site banner

Culture War Roundup for the week of November 28, 2022

This weekly roundup thread is intended for all culture war posts. 'Culture war' is vaguely defined, but it basically means controversial issues that fall along set tribal lines. Arguments over culture war issues generate a lot of heat and little light, and few deeply entrenched people ever change their minds. This thread is for voicing opinions and analyzing the state of the discussion while trying to optimize for light over heat.

Optimistically, we think that engaging with people you disagree with is worth your time, and so is being nice! Pessimistically, there are many dynamics that can lead discussions on Culture War topics to become unproductive. There's a human tendency to divide along tribal lines, praising your ingroup and vilifying your outgroup - and if you think you find it easy to criticize your ingroup, then it may be that your outgroup is not who you think it is. Extremists with opposing positions can feed off each other, highlighting each other's worst points to justify their own angry rhetoric, which becomes in turn a new example of bad behavior for the other side to highlight.

We would like to avoid these negative dynamics. Accordingly, we ask that you do not use this thread for waging the Culture War. Examples of waging the Culture War:

  • Shaming.

  • Attempting to 'build consensus' or enforce ideological conformity.

  • Making sweeping generalizations to vilify a group you dislike.

  • Recruiting for a cause.

  • Posting links that could be summarized as 'Boo outgroup!' Basically, if your content is 'Can you believe what Those People did this week?' then you should either refrain from posting, or do some very patient work to contextualize and/or steel-man the relevant viewpoint.

In general, you should argue to understand, not to win. This thread is not territory to be claimed by one group or another; indeed, the aim is to have many different viewpoints represented here. Thus, we also ask that you follow some guidelines:

  • Speak plainly. Avoid sarcasm and mockery. When disagreeing with someone, state your objections explicitly.

  • Be as precise and charitable as you can. Don't paraphrase unflatteringly.

  • Don't imply that someone said something they did not say, even if you think it follows from what they said.

  • Write like everyone is reading and you want them to be included in the discussion.

On an ad hoc basis, the mods will try to compile a list of the best posts/comments from the previous week, posted in Quality Contribution threads and archived at /r/TheThread. You may nominate a comment for this list by clicking on 'report' at the bottom of the post and typing 'Actually a quality contribution' as the report reason.

16
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

Apropo of the discussion below, I decided to look into these oft-repeated claims about Jewish overrepresentation in certain sectors of the economy. So I decided to look at the banking industry. I looked at the top executives of the 25 largest US banks by total assets; anyone listed on the bank's website under "leadership team" or some other such designation counts as a top executive, usually between 10 and 25 people for each bank. As far as determining who's Jewish, I mostly went by last names, although if someone was obviously black or Asian I skipped the name entirely. The results? Of 414 total executives, I found 19 Jews, or about 4.3%. Considering that only a little over 2% of the country is Jewish, this is significant overrepresentation. Or is it?

The first problem is that I had to rely on names to determine if someone was Jewish as that isn't the kind of information included in most corporate bios. And most of the names I came across weren't Cohen and Leibowitz but generic names like Weiss and Stein or something else that's German or Russian-sounding. For my purposes I assumed all these people were Jewish unless their bio specifically mentioned working for a Christian charity or something (like Jason Schugel), so I probably overestimated the total number of Jews by a few, though on the flip side there are Jews with gentile names I may have missed. And then there's the fact that a significant number of these Jews were women. In addition to the whole problem of married names, the stereotypical image of a Jewish banker is not a woman. Additionally, a lot of these executives were general counsel, or HR execs, or were involved in some other aspect of the business not directly related to banking, but I didn't bother to account for this because they're still obviously influential and are top executives at large banks, but one could make the argument that they shouldn't be counted.

Methodological issues aside, though, the more salient point is that while 4.3% may be a significant overrepresentation in a strict statistical sense (it's about double the expected number), this isn't the kind of overrepresentation most people have in mind when they talk about Jews and banking. It's hard to make the argument that at 4.5% Jews in any way control the industry, or even have any significant impact on it as a group. Relatively speaking, this is about half the number of Christians in Egypt. When you look at the individual banks, 11 of them, or nearly half, don't have any Jews in top leadership positions. An additional 10 have 1, and the remaining 4 have 2. The most Jewish bank on the list is Goldman Sachs at number 5, with 2 of 9 top executives, including the CEO, being Jewish. In other words, even the most obviously Jewish big bank in the country still has 80% gentiles in top leadership positions.

Is my methodology off? Probably. I limited myself to the top 25 banks because that's what I had time for, but I doubt that including the top 100 would have made much difference considering that below that you start getting into regional banks from areas where the Jewish population isn't particularly high and US divisions of foreign banks. But it's still something to look at. I could have included more people than the top executives, though any cutoff is arbitrary; I'm sure if you go all the way down to including branch employees the number of Jews would thin considerably. You could use boards of directors instead of executives. I don't know what kind of effect this would have but I avoided boards because they don't concern themselves with the day-to-day operations of the company and their members aren't necessarily in the banking industry at all, but you can make the argument. Whatever you think about my methodology, though, if you're going to challenge it, at least do the work. Don't just tell me my methodology is bad and you're just sure if I had used a different methodology I would have found that the whole industry is totally dominated by Jews. Because this is what people have been doing for years, and it's obviously bullshit. People have been talking about Jewish domination of various industries in the United States for years, but as soon as I take a cursory look at the most stereotypical Jewish business this "dominance" doesn't even crack 5%.

Also, I think you have control for how many Jews relative to gentiles have applied for various jobs/positions. It's possible jews are more inclined to choose careers such as finance or law because they enjoy those kind of things.

