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PaperclipPerfector  1mo ago (text post)   24754 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of November 17, 2025

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You Gotta Serve Somebody

You may be a construction worker workin' on a home Might be livin' in a mansion, you might live in a dome You may own guns and you may even own tanks You may be somebody's landlord, you may even own banks But you're gonna have to serve somebody (serve somebody) Yes, you're gonna have to serve somebody (serve somebody) Well, it may be the Devil or it might be the Lord But you're gonna have to serve somebody (serve somebody)

TLDR: The most important choice you make in life is who you will choose to follow. Obedience is agency.

Earlier this week, there was a long conversation about agency and its apparent reduction, leading to my reply on the topic of how we build agency in kids. Particularly this example passage from Herodotus sparked a lot of discussion from the crowd:

When the boy was in his tenth year, an accident which I will now relate, caused it to be discovered who he was. He was at play one day in the village where the folds of the cattle were, along with the boys of his own age, in the street. The other boys who were playing with him chose the cowherd's son, as he was called, to be their king. He then proceeded to order them about some he set to build him houses, others he made his guards, one of them was to be the king's eye, another had the office of carrying his messages; all had some task or other. Among the boys there was one, the son of Artembares, a Mede of distinction, who refused to do what Cyrus had set him. Cyrus told the other boys to take him into custody, and when his orders were obeyed, he chastised him most severely with the whip. The son of Artembares, as soon as he was let go, full of rage at treatment so little befitting his rank, hastened to the city and complained bitterly to his father of what had been done to him by Cyrus. He did not, of course, say "Cyrus," by which name the boy was not yet known, but called him the son of the king's cowherd. Artembares, in the heat of his passion, went to Astyages, accompanied by his son, and made complaint of the gross injury which had been done him. Pointing to the boy's shoulders, he exclaimed, "Thus, oh! king, has thy slave, the son of a cowherd, heaped insult upon us."

At this sight and these words Astyages, wishing to avenge the son of Artembares for his father's sake, sent for the cowherd and his boy. When they came together into his presence, fixing his eyes on Cyrus, Astyages said, "Hast thou then, the son of so mean a fellow as that, dared to behave thus rudely to the son of yonder noble, one of the first in my court?" "My lord," replied the boy, "I only treated him as he deserved. I was chosen king in play by the boys of our village, because they thought me the best for it. He himself was one of the boys who chose me. All the others did according to my orders; but he refused, and made light of them, until at last he got his due reward. If for this I deserve to suffer punishment, here I am ready to submit to it." [116] While the boy was yet speaking Astyages was struck with a suspicion who he was. He thought he saw something in the character of his face like his own, and there was a nobleness about the answer he had made; besides which his age seemed to tally with the time when his grandchild was exposed.

I offered it mainly as a fun little example of boys being boys throughout human history, whether it is ten year old Persian boys playing palace, or 12 year old boomer boys playing sandlot baseball, or 14 year olds in 2002 playing D&D late into the night at scout camp; how the best and brightest rise naturally to be leaders in any of those endeavors, and this teaches boys to find their role in the group and seek to raise their status by getting better at things according to their ability. But some of our friends saw something a little darker in it:

@Bombadi said:

I would think that the latter kid shows far more agency than the first, who simply follows the rules. Now, what did the kids not named Cyrus learn from this game? Did the game make them more agentic or less? After electing the king, didn't they simply follow his commands? I would suggest that in your example you are not teaching agency to the kids. You are teaching them to fall in line and follow a strict hierarchy that once set cannot be broken. You are creating one king and a legion of servants.

@Corvos among other things said:

I'm probably being a little belligerent. It's not even that I disagree with you completely, it's just the stunning levels of naivete and smugness in that story from Herodotus (on which my own schooling was at least partially based) irritate me. Oh, you didn't kiss the boot when the big kid told you to, and then he had his mates beat you up? Clearly you aren't high-agency and are doomed to a life of sad mediocrity while we reorder our society into bronze age Persia. Let the kids treat each other however they like, all things are for the best in this the best of all possible worlds...

And my reply to first one, then both of them spiraled outward until it became entirely too large to be a reply to one small comment, so I’m branching it out.

You gotta serve somebody. Obedience and submission is the ultimate act of human agency and will. Who you choose to obey and what you choose to submit to is what decides who you are and how you live your life, for good and for ill. An effort to avoid serving anyone, to be totally free of obligation or obedience, is a life thwarted, stunted, never to grow to its possible power.

Cyrus was not the only one displaying agency here, all the boys were displaying their agency, except the son of Artembares who was displaying cowardice and weakness. The boys got together, decided on a set of rules, elected a leader, and followed the orders of their chosen leader. They all used their will collectively to imbue their chosen leader with power, to make their chosen rules the rules, and make that will a reality. That is the essence of agency: organizing amongst themselves to work together, and choosing a leader who will work most effectively towards those goals.

And they could not have chosen better. We hear nothing of these boys in the future, to my recollection. But if they maintained their relationship with Cyrus after he became Great King, if he remembered their loyal service in their youth, then they were set for life. The spoils of Cyrus’ empire would have flowed into their coffers, they would have been Satraps and Generals, lords over peoples and estates. They would have pillaged Babylon, Lydia, Egypt, Ionia, Phoenicia. They would have had rich and beautiful wives of noble family, their sons would have been great princes and nobles.

Those who were cruel to the young Cyrus were luckier if he forgot them. The son of Artembares, he displayed not agency but weakness. He chose the game to start, he chose Cyrus, then he hesitated, he lacked the courage to commit, he tried to change horses midstream and wound up all wet. Rather than abide by the rules that he and his peers had organized together, rather than live in the world conjured by their own collective will, he tried to run to his daddy and get bailed out. He’s lucky if he was simply forgotten when Cyrus was Great King.

The choice of who to follow determine our lives. Man is at core a political animal, “apes together strong,” how we choose to organize ourselves determines our power and our ability, and who we choose to align ourselves with determines how far we rise. Whether we are ancient Persians choosing to follow a king, Romans choosing a Consul, Israelites choosing a Rabbi who claims to be the Messiah, soldiers choosing how to follow orders from an officer, citizens choosing sides in a civil war, students choosing which professor to try to seek mentorship from*, choosing a boss to follow or a business partner to work with or a company to dedicate our efforts to building, a young athlete determining to listen to everything the coach or the team captain says, a woman choosing a husband, an investor choosing a startup to go all-in with, a man picking a religion or a political party. We all gotta serve somebody.

Agrippa was the childhood friend of Augustus, he chose to follow Augustus at a time when it was not an easy choice to remain loyal and his loyalty made him a great man whose name and story I remember off the dome. The Apostles of Jesus and the Companions of the Prophet and the Sravakas of the early Sangha all became great men, great religious leaders, saints, because they saw a man worthy of loyalty and remained loyal. Lafayette and Hamilton submitted themselves to Washington when they joined the Continental Army. Ringo and George became gods following John and Paul around.

Every Billionaire makes many millionaires, some make other billionaires! Wozniak would never have been a household name if he had refused to follow Jobs. Ballmer would never have bought the Clippers (and gotten into trouble for breaking the salary cap rules) without the money he earned working with Bill Gates. Musk, Thiel, Bezos, and Huang have all made many of their friends and compatriots and early employees rich. The great coaches across sports spawn sprawling family trees: Bellichek and Saban famously demanded total dedication and loyalty from their assistants and players, but dozens of their assistants and former players have become great head coaches in their own right today. You’re much more likely to get rich by choosing the right guy to partner with or to work for than you are to get rich by founding the company yourself.

And you can choose wrong, with dire consequences. Think of those who chose to follow Benedict Arnold instead of George Washington. Think of those who backed Pompei over Caesar. Think of those zealots who aligned with Judas Iscariot over Jesus Christ. Think of those who backed and dedicated their lives to the vision at WeWork or at Theranos, instead of Tesla or OpenAI. You gotta serve somebody.

For most people, most of the time, agency is in choosing who to follow, who to take orders from, what orders to take. Choosing who to submit to in marriage is the most important decision most people make in their personal lives, and choosing to punt the decision and never marry is an equally important and life-deciding choice. Whose treatises and manifestos do you read? What political party do you sign up for? What candidate do you vote for? Who do you work for? Who do you give your money to? This is what agency looks like.

Coming off @Thoroughlygruntled ’s reply from the prior thread bringing up the Boy Scouts as a vehicle for boys to “go into the woods and throw rocks at each other” and thus build agency, and returning to kids for a moment. What I see as the truly great aspect of Boy Scouts is that if an average boy remains in the scouts from 11 to 17, he will go through every phase of the troop. He will join as an 11 year old, working to make Tenderfoot, and he will be in the bottom group of 11-12 year olds who are basically useless to the troop, who need to be shown how to do anything, who can’t keep up on hikes and their backpacks are taken up by the stronger older boys, who need to be protected from others and from themselves, who will need to be closely supervised when doing any task. The 11-12 year old looks to the older boys for help and guidance with everything, for leadership and mentorship, and they learn to listen to the older boys. Then they’ll grow up, get their First Class badges, and they’ll be in the middle group of kids, 13-15, who are basically self-sufficient and competent, who can be trusted with basic tasks like building a fire or pitching the kitchen tarp. They’ll become responsible members of the troop, trusted to handle themselves and expected to do what the 16-17 year olds tell them, and to instruct the 11-12 year olds. Then they’ll grow a few years older, and the older boys they grew up with will graduate and leave the troop, and they will become the older boys, the troop leaders, the 16-17 year olds. They’ll become the Senior Patrol Leaders and ASPLs and Quartermasters that the younger boys rely on for guidance and support. They’ll become the older kids guiding the younger boys. Boy Scouts is one of the few remaining organizations that delivers that kind of clear life advancement over time for kids.

Or at least it was. I had this argument many times with people about admitting girls to the Boy Scouts. It’s not that I think girls can’t enjoy or benefit from mostly the same program and activities that Boy Scouts runs, it’s that the moment you insert 12-17 year old girls into the group, it can no longer be self governing. Nobody wants to see a 17 year old senior patrol leader “guiding” a 13 year old girl without close adult supervision, and once you add close adult supervision the entire vision is destroyed. Who knows if my sons will be able to benefit from scouting, if they’ll ever get Eagle or get voted into the Order of the Arrow like their old man.

But I hope, whether it is in scouting or elsewhere, that they’re able to learn to obey and to lead. One cannot truly be capable of one without the other. Someone who cannot listen cannot give orders, someone who cannot give orders can’t really listen. We all give orders or take them in greater or lesser degrees as our talents provide in the Great Chain of Being, but we all gotta serve somebody.

*One of the reasons “Mentor” and “Mentorship” have become degenerate buzzwords rather than live concepts is that we do such a bad job of teaching young people how to be proteges. Mentorship isn’t a one way street, wherein your mentor altruistically imparts knowledge and favors onto a young subordinate in exchange for nothing. Rather, the protege must demonstrate his value. This can be that the protege demonstrates his simple talent: one day he will be important, and that will reflect well upon his mentor as well as put him in a position to dispense favors to his mentor in his turn. It may be doing favors or tasks for his mentor. It may be willingness to take the fall, take the blame, take the bullet for his mentor when necessary. But it will certainly involve loyalty and obedience. Choosing a person within an organization to be loyal to is a key part of advancing in any hierarchy, whether it’s a sports team or the Boy Scouts or a corporation or a police department or a courthouse or a military. However meritocratic a bureaucracy may purport to be, who you know is always important. Without the loyalty of the protege, the mentorship is meaningless, just an endless series of networking lunches.

Good post.

And they could not have chosen better. We hear nothing of these boys in the future, to my recollection. But if they maintained their relationship with Cyrus after he became Great King, if he remembered their loyal service in their youth, then they were set for life. The spoils of Cyrus’ empire would have flowed into their coffers, they would have been Satraps and Generals, lords over peoples and estates. They would have pillaged Babylon, Lydia, Egypt, Ionia, Phoenicia. They would have had rich and beautiful wives of noble family, their sons would have been great princes and nobles.

This is explored in the ending of Xenophon's Education of Cyrus, and forms the core of Xenophon's argument against monarchy, actually. Xenophon argues that what Cyrus did was take the best men of his people, lead them in glorious asabiyyah to ruling a great empire- and then what? What Cyrus has to do, once becoming Great King, is to make his friends worse men. He has to play them off against each other, he has to reduce their formidable wills, he has to effectively castrate the excellence and will to power that made these men worthy friends. Even the greatest king cannot be truly good to his friends, no matter how many satrapies he gives them, because he has to stay on top.

There is something to your broader point, but...

The most important choice you make in life is who you will choose to follow. Obedience is agency.

Choose is doing a lot of work there. In the anecdote you give:

The other boys who were playing with him chose the cowherd's son, as he was called, to be their king. He then proceeded to order them about some he set to build him houses, others he made his guards, one of them was to be the king's eye, another had the office of carrying his messages; all had some task or other. Among the boys there was one, the son of Artembares, a Mede of distinction, who refused to do what Cyrus had set him. Cyrus told the other boys to take him into custody, and when his orders were obeyed, he chastised him most severely with the whip.

