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The strange place of Jewishness in the culture war
I find that Jewishness has a very strange place in the culture war, and I think it merits examination. I welcome people trying to help me make sense of it and figure out exactly where the battle lines lay. Both left and right fancy themselves champions of Jewishness, and paint the other side as antisemitic. It's very strange how it breaks down, and I don't fully understand why and along which lines.
On the left, they're very eager to portray the other side as fascists, holocaust deniers, and old-fashioned anti semites. We can see this in cases like Kyrie Irving mentioned below, and Kanye West, where if anyone says anything bordering on Jew-illuminati conspiracy theory, they are pounced on and labeled as fascist and far right. I particularly disliked the handling of Marjorie Taylor Greene last year, where she said something (which admittedly did sound stupid and crazy to me) about Rothschild, and immediately, I was hearing about "jewish space lasers" from every jewish acquaintance I know. While I do agree that Greene sounded crazy, I think there was a few steps and a lot of filling in the blanks between what she said and something that's legit antisemitic.
On the right, everyone I know is very eager to say that the left hates Jews. These people are fans of people like Bari Weiss. I'm less clear right now on exactly what delineates the claim that the left hates Jews, maybe because we've had a run over the past month of a number of cases of the left supposedly championing Jews (like in the Kanye situation). I know that one such thing that people on the right take issue with is the left being very anti-Israel. Though really, I think it does make sense that being anti-Israel isn't the same as being antisemitic.
This state of affairs makes it difficult for me to predict how my Jewish acquaintances will react to any culture warring. I've found that sometimes, the very same people are eager to claim that liberal American institutions hate Jews due to their stances on Israel, but then will also turnaround and claim that Trump was about to start shipping Jews out to the camps for the 2nd holocaust. It sort of seems to me that most of them are so eager to see oppression everywhere, they're like a leaf blowing in the wind, following whatever the current is, claiming that anyone and everyone is out to get them. Instead, to me, it seems more like (almost) no one is out to get them, and instead everyone wants to claim that their tribe is the only REAL supporters of the Jews.
So much has been said on this topic over the centuries, it's tedious.
The long and short of it is that Jews truly have «systemic power» that the left accuses White-cishet-male-etc. outgroup of having; perhaps this accusation is better understood as a deflection. They are overrepresented in positions of power, they are substantially coordinated specifically as Jews, including in those positions of power, via a rich and dense network of Jewish organizations focusing on outreach to/bargaining with/pressuring people in power – well, this «they» necessarily excluding those who neglect their ethnic identity or its illegible political terms (e.g. Greenwald), and the fruit of in-group preference that those factors provide, but in terms of total influence this isn't a noteworthy caveat – and their coordinating structures are dedicated to maintaining and furthering this power, first of all by means of promoting the doctrine of Jewish victimhood (to the point of it having become a kneejerk quasi-religious dogma, with Hitler impersonation being about as taboo as Devil worshipping was in the Middle Ages – at least the medievals could have their Festivals!), and secondly by eroding the capacity of other peoples to coordinate, except to again erode the bigger and stronger group's capacity. So we have Civil Rights support and assorted pro-Black activism including BLM, but the moment Blacks begin to build their identity on the Black Hebrew Israelite/Nation of Islam ideology (admittedly a complete schizo clown show), Jews pull the plug and we see those performative lustrations.
This isn't new. I think the difference this time is that Western elites are progressively becoming, well, less Western, and more tolerant of explicit ethnic casteism, especially when powered by genuine differences in capability: for a good illustration, see @BurdensomeCount here. Due to all people nominally having the same rights and obligations, there is no notion of noblesse oblige either, the useful bits of Western egalitarianism being combined with useful bits of Eastern might-makes-right logic.
I think in my lifetime, even with moderately pessimistic estimates (i.e. the next 15 years) I'll see the flip-flop on this topic, a sharp transition to normalization of the belief that Jews, as a politically represented ethnic fraction, are just inherently better and have more rights than Gentiles. Those demands of admitting the advantage, with the promise of recognizing it as valid, are not as clever as people like Roko may imagine.