Instead of looking at individual banks you should look at the most important parts of the banking and finance sector. Jewish prominence is clearest in the leaders of each sector. Disney leads in entertainment, the New York Times leads in information. Facebook leads in its class of social media. Google leads in search. All are led/co-led by Jews.

Blackrock leads in finance. They hold about $10 Trillion in assets. They set standards for the financial world. ESG was their invention. They've been referred to as the informal 4th branch of the US govt, on par with the legislative and judiciary branches. This is because they were given the job of conducting massive 500 billion dollar bond and debt buybacks during COVID. They are the largest shareholder of major companies like Apple, Microsoft, Wells Fargo, J. P Morgan Chase and Deutsche Bank.

BlackRock states these shares are ultimately owned by the company's clients, not by BlackRock itself – a view shared by multiple independent academics – but acknowledges it can exercise shareholder votes on behalf of these clients, in many cases without client input.

You can see that Blackrock enjoys considerable influence over the most important companies on the planet. Larry Fink is chairman, founder and CEO. Robert S. Kapito is President. Both are Jewish.

The US Federal Reserve is possibly the biggest decision-maker in the world economy. They effectively control the price of the US dollar. The current president, Jerome Powell, isn't Jewish but the last three were. That takes us back to the late 1980s.

Let's look at raw political power. Donald Trump was perhaps the biggest cheerleader of Israel of any US president. He was actually Grand Marshal of the Salute to Israel, a ritual which really sounds like something a vassal state does to show homage to its overlord. He made these rather mask-off comments about how 10-15 years ago, Israel rightfully controlled Congress and now that control is slipping. Then he went on to complain about how Jews weren't voting for him, despite doing so much for Israel when he was in office.

"The biggest change I've seen in Congress is Israel literally owned Congress — you understand that — 10 years ago, 15 years ago. And it was so powerful. It was so powerful. And today it's almost the opposite," Trump told the conservative Ari Hoffman Show.

You've got the US secretary of state, Pompeo, saying: "There is no more important task of the Secretary of State than standing for Israel and there is no more important ally to the United States than Israel. There is much more work to do."

I would've thought that advancing US interests was the role of the Secretary of State. Perhaps countries like Australia or the UK (who actually fight alongside the US in wartime, unlike Israel) would be more important, valued allies. The UK doesn't make a habit of selling US technology to China. Australia doesn't undermine the nuclear non-proliferation treaty or drag the US into toxic territorial squabbles. But no, Israel gets extremely generous aid and unconditional US support, often going to development of indigenous Israeli weapons like the Merkava tank rather than just purchasing American technology.

You've got Nancy Pelosi saying things like: "If this Capitol crumbled to the ground, the one thing that would remain is our commitment to our aid…and I don’t even call it aid…our cooperation with Israel. That’s fundamental to who we are"

Who were the biggest individual political donors to Biden in 2020? Mr Sussman, Mr Simons, Ms Simon make up the top 3. All three are Jewish (Simons is the multi-billionaire founder of Renaissance capital, Sussman founded another finance company and and Simon is a real estate heiress).

Other notable spenders in the election were Bloomberg and Steyer, who ran failed electoral campaigns of their own. Steyer is half-Jewish. Bloomberg is Jewish. On the Republican side we have 'kingmaker' Sheldon Adelson, who was the largest Trump donor in 2016 and probably 2020. Jewish. We've got Uihlein, Griffin, Mellon, Ricketts & Eyechaner non-Jewish. Dustin Moskovitz, Jewish. Paul Singer, Jewish (he supported Republicans but also tried to get them to support LGBT). And then there's Soros whose exact donation figures are hard to discern due to it mostly being dodgy websites that discuss it, though probably very large if not the highest of all. Zuckerberg provided hundreds of millions for election offices, which is vaguely political. I can't believe it doesn't buy influence, especially in conditions where the format and methods used were in a state of flux due to COVID.

I observe a general trend where extremely rich Jews support Democrats and LGBT - their fortunes mostly from finance. There's Adelson who's on the other side of course. In contrast, we have gentiles who usually support Republicans and are fairly right-wing. This is from reading their wikipedia blurbs. Of the twelve 2020 megadonors CNN described as 'white', 7 are Jewish. 6.5 depending on how you class Steyer.

I think we can safely conclude that there's vastly disproportionate Jewish influence in finance, vastly disproportionate Jewish-Israeli influence in US politics. Just look at anti BDS laws, laws designed to obstruct people boycotting Israel! Despite most Americans opposing such laws, they've been passed in 35 US states. If anyone wants more proof or citations, I can provide excerpts from Mearsheimer's Isreal Lobby or provide links.

ESG was their invention.

No, it wasn't. I remember a few years back, they refused to participate in stuff like that, after most of their peers have succumbed.

I guess 'invention' is a strong word. But they were certainly ideologically committed to it, which clashed with their pursuit of profit somewhat.

https://www.reuters.com/business/sustainable-business/missouri-pulls-500-mln-blackrock-over-asset-managers-esg-push-2022-10-18/

Missouri State Employees' Retirement System had asked BlackRock to abstain from proxy voting at companies on its behalf, but the asset manager refused its demand, Fitzpatrick said. Proxy voting is done by asset management firms on behalf of shareholders.

They certainly have chutzpah, refusing to vote as customers wish.

Let's look at raw political power. Donald Trump was perhaps the biggest cheerleader of Israel of any US president. He was actually Grand Marshal of the Salute to Israel, a ritual which really sounds like something a vassal state does to show homage to its overlord. He made these rather mask-off comments about how 10-15 years ago, Israel rightfully controlled Congress and now that control is slipping. Then he went on to complain about how Jews weren't voting for him, despite doing so much for Israel when he was in office.

