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Culture War Roundup for the week of January 9, 2023

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Anti-Semitism: It's not rocket science

The familial relationship takes certain actions of the table and requires others, even when it's bad. You may at times despise a member of your family, think their ideas or values are terrible, have had awful experiences with them... but a bridge remains despite the gaps. You probably wouldn't want him imprisoned, hanged or shot, even under pretty hostile circumstances. On a more general note, there may be countless family members who are not awful people but are simply less capable than you. If they weren't family members, you might have little to do with them and might rarely even consider them in your plans. But because they are, you do. Ethnies are partly socially constructed, but largely racially constrained families, and they contained a weakened form of the same instinct of moral obligation towards the members of the ethny. Elites from the same ethny may see their peasants as retrograde, but they don't normally arrive at the belief that these should be mercilessly crushed, or that public policy should show no concern whatsoever for their wellbeing.

Now take an ethny with a dramatically higher average IQ (10 -15 points) than the members of the society they live in. You have at once, a guaranteed factory of new revolutionary ideas; and no instinctive limiting concern for the vast majority of people who will be affected by those ideas. Now sometimes ethnies merge and form new identities. Most British, Germans, Irish and even Italian Americans eventually came to see themselves as Americans first. But the gaps between your average German and Italian are not remotely similar to the gap between your average Jew and non-Jew. This is without mentioning the massive religious elephant in the room, or the thousands of years of hostility it involved. No one wants to merge with a family that has a comparatively large percentage of loosers to the one they came from. So the Jewish ethny remains separate, and as such it's members pursue their ideological goals without any concern for the damage these impose on the host society. Naturally, eventually people get tired of this and respond with anti-Jewish measures.

Note that this theory of Jewish gentile relations requires no belief in a unique Jewish malevolence in order to arrive at the conclusion that the relationship between Jews and non-Jews will always naturally develop into hostility.

  • -17

Jesus wept.

But because they are, you do.

Not necessarily. The parable of the prodigal son hinges on the contrition of the son, not on his foolishness.

Ethnies [?] are partly socially constructed, but largely racially constrained families, and they contained a weakened form of the same instinct of moral obligation towards the members of the ethny.

Do they? How weakened? I can find plenty of examples of intra-racial snitching, backstabbing, shifting alliances, or outside allegiance. You are glossing over the step where I am supposed to find the Jews uniquely scary on this front. This is the usual demand for a "belief in a unique Jewish malevolence."

Elites...don't normally arrive at the belief that these should be mercilessly crushed,

Oh, is that so?

or that public policy should show no concern whatsoever for their wellbeing

But of course. I notice you also don't bother to demonstrate that the Jews do both those things.

a guaranteed factory of new revolutionary ideas

Ah yes, the famed revolutionary zeal of the Ashkenazim. Except when it's time to talk about Israel, and suddenly the modal Jew is a Hasidic fundamentalist and a hidebound reactionary.

no instinctive limiting concern for the vast majority of people

It may beggar belief, but some humans are capable of extending empathy--even charity!--beyond their racial group. Again, you assert that Jews must be unusually malevolent, yet do not provide your evidence.

[rambling about how Jews can't integrate]

Uh huh. The Jews that you Noticeā„¢ in our American elite sure look like they're engaging with American culture. "The enemy must be both strong and weak," I suppose.

You conclude by, yet again, forgoing evidence in favor of assertions that your enmity is "natural." Congratulations: now that you've solved the Jewish problem, you can go back to living in the woods and getting in tribal fights with bands of monkeys. Civilization is about being better than this, about breaking the defect-defect equilibrium and unlocking a world of unnatural ideas like "comparative advantage" and "law."

If anti-Semitism were rocket science, it would be far more coherent.

''' It may beggar belief, but some humans are capable of extending empathy--even charity!--beyond their racial group. '''

People are also capable of extending charity outside of their family, yet the norm for most people, most of the time, is to extend far more empathy and charity to family members than to outsiders. In fact, most people would seriously distrust a person who told them, hey I care about family members and non-family members equally.

''' Again, you assert that Jews must be unusually malevolent, yet do not provide your evidence. '''

Once again, I think that every elite group is tempted to feel contempt for those it rules, and that the vast majority of it's capacity for benevolence towards those ruled stems from ethnic identification with those ruled.

You are, of course, correct. Charity may well be applied inversely proportional to distance. I think I've seen it described as a model of concentric circles, in which the closest (and smallest) circles receive the most attention.

But that does not mean the outer circles are empty. You could have someone who cares strictly less about those outside his immediate family, yet still be able to treat with them, even respect them. I say "could," but as you observe, this is the normal state of affairs.

the vast majority of it's [sic] capacity for benevolence towards those ruled stems from ethnic identification with those ruled.

Why do you believe this?

But that does not mean the outer circles are empty. You could have someone who cares strictly less about those outside his immediate family, yet still be able to treat with them, even respect them. I say "could," but as you observe, this is the normal state of affairs.

Not sure about the original thesis, but this counterpoint ignores the ingroup/outgroup/fargroup dynamic. It is common for some of those concentric circles to include functional complete apathy and even outright hostility. The "Early Life" trope does exist, and politics is the mindkiller.

True. But then, assuming there are only three circles (family, ā€œethnie,ā€ and ā€œno instinctive limiting concernā€) isnā€™t compatible with it, either. I think OP needs to do more work to explain why everyone is in an ā€œoutgroupā€ circle and not one of the more favorable ones.

Whatā€™s ā€œEarly Life?ā€ Kind of hard to google.

Whatā€™s ā€œEarly Life?ā€ Kind of hard to google.

When you see some paleface writer, journalist, researcher, etc, condemning western civilization and white people, check the "Early Life" section of their wikipedia article. Purportedly, it will let slip their otherwise unremarked Jewish heritage. Obviously subject to massive selection effects and convenient memory loss when it doesn't hold, but it does seem to bear out more often than I would have expected.

Ahh, I see.

Itā€™s the section I checked, yesterday, when trying to see if recent newsworthy figures were suitable examples for my post...so yeah, the trope is real.

"Early Life" is the section in a person's page on Wikipedia that usually mentions if they were born in a Jewish family.