I very strongly believe in noblesse oblige and perform it when in the midst of my own people. Back home people can basically tell at a glance that I am better than them simply based on my dress (even when I'm wearing local dress my clothes have higher quality fabric are crisper and fit me better due to having been specifically tailored for me) and in such a case I even go out of my way to e.g. at the airport lift my own baggage rather than getting a porter as that is demonstrating the virtue of self sufficiency to others around me. Also when praying I have no qualms to standing next to janitors and ditch diggers, reflecting the fact that while in Earthly matters people have different ranks, in the eyes of God we have all been created equal (and infinitely beneath Him) and that we will be judged for our sins in the same way on the Day of Resurrection regardless of whether one was a prince or a pauper.
When talking to people in my language no matter how low they may be I always use the formal, polite way of referring to them and in conversation always treat them like an equal (because it is possible to tell from my dress, manner of walking, height etc. that I am their superior, I don't need to articulate it). They know they are beneath me, I know I am above them but treating them like dirt beneath my feet isn't going to get us anywhere in relation to the reason I'm talking to them, instead I have a duty of care towards them similar to a parent's duty of care towards their children and I try and make sure that what I'm asking of these people doesn't cross the line over into exploitation (equally I would never ask someone to do something I wouldn't be willing to do myself, I've cleaned plenty of toilets and even once dug a ditch to find out what it was like).
In the west though I don't do any of it, because the proles here believe themselves to be equal in worldly matters to me (lol, lmao even) and so I treat them like equals; much like how my job is focused on figuring out ways to make money off of other market participants in the west these people get to deal with a version of me that only looks after my own self interest, and naturally since they are beneath me they lose out more often.
Once I made close to £500 off a student acquaintance of mine who was making wildly overconfident claims about the probabilities of certain events, I challenged him to trade on it and he accepted, despite knowing I work in quant finance and him being a history & politics student who stopped studying maths at 16. I even pushed to do a big sized trade given how confident he seemed by dangling the carrot of potentially winning £2000 in front of him. Naturally he was wrong, I was right and suddenly he had lost a month's worth of discretionary expenses for him. Had this been back home I would never have proposed the bet in the first place, seeing it as exploitation of those below me in this domain, and even after I had won would probably have returned the money along with a life lesson in being less confident in your assertions but here in the West I was perfectly happy to take the cash as I had rightfully won it from an equal, never mind that it was supposed to be his food money for the rest of the term while it was something I wouldn't even notice (you can probably tell I didn't really like him).
Just as a curiosity, what were his predictions and what did you do a big trade with him for?
Funnily enough it was the night of the 2020 US election and the trade was over the number of senate seats that the Democrats won on the night. He was your typical snooty nosed liberal who I think wanted to impress a girl also present by claiming to be "leftier than thou" with all of us. At the very least his actions pissed me off pretty early in the night. Also he was the type of "all bluster, no substance" person that is unfortunately pretty common at Oxbridge (wanted to go into politics after graduation etc.) He loudly proclaimed that everyone hates Republicans and was making unprompted statements like "there is a 50% chance Dems get at least 52 seats tonight" and I decided to teach him a lesson. All I did was check 538 predictions for what the real probability of that was and challenged him to trade, mentioning that if he really thought there was a 50% chance Dems got 52 seats he should be very happy to do a 4:1 trade with me that it's not going to happen (maybe he said 53, I can't exactly remember as it was 2 years ago and I very frequently do these sorts of trades with coworkers).
I suspect because there was a girl he wanted to impress and he didn't want to look like a pussy he didn't back down, most people I propose trades to back down when you suggest involving real money and at that point I decided it would be good to teach him an expensive lesson. I first proposed to do the trade for a small amount, my £80 vs his £20 but he taunted me (or at least I took it as a taunt) by saying I don't really believe in my position considering what a small proportion of my income £80 is given my job salary. At this is was pretty damn pissed off, and decided to properly teach him a lesson and asked him if he wanted to raise the bet size to my £2,000 vs his £500 and he accepted (it's a bit like redoubling in Bridge after your opponents double, they say they can beat you and you say "no you can't we're gonna punish you for thinking you can beat us"). We both transferred the money to the bank account of a trusted mutual acquaintance and waited until morning, whereupon I got my £2,500 once it because clear that it wasn't possible for Dems to get 52 seats any more and the best part was that he didn't even flip out or anything at me, despite having lost significant money and his body language showing he very clearly wanted to do so, because the girl was still there and it would look like he was having a tantrum.