Cannot be more pro-Israel than George .W Bush , who used Israel as a pretext for war. At least Trump was trying to end the wars

George .W Bush , who used Israel as a pretext for war

I remember him using as pretexts for war, in order, WMDs, vague insinuations of Iraq's culpability for 9/11, fighting terrorists there so we don't have to fight them here, and democracy being on the march. I don't recall him ever naming Israel as a reason to invade Iraq. I think the notion that defending Israel's interests were the motivation came largely from looking at the backgrounds of the people who ran Project for a New American Century, and who brought that agenda with them as they accepted cabinet positions in the W. Bush's administration. Other motivations likely included some sort of ill-planned view that we'd get their oil, and some daddy issues (combination of reliving his dad's glory days in the Gulf War and avenging Saddam's attempt on his dad's life in 1993). But the Israel part wasn't spoken out loud, as far as I can remember.

One of Bush's arguments was that Hussein had a documented history of funding terrorism--specifically, providing funds to the families of dead Palestinian terrorists. "Iraq contributed to 9/11" wasn't an administration argument; they pointed to Hussain funding Palestinian terrorism and having at least diplomatic relations with AQ higher-ups, and then argued that those starting points could lead to closer collaboration in the future to the detriment of America and the West in general.

In the US, Bush's arguments were WMD, funding terrorism, and genocide/human rights abuses. At the UN, the Bush administration focused on the WMD angle, because non-proliferation of nuke/bio/chem was the strongest argument (both practically and legally) for getting one or more resolutions through the Security Council.

I'd argue that Bush was used by Israel rather than a user of Israel (though he obviously still bears enormous responsibility for the war and bringing warmongers to power). Israel had a fairly obvious interest in getting rid of Saddam Hussein - he hated them and they hated him. He fired some missiles at them in the first Gulf War. Saddam was an obvious threat to Israeli security but not American security. America is on the other side of the world to Iraq.

At a key meeting with Bush at Camp David on September 15, 2001, Wolfowitz advocated attacking Iraq before Afghanistan, even though there was no evidence that Saddam was involved in the attacks on the United States and bin Laden was known to be in Afghanistan. Wolfowitz was so insistent on conquering Iraq that five days later Cheney had to tell him to "stop agitating for targeting Saddam."According to one Republican lawmaker, he "was like a parrot bringing [Iraq] up all the time. It was getting on the President's nerves.

Israel was the only country outside of the United States where a majority of politicians and the public enthusiastically favored war. A poll taken in early 2002 found that 58 percent of Israeli Jews believed that "Israel should encourage the United States to attack Iraq."4 6 Another poll taken a year later in February 2003 found that 77.5 percent of Israeli Jews wanted the United States to invade Iraq

Philip Zelikow, a member of the president's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board (2001 - 03), executive director of the 9/11 Commission, and counselor to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice (2005 - 06) , told a University of Virginia audience on September 10, 2002, that Saddam was not a direct threat to the United States. "The real threat," he argued, is "the threat against Israel." He went on to say, "And this is the threat that dare not speak its name, because the Europeans don't care deeply about that threat . . . And the American government doesn't want to lean too hard on it rhetorically, because it is not a popular sell.

General Wesley Clark, the retired NATO commander and former presidential candidate, said in August 2002 that "those who favor this attack now will tell you candidly, and privately, that it is probably true that Saddam Hussein is no threat to the United States. But they are afraid that at some point he might decide if he had a nuclear weapon to use it against Israel." In January 2003 , a German journalist asked Ruth Wedgwood, a prominent neoconservative academic and a member of the influential Defense Policy Board (chaired by Richard Perle), why the journalist should support the war. I could "be impolite," Wedgwood said, "and remind Germany of its special relationship with Israel. Saddam presents an existential threat to Israel. That is simply true." Wedgwood did not justify the war by saying that Iraq posed a direct threat to Germany or the United States.

In mid-May, Shimon Peres, the former Israeli prime minister now serving as foreign minister, appeared on CNN , where he said that "Saddam Hussein is as dangerous as bin Laden," and the United States "cannot sit and wait" while he builds a nuclear arsenal. Instead, Peres insisted, it was time to topple the Iraqi leader

Trump himself had a rather schizophrenic foreign policy. He was supposedly trying to withdraw from the Middle East - but kept US troops in Syria to 'seize the oil'. US troops are still there today, keeping the conflict frozen and unending. He assassinated a high-ranking Iranian general, not an obviously dovish tactic. I think he was listening to hawkish, fanatically pro-Israeli voices like John Bolton. Or perhaps killing Iranian generals was just part of his general pro-Israel stance. He tore up the Iran nuclear deal as well.

I literally just cited a poll that showed broad Israeli support for the war. A bunch of US insiders admitted that it was to support Israel:

Former Senator Ernest Hollings made a similar argument in May 2004 . After noting that Iraq was not a direct threat to the United States, he asked why we invaded that country.7 "The answer," which he said "everyone knows," is "because we want to secure our friend Israel."

Hollings, Clark, Zelikow admitted it. Wolfowitz was such a warmonger he had to be restrained by Cheney of all people!

They bombed Iraq's Osirak reactor in 1981, they considered Iraq an enemy. If they could somehow get rid of him without taking on the cost themselves they'd leap at the opportunity.

In fact, Haaretz reported on February 2 6 , 2001, that "Sharon believes that Iraq poses more of a threat to regional stability than Iran, due to the errant, irresponsible behavior of Saddam Hussein's regime.