Rather than abide by the rules that he and his peers had organized together, rather than live in the world conjured by their own collective will,

Did this boy choose Cyrus? Actively, willfully? Or did he 'choose' in the sense that I 'choose' to pay my taxes because something something Social Contract means that a big man will hit me with a stick if I don't? 'Collective will' so often imitates that Fuentes line: 'your body, my choice'. Cyrus was a tyrant who didn't give a single shit about your 'choices', and we can tell because when that boy does make an active, willfull choice, Cyrus has him beaten.

How many choices does one need to be offered before it is a choice, in your opinion?

Meta, but I also just wanted to thank you for responding to criticism with a proper well-written top-level post. I'm dubious on a decent chunk of the actual argument but good-faith, constructive responses to disagreement are not so common.

Cheers. What I enjoy about this place is when criticism causes me to learn more about my own hot-takes, I knew Teddy's history in my head but talking to you caused me to look up the passage in his autobiography, and it turned out the story was far more on-point than I realized. My opinion on the topic is deeper as a result.

Happy to be of service. Note that Teddy's original turn towards the strenuous life and deliberate weightlifting was prompted by his father though (at least as relayed in The Rise of Roosevelt by Edmund Morris, strong recommend). His father basically told him flat out that he had a brilliant mind, but that it would do him no good unless he built bodily strength to match, which Teddy assented to.

At least 2, of which one cannot be 'I punish you harshly for not choosing the other'.

It’s not that I think girls can’t enjoy or benefit from mostly the same program and activities that Boy Scouts runs, it’s that the moment you insert 12-17 year old girls into the group, it can no longer be self governing.

I believe most scout troops (age 12-17) are still single-sex. There are some pairs of boy and girl troops that meet at the same time, but where I've seen this the young girls seem to be much better at taking charge of things (girlboss memes?) and there doesn't seem to be any pressure on the boys to step up and actually lead, which despite cultural memes doesn't actually seem to be something little boys want to do without a leadership vacuum or adult prompting. Most troops seem to still be single-sex in practice, but this may somewhat depend on your area.

It's a little more complicated than that. There are single sex troops, but that also alters a lot of events where both male and female troops will be necessary. The troop level is only relevant for the weekly meeting and for troop-only events. If scout summer camp or high adventure camps admit both male and female troops, then that event is co-ed. If the local church has a boys and a girls troop and they hold camping trips together, if the local council jamboree or civil war reenactment event has both boys and girls, local Order of the Arrow, etc. Then each of those events becomes co-ed, and advanced adult supervision becomes necessary, and kid independence becomes lessened.

Venture scouts have existed for a long time, but there's a reason they start at 14 instead of 11.

I believe the Boy Scouts require their troops to be single sex, for obvious reasons relating to liability and chaperoning policies.

Troops, yes. They already have had other types of co-ed units: Venturing (age 14-21) and Cub Scouts (elementary school), for example. The chaperoning policies include a semi-annual multi-hour training course for adults.

Those who were cruel to the young Cyrus were luckier if he forgot them. The son of Artembares, he displayed not agency but weakness. He chose the game to start, he chose Cyrus, then he hesitated, he lacked the courage to commit, he tried to change horses midstream and wound up all wet. Rather than abide by the rules that he and his peers had organized together, rather than live in the world conjured by their own collective will, he tried to run to his daddy and get bailed out. He’s lucky if he was simply forgotten when Cyrus was Great King.

Why? How great would Cyrus have been if he operated simply on lizard brain tit for tat?

When the Armenians rebel against their master the Medes, the Medes send Cyrus to pacify them. Cyrus wins, but the Prince of Armenia argues that Cyrus should spare the life of his father the king, because this will be so over-the-top unexpectedly nice that his father will be a more grateful and helpful vassal than anyone else Cyrus could put in his place. Cyrus agrees and the Armenians are loyal to him forever.

The difference between a great king and your common Crip is that the great king understands that there's more to life than getting even.

Not to mention that choosing to rebel is also a choice. Better to reign in hell, etc etc.

Not to mention that choosing to rebel is also a choice. Better to reign in hell, etc etc.

The most agentic angel in Milton isn't Satan, it is Abdiel, the one angel who is present when Satan incites rebellion in heaven but chooses to be loyal.

Have we wrapped around to "agency is doing as you're told"? Running and telling Father about the rebellion is worse than what Artembares' son did.

Agency is as much having the ability to do what you're told as having the ability to not do what you're told. An individual who can't follow instructions, who can't cooperate with others, who chafes under any guidance, who rebels against any authority, lacks any agency just as much as someone who can never act against the crowd.

So what you're saying is, if Satan didn't rebel you'd think he was high agency?

Whose instructions did Cyrus, your high agency wunderkind, follow? Or is the top dog the only one in the chain with no agency, and all the goons high agency?

I like your post overall but this jumped out at me:

Every Billionaire makes many millionaires, some make other billionaires! Wozniak would never have been a household name if he had refused to follow Jobs.

And Jobs would've been nothing without Wozniak. It was a partnership, not one man following another. They needed each other equally - without Wozniak, Jobs is a sales guy without an interesting product, and without Jobs, Wozniak is a tech guy with a killer product but without the ability to convince people of its utility.

It was one sentence in a comment, so obviously I'm condensing the complexities of a relationship that was told in movies and books so long and boring that people gave them to me as gifts because they know I love long boring books.

But I do think there is some truth to it. Wozniak is arguably more responsible for the existence of Apple than Jobs in terms of technical innovation, in the same way that Agrippa is arguably more responsible than Augustus for winning the wars that put Augustus into power. Woz was the brains, but Jobs was always the public leader and visionary out of the two, even back to the days when they were selling Blue Boxes to scam telephone companies. Woz' decision to follow Jobs in his vision is the difference between Woz' likely outcome of a modestly wealthy tech worker bee in California, and being worth hundreds of millions of dollars and having a name I know. Agrippa would have been a talented Roman general regardless of who he chose to follow, but I wouldn't know his name if he hadn't followed Augustus.

A partnership naturally involves some degree of submission of one's own will to the partner, whether in a marriage or a corporation. But forming a partnership is a greater act of agency than going it alone and never making anything great.

Cyrus was not the only one displaying agency here, all the boys were displaying their agency, except the son of Artembares who was displaying cowardice and weakness.

Taking this apocryphal story at face value, Artembares clearly displayed agency by refusing to obey. The argument that he agreed to the rules and helped elect the "king" and then refused to go along seems a little suspicious and convenient; one would suspect something else happened that made him say "Nah," but to call refusing to go along with the crowd a lack of agency is quite a weird argument. Yes, you gotta serve someone (in some sense), but refusing to serve a particular person is a choice.

Arguably running to daddy to complain is cowardly and weak. But if instead he'd knocked Cyrus in the dirt, I don't think you'd be saying he lacked agency.

to call refusing to go along with the crowd a lack of agency is quite a weird argument. Yes, you gotta serve someone (in some sense), but refusing to serve a particular person is a choice.

I define Agency, inasmuch as we are describing a virtue, as something a little nobler than a deadbeat dad. Agency isn't just lack of discipline, it isn't just doing what you want when you want to, it isn't just "if it feels good, do it." A person who starts something but can't finish it is clearly lower agency than someone who finishes what they start. Giving in to the temptation to quit easily over every unpleasantness is a lack of agency.

Two kids join a baseball team. One does the bare minimum of showing up to practices, goes through the motions of the drills, then refuses to play the outfield and tells the coach that he refuses to play any position except shortstop or pitcher. The other shows up early to practice and stays late because he wants to do his best in every drill, practices as hard as he can, and goes wherever the coach tells him whether it is second base or right field or shortstop because he just loves baseball and wants to get into the game.

Which, in your view, is a higher agency kid?

That's an easy setup with an obvious answer. But "Obey the little shit who got elected as our sandlot 'king' no matter how tired you get of this game" is not showing agency, persistence, or drilling and practice. It's just being a submissive bootlicker.

Is there an obvious answer to to that setup? One of the kids loves baseball and seems to enjoy every part of the practice, the other kid's maybe only there because the authority figures in his life are forcing him and does the bare minimum to not get in trouble. We don't get any insight whatsoever into the first kid's agency, and the lack of more open defiance from the second could show a lack of agency, but then that would be counter to FHMs larger point. (Which I think is nonsense, tbf. His entire post seems to be "agency=good, therefore the action that lead to the best outcome must have been the highest agency".)

I think the connection between the two setups is that the lazy and annoying kid who refuses to play right field or be in the band if he isn't lead singer or play DnD if he isn't DM, he will always insult the other kids by saying that they are

not showing agency, persistence, or drilling and practice. [They are] just being a submissive bootlicker.

This is the universal cry of the burnout too lazy to study calculus, the kid who doesn't want to be on the football team if he has to do two-a-days, the guy who never makes progress in the gym because he doesn't want to stick to a program, the unemployed loser insulting his brother who just made VP at the bank. There's a balance between the two, Agency as a virtue means a moderation of willfulness and submission, having the strength to endure unpleasant things to get what you want, and the strength to choose what it is you want.

I guess we're both projecting our own version of what the setup and rules for ancient Persian and Mede kids playing "Palace" would be, and determining the outcome based on our vision.

But surely you can see my point here, that refusing to play isn't inherently more agentic than choosing to play, and that in many cases the individual who "takes his ball and goes home" is in fact less agentic than one who endures discomfort or a less than ideal situation to keep up with something they want to do?

But surely you can see my point here, that refusing to play isn't inherently more agentic than choosing to play

Nor is choosing to play inherently more agentic than refusing to play. You can choose not to play. And if that means breaking commitments or you choose not to play because it was too hard, perhaps that speaks poorly of your character. But--

Agreeing to make some other kid "king" is not a commitment as binding and serious as joining a sports team or signing up for calculus or agreeing to start a workout program. The scenario you (Herodotus) present is that some kids made Cyrus king for a day, one kid got sick of it, and you argue that he was wrong to get tired of the game. He should have continued bowing and scraping until Cyrus said the game was over, dammit! Again, I think "running to daddy" was the weak part, not when he got tired of calling Cyrus king. But Cyrus responded to some kid not respecting his "authority" by getting the other kids to gang up on him and beat him, and you (Herodotus) praise him for this!

You are presenting one principle ("You should choose your commitments and stick to them") but supporting it with an entirely different argument ("You must be obedient and you may not change your mind").

I honestly find your entire argument rather baffling. "You gotta serve somebody" is a truism that sounds profound on the surface, but essentially you're saying "Choose your master and obey him." Herodotus presents this as an anecdote about how awesome and naturally kingly young Cyrus was. Not being enamored of kings, or the concept of any man being "born to rule" (and others born to bend the knee), I don't know what to make of your ode to submission except that I reject the premise. We all serve someone, willingly or not. We don't have to make a virtue of it.

Let's take a closer to home example of self-organized play then: is the poster on theMotte who lashes out at the moderators and refuses to play by the rules more or less agentic than the poster who abides by the rules and advocates for their position?

TheMotte is actually a pretty good example of what I'm talking about, when I think about it. We respect those who demonstrate their worth, their skill and charisma, often if they are interested they end up as mods, they're in a position to change some of the rules if they want to enough. Those who lash out and can't handle the rules, they flame out, they don't have any impact.

The Motte equivalent of Artembares is someone who decides we suck and leaves (and then goes to whine about us on reddit). We can't actually keep people here who decide they don't want to play anymore.

Or if you want to compare Artembares to the guy who lashes out and gets banned - yes, he is being agentic and he's quite entitled to decide he doesn't want to follow the rules. And we're entitled to ban him.

That's where I disagree, I don't think the people who come here and then lash out are agentic. I think they are slaves to their own passions, incapable of agency because they can't operate within the rules. What amazes me about this place is the people who get banned and come back and get banned again. They clearly want to be here, but the moment a rule offends their delicate sensibilities they lash out and ruin it for themselves. Over and over.

I don't look at such a person and see a wild stallion who can't be tamed, an electric centaur with the true spirit of freedom in their breast. To me such a person is a slave, lacking in agency, they can't do the things they want to do because they are too chained to their own feelings.

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We followed the man because he embodied the virtues of office that effect the manifestations of success within ourselves, and we replaced the man with tbe office hoping that virtue can be embedded within the wall and text like words of power. Modern failure is due to the office being sacrosanct and the selection of men to enter such offices is done by chicanery crookery or chance. The corner office is degraded by the incompetent holding it as his own, but the failure is to let the incompetent drape himself in the trappings of virtues rewards without the work. The gatekeeper to the doors of office are what maintain or degrade the virtues desired, and when the office is hollowed then other offices are made to do what is necessary without the gatekeeper being present.

The great man and great leader works fantastically for small group organization where personal affect can be sustained, but it fails to scale horizontally or linearlly past death. Old boy networks held the line when mass labour mobilization and consolidation let in incompetents, but those networks had to be hidden, impossible in modern digital communication.

Right now the gatekeepers are the masters of the offices and the great men are replaced by what the gatekeepers deem relevant. With the rewards still accruable to the islands of competence, what incentive is there for greatness to subject themselves to the struggle session of gatekeeping proles or bureaucratized academica? The obvious problem is that the system as a whole rots, but thats the fault of the system for ennobling asskissers and tokens.

Our modern childish individualism sees people as complete and perfect, needing no training or education at all. We are taught to resist and subvert legitimate authority, and submit to the opinions of strangers on the internet.

