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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.
Zionism (right) vs Bolshevism (left).
Also, Jewish space lasers are as true as turning the frogs gay.
Can you explain Jewish space lasers? Metaphorically turning the frogs gay was true- everyone’s gay now and we don’t know why.
Iron Beam and similar directed energy weapons. They can allegedly shoot down satellites. Apparently China, Russia, Israel, and the US have these weapons. There also may, or may not be, DEWs in space, which can either shoot down other satellites or possibly ground based targets (I can't imagine they'd be too effective shooting the ground, unless they are one time use, or spend a hell of a long time charging; maybe a nuclear powered one could do it?).
The Jewish space laser conspiracies started with simple 'space laser' conspiracies. There was a growing conspiracy around various forest fires being done by DEWs. Lots of videos of California neighbourhoods burned down, but all the trees and stuff being untouched; melted cars; and then there were 'strange' light beams visible on some weather satellites. I just follow conspiracies for fun, so I don't really try to remember all the details.
Then the Space Force came out, talking about how China and Russia had DEWs in space (or targeting space?). And so then the conspiracies around DEWs went into overdrive. I don't know how the Jewish part ended up being added, but I assume Israel. If not Israel, then it's probably just 'The Powers That Be'. You can attribute any conspiracy to the Jews.
Turning the frogs gay was about a chemical (atrazine) that was getting into the water (usually from runoff from farms), and frogs exposed to it would change into females. So it's really the frogs are trans, rather than gay. And if 'they' means the government, then I suppose we could blame them. So 'they are turning the frogs gay' is mostly true.
And space lasers almost certainly exist; whether they are space-based and shooting at other satellites, or ground-based and shooting into space. Don't know about space to ground. I imagine there's a >90% chance that a Jewish person was heavily involved in designing it. And I imagine there's a >50% chance that Israel has some. So Jewish Space Lasers seems mostly true to me, though probably not quite as nefarious as the wording makes it seem.
Jewishness got added because Greene mentioned Rothschild Inc in her original statement. This is why I said:
Yes, the Rothschilds are Jewish, and some people probably link that to their conspiracies about them ruling the world. But they're also super rich, and people think they rule the world for that reason, too. We have no evidence (as far as I know) that Greene was coming at this from an antisemitic perspective, yet people quickly latched onto that, until people wouldn't shut up about "Jewish space lasers", driving me insane.
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The frogs turning gay was almost literally true.
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Also literally turning the frogs gay. (Really, turning the frogs trans, but who's counting...) I will never cease to be amazed at the ability of the internet to take Conspiracy Theories Czar Alex Jones and unerringly zero in on the like one thing he ever said that actually has a shred of evidence to it.
(To be clear, that effect has been questioned a bunch, and I have no idea what's actually up with it. But "Alex Jones cites a study that may not hold up" is hardly how you see the claim treated.)
Alex jones' talent is digesting tons of internet conspiracy info and sources, and regurgitating it in the most evocative, outrageous, and poetic manner. He also invariably always frames it US vs. THEM.
Thus sex deformities in amphibians caused by chemical runoff, turns into "THEY"RE PUTTING CHEMICALS IN THE WATER TO TURN THE FREAKIN FROGS GAY"
But 99% of what he says doesn't originate with him... it originates in invariably more respectable sources, or online discussion... but because he's such a virtuoso with phrasing, the most popular summary of the story is always his summary...
Most of his predictions aren't even predictions. As he says "WE HAVE ALL THEIR WHITEPAPERS", he just read the WHO documents about vaccine passports from like 2014, was going on about how they're going to take all your freedom away with a pandemic and vaccine passports...and then COVID hit and what do you know Alex Jones was right...except they'd openly planned and published their vaccine passport ideas in 2014, it wasn't a "Conspiracy" it was open policy, its just Alex Jones is the only person who hates them enough to read their boring speculative white papers about things that aren't going to happen, until they do.
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It sure was lucky for the left that the Kochs aren't Jewish.
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Honestly I'm not sure how many of his opponents even know he's Jewish. It seems like the median right winger thinks of Soros as "billionaire from something or other, eastern european but I don't know what country, uber-liberal views and supports lefty organizations in a way that isn't really fair and I couldn't explain why". Sort of like a less specific version of Bill Gates(who they also don't like).
The Rothschilds are the same thing; I'm not sure if they people ranting about their influence even know they're Jewish, or anything about what they are other than "vaguely wealthy family with vaguely sinister behavior".
My estimate is "about as many as those who know there is such a thing as Jews".
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Thank you, I think you've well-put a lot of my frustrations over how people responded to Greene, latching so quickly onto anything that seemed like it could be used to tar her, when it's not quite so clear. When I first looked into what exactly she said, I also thought "wait... she didn't really mention Jews, exactly, why is everyone taking this stance in opposition to her?"
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Because the Rothschild family features in a lot of conspiracy theories due to being enormously wealthy and influential during the 19th century. You really don't need any additional explanation for why a family that had that level of wealth and influence over governments for a century accumulated conspiracy theories exaggerating their power further. Look at the conspiracy theories that have accumulated about Bill Gates in just a couple decades. Someone did the usual conspiracy-theorist thing of playing Six Degrees of Separation and noticing they were connected to PG&E, and then MTG read and repeated it.
For fans of irony - Despite being super into any conspiracy as a kid, I used to mindkill anyone who mentioned any antisemetic conspiracy (this is back when I was a good boy, 11 or 12 or so). That was until I got accused of trying to spread antisemetic conspiracy theories for doing a history report on the amazingly cool (to a poor stupid x files fan) Rothschilds, who were so awesome back in the day that people still thought they ran the world. Apparently I was trying to dog whistle antisemetism despite not actually knowing they were Jewish (the term dog whistling wasn't used back then, the teacher just called it being sneaky).
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