Sharon wanted Saddam toppled, along with war in Iran. There was an early period where they thought maybe the US would only fight one war and maybe they might prefer targeting Iran to Iraq but then they changed their minds. Gung ho in favor of war with Iraq.

A few weeks later, Ra'anan Gissen, Sharon's spokesman, told a Cleveland reporter that "if Saddam Hussein is not stopped now, five years from now, six years from now, we will have to deal with an Iraq that is armed with nuclear weapons, with an Iraq that has delivery systems for weapons of mass destruction.

In mid-May, Shimon Peres, the former Israeli prime minister now serving as foreign minister, appeared on CNN , where he said that "Saddam Hussein is as dangerous as bin Laden," and the United States "cannot sit and wait" while he builds a nuclear arsenal. Instead, Peres insisted, it was time to topple the Iraqi leader.

On August 12, 2002 , Sharon told the Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee of the Knesset that Iraq "is the greatest danger facing Israel

They also provided some false intelligence to the US, to go along with all the false intelligence the US and UK were producing on their own.

Haaretz, for example, ran a story on February 17, 2003, titled "Enthusiastic IDF Awaits War in Iraq," which said that Israel's "military and political leadership yearns for war in Iraq.

I personally am repulsed by this attitude. They were all gung-ho about the war others would fight, advancing their interests. But they don't send a single soldier to fight. No skin in the game.

Mearsheimer & Walt have a pretty interesting blow by blow of the ideation phase of the Iraq War starting on p233 of The Israel Lobby and US Foreign Policy:

In short, Israel did not initiate the campaign for war against Iraq. As will become clear, it was the neoconservatives in the United States who conceived that idea and were principally responsible for pushing it forward in the wake of September 11. But Israel did join forces with the neoconservatives to help sell the war to the Bush administration and the American people, well before the president had made the final decision to invade. Indeed, Israeli leaders worried constantly in the months before the war that President Bush might decide not to go to war after all, and they did what they could to ensure Bush did not get cold feet.

The Israelis began their efforts int he spring of 2002...

Cannot be more pro-Jewish than George .W Bush , who used Israel as a pretext for war. At least Trump was trying to end the wars

This was not the case. The official, public reasons of war were:

1/ WMD

2/ WMD

3/ WMD

4/ bringing freedom and democracy

5/ TL;DR legal arguments

Unsurprising. According to the NYT feat Steve Sailer, Jews obviously dominate only as University Presidents, at 56%, less so as heads of news and media companies (36-40%), and across the sample of powerful positions the NYT has gathered make up merely 13%, which given what we know about IQ disparities probably indicates systemic anti-Semitism. Consider this also an endorsed alternative to your work (in the future, please attach CSV at least, when you're talking about 414 data points and aggressively demanding a quantitative analysis).

Seriously though, I do suspect that this methodology is wrong, much like counting ML papers and SOTA results on synthetic benchmarks can create the impression that the US is lagging behind China (indeed, «The China-US AI research gap has continued to widen, with Chinese institutions producing 4.5 times as many papers than American institutions since 2010, and significantly more than the US, India, UK, and Germany combined»), while in reality not a single Chinese paper is of any consequence and Google alone, with a few dozen major papers, is running circles around the entire rest of the planet, with OpenAI and Meta in tow.

Goldman Sachs is not bigger than JPMorgan Chase, but it aggressively defines standards and pushes ethical guidelines for others to follow; it may be that David Solomon, or whatever he represents, has higher agency than Jamie Dimon. And do you seriously say that the CEO has 1/10th of the power because there are 9 more executives listed? Does Xi have 1/7th of the Standing Committee's power?

To be fair, he could have even less. Structure matters. Maybe it's like the difference between the LA Times and the New York Times: «...the Los Angeles Times, where I worked twice, for instance, was a reporter-driven, bottom-up newspaper. [...] It was a shock on arriving at the New York Times in 2004, as the paper’s movie editor, to realize that its editorial dynamic was essentially the reverse. By and large, talented reporters scrambled to match stories with what internally was often called “the narrative.” We were occasionally asked to map a narrative for our various beats a year in advance, square the plan with editors, then generate stories that fit the pre-designated line.» I suspect it's not a coincidence that Sulzbergers guard their turf so jealously while the LA Times is ran more like a regular business. (In the same vein, what is interesting about Goldman Sachs is not its current CEO but the historical predominance of Jewish executives, and the often clannish nature of their succession. GS is not merely a property).

BlackRock, meanwhile, this «industry leader in environmental, social and corporate governance» that issues moralizing letters to its clients, is not even a bank, has pitiful assets by bank standards and can mainly brag of «assets under management» ($10 trillion of them, though) and thus doesn't make it to your list with its diverse leadership.

It may work the other way around too. Like Churchill has said once, «...the principal inspiration and driving power comes from the Jewish leaders. Thus Tchitcherin, a pure Russian, is eclipsed by his nominal subordinate Litvinoff, and the influence of Russians like Bukharin or Lunacharski cannot be compared with the power of Trotsky, or of Zinovieff, the Dictator of the Red Citadel (Petrograd), or of Krassin or Radek – all Jews.» This is an unsubstantiated, qualitative judgement of a savvy well-connected operator, that no counting of raw beans could check – how do we know if Litvinoff truly was more powerful than Tchitcherin? His rank doesn't indicate that! Kushner, too, didn't outrank Trump, nor does Blinken outrank Biden, yet the former has bragged of defining Trump's policy in the Middle East (one of the few parts of Trump's presidency that have been allowed posterity) and basically running the whole show, and the latter is perhaps more influential still. And someone like Pompeo is a purebred Gentile, but his beliefs about the supernatural primacy of Israel, uhh... Ditto for Pelosi – does it matter if she isn't as Jewish as Schumer?