How much of our educational idiocy is downstream of the inability of teachers to command the respect and attention of their students?

How much of our criminal idiocy is downstream of the resistance of large sections of the public to basic enforcement of the laws?

How much of our political idiocy is downstream of the unwillingness of our ruling class to support the government they control?

Ultimately, we all spend our lives on what we find important. We follow the rules we must to get where we want to go. We all serve, we are all limited. Freedom is not the lack of restriction, it is the choice of restriction.

We are taught to resist and subvert legitimate authority, and submit to the opinions of strangers on the internet.

One might note that "legitimate authority" hasn't exactly covered itself with glory recently.

If it's "legitimate" then we wouldn't be taught to resist it, now would we?

What happens when Groypers start attending your church?

I've seen (in real life even!) blue-tribe immersed evangelical leaders bemoan the lack of religious interest in the side of America they see. Our churches have largely pandered to the "wider culture" (typically center-left leaning) without realizing that there is a burgeoning counter-culture that signals great interest in traditional religion. When they do realize there is such a counter-culture, they condemn it.

The most recent example is the the much-ballyhooed Fuentes-Carlson interview. The David Frenchs of the world signaled their great distaste. The very-online dissident right was mostly pleased. As I have never heard Fuentes speak before, I decided to listen to the entire interview. What surprised me most was how much both Carlson and Fuentes talked about Christianity. I had not known Fuentes claimed to be religious. (As an aside, the interview did nothing to convince me that Fuentes holds any deep convictions, much less genuine Christian faith). (As another aside, it turns out I am more "extreme" in my religious views than Fuentes: conditioned on him being religious I would have expected him to be to my right [insert "that awkward moment" meme]). If Fuentes continues to treat Christianity as a key part of his identity, his followers will start showing interest in the Church.

I'm not the only one who has noticed. There are other (near-dissident) leaders in the evangelical world who are looking to engage with the wayward, but seeking, young right. The pastor Michael Clary has written several posts either arguing for reaching the right or directly appealing to the dissident right. While less than eloquent (and with some boomer-like mannerisms), Mark Marshall explicitly recommends engaging with Groypers. Even conservative stalwart Kevin DeYoung has started to use language that appeals to the dissident right without outright condemning it (though he has engaged with dissident right ideas in the past).

But, by and large, our churches have been conditioned to be "salt and light" to a left-leaning world. We know how to deal with a blue-haired lesbian. Even conservative/orthodox churches can show the love of Christ to the wayward left. Be winsome, win them for Christ, and let sanctification come later (if it happens at all!). But our churches are not at all prepared for a young, irreverent to cultural norms, Christian Nationalist man who is interested in tradition and yearning for something more meaningful than a Ted-talk and a rock-concert on a Sunday.

And come they will, especially if the church is little-o orthodox, especially if it is traditional, and especially if proscribes female leadership. We shall soon see how tolerant our churches actually are. We are told we must show love to the sinners to our left. Let us see whether we show the same love to sinners on our right.

For the first time in decades Christianity has the aesthetics of cool. Rather than try and stuff progressivism into the skinsuit of the Church, why not embrace it?

Sure, their faith is superficial, but I came into my faith for similarly superificial reasons. I wish to be strong, I wish to be valiant: I wish to be a knight in the service of God to slay dragons. That same motivation that converted the warrior pagans of the Franks, Germans and Visigoths is born again. Is that so wrong?

You don't need to look at Groypers for this.

I'm going to blatantly shill for a youtube channel I'm rather fond of; Effective Purpose, whom if I had to describe to other people, I'd say he was a Married, Christian Hoe Math.

I'm not joking.

The thing I find most interesting about him is that, despite his professed Christianity(and he certainly comes across as spiritual, though I suppose that could be my bias in action), he does not spare the rod nor spoil the child when it comes to criticism of things he finds need to be criticized; From the Church itself, to Church leadership, to women, and even Christian Women as a whole, noting that the entire 'TradCath' path toward acquiring a woman is just another pig and poke due to various reasons(which he then goes into).

He's done a video about what you talk about; How other things in the past(and in the current day), men will flock to the church in times of trouble and promptly leave for various reasons(see above).

So. Perhaps I'm a bit of a pessimist, but I don't see any influx of Groypers to have any long-term influence. If anything, the real danger will be excactly that; they move into the church, find the above, and then promptly move onto something that will satisfy thier need without any sense of restraint or stricture.

pig and poke

Pig in the poke (poke == sack)

Wiki:

"Starting in the 19th century, this idiom [buying a pig in a poke] was explained as a confidence trick where a farmer would substitute a cat for a suckling pig when bringing it to market. When the buyer discovered the deception, he was said to "let the cat out of the bag", that is, to learn of something unfortunate prematurely,[3] hence the expression "letting the cat out of the bag",[4] meaning to reveal that which is secret.[5] The French idiom acheter (un) chat en poche and the Dutch een kat in de zak kopen and also the German die Katze im Sack kaufen (all: to buy a cat in a bag) refer to an actual scam of this nature, as do many other European equivalents, while the English expression refers to the appearance of the trick.[5] The English idiom "sold a pup" refers to a similar con.[6] Other variations include "buy a fish in water" (Arabic), "buy a cow on another mountain" (Chinese), "buy in a closed box" (Italian) and "buy a cat instead of a hare" (Iberian languages).

I don't disagree that societies expectations of women are low, or that society is explicitly and institutionally biased towards women. What does he advocate for beyond preaching from the pulpit that women should lower their standards?

You could look at his videos he's done on this topic, if you care to.

I don't think he's advocating any single golden ticket solution(wise, as I belive there is none), but I think he does a valuable service of pointing out where male leadership is failing at leading men.

As a general retort, directed against no one in particular concerning the gatekeeping rhetoric I usually see around this topic:

There's a historically consistent delusion of Christians believing they are always at the center of Christianity, which always happens to be right here, right now, exactly where they are, leaning towards exactly what they happen to think. Which lends them the power to feel justified to gatekeep many matters of moral and philosophical significance, including Christianity and the church, from outgroup outsiders.

In reality the modal church of 100-200 years ago is so far removed from the modern modal church that there is no real reason to comparatively consider anyone Christian today. Which speaks to the fact that the church is not Christianity, it's the people. Insofar as there will be an influx of church going young men, they will change the church. Insofar as there are groups of people claiming to represent Christianity in the defense of their church and the inevitable change that is coming, they have no firm ground in proclaiming they are doing so as a Christian.

To that extent I'd wish for church leaders and gatekeepers to recognize that this has nothing to do with Christianity. Church politics are people politics. And the people are in a proxy ethnic culture war. There's nothing a pastor can say to a young man that will faze or enlighten him. They've been hooked up to technology far superior to an echo-y sermon. The church is a platform for organization. The church is at war for its life because of a culture war. Take these people and facilitate them and their beliefs towards something useful. It's a conflict the church needs to fight, and it's a fight these people want to join.

On a sidenote, how far removed are the groypers in opinion from Father Coughlin? Will anyone claim to be more Christian than him? Well, you have a few like those coming in. Less intelligent and erudite, but their heart seems to find the same place. To that extent it's hard to gatekeep those who are more similar in spirit to those who came before you than you are. Lamenting that they are not like the Christian church goers of today is hypocritical to say the least.

In reality the modal church of 100-200 years ago is so far removed from the modern modal church that there is no real reason to comparatively consider anyone Christian today.

I honestly don't understand what you mean by this. There are creeds from more than a thousand years ago that Christians today still hold to - those are what have traditionally been used to gatekeep Christianity, and churches today still hold to them.

Obviously a lot of cultural things have changed (for instance, we speak English now and dress funny) but (to pick a random culture war issue) one of the earliest Christian texts (the Didache) specifies that Christians are not to commit abortion: this is a stance the largest church in the world (the Catholic church) still agrees with, and the largest Protestant denomination, at least in the United States, also agrees with it!

To maybe bring it home just a bit: [as per Wikipedia, I don't think this is controversial] the big fight between the fundamentalists and the modernists in American Protestantism started in the mid-1800s when higher criticism crossed over from Europe and really blew up in the 1920s (so: 100 years ago). By the way, whenever you see people talk about mainstream Protestantism versus evangelical or fundamentalist Protestantism, this is essentially what they are nodding at: the mainstream Protestant denominations (that are currently in decline) were the ones were the modernists won - a fight so important that 100 years later it is still referenced in e.g. Pew's polling. This clash of worldviews prompted a guy named Bob Jones to found a university (Bob Jones University); established in 1927. A guy named Billy Graham (b. 1918; d. 2018) attended Bob Jones (before transferring). And as it happens, so did the pastor of the church I went to last Sunday.

At least in the United States, then, not only would Christian time-travelers moving backwards and forwards in time 100 - 200 years be able to understand each other and have theological conversations from shared texts such as the creeds and Scripture, and not only would they largely find that people in their denominations agreed with them on important matters such as what constituted a Christian, what was necessary for salvation, what was and was not sin, etc., but the time-travelers from 100 years ago would find that people today are studying the writings of their contemporaries and they would find that the institutions that they had created were absolutely instrumental in shaping the landscape of 21st century America. They would find that the pastors and preachers went to the institutions that they created because they shared their theological convictions. And if they went to those institutions, they would probably find people they knew teaching there, or if not, people who had learned from those they had taught.

I don't recall if you're American; maybe you aren't and your experience is different. But where I am, the church politics of 100 - 200 years ago are still very much alive, and the doctrines and creeds that are taught go back much further.

I honestly don't understand what you mean by this. There are creeds from more than a thousand years ago that Christians today still hold to - those are what have traditionally been used to gatekeep Christianity, and churches today still hold to them.

It is not hard to understand. "Modal Christians" of pre modern trad age were not theologians, but illiterate peasants who never heard about any "creeds" and practiced their faith mixed with various village traditions and superstitions (often extremely unchristian).

Unless you are descended from unbroken line of scholars (it there ever was such thing in the West), your ancestors were not studying works of Saint Thomas, your ancestors were doing rituals to protect themselves from elves, goblins and leprechauns and were venerating saintly dog to help their sick children.

This is how real trad life looked like, and it is irretrievably lost.

(it was more tenacious you would expect. Cult of Saint Guinefort outlived French kingdom, two empires and three republics, all efforts of church and school failed to uproot it, and succumbed only to electric power, radio and television).

See also this old twitter thread with rather downer description of East European trad village (seen then as most Christian part of the world).

It is not hard to understand. "Modal Christians" of pre modern trad age were not theologians, but illiterate peasants who never heard about any "creeds" and practiced their faith mixed with various village traditions and superstitions (often extremely unchristian).

Even if this is true (and I suspect it's greatly overstated: the Christian of the past you describe, far from never hearing about any creeds, could probably recite the Nicene creed from heart because he learned it during Mass, albeit in Latin), this has no bearing on the post I was responding to. In my country even 200 years ago the majority of citizens could read.

Furthermore, there's a category error in measuring modal by time rather than population. Thanks to population growth, the modal Christian by population - which is the correct way of measuring a the most frequent number - is actually much closer to the megachurch than to the medieval mass than one would think. Exactly how close is an interesting exercise, and probably worth much more time and attention than the minimal effort I've put into it, but:

The entire population of Europe in 1600 was around 80 million, smaller than the population of Germany today. Or, to look at it another way, the world population only crossed the 1 billion mark in 1800; the Catholic Church alone reports over a billion practicing members today. It looks like (napkin math based on guestimates of population growth over time so this could be wildly off) only about 50 billion people ever lived worldwide between the time of Christ and 1950 (Novus Ordo, the current Catholic mass in the local tongue, came into effect around 1970) and the vast majority of them I think we can safely assume were not Christians, with Christianity really only taking off outside of Europe and the Middle East during the Age of Discovery (say 400 years ago).

So if you actually measure by the number of Christians then you'll find that the modal Christian is actually skewed surprisingly close to the present - with around 2 billion Christians alive today, Protestants and Eastern Orthodox holding service in the local tongue, and the Catholic Novus Ordo kicking in around fifty years ago, it's possible the majority of Christians who have ever lived received their teaching in the native tongue, and the majority of those likely read or heard (at a minimum) the Nicene Creed, which is looked up to by Catholics, Protestants, and Eastern Orthodox.

Obviously you could litigate to what degree those numbers represent committed Christians. But obviously the clergy and committed Christians are going to be the ones doing the gatekeeping, and they will be more familiar with the creeds than the average layperson, not less.

This is how real trad life looked like, and it is irretrievably lost.

I think this sort of life is alive and well, just not where you live.

If your ancestors belonged to a church with creeds, they almost certainly knew it- they might not have understood it, but the illiterate villagers in rural France would hear 'Credo in Deum...' every Sunday morning. The ability to recite large portions of the mass from memory was very widespread and before very recent times, liturgical churches usually translated basic prayers into the common vernacular(which often wasn't the same as the prestige dialect formal liturgies might have a translation into) before the bible and had the peasants memorize them.

Saint Guinefort is a legend. Don't you dare besmirch his holy name!

But yes very much agree that folk religion was different. I do wish we could go back, sometimes, just without all the disease.

While there is some truth to your claims, some of those creeds were recited at mass every week, so I would certainly think even Mediaeval peasants would have at least heard about them.

