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Well, I guess it was only a question of time before the ADL condemned Dave Chappelle and SNL more generally for "popularising" anti-Semitism.
Chappelle had a SNL monologue a few days ago where he walked a tightrope between supposedly condemning Kanye and Kyrie before slyly signal-boosting some of their talking points. Kanye comes across as crazy and Kyrie as plain dumb but Chappelle is neither, so this is arguably bigger news. Of course, Chappelle has been courting controversy before, such as his perceived anti-trans comments or complaining about college kids being too sensitive these days.
So I am not sure if this is some kind of cultural shift where black entertainment elites are more willing to criticise Jews or if it is simply Chappelle running towards controversy in order to stay relevant. Maybe it is both. Nevertheless, I think the ADL has by and large been enormously inefficient and self-defeating during these past 6 weeks. It seems even some Jewish publications agree.
On the radio this morning, there was a pop news segment which mentioned the drama. They quoted Chappelle’s joke, something along the lines of:
I concur with the hosts that the joke is decently funny. It certainly works better than some of Chappelle’s “snowflakes, amirite?” bits. The best part, though perhaps unintentional, is that when quoted it looks like an apology for a different joke until the punchline.
I remain skeptical of claims that this (or random bait on Twitter, as in that other thread) implies some sort of growing black/Jewish tension. Aside from being an obvious opportunity for selection bias, it’s firmly in the “to good to check” category for those who expect to see race warring everywhere. This includes a big chunk of the dissident right as well as, apparently, the ADL.
I think the cat's out of the bag. This particular (ever-growing) set of mini-controversies will subside eventually. But awareness/noticing will increase monotonically because once you notice you don't unnotice. The next controversy surrounding this question will have even more prima facie plausibility than this controversy started by Kanye's rant, and so-on. Look at what Elon Musk tweeted yesterday. It's a hop, a skip, and a jump away from anti-Semitism.
The reason I do think that this is symptomatic of a turning point is expressed pretty well in Chapelle's set. Chapelle isn't walking a tightrope because he is concerned about unethically disparaging a people. He's worried about a reprisal for saying true things. That's not a long-term stable state. The long-term stable state is that nobody even thinks about it, or they think it's morally wrong to believe it. What we are seeing is a growing awareness, and people are being quiet and walking a tightrope because they are afraid and not because they are morally on the side of the ADL.
Or do you?
Many years ago, as a teenager (probably 14 or so), I was at my friends' place playing Monopoly, and we had a TV turned on (not sure why. Also, yes, Monopoly, it was a long tradition and more of a cause to meet up by that point). Two other players went to the kitchen. The news host was blathering something generically loyalist about the rebirth of spiritual values, very distinctly phony – maybe Putin visiting some newly opened church or priests baptizing a rocket factory, whatever. By then, I've learned through some pain not to discuss politics in real life, so it was filtered out as background noise. My friend, a zealous Orthodox Christian and a devout patriot, and generally something of a cowardly conformist, looked into the screen for a bit, grimaced and suddenly said «...it's all bullshit, isn't it? Just a show. Complete unscrupulous profanation, just some window-dressing for the corruption of power-hungry slugs with not a iota of conscience. That's what you notice all the time, right? And that's why you used to mock us».
With me staying silent (it was a rather eerie moment), he thought a little more, by the looks of it sincerely weighing his options, to commit to one of them. «But suppose I accept that this is the way things are – what then? Do I pretend they aren't? Do I try to persuade my family and other friends? Do I argue with them? If I fail, will they trust me? Will I be able to trust them, knowing they know I don't believe what they believe? What will I even rely on? I don't know. No, no. No, sorry, this is going nowhere».
(If that sounds unnatural – I kid you not, that's how he spoke. I don't remember the exact lines but this is their style and meaning. He's a weird guy, nerdy and way more eloquent than me).
I shrugged, switched the TV off and we went back to the game.
Last I checked, he fully supported the «regathering of the Russian lands», the battle with Banderovites, and the Moscow Patriarchate. With any luck, he'll become a priest in a few years. This doesn't seem to be disingenuous at all.
The moral of this parable is that people can be entrenched in their views, resistant to persuasion, and very attached to received wisdom that ties them to their loved ones and the society they live in. Ben Shapiro is of course right that facts don't care about your feelings. But if you have feelings, you may find it easy to disregard even self-evident facts, and believe Shapiro-Solovyev's lies when your peers believe them already.
I get your point and I agree "feelings don't care about your facts" is a more insightful turn of phrase than Shapiro's slogan. But I think you may be underestimating just how unconscious the average American has been about Jewish power and influence. It's something that was hardly ever talked about, maybe only by small circles in the paleo-conservative movement, dissident publications, or the occasional faux pas from a Gentile in Hollywood. But it was totally invisible to the average American. Now we have celebrities openly talking about it on Twitter. I've even seen progressive-adjacent spaces asking questions about Jewish influence. Of course, they all agree that the answer is that Jews just have a really great culture that values education and achievement- end of story. I don't necessarily expect facts to influence the vast majority of them into embracing dissident thinking.
It's more like it's becoming impossible to deny that the Death Star exists. Kanye forced them to publicly display the power of their fully operational battlestation. And people are talking about it. A lot of people are rationalizing it and defending it. A lot of people are defending Kanye and Kyrie. But the time of the average person not being aware that the Death Star is something that exists out there is going to come to an end.
I think where we disagree is that you believe they will soon be able to fully flout the Death Star- "Yeah we have it, don't mess with us or you're going to get it." Greenblatt is clearly adopting that strategy- perceived by some to be a mistake. I also think it's a mistake and is going to backfire (and is already starting to do so- the genie has left the bottle).
In other words, a Prog saying "yeah Jews are overrepresented in all these institutions, because of their great culture" is a major shift from nobody thinking about Jewish power at all.
OK, so what's your solution to Jews being overrepresented in these institutions, assuming you think it's a problem? Actually, why do you think it's a problem? I would make this comment more high-effort by guessing answers to those questions but I don't think I have a good enough mental model to be using it for that yet.
There is a problem here, and it's that you defaulted to assuming over representation is a problem, instead of what it is, an obvious fact which is verboten in public discourse (which is an actual problem). Perhaps you can answer it the other way - why isn't it a problem? When we have spent the last ten years setting up idiotic quotas in every corporation and government department for a percentage of staff to be a particular ethnicity or gender, why is Jewish over representation in some of the most prestigious industries in existence not a problem?
Here's a solution - nobody has to pay for mentioning this obvious fact with their jobs any longer, or their reputation, or millions of dollars. Nobody gets forced to call a deer a horse. I know, it doesn't seem like it would really solve anything to me either, but then I have to ask why the fuck Jewish advocates are so hell bent on carrying it out?
I think the quotas are dumb. We shouldn’t have make work job for underperforming minorities and/or women. We shouldn’t promote on such criteria either.
The same arguments for why those are problems (and many people are against affirmative action for articulated reasons) supports the argument it is fine Jews are rich.
Yeah, that's the joke, those policies are a result of the same racial politics they propagate. I don't care if Jews are rich and successful, they should get it if they can. And a culture of valuing intelligence often has that effect.
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