way, the German/French/... claim against Arabs is live; the Arab claim against Israelis is live; the Jomon claim against Yayoi Japan is, somewhat surprisingly, still live; but the Israelis only have a claim to the Levant against the Romans who scattered them, which is long dead.

Under this framework, in fact, the Jews have a much more plausible claim against the various peoples of Europe who expelled them (especially, if you want to appy the "invader" framework to their whole history, where they settled on lands that changed hands to some entity that was later cut down to size by someone else). This agrees with my long-standing intuition that after WWII a Jewish State should actually have been carved out of the losing nations in Europe (which I remember @Southkraut taking great offense at for reasons that still strike me as insufficiently thought through; imagine the different trajectory many things could have taken had Germany been allowed to discharge its blood debt with soil in this way).

which I remember @Southkraut taking great offense at for reasons that still strike me as insufficiently thought through

They are. The thought terminates at "Rightful German clay must remain in German hands."

I always liked (perhaps a bit sardonically) Michael Chabon's solution in the The Yiddish Policemen's Union. They turned the southern bit of Alaska, the area around Juneau, into Israel. The US didn't miss it. I always think about that whenever the discussion of what to do with the Palestinians comes up. If everyone is so concerned...give them the cold wilderness no one else wants to deal with. (This is just a silly thought experiment, not meant as a serious solution)

That was actually a real proposal that was kicked around by the Roosevelt administration, which is where Chabon got the idea. I don’t think it got particularly far in real life, but it was considered.

As the old line goes, the socialists will never forgive the Jews for surviving the Holocaust.

The solution was supposed to be "final", yet 80 years later here we are.

As the old line goes, the socialists will never forgive the Jews for surviving the Holocaust.

Fascists, not socialists.

Tomatoh, Tamatah.

Contra the last 50 years of leftist propoganda, national socialism and international socialism resemble each other far more then either resembles any other ideology.

National socialism is still socialism.

I got as far as the subhead:

Since they liquidated socialists by the score and opposed everything we believe, Nazis were not leftists.

Lenin, Trotsky and Stalin also liquidated socialists by the score, and opposed "everything we believe in" at one time or another.

It's not hard to come up with a fairly coherent principle that rationalises this pattern: if your homeland gets seized by another people, your people get a perpetual moral claim to reconquer it from the people that seized it, but not from anyone else that may further seize it from those people and thus has not perpetrated a direct injustice against you and yours

This is only coherent if you set the clock at a completely arbitrary cutoff and commit to ignoring the fact that nearly every slice of land on the planet has changed hands numerous times. The “Germans” are only considered a coherent people now, in hindsight, as a result of millennia of mutually-hostile civilizations slaughtering each other. Why do “the Germans” have a legitimate claim against “the Arabs”, but the Western Hunter-Gatherers of 20,000 years ago (themselves certainly not a unified ethnic group) do not have a permanent claim against any descendants of Neolithic Farmers and/or Proto-Indo-European pastoralists?

This is only coherent if you set the clock at a completely arbitrary cutoff

Only semi-arbitrary. We cut it off post-WWII because that's when we realised that the seizure of territory by force of arms was increasingly damaging, and thus could not be allowed to continue in the future. Thus we set the cut-off at 'now' as a Schelling point, because we had to set it somewhere, and 'now' was the least disruptive.

because that's when we realised that the seizure of territory by force of arms was increasingly damaging, and thus could not be allowed to continue in the future

No, that's when the American Empire completed its conquest of most of the world, and as the sovereign thus deny lesser/client states the right to wage war on neighboring states. There are 5 countries with the de facto right to do this and 2 of them (Britain and France) are mostly just US vassals at this point anyway.

The Americans and the Russians are in a hot proxy war right now. "We" is clearly just self-serving American bullshit, something they inherited from the English; the "all wars are defensive" stance, by contrast, is straight out of the Roman Republic.

the right to wage war on neighboring states. There are 5 countries with the de facto right to do this and 2 of them (Britain and France)

Eh? When did the Brits wage war on a neighbour post WW2? I assume you’re not talking about rearguard colonial stuff in the late 40s.

and 2 of them (Britain and France) are mostly just US vassals

Brits tried it with Suez (until being politely reminded that the only power they had was at the US’ pleasure for anti-Soviet reasons- Argentina was a gimme though), and then there’s the French in Indochina and, importantly, Vietnam.

And regionally, they’re still relatively powerful, as Libya found out in the early 2010s. But they don’t have the power they used to before the European Civil Wars.

Brits tried it with Suez (until being politely reminded that the only power they had was at the US’ pleasure for anti-Soviet reasons- Argentina was a gimme though

Right. Britain clearly does not have the power to make war on neighbouring (ie European) states, which is why it confuses me so much that OP claims otherwise. Argentina was purely defensive: the settlements are British and have been for centuries.