The context of this thread also seems to be more about the institutional level, rather than what individual church members believe or practise, which indeed can often be in tension with official teachings both in modern and premodern times. And looking at the institutional level, the Nicene Creed or opposition to abortion or whatever have been shared close to universally among all Christian churches for more than a thousand years.

Unless you are descended from unbroken line of scholars (it there ever was such thing in the West), your ancestors were not studying works of Saint Thomas, your ancestors were doing rituals to protect themselves from elves, goblins and leprechauns and were venerating saintly dog to help their sick children.

I wonder how disconnected these really are. Stirner claims the death in belief of ghosts (but goblins/leprechauns/etc will do well enough) caused the mortal wound to the foundation of religion as a whole.

When you don't have this, the primary way normal pre-moderns interacted with the supernatural is lost, and intellectual religious writings have nothing to rest on.

one of the earliest Christian texts (the Didache) specifies that Christians are not to commit abortion: this is a stance the largest church in the world (the Catholic church) still agrees with, and the largest Protestant denomination, at least in the United States, also agrees with it

Not only is it the stance of the largest church in the world, it's also the stance of the next largest(Eastern Orthodox), and the fourth largest(oriental Orthodox), and a big chunk of the third largest(Anglican communion).

In reality the modal church of 100-200 years ago is so far removed from the modern modal church

IMO the modern modal church isn't too Christian, nor does it have any real political effect in so far as it's Christian. Christianity in the West seems mostly to be another thing that progressives have eaten.

If we look around, we see lots that's against Christian dogma. Over a billion abortions since 1980, more abortions than all those who died in every war in human history. Marriage is not really 'till death do us part' anymore, marriage has been annexed by the state. Cohabitation before marriage - very common. It's judges and lawyers who control marriage (straight or gay) and divorce, the church only provides a venue and music. Pornography is in full bloom. Pride parades are in full bloom. Greed and materialism, superabundant. Self-promotion and narcissism on social media. Sabbath breaking. Blasphemy. Gluttony and excess. Sloth. Need I go on?

My main experience with church was Catholic Jesuits, not anyone terribly based or trad. But the trad don't seem to have done much. What have they accomplished? Poland, Russia, Africa... maybe Christianity really is influencing policy and values there. In the West it seems to be old people, ritual, progressivism and a pale shadow of its former power.

I agree, and I find it galling that most Western Christians are just fine with the complete surrender of society to hedonism and licentiousness...and often partaking in it. The early Christians would be torn apart by wild beasts rather than bow to a statue of Caesar. Modern Christians pay homage to the gods of this age without even thinking twice.

What are the gods of our age?

Conceptually the same gods as in any age: anything we place above God or are more key to our identity than God.

I think some specific gods of this age are "comfort", "tolerance", political affiliation, sexual orientation, "reason", educational achievement, careers. Not all these are bad in and of themselves, but they become gods when we place our faith or find our identity in them.

If this isn't a straight line begging for a Kipling Reference, then I don't know what is.

Yeah very much agree, sadly. I wish we were better.

I recall a line from a Jonathan Edwards sermon to the effect that one of the greatest pleasures saved souls enjoy in Heaven is watching the sufferings of the damned in Hell.

This was the same era when a popular middle-class pastime was going to the insane asylum to laugh at the antics of the lunatics.

This was the same era when a popular middle-class pastime was going to the insane asylum to laugh at the antics of the lunatics.

What?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bethlem_Royal_Hospital#Public_visiting

It was a big thing during the early- and mid-eighteenth century.

Asylum Tourism. The degree to which this was a "popular middle-class pastime" has been a little exaggerated, but it was certainly a thing.

It seems to me the mainline Protestant churches are currently dying out exactly because what is taught there bears little resemblance to what churches taught a century or two ago, whereas the churches that stuck with traditional Christian theology seem to be doing a lot better. I am fully expecting churches that will now start pandering to the dissident right or whatever will achieve similar results as to those who pandered to progressive sensibilities. The way forward for the Church always has been to stick to its own message rather than to pander to cultural fads.

I feel like the story of progressivism emptying the pews is a little bit too convenient and self serving to be true. Not saying it is entirely incorrect. But I'd also wager that the churches that were first to fall to 'progress' were also in a weak state to begin with, and therefor felt the need to do something. Couple that with the idea that more devout believers are more likely to congregate around a more traditional message, I'm more inclined to think traditional churches are herding devout believers rather than recruiting new ones. And that they persist by dint of the temperament of the radical that seeks them out. But there are only so many of those to go around.

The way forward for the Church always has been to stick to its own message rather than to pander to cultural fads.

I could be sympathetic to this point of view but from my experience observing Christian theology politics, 'every denomination that is not mine is a fad' seems like a common viewpoint when discussing the topic of what the church's message actually is or should be.

I can only plead ignorance and ask if there is some average form or consensus on what the general message of a Church is and whether or not it has changed over time. In my local Protestant Scandinavian church it is generally vague humanist platitudes. Or maybe the humanists just got to me first... In either case I saw no relevant distinction between the two. What is the churches correct message in America?

In terms of what I think the correct message ought to be (although I am also not American, so I am not speaking for that context specifically), I think people elsewhere in this thread have pointed out there are plenty of historical creeds that Christians of various denomination have adhered to for more than a thousand years. Even on some issues that are currently contentious in the culture war, like a lot of issues pertaining to medical ethical stuff or sexual ethics there are clear Christian positions adhered to by official Roman-Catholic, Eastern Orthodox teachings and also by conservative Protestants. I don't want to overstate the case here, of course there are also plenty of meaningful differences and all of these groups have changed in various ways throughout the centuries and have in some ways been influenced by the surrounding culture, but things like the Nicean creed, or general pro-life medical ethical positions, or the idea that sex should be within marriage, are believed by the vast majority of Christians always and everywhere. I really am convinced that there is a consistent core of historical Christian teachings which a lot of Christians around the world have preserved.

Now the Lutheran churches in Scandinavia which I presume you are referring to have indeed in the past 150 years or so abandoned a lot of these beliefs. But that is my point, if Christian churches want to have anything relevant to say, they should retain core Christian beliefs. Otherwise, what is the point? What reason to exist do Christian churches have, if they don't even believe in stuff that pretty much all Christians have believed historically? What even is Christianity then?

I come from a Protestant background in the Netherlands myself. In the past years I've lived in a few different towns and been a member of the local mainline Protestant Church of the Netherlands. The majority of this denomination is pretty liberal theologically and ethically, just like the mainline churches in the USA or other European countries. It does however have a pretty significant conservative wing. In all of those towns I can see the same pattern reoccurring; the various congregations in the different boroughs of the towns which have become liberal are dwindling in numbers, they have to merge with each other to keep going and are mostly visited by elderly people. But all of those towns have one or two congregations of the conservative wing of this denomination, which explicitly affirm historical creeds and have conservative views of things like abortion and sexual ethics, and every time those congregations don't have issues with dwindling attendance and you can find plenty people of all ages on Sunday mornings. In all those conservative churches I've even come across a few converts who were brought up without any religious background whatsoever and anecdotally the number of converts have been going up in recent years (although we're still talking about small numbers to be sure, I'm not claiming some sort of revival is going on the Netherlands just yet).

So from my perspective, churches that stick with historical Christian teachings, seem to be doing relatively fine and I'm always put off a little bit by the "ohh we have to change x, otherwise the kids will never go to church" rhetoric, because in the past 150 years or so, the churches that have tried very hard to stay in touch with currently societal trends are exactly the ones that have become irrelevant are closing their doors or are only being visited by a handful of elderly people.

Wait, you live in the Dutch bible belt?

Nope. I have never lived in the bible belt myself. The church I go to is of a type that's pretty common in the bible belt, although in a proper bible belt village it might be one of the less conservative ones. There is a bunch of stereotypical stuff associated with the Dutch bible belt that you won't really find in the type of church I go to, like avoiding vaccinations and insurance, experiencing a lot of existential dread over whether you are part of the elect or not, not being allowed to drive a car on Sunday, etc. But we do adhere to historical creeds, only men can be ordained, conservative views on medical ethical issues, etc. so definitely still on the conservative side of the spectrum.

So, the usual main example is the Episcopal church, which has always been the least devout denomination- although ACNA and the Catholic ordinariates indicate that progressivism is an explanatory factor for it doing unusually poorly. Likewise the ELCA's decline mostly tracks declining religiosity among German-Americans. But Methodists were actually a very healthy denomination before they went progressive, and the ELCA contrasts with America's other two Lutheran denominations(which are both healthy confessional churches). The Presbyterians are another example that isn't just explained by 'yeah, this church was always full of people that didn't really believe'.

Oh dear, as an actual literal rad trad is this a dynamic I'm familiar with. Groypers like traditional Catholicism- far more than vice versa, we mostly think Nick Fuentes' brain is rotting from aids- because we are a bit antisemitic, very socially conservative, and distinctively western(and proud of it). We do not like their attitudes towards women(we think they actually hate them, rather than recognizing their different role in the order of creation). We're skeptical of their piety. Actual rad trads are often shocked by the things twitter tradcaths put their name behind(and DR twitter has a running joke about how they don't actually go to church- actual rad trad twitter is a different world) and are not happy to be associated with spicy DR takes about race or whatever. When this happens out loud in real life there can be fallouts and shunning rather than flame wars.

Who are some good people to follow in actual rad trad twitter?

Trad websites/blogs/media outlets- FSSPXnews, Fisheaters, Rorate Caeli, the Remnant.

People- Fr Dave Nix(one of the few hardliner priests you can find on twitter), Michael Matt(editor of the Remnant), Gabriel Sanchez, Edward Hapsburg(yes, one of those Hapsburgs).

Hmmm can only find the last on a cursory search? Strange. If you want to DM me your twitter I can just follow you. My name/pfp is the same over there as well.

How rad do you want to trad?

7/10.

From what I can tell, the dissident right’s interest in Christianity seems entirely based on the vibes of it being “based and trad” rather than actually being interested in the teachings of Christ. What Christian values do they actual have? The movement is centred on vice signaling, aka the “based ritual”, displaying abhorrent opinions, possibly ironically, to shock and troll the libs, their few female members are highly sexualised (see their embrace of Sydney Sweeney), and they are certainly more concerned with a white identity than a Christian one.

I mean the same thing can be said about progressive "Christians" and their worldview. You talk about Sidney Sweeney, but there are female protestant ministers blessing a wedding of polycules of 4 gays out there.

I think this is the point the OP wanted to make - protestant churches were infected with progressive feminism to the extent, that they are going out of their way to accept only fan whores now doing a ministry, attacking any sceptics as unchristian, you have hundreds of churches accepting LGBT lifestyles as a new normal. There are churches with "neutral" stance toward abortion, the very same churches and more are also condoning divorces.

So groypers are just pretend racist, sexist and bad Christians. Of course, but where is the same criticism for their leftist radicals, where are the calls to expel them from the body of Christ before their heretic ways bring the whole edifice down? Or are there arguments how there should be Christian love to sinners - of course except the sin of progressive racism/sexism/homophobia/transphobia, those are the newly implanted 4 commandments. That is the point I think the OP makes.

there are female protestant ministers blessing a wedding of polycules of 4 gays out there

Our ancestors were neither sadists nor fools. There was a reason they used to burn heretics at the stake.

This got reported as low-effort and it really is, but I'm not going to mod it. It's just a dumb, low-effort argument.

Our ancestors were probably sadists and fools to the same degree we are. But they didn't burn heretics out of some deep wisdom. "Our ancestors burnt people who disgust me, we should do that again." Well, the reason they burned heretics is that killing people who were disgusting, disturbing, inconvenient, or a burden was how they did things in a society that would also have burnt half the people on this board.

I am always bemused by r3tVrn-posters who would not have survived a hot second in the societies they idolize.

I was going to say this as well, for the most part.

Nick is more the trendy influencer type conservative who’s great for the outrage machine of social media. I don’t follow him in particular unless he’s made a splash large enough like on Tucker that I have to watch him. But I’ve seen him in other venues before. I’ve never found him informative at all. And he has been clearly misinformed on various topics.

Take one particular example of this. When Halsey English debated Nick back when Warski Live was still a thing. Nick’s a young and good looking guy who was dressed up for the discussion. Most people watching this would’ve said Nick won. And if you asked me on the optics and performative antics of how debates go, he did. But as a person that’s read extensively and pretty deeply across various topics they touched, Halsey actually had the argument correct by a good shot.

Take Nick’s remarks about the Talmud (or Dan Bilzerian’s if you want to). He’s repeating a lot of the classic tropes and accusations about anti-Christian and anti-Jesus remarks that have been around for centuries. Not knowing some of these are outright fabrications (they don’t exist), are a collection of scandals where Rabbi’s give different views about hypothetical arguments among classroom discussions, or are often refuting various claims. The Talmud is a massive religious collection of “case law” more or less. It’s not a single unified composition of discrete writings that says shit like “you can murder gentiles.”

I personally own a complete collection of the Babylonian Talmud and Christ is it a pain in the ass to read and make sense of. But if you actually read it, it fully conforms to the explanations the Rabbi’s give. Nick either doesn’t know this or knows and is lying about it. I think the former is probably true in his case.

