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PaperclipPerfector  5mo ago (text post)   28535 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of October 13, 2025

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The only remarkable thing about this post is the political valency; what is this place if not nut-picking to wage the culture war?

I can't speak for anyone else, but I certainly try not to nutpick. I thought the ethos of the place aspired to something a little grander as well.

Broad swathes of 'antisemitism' on the left can differentiate between opposing Jews and opposing Israel.

Yes; most people, if you can get them one-on-one in a relaxed social setting, will be fairly chill and generous on most political issues. However, those same people, in a march or mob, or when agitated against the outgroup (i.e., in a politically-activated state) will take much harder stances out of pure oppositional aesthetics or attitude.

Also, the "soft and reasonable" left position on Jews, whether or not in Israel, appears to be something along the line of "anything other than deracinated individualism and blank slatism rhymes with nazi and is verboten." This, I should hope understandably, comes off to many Jews and particularly Israelis as the equivalent of Ghandi's advice to the Jews of eastern europe.

The largest protests against the Israeli war in Gaza in my region were led by Jewish men in kippahs with megaphones blocking traffic.

Progressive leftism these days is as much a jewish heresy as it is a christian one - not for nothing is reform Judaism called "the Democratic Party at prayer." Truly, the monkey's paw has curled and given the right a true "judeo-christian" civilization in the form of the GAE, with its mainline protestant State Department, jewish DOJ, and mormon security service state. (said firmly with tongue in cheek).

On the other hand none of those (with the exception of the mormons) do a great job of reproducing themselves; mainline protestant churches are famously elderly, and another famous joke teaches that the way you can tell the difference between a reform and orthodox jew is that the orthodox one will have jewish grandchildren. So how "jewish" really, are these barren branches?

Antisemitism on the right rarely bothers to make the Israel/Jew distinction, particularly when it arrives at it's antisemitism via the protocols of the elders of Zion and the Great Replacement Theory and Holocaust denialism.

A much more degenerate route than the traditional "judeo-bolshevism" line, though that still has its supporters out there.

One of these flavors of antisemitism, were it to gain power, would likely cut foreign aid to Israel and boost aid to Palestine. The other would likely pogrom the US government and elites, or worse.

Honestly, I'm unclear which one is which, because a disproportionate amount of the actual anti-jewish violence in the US comes from the black nationalist and muslim side of things, which are broadly (though not exclusively) within the left/antizionist tent.

See, when this is done by people you dislike you break out the Narcissist's prayer:

That didn't happen. And if it did, it wasn't that bad. And if it was, that's not a big deal. And if it is, that's not my fault. And if it was, I didn't mean it. And if I did, you deserved it.

Also known as the Trial Lawyer's catechism.

[M]ost people, if you can get them one-on-one in a relaxed social setting, will be fairly chill and generous on most political issues. However, those same people, in a march or mob, [...] will take much harder stances out of pure oppositional aesthetics or attitude.

In other words,

A person is smart. People are dumb panicky dangerous animals and you know it.

That is why I support individualism. Erasing the self to identify only as a cell in the body of a collective is dangerous. When that group is defined by birth, such that non-members are permanently and irrevocably other, it is more dangerous. When this involves punching down rather than up, the danger reaches 'holding a neutron reflector over a plutonium core with a screwdriver' levels. (Seriously, Louis Slotin, what the expletive-deleted were you thinking?)

The problem is that people are social animals; you can't separate the individual from the group. At best, you can try to prune and restrict membership such that solidarity and assabiyah inside the group is so strong as to allow for greater space for individualism within its bounds. But, paradoxically, you can't do that by strengthening individual liberties; you have to do so by attending to the group.

assabiyah

I read the Muqaddimah recently and you're the only person I have seen use this word outside of that work. It really deserves to be more widespread.

We used to have a guy obsessed with assabiyah. IIRC he has some other, uh, proclivities that eventually got him the boot.

It was used fairly frequently here a few years ago, before falling out of favor.

Yet somehow people still can't spell it properly…

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