To this day I haven't talked to him again, I saw him a few times walking around college after that event but never exchanged words, he should have graduated by now.
Looking back this probably wasn't the best bet to make because of the Georgia runoff which could have locked my (and his) money up for a pretty long time, but hey it worked out for me in the end.
You both sound like highly unpleasant people but then again, a fool and his money are soon parted, so you did teach him a valuable lesson.
Funnily enough pretty much nobody who actually knows me in person decently well would describe me as unpleasant. People generally consider me to be fun, easy going, patient and extremely generous. Perhaps I'm giving off the wrong vibes with my writing style, I don't know...
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I will pray for you.
The son of God rode in on a donkey and never expected anybody to 'tell at a glance that he was better than them'.
Those who believed in him created the civilization that lucky people like you get to visit and 'work in quant finance' in.
You didn't choose your job? Who forced you to 'only look after your own self interest'? I pray that we all find the alternative version of ourselves that treats others better than ourselves.
Thank you, and I will remember to pray for you too.
While I believe in Jesus and respect him as a prophet bringing the word of god to mankind I'm not a Christian but rather a Muslim. There is an Authentic Hadith that goes:
As well as others like (this is one of the miracles attributed to Muhammad);
In Islam it's pretty well established that Muhammad from his appearance stood out and displayed nobility in everything he did. There is also a Hadith that says:
Islam is rather more of a warrior's religion than Christianity. I find the latter very much reflects a slave mentality that (in my opinion) isn't the best for individuals to hold, for example from the Sermon on the Mount there are statements like “You have heard that it was said, ‘An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.’ But I say to you, Do not resist the one who is evil. But if anyone slaps you on the right cheek, turn to him the other also." and things like "You have heard that it was said, ‘Love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ But I tell you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you". To me this reflects a warped viewpoint of the world and in this case I identify more strongly with the Confucian doctrine of "treating your enemy the same way you treat your friend is an insult to your friend" (I suppose this provides an example of fundamental differences in the basic beliefs that Western/Eastern cultures were built on that then went on to cause the cultures to diverge further and further as they developed, a bit like different starting conditions in a chaotic system).
True, but those people have gone now and western society is trending towards godless heathenism, that culture is slowly going extinct even though the genes are still there, basically in inverse of how the Magyars strongly contributed to modern Hungarian culture, but very little to their genes. A modern Hungarian saying Magyars were his genetic ancestors would elicit a scoff from me, much like how a modern non-believing westerner would do if they said that the believers in Christ who built the West were their memetic ancestors.
Nobody. I actually always try to treat people I know better than myself, it's just that in the West without noblesse oblige I don't really give a shit about providing direction and being a good role model towards low class people I don't personally know or have relationships at at least the level of "friendly acquaintance". Back home I do indeed look out for others, even random strangers before caring for myself to an extent. It's considered bad form to say how much you give to charity but I give freely to the poor and always have done so, this being a value instilled in me by my parents from an early age. In fact I consider my high paying finance job as sort of a reward from God for freely giving to the poor and needy, indeed I didn't keep that £500 I won from that overconfident western idiot but instead donated it to the Edhi Foundation which provides hospital and ambulance services to the extremely poor back home and saves countless lives a year (Edhi himself was a great man, in Islam it's generally frowned upon to donate organs but even then shortly before he died he asked his doctors if any parts of his body might be of use to patients and they replied that while most of them wouldn't - he was 88 at the time - his eyes could still be implanted so he gave those up too when he passed away, one final act of charity towards those who need it).
I too hope we all find the ability to put others before ourselves.
Warrior of that?
The Christian god very much intend his followers to be obedient to him, but the ideal Christian behavior is not really to be a slave, as Christians have historically rather chosen to die as a martyr than conceal their faith or deny their god.
Any persecution can be tolerated for the sake of the actual life with god, after this worldly one.
What do you mean by that dichotomy?
Do you have a switch on your morality based on where you are located?
One side effect of the Christian behavior of wishing good on your own enemies is that it may potentially lead to a certain admiration by enemies or bystanders for your peaceful, moral behavior.
Perhaps that is one reason you work in quant finance in the West instead of IED development wherever you come from.