Nick is mostly popular IMO not because he’s some kind of scholar or intellectual heavyweight making waves. He says things that are outrageous for the times that are funny and inflammatory and progressive ideology is falling more out of favor with conservatism again becoming in vogue. He’s caught a high point in the wave of things and is riding it very effectively. The real testament to how bright or successful he is, is what he ultimately does with the victories he’s stacked and the popularity he’s accumulated.

The Talmud includes many thousands of prescriptive and proscriptive rules. It also includes other stuff. But if you’re a kosher-keeping Jew, the rules from a book like mishnah chullin are absolutely binding, though modified according to sect / kosher process. It’s not accurate to say that the Talmud is only a collection of opinions and debates. If you walk through Williamsburg or imagine Ben Shapiro’s daily life, these are the most rule-following people in the world, and all of the rules are in the Talmud and accompanying literature. And you can’t just not follow them, as that would get you ostracized and banned.

The criticism against the Talmud is as follows: among the very many authoritative rules which religious Jews follow with extreme care, are also rules that appear evil. The evil rules are not currently followed, but for what reason? Is it only because they can’t get away with it? Are they just biding their time until they can? For instance, if you read chapter 10 of Maimonides’ Avodat Kochavim in the Mishneh Torah, which is a Talmud redaction (highly authoritative and taught at most Yeshiva), you’re going to find rules about being merciless to outsiders:

You may not draw up a covenant with idolaters' which will establish peace between them and us and yet allow them to worship idols. Rather, they must renounce their idol worship' or be slain. It is forbidden to have mercy upon them. Accordingly, if we see an idolater' being swept away or drowning in the river, we should not help him. If we see that his life is in danger, we should not save him. It is, however, forbidden to cause one of them to sink or push him into a pit or the like, since he is not waging war against us.' To whom do the above apply? To gentiles." It is a mitzvah, however, to eradicate Jewish traitors, minnim, and apikorsim, and to cause them to descend to the pit of destruction, since they cause difficulty to the Jews and sway the people away from God, {as did Jesus of Nazareth and his students, and Tzadok, Baithos, and their students; may the name of the wicked rot.}

The criticism against the Talmud is as follows: among the very many authoritative rules which religious Jews follow with extreme care, are also rules that appear evil. The evil rules are not currently followed, but for what reason? Is it only because they can’t get away with it? Are they just biding their time until they can?

Hence the trouble modern churches have.

There are a few rules in the Bible that also appear evil, and opponents of the Church can thus ask an incredibly effective question- is the only reason churches outwardly compatible with classical liberalism do that so that, as soon as everyone's a member, they can do their best villain laugh and reimpose the evil-appearing rules? Obviously some churches deal with this better than others- the ones that throw themselves prostrate before the community (you can tell the ones that are like this because they have Current Thing stapled to them, usually a Pride flag) eventually scatter to the winds because throwing themselves to the floor to be trod on destroys any community- the movers and shakers give up and leave, then everyone else does. Ask the Boy Scouts about that.

And Christianity, which derives its power based on something inherently not of this world, just doesn't have a good answer to that "but will you turn evil again someday?" question- or rather, the answer they do have is not really something one can deliver in a press release[1]. Christianity is alien, and Christians forget that at their own peril (and if they are aware of that, they tend to come off like this).

[1] The most recent Superman movie was about this exact thing. It didn't have a satisfying answer to that either since the dog bailed him out of everything, but then again, Christians are also supposed to trust that Dog God will bail them out, so...

Christianity is alien

https://www.thepsmiths.com/p/review-believe-by-ross-douthat

if He didn’t rise from the dead, then wasn’t it actually the worst advice ever? The example Jesus provides is an example of how to get killed: first you make people jealous, then you make them mad, then you confuse and demoralize your followers, then you refuse to speak in your own defense. If the real story ended with the Crucifixion, then surely it’s a story about what not to do.

...

just taken at face value, it’s a really weird story ...

And then there’s the wandering part — most of it just seems to involve upsetting or confusing people. Zero monsters are slain. Zero Roman legionnaires are ambushed or waylaid by this supposed revolutionary folk hero. His only really heroic acts are miracles of healing, but whoever heard of a legend of a Great Physician? And the people who get the healings tend to be ones who, in the view of this society, don’t deserve it — heretics, prostitutes, lepers, the possessed — all of them “unclean.” Some of the healings even deliberately violate the law. Is he the first ever anarchist, come to overthrow not only the Roman occupation but also the rules of the Jewish religion? Is he a prophet of just using common sense and being nice to each other?

No. At other times He makes the law more restrictive, sometimes to an almost unbelievable degree. There were already rules against adultery, but this new hero, or prophet, or whatever He is demands perfection. “But I tell you that anyone who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery with her in his heart. If your right eye causes you to stumble, gouge it out and throw it away.” (Matthew 5:28-29). I’m sorry what? Just who does this guy think He is? And yet His morality gets even weirder than that. Many of the worlds religions, philosophers, and sages have roughly converged upon a recognizable set of ethical principles for being a just and righteous man. You know what it doesn’t include? “…do not resist an evil person. If anyone slaps you on the right cheek, turn to them the other cheek also. And if anyone wants to sue you and take your shirt, hand over your coat as well… love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you.” (Matthew 5: 39-44). This is an impossible standard and seemingly insane advice. In most places, following it is the equivalent of slow suicide.

He seems oddly unconcerned about fairness. Often, as He wanders the countryside healing and upsetting people, He explains His view of the world in simple stories. The stories are about everyday things familiar to the agrarian population of first century Palestine, sheep and vineyards and olive trees and rapacious officials, stuff like that. But think a little too hard about any of these stories, and they make no conventional sense at all. “You know how sometimes you have a hundred sheep?” I imagine everybody nodding along at this point. “Well, if one of your sheep went missing, wouldn’t you ignore the other ninety nine, and spend all of your time looking for the lost one?” Yeah, totally… hey, wait a minute! No, I would not do that. That is not what any sensible shepherd would ever do! Ninety nine is a bigger number than one! But He’s already moved on: “So you know how when you have a group of vineyard workers who work all day, and another group who only show up at the last minute, and then you pay both groups the exact same amount, and…” NO! I do not know that, because that does not make any economic sense at all, ARGH. But He has no time for your arithmetic born of scarcity, because He lives amidst infinity, and keeps telling you, maddeningly, that you do too, and that by giving yourself away you’ll have more left than you started with.

if He didn’t rise from the dead, then wasn’t it actually the worst advice ever? The example Jesus provides is an example of how to get killed

If you assume that modern Christianity is otherwise correct about him, his ideas thrived and are believed by billions of people today. That's a pretty big success, even if he personally lost his life.

Sure, but that kind of begs the question - should we continue to take him seriously, all things considered? If everyone clicked on a "one weird trick" video, that wouldn't make the weird trick good advice. Governors hate him!

Jews, Christians, and Muslims all conveniently ignore some of the uglier stuff in their holy books that if taken literally would oblige and/or excuse them from behavior considered repellent in the modern age. And all three love to point at the ugly stuff in the other religions' scriptures as some kind of gotcha: either they are not "really" following their own religion, or they secretly practice and defend this stuff and hide it from outsiders.

Jews, Christians, and Muslims all conveniently ignore some of the uglier stuff in their holy books that if taken literally would oblige and/or excuse them from behavior considered repellent in the modern age.

I don't have time (or maybe inclination) to dispute this but for calibration purposes could you offer some examples? Or don't, if that seems too onerous a request.

The Jewish examples from the Talmud have been given above - lots of rules about how you can treat gentiles (badly). The Bible has Leviticus and Deuteronomy, with the various laws about what you can and cannot eat, and also that you should put to death adulterers or disobedient children, and exhortations to slaughter enemy tribes. There are also some ugly stories in Judges. The Quran and the hadiths, likewise have verses about taking women as sex slaves, slaughtering the Jews, and everyone's favorite story about Mohammad and Aisha.

All three religions have a large body of jurisprudence explaining how these laws or parables were very specific and contextual, or were superseded by later precedents, or by the New Testament, and so on. So no, you don't need to explain to me that the Bible does not actually require you to stone your disobedient son or prohibit you from eating shrimp. I know that. But all these apologetics require accepting that these prescriptions were, in fact, contextual and open to interpretation, and just taking one snippet all by itself and its literal meaning is basically scriptural nutpicking.

People like @coffee_enjoyer who enjoy those long lists of horrible Talmudic prescriptions as evidence of all the secret evil things Jews believe are doing exactly this (and will likewise happily take at face value the less savory Quranic verses and hadiths). But of course Deuteronomy 21 and Leviticus 20 and all the stories in Judges about enslavement, rape, and genocide, those are nuanced.

The nuance is that for Christians, what Jesus says on a topic supercedes everything to the contrary in the Old Testament. The “law” of the Old Testament is very specifically abrogated (though the word “fulfilled” is insisted). For instance,

You have heard that it was said, ‘An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.’ But I say to you, Do not resist the one who is evil. But if anyone slaps you on the right cheek, turn to him the other also.

This supersedes Exodus 21:24, Leviticus 24:19-20, Deuteronomy 19:21. The abrogated / fulfilled Old Testament Law is kept by Christians for reasons of historical and symbolic reference, because Christ is held to have satisfied and completed the Law. This is an important nuance to make and not at all an evasion; the “1st primary” text of Christianity is the New Testament, which specifies how parts of the Old Testament have been deprecated; the “2nd primary” text is the OT, understood only in relation to the 1st. But what Christianity lacks is the rich orthopraxic secondary literature like you find in Judaism and Islam. I say “secondary”, but really these works are orthopraxically primary.

If an Islamic “Sahih Hadith” in a given jurisprudential tradition specifies something, then it simply must be held by all adherents of that school of jurisprudence. It’s just how Islam works; the “sunnah” as clarified by the authentic transmissions of secondary literature have authority. It’s what Muslims spend most of their time reading. The Muslims who do not believe in the secondary literature are called Quranists and they are as insignificant as the “Kairites” of Judaism who only believe in the Old Testament. The only real case of orthopraxic literature in Christianity akin to Hadith or the Talmud is if you’re a priest engaging in a mass, or if you’re being advised on when to do something at a mass or which sins must be confessed.

Yes, buddy, I know about the New Covenant. And I'm also quite familiar with Islamic jurisprudence and interpretation (and disputes) over hadiths.

The problem is, the vast majority of religious practitioners of all faiths are not theologians or lawyers. This is why some Christians actually quote those Old Testament verses when it's convenient, and then fall back on "But Jesus" when the ones they'd rather not follow are quoted back at them. I don't think Christians are particularly hypocritical or unlearned about this, relative to anyone else. But by the same token, some Muslims and Jews are aware of the bad stuff in their holy books and handwave it away, and some don't. Most Muslims don't approve of marrying 9-year-olds, most Jews don't approve of taking gentile slave girls, most Christians don't approve of stoning children to death.

There is no difference, except the artificial one you create in an attempt to gotcha Jews.

Now, you can claim that means most Muslims and Jews aren't really following their orthodox doctrines (though I don't know why we should consider a hostile outsider more qualified to interpret their scriptural fidelity). Maybe you can even make a theological argument that under the letter of their respective laws, Christians are correct to ignore their bronze age genocidal covenants while Muslims and Jews are incorrect to ignore their bronze age genocidal covenants. But that would presumably be between them and their gods. If you want to convince us that Jews don't really follow the Talmud, go argue with a rabbi. If you want to convince us that Jews are actually that evil and slimy because they secretly follow all your uncharitable Talmudic interpretations, your case is entirely scriptural nutpicking, and it's fair to ask if you've stoned any children or damned yourself with polyester lately.

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It's not hard to find examples of people (mostly not in the collective West) following through on "the ugly stuff". ISIS and friends are the obvious example, but I won't say the other two are completely guilt-free either.

Another example I've seen is the Talmud saying it's ok to rape boys under the age of 9, apologists for the Talmud claiming it was just one rabbi's opinion and not actual Jewish law, but then you look up what Maimonides had to say about it and he agrees it is actual Jewish law

Out of context. It means that a boy has to be 9 for an act of intercourse to legally count as one for other purposes. The prohibition on rape is separate and has no minimum age.

Out of context.

Nope, that's a different section of the Talmud. Sanhedrin 54b is what you want:

במאי קמיפלגי רב סבר כל דאיתיה בשוכב איתיה" בנשכב וכל דליתיה בשוכב ליתיה בנשכב The Gemara asks: With regard to what principle do Rav and Shmuel disagree? The Gemara answers: Rav holds that any halakha that applies to one who engages in intercourse actively applies to one who engages in intercourse passively, and any halakha that does not apply to one who engages in intercourse actively does not apply to one who engages in intercourse passively. Therefore, just as one who engages in intercourse actively is not liable if he is less than nine years old, as the intercourse of such a child does not have the halakhic status of intercourse, so too, if a child who is less than nine years old engages in homosexual intercourse passively, the one who engages in intercourse with him is not liable."

And Maimonides, applying this part of the Torah many centuries later:

"Once a male has penetrated another male, if both are adults, they are stoned…

If one was a minor but at least nine years and a day old, the active or passive adult is stoned while the minor is exempt.

If the minor was exactly nine years old or less, they are both exempt. Still, it is fitting for the court to give lashes of insubordination to the adult for sleeping with a male, even though that male was less than nine." - Laws of Forbidden Relations 1:14

This is what I'm talking about, there are plenty of things in the Talmud that sound awful out of context but are unobjectionable in context (or the person referencing it is incorrectly summarizing what it actually says). But there are also several that are absolutely horrendous regardless of context.