Did you actually read my post? I'm not setting arbitrary clock cutoffs (see: my opinion regarding the case of the Japanese), but instead using cultural continuity as acknowledged by the people involved. The present-day Germans think of themselves as the same people as the Germans from 100 years ago, before any significant Arab immigration commenced; and conversely there is a continuous chain from the ones of 100 years ago to the present ones where older generations thought of younger generations replacing them as "their people". It's an interesting question whether the same reasoning should apply to wider or narrower circles of ingroup status as well, rather than just those at the scale of a "nation"; but if there actually were descendants of Western Hunter-Gatherers alive today that had some semblance of this sort of continuity, I would at least be open to considering it valid if they demanded that Indo-Europeans should gtfo back to the steppe.

The present-day Germans think of themselves as the same people as the Germans from 100 years ago

This is actually more complicated than you are making it sound! The thorny questions of German “nationhood” were the source of many wars over the course of centuries. There was a dialect continuum of German (or German-adjacent) languages, but the extent to which these various peoples were culturally- and politically-unified was very much in dispute for a very long time. “German” identity in many ways had to be imposed from top-down. (And we can see the extent to which this process was not completely achieved by, for example, the existence of a separate Austrian state.) The same is equally true of “the French” as a people. Once you start digging into the specifics, the “unbroken chains of continuity” start to look more like frayed ropes held together by tape.

I picked 100 years rather than a larger figure on purpose (and I'm reasonably familiar with German history; that's where I got my passport and most of my schooling!), and I'm happy to elaborate the rule as being against irredentism in case of doubt (so no German pre-Bismarck claims survive). The situations I opined on just all seem to be fairly clear-cut cases of nationhood continuity.

An even easier solution might be to posit a one-sided onus based on present-day claims of inheritance - so e.g. a hypothetical Russian Empire acquisition of North Africa would be morally open to a claim by descendants of the Carthaginians the moment the Imperial Russian government opens its mouth to say something about being the "Third Rome".

(I'm not trying to propose a counterintuitive-but-defensible rule, but rather some simple rule that aligns with intuitions about right and wrong that I have independently, as one does in analytic philosophy.)

The Arabs still have many homelands and there was no distinct Palestinian identity before Israeli independence.

That argument isn't going to convince Arabs, it isn't meant for the jewish population. It is an argument for Europeans meant to justify a massive refugee crisis on Europe's doorstep. The arab states have absolutely no reason in aiding a mass ethnic cleansing of Palestinians. For us in Europe we have zero reason to want to see millions of arabs move. Even if it is to other arab states it is still a disaster as it is destabilizing.

Israel has not only been involved in plenty of wars that has ended up with migrants in Europe. The ADL and plenty of other jewish groups have been pushing hard for mass migration into Europe.

So if not living in your own ethnostate makes it perfectly fine to evict people there is no problem if the rest of the world forcefully evicts all jews?

So it would have been completely fine to ethnically cleanse all Finns and Estonians pre 1918 as they had never had a state? Basques have never had an ethnostate so are they free game?

The ADL

The American ADL has been pushing for .. mass migration into Europe? I don't like it at all, but that seems rather far from its notional remit.

Here is a press release with policy recommendations to criminalize opposition to mass migration, triggered by the Lauren Southern documentary about the NGO ships picking up migrants off the Libyan coast and dropping them in Italy.

Thanks. I mostly know them for getting people to kiss the ring on TV...typically after saying something critical of Israel or more rarely, Jews.

I wonder how many people read that .. it's an exercise in tedium that in the end amounts to basically nothing except "you must censor people" and "pass hate crime laws" and doesn't even try to explain how low or no immigration is bad.

Absolutely. They have put enormous pressure on social media companies. They have also helped many pro migration NGO:s.

On top of that there are several other lobbying groups that have pushed hard for mass immigration.

Do you have some concrete evidence that they put the thumb on the scale about European migration? It would be a bit surprising to see, since one would think the opportunity cost of not investing that money in the American political market would matter more for them.

The overwhelming impact they have had on social media has absolutely played a major role. They have also sponsored multiple NGOs in Europe.

Which ones? Can you provide some concrete data of that and relevant pressure on social media companies?

*Here is an article about the ADL pressuring social media to stop criticism of its agenda.

*Here is an ADL press release with policy recommendations to criminalize opposition to mass migration to Europe, reacting to Lauren Southern's documentary about the NGO-run Libya to Italy boat migration route.

*Here is a more detailed look at the human-smuggling NGOs ferrying migrants from Libya to Italy.

*Here is an animation made from the ship tracking data of the NGO boats in question.

*Here is an ADL press release from 2015 condemning the rise of anti-migrant sentiment in Europe.

*Here is the ADL's propaganda packet made for high school teachers focused on pushing the youth to see migrants to Europe sympathetically using that viral photo of the drowned boy on the beach in Turkey.

*Here is an article from the Daily Forward about the Zionists of America criticizing the ADL for fighting anti-refugee activism in Europe because the mass migration of muslims into Europe was causing increased antisemitism.

I hope this infodump is enough to convince you.

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