Now, how do we develop a proper methodology for apportioning relative power of groups in a principled way? I admit it's hard, but I think this involves what Moldbug is going on about with his reformalization. We evaluate individual actors as moved by others or actively moving them; their interpersonal relationships and their career obligations to organizations with unambiguous and hopefully self-admitted allegiances; we chart trajectories leading people from the crib to powerful positions; and thus reveal a network of influence.

Necessarily, this is going to give off crazy vibes – so nobody decent will bother. Certainly couldn't be me!

China does very well in computer vision, they lead the US there. Surely their world-leading papers are of consequence. Computer vision isn't as sexy as language models or image generation but it is still important. The Chinese aren't even that far behind the US in LLMs, they're apparently ahead of GPT-3, so only about a year behind at most.

Supposedly, they're spending significantly more on military AI than the US, despite an overall budget discrepancy. There's no shortage of STEM talent in China and they are hard-working, energetic people. I think they remain a contender. You are too blackpilled on US hegemony. Nothing yet is locked in, the dice are still in the air.

https://alexw.substack.com/p/war?sd=pf

It may work the other way around too. Like Churchill has said once, «...the principal inspiration and driving power comes from the Jewish leaders. Thus Tchitcherin, a pure Russian, is eclipsed by his nominal subordinate Litvinoff, and the influence of Russians like Bukharin or Lunacharski cannot be compared with the power of Trotsky, or of Zinovieff, the Dictator of the Red Citadel (Petrograd), or of Krassin or Radek – all Jews.» This is an unsubstantiated, qualitative judgement of a savvy well-connected operator, that no counting of raw beans could check – how do we know if Litvinoff truly was more powerful than Tchitcherin?

Well, we now know how it ended, we have the benefits of knowing that ZOG even at its strongest stands no chance against COG.

Lesson of history is: if you have a (((problem))) in your house, call the Caucasians

Lesson of history is: if you have a (((problem))) in your house, call the Caucasians

Should you, though?

I've read some Trotsky. He was an intellectual, at least; some of his views (which you have linked to) are close to mine. Yes, chutzpah, double-or-nothing, wasting the Russian people as kindling to start the global Revolution, all that's true – but would it have worked? With the benefit of hindsight we know also that Trotskyism is incapable of seizing power and easily falls to dynamics one can observe in an ordinary nerd community; it is quite likely that his brazen escapades would have culminated in a swift collapse, not unlike FTX, freeing the Northern Eurasia for some freer and nicer future. Likewise, hilariously Jewish and unbelievably extreme power grabs in Germany (e.g. the Bavarian Levien-Levine duo have not persisted, instead only priming the polity for eventual acceptance of local far-right forces, which... ended up having their own problems.

Now, Stalin was a political animal of the basest sort, a man who knew few things, but among them how to grab and not let go. Georgians provide the lion's share of ex-USSR's thieves-in-law, Stalin was the apex of the type, and the country reigned by Georgian-Mingrelian mafia was entirely deserving of the moniker «Empire of Evil» (arguably unlike the older, softer, Slavic-ran Sovok). If that is the natural antidote, is it truly better than the poison? Is «ZOG» the worst rule that can befall a people?

(Stalin was supported in his atrocities and outlived by one lesser-known Lazar Kaganovich who, according to some rumors, played part in his death, participated in an attempt to seize power in 1957, survived that, and has almost outlived the Union itself; but that's neither here nor there).

I don't understand this argument. («And they lost», as @Stefferi triumphantly puts it, but there it's expected – by Stefferi's motivated reasoning, the very fact that Kanye dared to mouth off with his death con, before getting canceled from everywhere and divested from, is evidence of the powerlessness of Jews in entertainment, so it's not surprising if eventual loss of a groups retroactively makes its period of dominance fictitious).

It is true that Russians have been historically underrepresented among the country's elite, where descendants of Northern Europeans competed with more clannish non-Slavic locals. This is nothing to be proud of, but also fairly typical in less developed countries. One can conclude that the Russian National State is sorely needed, or discuss which mix in particular was more tolerable. I believe that both «Jewish» and «Caucasian» periods of the USSR were extraordinarily ruinous, far more so than the stagnant «Slavic» period, that the «Jewish» period of post-USSR was also extremely bad, that the «Russian-Caucasian» period following it was fairly tolerable if not for its culmination in... well, this; and in general the period of dominance of elites with German heritage was not hopeless and brought Russia the closest to the bleeding edge of contemporary civilization.

If possible, I'd have swapped Germans for the French, as they themselves tried to do in spirit and education.

I've read some Trotsky. He was an intellectual, at least; some of his views (which you have linked to)

No need for top effortposter flattering ordinary pleb shitposter, but it is appreciated ;-)

are close to mine.

This famous (very unegalitarian) quote?

"The average human type will rise to the heights of an Aristotle, a Goethe, or a Marx. And above this ridge new peaks will rise."

We are closer to this shining future than even before. In today's world, all world's knowledge that dwarfs British Library of 1800's like Himalayas dwarf the molehill is available on everyone's fingertips, publishing your work of unlimited length for whole world to see is even easier, and, in developed parts of the world, sweet NEET life is possible without being born in family of bankers and lawyers, marrying into nobility and mooching off capitalist friend.

Even the most average human being could be Marx today, and there are indeed many such cases

Likewise, hilariously Jewish and unbelievably extreme power grabs in Germany (e.g. the Bavarian Levien-Levine duo have not persisted, instead only priming the polity for eventual acceptance of local far-right forces, which... ended up having their own problems.