That's out of context in pretty much the same way (except you quoted enough to show the context). It says they're not liable for violating the prohibition against homosexual intercourse. It doesn't say that it removes the liability for violating the prohibition against rape.

Moses Maimonides says the only punishment the rapist should face is lashings for homosexuality. And perhaps more importantly, on the previous paragraphs hes lists no punishment for women that rape 8 year old boys except thet they have lost any eligibility to marry a member of the priesthood. It seems pretty clear that Maimonides interpreted that section the same way modern normies reading it do.

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You said that "the Torah says it's ok to rape boys under the age of 9". This reads to me like autistic legalist interpretation on precisely how the laws around equal punishment for sexual offenses and minimum age for criminal culpability interact, not an endorsement of pedophilia; it's no more sinister than an Aella poll.

Semi-relatedly, here's a funny bit from Sanhedrin 55a on the halakhaic status of putting your dick in your own ass:

Rav Aḥadevoi bar Ami asked Rav Sheshet: With regard to one who performs the initial stage of homosexual intercourse on himself, what is the halakha? Is he liable for homosexual intercourse? Rav Sheshet said to him: You disgust me with your question; such an act is not possible.

Rav Ashi said: What is your dilemma? With regard to doing so with an erect penis, you cannot find such a case. You can find it only when one performs this act of intercourse with a flaccid penis. And the halakha is subject to a dispute: According to the one who says that a man who engages in intercourse with a flaccid penis, with one of those with whom relations are forbidden, is exempt, as that is not considered intercourse, here too, when one does so to himself, he is exempt. And according to the one who says that he is liable, he is rendered liable here for transgressing two prohibitions according to Rabbi Yishmael; he is rendered liable for engaging in homosexual intercourse actively, and he is rendered liable for engaging in homosexual intercourse passively.

Lmao! What in the fuck….

I love how this thread has turned into a discussion where we’ve essentially become a group of Jews debating scriptural nuances and statements of other Rabbi’s, vindicating the stereotype that Jews love to argue with each other.

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If it is Jewish law and yet most Jews do not appear to act or express beliefs matching it, is it Jewish law?

...yes, obviously?

American law sets speed limits, despite the fact that most Americans do not appear to act or express beliefs matching them.

The laws of the state are not the same thing as the laws of a religious group, so, no, it's not obvious.

For starters, people obey the laws of the state because those are enforced, while religious law, outside of places where the church and the state are integrated, is much more of a suggestion. Then there's also the historical disconnect between religious law that was written 2000 years ago and the today, as opposed to state law which is usually updated a bit more frequently.

As most know, there has been a media battle within the Con Inc ecology. I want to go over some of those developments. If you know the lore you can skip the story so far.

Story so far

On October 27 Tucker Carlson did an interview with Nick Fuentes on The Tucker Carlson show. Sitting at a comfortable 6 million views, it’s one of his most viewed videos. Following that interview, jewish ethnonationalists like Ben Shapiro and Jonathan Greenblatt made the rounds condemning and calling for disavowals. But condemning and disavowing Tucker Carlson is easier said than done.

When the Heritage Foundation released their condemnation video, they distinctly claused out Tucker from their criticism. This, for jewish ethnonationalists, was outrageous. Eliciting remarks from Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell and Senator Ted Cruz, and other jewish ethnonationalist stooges. Tucker needed to be firmly disavowed, and Fuentes was not to be talked to or debated, but ostracized and ‘canceled’. Heritage Foundation president, Kevin Roberts, went back like a beaten dog and put up a second apology video saying as much. Still, it was not enough and condemnation articles, calls to resign and protest resignations rained in.

Despite all this chaos, Roberts kept his presidency, Tucker remained unfazed, and Fuentes was only emboldened by the attention. releasing an hour long monolog on the alleged overbearing fact of jewish ethnonationalist influence in American politics and his position on the modern JQ. The jewish ethnonationalist front had to hit back somehow.

Enter Chuck Schumer, proposing a senate resolution to condemn Nick Fuentes and the platforming of him by Tucker Carlson.

Whilst Fuentes is only emboldened by such attention, it might be different for Carlson. It is, after all, harder for a man of credibility and standing like him to shrug off an official disavowal like that. Though it could not have come from a better direction as far as a right winger is concerned, it is still bad.

The Carlson Rebellion

Missing from the firestorm of outrage and shock from the Fuentes Carlson interview is the simple question of... What exactly is Tucker Carlson doing here? Unlike Fuentes, who lives for this type of spectacle, Tucker is, one can imagine, an actual person with connections and things to lose. So why?

In a recent episode Tucker laid out his answer to the Fuentes Question. Young mostly white men are flocking to the extremes, both left but mostly right, because America sucks. Everything from the housing market, job market, education, media, domestic and foreign policy. It's all anti-white. It's all anti-male. What exactly does anyone expect young white men to do? What confident identity is even available to young white men?

To that extent one can sense Tuckers ire towards the establishment and those who shill for it. How is it possible to allow things to go on like this? To ignore it? Telling young white men to be individual whilst every other group is forming coalitions to outcompete them is suicidal and stupid. Why can't we tell them something else? Something they actually want to listen to. Well, that might lead to another holocaust in the minds of paranoid jews so, no, we can't. Young white men just have to die alone and abused.

Say what you want about Fuentes, but Tucker, at the very least, has a proposition that is open to compromise with the ethnonationalist jews on the right: This individualist free market zionism stuff isn't working anymore. Things, as they currently are, have to change. And if the only response to that reality is calling everyone an anti-semite or a nazi then what is even the point of this?

Carlson and Fuentes are both far less ideologically rigid than they sometimes seem. Tucker’s journey from libertarianism is more known (and because of his age, longer), but Fuentes has changed with time too. He won’t ever become a neocon, but there is a case to be made that he is moderating his antisemitism over time. We will see what happens, I think that as automation and AI and their economic consequences becomes the central question in politics a lot of things will be up in the air.

Carlson sees Fuentes as a future leader of a large segment of the American Right. To the extent possible he wants to channel this in a positive direction. He pushed back on Fuentes attacking "good" people on the right. He used religious arguments to persuade Fuentes' followers that idpol is a dangerous idea (God judges individuals, we should too). He practically begged Fuentes to settle down and get married. Carlson gained goodwill among the Groypers for "platforming" Fuentes. In return, Carlson hopes they heed his words.

He used religious arguments to persuade Fuentes' followers that idpol is a dangerous idea

Yes, this has been the Conservative playbook for decades: say "ipdol is a dangerous idea" while White men are under the yoke of all other groups that defect from that ethos. Carlson didn't even engage Fuentes' response that Jews do not cooperate with that ethos, they say "idpol is a dangerous idea" for whites while they maintain intense identification with their heritage and organize collectively and internationally on the basis of their ethnic identity. Every Fuentes fan has heard "idpol is a dangerous idea" before, and all of them most likely believed it at some point. And then we see irrefutable proof of the consequences of Whites naively cooperating with that ethos while every single other group, Jews in particular, defect and use cultural and political power against us and in favor of themselves.

There's no honor in "gracefully losing" your country by clinging to a fundamentally broken and hostile demand to cooperate in a moral strategy that other groups have no intention whatsoever of following. If they demand you cooperate while they defect, they are just being adversarial against you and you aren't a Moral Person for accepting that.

Right now Jewish people can't agree on whether there's an antisemitism scourge domestically and subversion of Israel's absolute legitimacy internationally, with progressive Jews jettisoning couching all their views in terms of Jewishness, in favor of just progressive ideology (which supports others' idpol, infamously). They're losing their idpol religion, if you will. But the conservative ones, ostensibly individualistic and meritocratic, are ironically doing the opposite.

This idea that THEY are defecting is silly. It's not some monolith.

He practically begged Fuentes to settle down and get married.

But since Fuentes is against gay marriage, this is very unlikely to happen.

A shame. A Fuentes-Destiny marriage would be the win for bipartisanship America needs

What kind of a matrix do we live in when two of the opposite radical points on the political compass have these twinks as faces.

It's the chemicals in the water that Alex Jones warned us about.

Great, my frogs have been gayed and now the yes-chad chuds and the antifa/commies are both gay. The west is trully over.

If Chuck Schumer's resolution passes it would be the first time in US Senate history of such a condemnation of a private citizen for political views.

Young mostly white men are flocking to the extremes, both left but mostly right, because America sucks. Everything from the housing market, job market, education, media, domestic and foreign policy. It's all anti-white. It's all anti-male. What exactly does anyone expect young white men to do? What confident identity is even available to young white men?

The foremost appeal is the force of truth. If you watch Nick's monologue, his criticisms are true. They are rational arguments, and they are anti-fragile in the sense the backlash they provoke strengthens their currency. It's not just due to the housing market, job market, anti-white Culture. It's due to the very real cultural criticism of Jews that Nick gives which nobody else has been willing to say. Jews themselves incessantly criticize White culture and identity through all mediums and institutions they control. And then they become apoplectic when a White man fires back with truthful criticism of Jewish identity and culture.

One thing I have never seen from any of the Jews weighing in on the Tuckercaust is an acknowledgement of the arguments Fuentes is making. They grasp for some other explanation for Fuentes' popularity, but they never restate the arguments Nick makes in that monologue for example and engage them. They simply pathologize the individuals who are being influenced by these arguments. It's why Shapiro would never debate Fuentes. If Fuentes laid out his argument as clearly as he does in this monologue, what would Shapiro even say?

The only path forward would be for Jews to acknowledge the truth of Fuentes' arguments and make genuine efforts to reconcile. They are incapable of that, which is why cancellation and pathologizing the "anti-semites" is their only reaction to this Cultural Criticism going mainstream and it's not going to work.

My guy, can you tell me what it is about the Jews?

I've never been able to figure this out. Take the mask off a bit and tell me why them.

You had me nodding along and then it is abruptly about Jews and I check out.

Yes Jews are in the pile that is causing these problems but they are a rounding error in comparison with say, HR dog moms, or X actual ethnic/racial demographic that supports the spoils system instead.

Did a Jew bully you in school, get your dad fired, close your favorite restaurant?

I don't know where this stuff comes from and I earnestly want to.

White anti-black racism has a straight line from perceived degradation of communities to the feeling, accurate or not.

I don't know where anti-semitism comes from.

To steelman: due to observations of Jewish behaviour, the anti-Semites have rationally concluded that the Jews are attempting (in a disorganised, prospiracy way) to destroy the White race, and displace it low-IQ Third Worlders who would lack the collective human capital to organise against a Jewish elite and Holocaust them.

Given this, it makes sense for a White identarian to prioritise attacking Jews instead of Black people, because without Jews there wouldn't have been mass immigration, the civil rights act, etc anyways.

Having said that, I don't think this is true. I propose a much simpler (albeit uncharitable) explanation: jealousy.

The Jews have better life outcomes than Whites. Both on average, and at the extremes, where they disproportionately occupy positions of power and prestige in the Western world. They also have a higher measured IQ than Whites, and like... I think that's just it (no need for overcomplicated theories about Jewish group evolutionary strategies inferred from Talmud quotations, etc)

Jews do better because they are (on a group-level) smarter, and people don't like feeling inferior. So they become jealous. And They make up complicated stories and theories about why they dislike X that are more flattering to their ego (And ditto for standard Black/Third World "theories" about White overachievement)

Also, I know you don't really care about the JQ either way (nor do I), but it clearly does mean a lot to anti-Semites on the forum. I think this whole pattern of discourse: where an anti-Semite, respectfully and in good-faith, states their opinions and then gets met with Bulverism ("Did a Jew bully you in school?" - seriously?), childish mockery even by actual mods ("Joo posting"), and condescending psychologisations that don't address the object-level argument at all - which has become normal, to be totally against the spirit of the Motte.

The problem is your steelman -- even if you drop the "rationally" -- is rusty and backwards. The anti-Semites start with the Jew-hate for basically irrational reasons, and then come up with rationalizations. That's why the bulverism and mockery; the rational arguments are just window-dressing and the anti-Semites are unreachable by any means.

I believe that this is true for a minority of cases - I'm sure a lot of people on here have seen absolute losers latch on to the jews as the reason why their life sucks, a reason that they can't do anything about and have no power over which thus gives them permission to not do anything about the actual problems in their life. These people exist, they have always existed and if the jews themselves never even existed they would find some other group to blame (maybe Majestic12, the Illuminati, the Freemasons or The Man).

But that just isn't the case for the majority of what I see called antisemitism today. Hell, I'm considered an antisemite - not because I have a terrible life that I blame on the jews, but because I actually sincerely oppose the actions of the state of Israel. I am a left-winger and think that it is wrong to murder children because they were born the wrong ethnicity, even if that ethnicity is Palestinian. Because I think that's directly comparable to the behavior of the nazi regime, this marks me as an anti-semite despite the fact that I'm not a loser (like all other posters on anonymous imageboards, I am tall, good-looking, wealthy, well-endowed, in great shape, have lots of sex, etc). I've actually changed my beliefs because of some of the arguments and discussions I've had on the motte to boot, so I'm fairly certain I am actually amenable to rational arguments.