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If people like you won't use a porter, how are porters going to make a living?
Porters aren't slaves. Hiring one (including as part of a package) is a business transaction from which the porter benefits.
I agree, and the reason I won't use a porter is to demonstrate that relying on servants to do small menial tasks is not necessary (as pretty much everybody back home does, even we have a live in cook) and there is virtue in doing these things yourselves. I don't have anything against using a porter when I have lots of luggage (and do use them) but plenty of people back home with the means hire a porter even when all they have is 1 carry on bag and 1 suitcase, both of which they could easily have moved themselves together because they see the small pittance handed to the porter to be worth less than the effort expended in rolling a single bag along.
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This wasn't an attack on your attitude, which if anything is refreshing in its boldness and consistency. Even an explicit Varna system where our neo-Brahmin Judeo-Hapa CEOs are recognized as spiritually (and racially) superior but are also expected to fulfill certain paternalistic prosocial obligations befitting their greater capability would be preferable to the current having-the-cake-and-eating-it-too arrangement, where Whites both underperform and carry the inexhaustible moral burden of transgressions, real and imagined.
Note, however, that in the West you feel noblesse oblige towards, and intend to save, «the West» as an abstraction and a communal cultural legacy. As you have indicated many times in the past, ignorant, wretched lower-to-middle-class Anglos can only inspire an almost-genocidal contempt on your side. You justify this by pointing out their unmerited pretension of equality. Fine. But if we compare values, they are, on average, superior to the median member of your nation (if not your lineage) in all respects one could care about – work ethic, intellect, honesty, fucking cleanliness – except maybe knowing their place; they provide the substrate for your flourishing; and they are not afforded the opportunity to lord over those lesser people in their countries, nor do they seek it – as opposed to their, or rather their upper classes', forefathers of the Colonial era. And indeed both in the US and the UK they calmly accept even the political leadership of your kin; a situation unthinkable in any South Asian nation, no matter the respective merit.
In my eyes this largely redeems their superficial arrogance, and brings the ball back into your court.
Oh absolutely, we've failed to even potty train our lower classes properly...
I have an uncle back home who worked for a few years in the west but went back to take care of my grandparents. He constantly laments the lack of talent and general low performance of the people he can hire compared to what he could get in the West, almost all the competent people basically emigrate and back home we're left with the dregs. It's good for the country as a whole due to remittances but bad for growing successful businesses.
@2rafa says that we should feel deference towards the Anglos at the top and I will freely admit that the superior Anglos are better than the superior South Asians but it is not enough to merely be superior, one has to use it for the benefit of society. A king who does not rule as a king but instead prefers to spend his time slumming it out with the peasants isn't doing them a service, instead he is damaging the realm and in turn the peasants themselves by leaving it headless. Western elites losing the desire to take their natural place and rule justly over society is not something to credit them with, but rather it's a mark on their character.
Modern western elites have very conveniently dropped all the noblesse oblige that required them to put effort into providing direction to society, while adopting all the worst hedonistic impulses that allowed them to focus on putting themselves first over the rest of society. Sure, they spun up a welfare state that now takes up a huge portion of their (and my) taxes and uses them to try and fix the problems they themselves have created but these people by and large are already rich enough to live a good life because of their assets. Instead of earning say £1,000,000 a year and living life according to norms that provide a good role model for others they have chosen the path of earning £500,000 (after taxes) and giving in to personal hedonism where because of their support structures they still do well, nay better than the first case, in the end, while setting fire to what remains of society.
I think your accusation of my "almost-genocidal contempt" towards the lower classes is unfounded. What I dislike about the western lower classes is their insubordination, this doesn't merit their (or anybody's) genocide, other than that I think they are probably the best lower classes you can find anywhere in the world. They are not to blame for the degenerate culture they have adopted, in a functioning society culture is set by the elite, and it is modern western elites who have failed to articulate and indoctrinate a good and successful way of life/vision of society to the lower classes.
If I were to have "almost-genocidal contempt" towards anybody it would be towards the memes of the modern Western upper class. It is their dereliction of duty that has led to the current state of affairs, I would classify it as a sin towards their own lower classes, and as we all know, the wages of sin is death. This dereliction of duty is not something I am thankful to the western upper classes for, they have chosen the path of easy hedonism for themselves over their ordained role of ruling wisely over the rest of us. And for this they deserve to be at the very least memetically replaced.