Assuming it was even meant to "persist", see this amusing anecdote from contemporary witness

https://web.archive.org/web/20210307222730/https://twitter.com/BaruchKogan/status/1368689750664740875

https://i.imgur.com/JTGjj6m.jpg

https://i.imgur.com/khduFK8.jpg

Now, Stalin was a political animal of the basest sort, a man who knew few things, but among them how to grab and not let go.

You know this is unfair to old uncle Joe. Ordinary bandit would not feel the need of joining any revolutionary party, when he could keep his loot for himself.

Do you expect that, for example, Ramzan Kadyrov, has in his palace library of 20,000 heavily annotated volumes?

(maybe he does, maybe all the funny Caucasian hijinks are just one big ruse, and Russia and the world are for a big surprise ;-) )

I don't understand this argument. («And they lost», as @Stefferi triumphantly puts it, but there it's expected – by Stefferi's motivated reasoning, the very fact that Kanye dared to mouth off with his death con, before getting canceled from everywhere and divested from, is evidence of the powerlessness of Jews in entertainment, so it's not surprising if eventual loss of a groups retroactively makes its period of dominance fictitious).

When you are painting (((them))) as some unstoppable juggernaut, pointing that most pronounced period of dominance, one cited as example of supreme power lasted barely more than 10 years and was ended by ordinary mountain man is useful argument.

the very fact that Kanye dared to mouth off with his death con, before getting canceled from everywhere and divested from, is evidence of the powerlessness of Jews in entertainment, so it's not surprising if eventual loss of a groups retroactively makes its period of dominance fictitious).

My argument wasn't that they are powerless, of course. The argument was that they do not hold absolute power; Kanye cannot in fact be stopped from spreading his message, even if there are inefficiencies. At least if the triumphalist narratives from various antisemites I've seen hold, this is having a real effect, too.

Likewise, when it comes to the specific claim of Bolshevism as Jewish agenda, the Jews in the Soviet Union never held anything like absolute power; for a while, many important Bolsheviks were Jewish, sure, but even during this period we cannot talk of "Jewish rule", and most of the powerful Jewish Bolsheviks fell from their heights pretty much right after the Revolution, which especially in hindsight serves as more proof about the tendentious nature of their power even during the period.

Frankly, all the talk about Soviet Union under "Jewish rule" or "Caucasian rule" or even Russian Empire under "German rule" just seems like deflection from the most obvious narrative: Russian Empire, Soviet Union and the current Russian Federation have all been fundamentally Russian projects, with the reigning group, in the end, being Russians or Russified/Russianizing minorities. The same eternal Russia, just changing garbs from one to another.

At least if the triumphalist narratives from various antisemites I've seen hold, this is having a real effect, too.

Well, have they ever held? Did the «sheeple» ever «wake up» from some media imbroglio? What's the exact scenario here? I can tell what the most probable and boring one is: Kanye burning through his remaining social and financial capital and simply becoming irrelevant; some kooks following him into the depths of Q-adjacent conspiracies; his image in the public eye gradually transforming from «that rap icon with a few wacky ideas» to «that schizo antisemite who was popular for a while somehow; man, Millenials sure were gross bigots». This isn't the first time this has happened to the biggest guy in his respective arena – Ford, Disney, Fischer to name a few; probably Musk soon.

Do you happen to disagree with me and agree with triumphalist antisemites?

I think you are the one dutifully deflecting from noticing the sovereign – as befits a politician.

Russian Empire, Soviet Union and the current Russian Federation have all been fundamentally Russian projects, with the reigning group, in the end, being Russians or Russified/Russianizing minorities.

I guess that's how it must look from a de facto ethnostate.

What happens to Kanye himself is largely irrelevant. I mean, he is a schizo, both regarding his longtime erratic general behavior and the specific form of his theorizing - unless one believes that Black-Hebrew-Israeli generated narratives in general within the sphere of credible politics. The point was that even this schizo, fundamentally, cannot be stopped from spreading his point of view, and the effect seems to be rather a negative than a positive one for the Jewish community.

I guess that's how it must look from a de facto ethnostate.

One might look at it that way. From my perspective, though, all the Russian nationalist talk about "it was the JEWS who did the Soviet Union! Not us! The Jews!" just looks like fundamentally a gigantic pile of cope, a complete deflection of national responsibility.

The point was that even this schizo, fundamentally, cannot be stopped from spreading his point of view, and the effect seems to be rather a negative than a positive one for the Jewish community.

That's just a "one man's modus ponens..." type of disagreement. I am arguing that his defining characteristic that has allowed his views certain exposure is his near-unrivaled eminence as a brand name and public entertainer, not his Black Hebrew opinions one could as well get from a deadbeat with a crack pipe on a seedy back alley in Baltimore. For you it's «even this schizo cannot be stopped from mouthing off», for me it's «even this celebrity can be canceled, barely making a splash».

The reason I believe my frame is more correct is that if even this schizo could be «stopped» – that is, stopped sooner and more completely, erased from the public consciousness like Yezhov from that photo – we'd have been living in a totalitarian world, walking on tight leashes, much like Chinese businessmen for the last few years, humbled by Jack Ma's adventures. Like, I've asked you the last time – what then? If not even a batshit crazy billionaire celebrity can realistically do something like this, what's happening?

I guess the answer is something like «credible politics is happening».