And I'm not alone. Greta Thunberg qualifies as an antisemite now too for the same reasons, and she then went on to get sexually assaulted while in Israeli captivity - good luck making the case that she's an antisemite because she just has an irrational hatred of jews when The Jewish State detained and assaulted her for trying to deliver food to starving children. Similarly, the most recent case from my home country was this story - https://michaelwest.com.au/antisemitism-st-vincents-heartless-treatment-of-cardiologist-who-asked-a-question/ A cardiologist who has saved countless lives, developed heart transplant surgical techniques and visits an indigenous community to provide healthcare on a regular basis is now prevented from performing his literally life-saving work because of the zionist lobby's efforts to defend the genocide they're undertaking in Palestine. To use an example from the US, Ms Rachel's "antisemitism" very clearly comes from her love of children and opposition to the people currently creating vast numbers of child amputees (and child corpses) rather than some kind of personal failing on her part.

People who learn about and see this stuff get legitimately upset - and the idea that this heart surgeon is "unreachable by any means" doesn't even rise to the level of a joke. Israel has engaged in a campaign of mass murder and openly bribes western politicians to ensure that our tax dollars continue to support what they're doing despite the opposition of the majority of the population. These are real, serious reasons for people to oppose Israel, and Israel goes out of its way to make sure that criticism of their state is classified as antisemitism. I think that this is extremely dangerous, because when you tell people that opposing the murder and mutilation of innocent children is antisemitism you don't stop people from getting upset about what happened to Hind Rajab. Rather, you make people believe that the social proscriptions against antisemitism are an evil that needs to be removed - and while I think that removing those proscriptions are going to cause big problems in the future, I can't bring myself to argue against the idea that a cardiologist should be able to save lives even if he engages in political speech that zionists don't like.

There's nothing antisemitic per se about opposing the actions of the Israeli government. Israel is not the Jewish people nor are the Jewish people Israel, regardless of what Netanyahu or anti-semites would like you to think. But a lot of the accusations against Israel are A Rape on Campus-level incredible, and that includes claims that Greta Thunberg was sexually assaulted by the Israelis. Not because they're such saints, but because they're not utter idiots. I don't know about that particular cardiologist, but I do know doctors have been involved in creating and perpetuating Hamas hoaxes, including the "starving child" who actually was born with a genetic disease, and the bogus X-rays purporting to show infants executed by IDF soldiers. As with A Rape on Campus, you start to wonder why people are believing obvious nonsense. And in both cases, the most likely answer is hatred of the target.

But a lot of the accusations against Israel are A Rape on Campus-level incredible, and that includes claims that Greta Thunberg was sexually assaulted by the Israelis. Not because they're such saints, but because they're not utter idiots.

This is actually extremely credible - have you heard of the Sde Taiman rape protests? Sexual abuse and humiliation is a well-attested and confirmed feature of Israeli incarceration, to the point that when prison guards are arrested for rape there are pro-rapist protests held to ensure they can continue to rape prisoners. Government ministers referred to the rapists as "our best heroes" and led efforts to ensure they were set free. The statistics we have regarding sexual abuse of foreign women in Israel are pretty nasty too - https://www.business-humanrights.org/en/latest-news/israel-a-new-report-reveals-100-of-thai-agricultural-workers-were-sexually-assaulted/

I don't feel like it is stretching the bounds of credibility to say that a country which sexually abused 100% of their female foreign agricultural workers and had protests to protect their ability to rape prisoners would have sexually abused a female prisoner. For the record, I don't think they rape because they're idiots, but because they believe they are immune from consequences (and for many of them, that's been true so far).

I don't know about that particular cardiologist, but I do know doctors have been involved in creating and perpetuating Hamas hoaxes,

You don't need to say it twice - your comment has absolutely nothing to do with the case at hand and no relation to the story itself. This doesn't even reach the level of a counterargument, and even if I simply accept your claims it doesn't refute my point at all. I can understand not wanting to read, but next time please just say that instead of pretending to engage with the argument.

including the "starving child" who actually was born with a genetic disease,

...what exactly makes starving children more morally acceptable if they were born with a genetic disease? The actual starving isn't in question at all, and it has been an explicit Israeli policy going back decades. We can even go back to 2006 when an advisor to the Israeli PM spoke about how they were planning on putting the Gazans on a "diet" by reducing the food they allow in.

This is actually extremely credible

You can say it all you want, it ain't. Even if the Israelis were the ogres you claim, it wouldn't be credible that they'd mistreat someone as visible and with friends as powerful as Greta Thunberg.

The statistics we have regarding sexual abuse of foreign women in Israel are pretty nasty too - https://www.business-humanrights.org/en/latest-news/israel-a-new-report-reveals-100-of-thai-agricultural-workers-were-sexually-assaulted/

I found the original report this claim supposedly comes from. It has few statistics and says basically nothing at all (it doesn't even make that claim).

including the "starving child" who actually was born with a genetic disease,

...what exactly makes starving children more morally acceptable if they were born with a genetic disease? The actual starving isn't in question at all

The child wasn't starving; its appearance was due to the disease. And yes, the actual starving is in question.

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The anti-Semites start with the Jew-hate for basically irrational reasons, and then come up with rationalizations. That's why the bulverism and mockery; the rational arguments are just window-dressing and the anti-Semites are unreachable by any means.

I mean, I agree. But this argument is fully general for any descriptive position on reality I think is wrong (doesn't what you've said also apply to, e.g. religion?) Their reasons only appear irrational from our perspective. And symmetrically, the rest of the forum are irrational people unwilling to question the mainstream narrative.

So, if we allow people to do this sort of stuff, at best it leads to a one-sided soft-censoring of certain topics (you can advocate for X, but then you get no protection from others by the mods but are still held to the rules yourself), or worse it leads to discussion on a topic becoming totally devoid of object-level content, just both sides explaining why their opponent really said what they said.

Having said that, I don't think this is true. I propose a much simpler (albeit uncharitable) explanation: jealousy.

Smells like cope. Jews are like 2% of the US population and look white, barely anyone would notice their existence if it weren't for the stuff in your first paragraph and general Israel bullshittery.

Jews are like 2% of the US population and look white, barely anyone would notice their existence...

No? As I pointed out, they are hugely overrepresented in basically any kind of elite thing. e.g. they make up ~1/4 of all Physics Nobel prizes. I suppose they might fly under the radar for normies, but if you have any kind of intellectual inclinations, you'd end up noticing Jews (our forum is literally an offshoot of a Jewish blogger)

general Israel bullshittery.

But calling it "bullshittery" is kind of begging the question. The usual logic goes that the Jews are tricking the US government into backing a "foreign" (i.e. non-White) state's interest at the expense of American Whites. But this only makes sense if we have already established the Jews aren't really White and are hostile mimics. Otherwise the "Israel bullshittery" is just a specific kind of White advancing the interests of the White race.

No? As I pointed out, they are hugely overrepresented in basically any kind of elite thing. e.g. they make up ~1/4 of all Physics Nobel prizes. I suppose they might fly under the radar for normies, but if you have any kind of intellectual inclinations, you'd end up noticing Jews (our forum is literally an offshoot of a Jewish blogger)

I think if it was Physics Nobel Prizes and things of that nature, people would easily brush it off. The real problem is their significant overrepresentation in law and media, and how they have used those positions to shape the law and the discourse in ways that, frankly, a lot of people find unamerican. You can love Ben Shapiro and Mike (?) Prager, but 99/100 Jewish law degree holders and media figures is anti-gun. Guns are a major thing that makes America American, if you are a gun control advocate, as most Jews are, that is going to be viewed very suspiciously. If you don't like guns just move to England. London and New York are basically peer cities, or at least used to be.

Another topic would be the military. America has a uniquely masculine military culture still. Most media Jews are uncomfortable with that. But its a very American thing. Again, if thats not your thing maybe America isn't really your thing.

Now, this isn't uniquely Jewish, it is Progressivism. The issue is that progressives dont really like anything that is unique about America and Jews are part of that memeplex. They are also, very prominent and successful as part of that progressive ecosystem, which is why the issues start to fester.

Another thing that I've often thought about this, and related question when people or groups are "accused" of being unamerican. Like, isn't it just an easy fix to do more American stuff? Buy a gun and get trained up on it. Grill some stuff on July 4th and celebrate America. Don't fly flags other than American flags. Don't complain about nice statues of dead guys who founded the country. Speak English, and if you can't really learn it, better hell make sure your kids sound like Tom Cotton or J.D. Vance by the time they are 18. Like, its pretty easy no?

Buy a gun and get trained up on it.

Love to, but the gun control laws of New Jersey -- which were not passed by Jews, the most recent proponent is Irish Catholic -- won't allow me.

Grill some stuff on July 4th and celebrate America. Don't fly flags other than American flags. Don't complain about nice statues of dead guys who founded the country.

The statute-complainers seem to be mostly heritage americans. I'm not aware of Jews refusing to grill, even if observant Jews are rather picky about it. The Jews around here mostly speak English except some of the Haredi, and they're anything but Progressive. I think the local JCC flies an Israeli flag. But I'm pretty sure they fly it lower than the American flag. I'm also sure that if they didn't fly it, it would make no difference; the anti-semites will use any stick they can find and if they can't find one they'll make one up. Further, I don't think "change your domestic politics" is actually a reasonable thing to demand, even if I wish Jewish progressives would.

Love to, but the gun control laws of New Jersey -- which were not passed by Jews, the most recent proponent is Irish Catholic -- won't allow me.

Have you considered... just leaving New Jersey? You clearly hate it there. Why not move to a state like Texas or Florida? That's the big advantage of living in a continent-sized country with strong (by international if not historical standards) federalism.

The usual logic goes that the Jews are tricking the US government into backing a "foreign" (i.e. non-White) state's interest at the expense of American Whites. But this only makes sense if we have already established the Jews aren't really White and are hostile mimics.

No, the usual logic is that the Jews (and their dimwitted Evangelical sidekicks) are causing the U.S. government to back a foreign (no scare quotes) state’s interests at the expense of America. That’s it. It has nothing to do with whether Jews are white and whether Israel is a “white” country.

Israeli meddling may be its own thing, but I'm skeptical of conspiratorial accusations against the Jewish presence in globohomo/woke/$CURRENT_THING-ism. After all, PMC Whites aren't particularly known for their opposition to woke; I suspect that the overrepresentation of Jews in general wokery is primarily a function of their increased presence in the PMC and not reflective of a distinctly Jewish bent towards leftist progressivsim. If you had data showing jews to be significantly more woke than status-matched whites, that would be more convincing.

You've never seen those Twitter posts of jews shit-talking white people, identifying as white when and only when they can derive an advantage from it? I've show you a picture, but for some reason I can't find them on Google. Do you know how annoying it is to dig up any information which has a slight right-wing bias? Every search engine will actively work against you. I will find examples if you really want to see them, though.

Also, old conspiracy theories always mention the jews.

By now, you should have learned that most conspiracy theories were true. Here's some older theories (pre-2000):

Some people are trying to destroy gender and make society uni-sex.

Women are tricked into believing that they should be career-oriented rather than family-oriented. That they should be independent.

The elites are looking into population-control and depopulation programs.

A group that Conspiracy theorists call "the illuminati" wants a one-world-government (Anew world order).

Christianity and Christian values are under attack (this used to be blamed on satanists, freemasonists, and communists, but does it matter what we call those behind it?)

That Homosexuality is pathological and correlates with most forms of sexual deviancy (like pedophilia).

That muslims won't integrate into the western society, but merely lay low until they make up a good chunk of the population, only to then promote their own religious values aggressively while being intolerant of ours.

Most of the conspiracies that I saw on the internet as a child, most of which I doubted were true, are currently unfolding. So why would I not give these skizos of old the benefit of doubt about jews? They were right about basically everything else. Also, many of these issues are old, they all go back to the 50s if not earlier. Even transsexualism is old. For instance, look into Magnus Hirschfeld - an Ashkenazi Jew and sexologist who promoted LGBTQ doing the Weimar Republic.

Personally, I dislike jews because so many of them are dishonest. Ben Shapiro for instance, disgust me. And can you blame people for being angry that "America first" turned into "Israel first"?

Where do you think anti-white thought originate? It is at the very least strongly supported by the media, and there's a lot of jews working for the media.

You've never seen those Twitter posts of jews shit-talking white people, identifying as white when and only when they can derive an advantage from it?

And also the posts of jews who do not. But these are usually not counted, for some reason.

By now, you should have learned that most conspiracy theories were true.

I have learned that a person who yells out at every minute that it is 13:56 might be correct at least once every day, but he can't be relied on to tell the time.

The distinguishing feature of schizos is not that they believe that there's a They who want to do Something (most normies believe some form of that, and it is not surprising or significant that if Jews are highly represented in philosophy and politics in general, they will also be highly represented in evil philosophy and evil politics). It is that the schizo's fixation is all-consuming and all evidence against it is merely more evidence in favor to him.

That's like saying "Not all gay people are promiscuous". A tendency is bad enough.

I think more than 50% of classic conspiracies have come true. Many of the ridiculus counter-examples you're probably aware of were never real theories, but rather satire meant to mock conspiracies. They probably did get "vaccines cause autism" wrong, though. "Q anon" and "flat earth" are also trivially wrong. The chemtrail claims come from geo-engineering, which do occur, and they do add chlorine to tap water. Jews also do inflate numbers in order to victimize themselves further.

