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Notes -
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.
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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