Indeed I lay the blame at the feet of western elites not only for the modern state of the West but also the subcontinent as a whole. There is a saying, said half jokingly, back home that in 1947 the white man took his independence from us and left. After plundering India for a hundred years once the concept of universal human rights had developed to the point where taking care of us as our master and leader was about to become more of a burden than a boon the white man very craftily packed his bags, sowed in us the seeds of "freedom" and left us to our own devices, whereupon the local elites who were less competent in almost every way and more corrupt etc. were forced to try and make a go of things. Naturally this led to worse outcomes than one where the white man would still be ruling over us justly and fairly. Well many of us weren't having it and instead of consigning ourselves to be ruled over by our own incompetents we sought our way to the home of the white man, where he was still in charge and things were better. A friend of mine once told a white person he was talking to that the reason there are so many of us now in the UK is that because "you were there, so now we are here".
These days though the white man doesn't even want to rule over his own lands and tries to pass off shirking his duty to enjoy the hedonistic life as being the morally "right" and "just" thing to do, how far has he fallen...
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Nobility, as far as I understand it, is about owning land, developing it and those who dwell on it and protecting it and them from harm. (Whatever "bloodline" and "good stock" are, they only contribute to nobility as much as they contribute to what nobles do). Perhaps Burdensome has neglected to mention everything he does that makes him, as he puts it, "better", but from what I gathered from his post he moves money around the Western market and earns a premium based on how much of it ends up in his employers' hands. Hardly evokes an image of a noble patriarch, that.
Right, the devil is very much in the details as far as @BurdensomeCount’s account of his noblesse oblige. The nobility of medieval Europe were expected to actually materially improve the lives of the people living under them, and to provide military protection for them. They were warlords - warlords with culture and at least the trappings of a genteel bearing, to be sure, but we’re talking about a network of guys who were expected to raise and lead armies in brutal combat.
I’m sure that @BurdensomeCount would say that he’d be happy to be a benevolent patriarch to the Western proles, and to provide for and protect them, if only they hadn’t pre-emptively spurned his noblesse with their gross insubordination. But could it be that he has gotten the causation backwards? Maybe the Western proles hate him and revolt against him because they are fully aware that he is in their country specifically to do something parasitic which produces zero actual value for anyone who isn’t a mega-wealthy vulture capitalist, and they don’t believe that he has anything remotely useful or beneficial to offer them.
A shake-up a few years ago in the executive suite of the multi-billion-dollar corporation with which I’m employed led to the ascension of an Indian Brahmin CEO, who then hired a few of his co-ethnics to major positions in the company. I’m sure that this guy probably sees himself precisely the way that Burdensome sees himself; as a paragon of superior breeding, here to rescue a flagging company with his immense and visually-obvious inborn talents. What most of us proles see, though, is a painfully awkward empty suit with not one iota of integrity or love for the common man in his bones. A parasite, here to bleed the company dry, dither about wage increases, and give a leg-up to other immigrants from his caste. A massively well-compensated parasite, and almost certainly a profoundly intelligent and numerate man, but someone I wouldn’t let into my home.
I would actually be fine with an immigrant overclass who displayed a genuine noblesse oblige. I agree with Burdensome that Anglosphere proles - I can’t speak to the state of Western proles more broadly - are degenerated and unworthy of the mantle of self-rule. They are crying out for someone to be their champion, but their shitty tastes and miscalibrated instincts keep leading them to elevate what, to the rest of us, are obvious grifters and charlatans. A ruling class with a combination of genuine erudition, hyper-competence, and noblesse oblige is exactly what these people need, and while I’m far from convinced that we’re past the point that we could construct such a class entirely from native-born talent, it’s at least plausible. The problem is that we can sense, with zero difficulty, that the overclass we’re actually importing are soulless sycophants and parasitic quants, saying whatever they need to say to get ahead while privately undermining and bleeding dry the people they’re ostensibly supposed to be protecting. Until the proles see concrete changes, of course they’re going to be insubordinate. You can play chicken-and-egg games all day, but from my perspective the ball is in your court to earn their deference.
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