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naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   5647 thread views

Quality Contributions Report for December 2022

This is the Quality Contributions Roundup. It showcases interesting and well-written comments and posts from the period covered. If you want to get an idea of what this community is about or how we want you to participate, look no further (except the rules maybe--those might be important too).

As a reminder, you can nominate Quality Contributions by hitting the report button and selecting the "Actually A Quality Contribution!" option. Additionally, links to all of the roundups can be found in the wiki of /r/theThread which can be found here. For a list of other great community content, see here.

A few comments from the editor: first, sorry this is a little late, but you know--holidays and all. Furthermore, the number of quality contribution nominations seems to have grown a fair bit since moving to the new site. In fact, as I write this on January 5, there are already 37 distinct nominations in the hopper for January 2023. While we do occasionally get obviously insincere or "super upvote" nominations, the clear majority of these are all plausible AAQCs, and often quite a lot of text to sift through.

Second, this month we have special AAQC recognition for @drmanhattan16. This readthrough of Paul Gottfried’s Fascism: Career of a Concept began in the Old Country, and has continued to garner AAQC nominations here. It is a great example of the kind of effort and thoughtfulness we like to see. Also judging by reports and upvotes, a great many of us are junkies for good book reviews. The final analysis was actually posted in January, but it contains links to all the previous entries as well, so that's what I'll put here:

Now: on with the show!

Quality Contributions Outside the CW Thread

@Tollund_Man4:

@naraburns:

@Bernd:

@FiveHourMarathon:

@RandomRanger:

@Iconochasm:

Contributions for the week of December 5, 2022

@zeke5123:

@ymeskhout:

@FiveHourMarathon:

@gattsuru:

@Southkraut:

@Bernd:

@problem_redditor:

@FCfromSSC:

@urquan:

@gemmaem:

Sexulation

@RococoBasilica:

@problem_redditor:

Holocaustianity

@johnfabian:

@DaseindustriesLtd:

@SecureSignals:

Coloniazism

@gaygroyper100pct:

@screye:

@urquan:

@georgioz:

Contributions for the week of December 12, 2022

@SecureSignals:

@Titus_1_16:

@Dean:

@cjet79:

@JarJarJedi:

@gattsuru:

@YE_GUILTY:

@aqouta:

@HlynkaCG:

Contributions for the week of December 19, 2022

@MathiasTRex:

@To_Mandalay:

Robophobia

@gattsuru:

@IGI-111:

@NexusGlow:

Contributions for the week of December 26, 2022

@FCfromSSC:

@gattsuru:

@LacklustreFriend:

@DaseindustriesLtd:

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The voting on the Holocaust threads has me substantially downgrade my opinion of the voting habits of the average mottizen, I have to say. The bizarre nitpicking arguments followed by the complete failure to answer the simple question of 'well, where did all the Jews go?' makes me suspect our 'simply upvote long tracts of text' culture would see us upvote creationism in fairly short order if faced down by Duane Gish.

Not to mention that you'd expect these secret assimilated Jews to pop up during the period when the great majority of people in former Soviet Union with any potential connection to Judaism allowing them to use the Law of Return endeavored to make aliyah, or at least otherwise GTFO the rapidly redecaying ex-Soviet countries. Unless one expects that this assimilation was almost supernaturally complete, to the degree that none of the oldsters would go back to their old status and none of their kids would suddenly remember that there's a suspicious menorah in the attic or that their granddad used to speak a language that sounded like German spoken in a weird way, the assumption would just be that the Soviets indeed killed all the evacuated Jews, something - again - not shown to the required degree in any records or statistics.

Unless one expects that this assimilation was almost supernaturally complete, to the degree that none of the oldsters would go back to their old status and none of their kids would suddenly remember

One could point to Marranos and argue it can take a while for a spooked Jewish lineage to come out. 500 years. 600 years, even.

I'd say that Soviet Antisemitism is a bit exaggerated. Sure, getting Affirmative-Actioned at the entrance exam to Moscow Engineering Physics Institute and hearing racist anecdotes as you grow up might suck – but it's not literally as bad as the Spanish Inquisition.

Well, yes, that's one point of the argument that such assimilation would not have been necessary - there was no similar persecution to what drove the Marranos underground and there would in few decades be a powerful motivation to suddenly remember that you are Jewish or have at least some connection to Jewishness - the possibility of aliyah in the midst of Soviet collapse and the related uncertainties.

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