From my perspective, though, all the Russian nationalist talk about "it was the JEWS who did the Soviet Union! Not us! The Jews!" just looks like fundamentally a gigantic pile of cope, a complete deflection of national responsibility

But you're not talking of nations here; and Bolsheviks were explicitly opposing Russian nationalism (which, by the way, earned them enthusiastic support of such currently anti-Communist peoples as Latvians). Do you hold Chinese nationalists to the same standard of collective ethnic responsibility? Or is escaping to an island under American patronage, instead of dissolving in Paris on the account of having no such islands around, enough to earn your pardon?

How do you think Russian Nationalists fared post-1917? Specific career trajectories, please. For example, Mikhail Osipovich Menshikov – a typical Jew-counting nationalist of the type you're ridiculing here, who was screaming bloody murder about Jews distributing anti-Tsarist agitation since early 1900's. Did he hop on the Soviet bandwagon to glorify the slightly transformed Motherland? No, he predictably got executed by a bunch of Cheka Jews (according to his wife, shot by a certain unsettlingly bloodthirsty youth called Davidson). Ilyin escaped such a fate to Switzerland. On the less effete side, what about Vrangel, Ungern, Denikin and so on?

As a movement, Russian Nationalists, whether of Russian, German, Polish or any other ancestry, did take responsibility, as well as they could, which was perhaps not well at all. They had their intellectuals, their extremist factions, their attempts to steer the discourse. First, their preferred (albeit not particularly interested in their input) regime was toppled using terrorism and propaganda, disproportionately organized by people like Gershuni and Azef and financially supported by people like Jacob Schiff; then they were defeated in the course of a civil war, in which the principal agency on the opposing side belonged to people like Trotsky. That those cerebrally inclined victors soon lost to a more primitive mafia, which in turn was supplanted by Slavs in the long run, changes little.

It can be said that vae victis, and anyway Russians en masse chose Reds over Whites. It is certainly easy to understand how neighboring nations do not give much of a fuck whether Kremlin is White or Red and hold that the only good Russian is a dead one. Nevertheless, it's clear that at the time of those events Russians en masse were ignorant apolitical peasants and frustrated workers with just about enough agency to get a clue which side promises gibs or will punish them harder for non-cooperation, and that intellectually the broader Socialist and specifically Bolshevik movement was dominated by Jews, this trend starting long before Lenin.

After all, even he discovered Das Kapital through the lecture of Moisey Mandelshtam – as told by Radek.

"Russian nationalists" is quite obviously a different thing than "Russians", just like "Jewish nationalists" (arguably a more compact name here is "Zionists") is different from "Jews". Russian nationalists, as a specific ideology, obviously didn't fare very well in the Russian Revolution and Soviet Union, but Soviet Union was still fundamentally mainly a Russian project (though, as said, often supported and advanced by Russified and Russianizinf minorities), a continuation of the previous Russian state, just as the current Russian Federation is the (direct) continuation of RSFSR, and Soviet Union more generally.

Yeah, I mean, that Churchill quote is about the worst example that one can use, since we know now that Trotsky, Zinoviev etc. would be sidelined very quickly (even before their actual fall it was not them getting their policies through in the short run, ie. before Stalin took over the show firmly - it was Bukharin, Rykov etc. who formed the majority in Politburo with Stalin implementing the NEP and the more moderate 20s foreign policy, and Stalin only turned on the Right after marginalizing the Trotsky, Zinoviev and Kamenev for good. Not exactly what I'd call a firm source of principal inspiration and driving power! Litvinov was also (during a later period, of course) used for a time for whatever purposes Stalin had and then dumped quick once his Jewishness became an obstacle to getting closer to Nazi Germany.

In general, it's the study of early Soviets that has most convinced me how tendentious the "Jew-counters" tend to get. I've seen people argue that Lenin was Jewish (according to current info Lenin might have been 1/4 Jewish, but if he was, he didn't know his roots), that Stalin was Jewish (some theory says that "Dzugashvili" comes from a word meaning Jew - it doesn't, that Bukharin was Jewish (absolutely no other reason to suspect so expect that he was a Bolshevik - yes, it's that circular), that other early firmly gentile communist figures like Engels and Karl Liebknecht were Jewish etc etc. Or people using this Putin quote as first proof that the first Soviet government was 80 % Jewish - one can actually go to Wikipedia to check the ethnicities of the members of the first Council of People's Commissars, and as far as I've been able to ascertain, only one of them was (Trotsky).

Or people using this Putin quote as first proof that the first Soviet government was 80 % Jewish - one can actually go to Wikipedia to check the ethnicities of the members of the first Council of People's Commissars, and as far as I've been able to ascertain, only one of them was (Trotsky).

BTW, to all people who complain about "Jewish control", look at Tsarist Russia.

Here is the last Tsarist government, count the names.

Yes, German names, 5 out of 16. I am too lazy to look up percentage of Germans in Russian empire and calculate the overrepresentation rate right now, but at first sight, GOG makes ZOG look like amateurs.

The difference is that you don't need to look for reasons why the Tsarist government was so bloodthirsty because it wasn't.

When you are looking over Soviet governance you have to answer the question of "why were they so downright genocidal against Russians?". Ethnic animus is one of the answers that is on the table.

1/4 Jewish

Good enough for Israeli Law of Return.

one can actually go to Wikipedia to check the ethnicities of the members of the first Council of People's Commissars,

Given the Soviet Union’s complexity and predilection for numerous layers of bureaucracy it is a difficult to quantify the number of Jews throughout senior leadership positions during and just after the revolution of 1917. Half of the top contenders in the Central Committee of the Communist Party to take power after Lenin’s health declined in 1922 – Lev Kamenev, Trotsky and Zinoviev – were Jewish. Yakov Sverdlov, the chairman of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee from November 1917 to his death in 1919, was Jewish. Born in 1885, he had joined the Russian Social Democratic Party in 1902 and became a member of the Bolshevik faction with Lenin early on. Like others of his generation he took part in the 1905 revolution. His father converted to Russian Orthodoxy.

The Central Committee of the USSR is instructive as an indicator of the prominence of Jews in leadership positions. In the Sixth Congress of the Bolshevik Russian Social Democratic Labor Party and its Central Committee elected in August 1917, we find that five of the committee’s 21 members were Jewish. This included Trotsky, Zinoviev, Moisei Uritsky, Sverdlov and Grigori Sokolnikov. Except for Sverdlov, they were all from Ukraine. The next year they were joined by Kamenev and Radek. Jews made up 20% of the central committees until 1921, when there were no Jews on this leading governing body.

Good enough for Israeli Law of Return.

But also not enough to be sent automatically to the camps in Nazi Germany (unless there were other complicating factors, of course). Why would this be the relevant criteria, again, especially - as stated - as there is no evidence that Lenin was ever aware of his Jewish heritage?

Half of the top contenders in the Central Committee of the Communist Party to take power after Lenin’s health declined in 1922 – Lev Kamenev, Trotsky and Zinoviev – were Jewish.

And they lost.

Jews made up 20% of the central committees until 1921, when there were no Jews on this leading governing body.

Which is more than expected on the basis of demography, but hardly anywhere close to anything forming a majority, or even a commanding plurality (especially considering that Jewish Bolsheviks often fought among themselves - Zinoviev and Kamenev turning on Trotsky etc.)

To me it seems that there are fairly good neutral explanations why there were more Jews than would demographically have been expected in early stages of Bolsheviks/CPSU; it was natural for Jews to gravitate to revolutionary left-wing politics in a situation where the right wing was openly antisemitic as a matter of course and centrism often meant the tacit preservation of antisemitic structures, and as an added factor Bolsheviks had a specific need for people who knew German (Yiddish would at least offer you a good basis for this) for diplomatic purposes in the early years, with many Bolsheviks of the Jewish ethnicity having prominent diplomatic roles, and also the language factor allowing many Jewish Bolsheviks to become exiles easily, benefitting from hanging around with Lenin who was also an exile. Once those factors became less relevant, the power of such people diminished rapidly, often with fatal results.

(Of course one could also argue that exactly none of them were Jewish in the religious sense, as Bolshevik Party required strict atheism of all of its members anyhow...)

(Of course one could also argue that exactly none of them were Jewish in the religious sense, as Bolshevik Party required strict atheism of all of its members anyhow...)

As the joke goes:

"What are you worried about? Your documents say 'Russian'!"

"So? They're gonna break my face, not my documents!"

(Lost in translation: the ambiguity between "hit in the face" and "hit according to the face")

...How many Russians and Russian speakers are here anyway?

Ironically the best explanation I can think of for higher Jewish agency is a rejection of the "greedy Jew" stereotype. It would be the gentile who is greedy. The Jew will not go against his own people for a dollar, and in fact puts a high monetary value on the success of his kin. The gentile can be controlled with Jewish money because the gentile is selfish, short sighted and greedy. The gentile wants more stuff and will sacrifice his kin to get it. Therefore Jews have free reign to set the culture and all the gentiles kowtow to AIPAC and ADL because they aren't willing to bear the cost of not doing so. Jews on the other hand will gladly sacrifice some profit and spend a lot of money cancelling, for instance, on of the most successful rappers ever, Kanye West, even though it would be better for business to keep making deals with Kanye.

According to the NYT feat Steve Sailer,

Inage and article linked in this tweet, cites a tweet by @PhilippusArabus who appears to have "protected" their tweets. Here is the source, archived.

The complexity of power is indeed one of the principle problems with describing and understanding it.

Kanye West was photographed holding up an image of this spreadsheet that paints a very different picture- granted it's from a different industry. But a lot of those names in red do not sound Jewish to me. I looked at a couple of them myself and verified a few that checked out. If you want to continue your analysis, you could follow-up with a random sample of the names here in red and see how many, if any, are misidentified as Jewish in order to estimate a false positive rate for this analysis. Since there is no option other than "Goy" and "Jew", I am guessing the author classified half-Jews with Red. Still, I think your methodology is probably falling short.

Edit: I found this blog post which provides a more thorough analysis with a more widely expanded "unknown" category and actually provides sources for classifications.

The irony is that left-wing Wikipedia makes it easy to know who is Jewish or not. It's often at the bottom of the wiki.

The irony is that left-wing Wikipedia makes it easy to know who is Jewish or not. It's often at the bottom of the wiki.

This is why Slavic people invented patronymics ;-)

In traditional Eastern Europe, Internet connection was unreliable, and when you couldn't verify someone's early life on Wiki, you could just check their names.

Ivan Petrovich - good. Ivan Israilevich - not so good.

Building on methodology pioneered by Azusa_Admirer88 et al. (2017) and further developed by Sailer, Steve (see bibliography pages 3-47) in this paper I argue that...

I don't know why, but you've made me really want to read an academic style Semite-Critical Theory paper.

Kevin MacDonald's Culture of Critique would be the most influential academic style treatment of "Semite-Critical Theory". It's banned on Amazon but I bought my copy online through Barnes and Noble, but it looks like it has now been removed from that merchant as well. But you can probably find it somewhere. This video provides a synopsis, but I have not watched the video myself. The book is well-sourced.

Thanks, I've always intended to read that. Sure there's a pdf available somewhere.