I was once told that a great way to humble oneself was to attempt to predict the future. If your world model isn't accurate, your predictions will be way off. Yet many of these "crazy" conspiracy theorist correctly predicted many of the issues which are currently happening. Instead of preventing these developments, people mocked them or claimed that they weren't happening. How many loops do we need? It didn't even take a genius to know that Muslims wouldn't respect western culture, the first person who told me that would happen was about 12 years old.

You're making this out to be about cognitive biases and false positives in thinking, but I think it has nothing to do with that. The reason people don't believe in conspiracy theories is because they've been branded "low social status", so you'll have as much success explaining them as you'll have explaining that being sexually attracted to 16-year-olds isn't unnatural nor pedophilia. It doesn't matter how correct you are. It also doesn't matter how incorrect people are when they say that HBD isn't real, or that mass-immigration is beneficial. Ideologues have a lot in common with religious people

The chemtrail claims come from geo-engineering, which do occur

The median chemtrail theorist says or implies that They are gassing people, with nefarious purposes. Not geo-engineering. That's what I'm getting at.

It didn't even take a genius to know that Muslims wouldn't respect western culture, the first person who told me that would happen was about 12 years old.

It doesn't take a genius to see that the Muhammad boy you know doesn't respect your culture and to repeat what adults are saying about Muslims, but that's not the same thing as knowing.

It doesn't matter how correct you are.

It absolutely matters how correct you are, because if someone actually decides to brave the low status and investigate, and the first thing they notice is that you were blatantly incorrect about the parts of the theory that are the easiest to investigate, many people are going to assume that the low status designation was correct. You have to lead with the parts of your theory that are undeniable. Schizos don't.

The theorists I remember do mention weather manipulation, but their main criticism is that they're spraying toxic chemicals. That the trails which come after planes aren't just regular water vapor, but some kind of chemical, and that these lines covering the sky used to go away faster when they were young. When these conspiracies were booming, you could frequently see the sky almost covered by contrails, which doesn't seem to happen much anymore. There's fewer lines now, and they disappear more quickly.

the Muhammad boy you know

It wasn't a muslim, it was an European who had read the Quran and concluded that muslims migrating to Europe were doing so in order to take it over. That they'd prioritize their religion over our culture and laws. That they'd exploit our good-will. And the prediction was pretty spot on

It absolutely matters how correct you are

Do you know of zero popular beliefs which are trivially wrong? Do you really need an investigation to tell that the vast majority of the best scientists the world has seen are men? Do you need an investigation to recognize that men are generally stronger than women? That A person from Sweden is quite a lot smarter than a person from Africa? That third-world immigrants engage in about 10 times more violent crime than natives?

All you need to know that the current world is completely crazy is a memory of the past. "Sticks and stones may break my bones" is a children's rhyme. We used to teach literal children not to be offended by words, and now we're arresting adults because other adults cannot handle their words. It's pathetic, and every person who knows anything about mental development should be able to see it at a glance. But as universities are far-left, these so-called experts construct a blind-spot against this observation. Neither Education nor Science defend against stupid beliefs, so why would an investigation? Here's the fully sourced chronological story of GamerGate. How many knows it exist? What difference did it make?

People get used to whatever is the case currently, and then they consider it "normal". This proves that the common perception of the world is relative rather than absolute. In other words, if society had entirely different beliefs, then the consensus of scientists would "investigate" and find those beliefs to be true. None of it is rooted in any objective reality, as people largely don't care about objective reality.

And also the posts of jews who do not. But these are usually not counted, for some reason.

If Jews don't count as an identity bloc operating in their own interest then literally no one does. Like yes we know that every random Jewish podiatrist or whatever doesn't work for AIPAC or something, people can quit telling us like we're supposed to suddenly turn around in wonder and say "gee whiz I guess it really isn't literally every Jew, I love Israel now!"

It's a trifling observation that's only significant by way of how little you see it made in reference to any other groups. We can speak collectively of whites, blacks, whatever all day and no one ever feels the need to do this particular dance.

Blacks are even more of a political bloc than Jews. But no one claims the NAACP in engaging in some conspiracy to sell out the country to Wakanda or something.

We can speak collectively of whites, blacks, whatever all day and no one ever feels the need to do this particular dance.

If I called out every time someone spoke excessively collectively of whites and blacks here (mostly blacks) I'd literally be here all day.

Yeah I don't understand why some people blame jews for social justice bullshit. Plenty of non-white people and non-jew white people are all about identity politics.

You can find plenty of thought leaders of any demographics advocating both for and against this stuff, and tactically it seems like a bad move because the anti-Israel component was inevitable and is now incredibly strong.

If this was some sneaky conspiracy it wasn't a genius one.

They are ideologically at the center of it, at least in academia. Feminism, critical-whatever subversive studies, internationalist nonsense. You read enough theory and the early life section becomes old hat.

They use the same feminine tactics, e.g. victim mentality. They're also over-represented in important universities (which now have a strong left-wing bias) and of course, they're big on banking, and the entire financial system is basically one big scam, which has been rather obvious for over 150 years now

But yes, politics in general is rather awful, and most people who make politics a big part of their life are awful.

Anti-semitism is becoming more common and this is a direct consequence of jewish actions, but I think it only adds legitimacy to their victim complex (which may be the goal). At this rate, they might not have to spray paint swastikas on their own synagogues anymore!

Holocaust denial is becoming illegal in more and more countries, even though such a law is in conflict with fundamental human rights. It's easier to get away with criticizing white men than jews (they're less protected), so jews are still in a stronger position. Don't merely judge the strength of a group by how much of a "minority" they are, those who are actually oppressed are never recognized as such

Starting from minute 14 or so, in the linked monolog Fuentes goes into his views on the topic. Largely derived from the facts laid bare in this article.

In the end he asks: 'Why is this so hard for people to wrap their head around'? It's a valid question. As far as Fuentes goes, these are not complicated observations. Yet there are entire books on the topic of anti semitism and how it's irrational, pathological this and that... But like SecureSignals points out, they don't deal with any arguments or observations laid out by the so called anti semites. To that extent, the entire premise of anti semitism as a concept is just a framegame.

It's rather comical that whenever the topic comes up, you end up with people asking an endless series of questions as if this is complicated or hard to figure out. It's not.

I think at best this is a scissor.

I can understand why people start to hate a poor behaving minority or a growing and supplanting immigrant group. I can understand why countries that have been in opposition hate each other like in the Middle East and Asia.

I don't understand hatred of Jews. For a minority group they are generally considered well behaved, they are successful and if you want to be jealous that's an angle - but their aren't a huge amount of them so who cares.

generally considered well behaved

There are standards of behavior beyond not shitting in the street or doing drive-by shootings.

What are the relevant ones?

Take out the word "Jews" and insert the word "Russians" and I think you might get somewhere. This is especially fun given that American Jews overwhelmingly came either during the Russian Civil War (how we got Ayn Rand and most of the neoconservatives), during the Jackson-Vanik era (how we got Max Boot), or after the fall of the USSR (how we got Julia Ioffe).

"Well behaved" is a matter of opinion. Successful? Sure. Is having our politics Russified for the better of the country? I don't think so, and IMO neoconservatism is just Russian imperialism or anti-Russian imperialism waving an American flag. That they overwhelmingly subscribe and contribute to bog-standard anti-American Yankee progressive politics back at home is also not endearing.

How does hate even enter the conversation?

Gradually, you gradually learn to hate people with enough exposure, when a certain group of people is always at odds with your continued survival and always has the same destructive politics that are diametrically opposed to yours. It doesn't help that when AIPAC says jump your political representatives don't even ask how high.

Besides religion? Besides nationalism?

A lot of the things people say about the Jews are said about other groups. Ilhan Omar gets the same charge of dual loyalty, with the same basis.

Complaints about white overrepresentation and privilege? Certain applicable to Jews. In hindsight it was sort of hubristic to expect that the young, especially Third Worlders who have ethnic and religious reasons to resent Jews, were going to just buy into the doublethink that "muh culture of education" would allow an exemption from the usual critiques of wypipo.

The difference is that Jews are disproportionately successful and that combined with the antisemitism taboo is great at shutting these complaints down, which apparently makes it worse.

I'm not the guy you responded to, but the most enlightening explanation I've heard given of right-wing antisemitism is given in this substack article (sorry for the long text-dump, but I think it's very informative)

Anyway, perhaps we should get on with it. The first characteristic of the Far-Right mind is the desire for anthropomorphic theories of socioeconomic reality. What I mean by that is the need to fit the data of reality into a shape that makes sense in terms of a consciously conceived plan to move that reality in a particular direction.

This mindset is commonly given the term ‘conspiracy theorist’, but, on the whole, I think that is usually too generous. A conspiracy theory involves an attempt to tell a story in which the various pieces of data fit into place. Doing so inevitably leads to spiralling layers of complication in which anomalous information can only be accommodated at the cost of creating yet more anomalous data points that can’t be made to fit. Hence this meme:

The typical Rightoid doesn’t bother with any of that. What he does instead is notice some apparently contradictory information, then use innuendo and rhetorical questions to assert that this can only be explained by they planning it. He believes not in conspiracy ‘theories’, but conspiracy deities, shapelessly malleable and borderline omnipotent entities whose mere existence is enough, by their own terms of definition, to explain any kink in the matrix you might observe (and, Heaven knows, the matrix is kinky enough you can do this all day).

To this day, a good portion of my friends are Rightoids. Most of them are good people, and none of them are wholly devoid of positive qualities. The need to anthropomorphise complex social structures exists in them to various degrees of extremity, a product of how frequently they indulge it, but, in all cases, is central to their entire engagement with politics. What I learned after many years is that it’s an act of pure self-harm to try and argue them out of this. You can sit with them, as patiently as you can, for literally hours on end, forcing them to stop changing the subject and actually explain how the different parts of their ‘theory’ fit together, to verbalise each step and watch as it dissolves into undeniable incoherence, and then later the same week they’ll be back with the exact same thing. This is how they want to be. Some people like crackers, and some people like crack. No point in getting aggravated about it (another thing I wish I could go back 10 years and point out to myself).

To recap, the essential quality of the Far Right mind is the desire to explain the world around him in terms of the plan of a conscious intelligence. You therefore need a they; this is the whole point. Once we understand this, it’s pretty obvious why antisemitism exerts this queer magnetic attraction to all who enter the walls of the Far-Right asylum. If you have already decided that someone is behind the curtain driving everything going wrong around you, then who else it is supposed to be? The Yoruba? Inuits? The Jews are an obvious candidate not just because they are genuinely a big deal, but also because there is 150 years of antisemitic literature that you can read explaining how Jews do it and a small army of salesman eager to initiate you into their pyramid scheme. For years, I couldn’t understand why almost any dissident Right article on practically any subject would have at least one comment beneath with a fresh insight like ‘why do they call it the Cathedral, more like the SYNAGOGUE if you ask me!!!!’, but, when you think about it, it’s just good marketing. There’s always someone new who took a fistful of red pills and is looking for the next dose.

You can sit with them, as patiently as you can, for literally hours on end, forcing them to stop changing the subject and actually explain how the different parts of their ‘theory’ fit together, to verbalise each step and watch as it dissolves into undeniable incoherence, and then later the same week they’ll be back with the exact same thing.

Yes. This is why I go so hard on our Joo-posters. Because they do this every damn time. Doesn't matter how calmly and politely you ask them to explain why it's always Da Joos. They'll give you an eliiptical theory of Jewness that doesn't hold together, cobbled together bits of Holocaust apocrypha, and when someone bothers to patiently disassemble it, they curl their upper lip, go silent, and then come back in a couple of weeks repeating the same thing.

This phenomenon isn't unique to Joo-haters. We just got to the point of you disagreeing with yourself. I don't know if we've gotten an elliptical theory, but we've definitely had cobbled together bits of apocrypha. I think we're at the "upper lip curl, go silent" stage, but I have to imagine that when it comes up again (and it will), you'll probably be repeating the same thing.

An obsessive making everything about his obsession and trying to make it the topic regardless of context is on point, though it's not the point you think you're making.

That may be true, in the technical sense that you have affirmed a contradiction. From the principle of explosion, sure, you can probably show that to be true. Of course, you can also show the opposite to be true. And back in reality, you're not really accusing me of being a one-issue poster. That would be bonkers. You're just deflecting, again.

I'm just observing the phenomenon you've just described in this thread. The context is on point. It was your point!

Do you know how crazy you sound?

I did not take the strawberries.

More comments

It's worth noting that 'not being an antisemite' is a historical anomaly. I'm not saying anything for or against the Jews here, just that there's clearly a lot of people they rub the wrong way.

This is a good point, but the things pointed out right now (like overrepresentation in Hollywood and Journalism) ...those are new? What the fuck were they doing other than not being Christian before? Or is it just that they survived when the Druids got wiped out or whatever.

What the fuck were they doing other than not being Christian before? Or is it just that they survived when the Druids got wiped out or whatever.

Basically, yes. When Christianity took over as the state religion in early medieval states, it was not a very tolerant religion. They did not suffer a follower of Freyja or Jupiter to live. Or an atheist, for that matter. Jews were the only religious outgroup which Christians did not feel the need to kill wherever they encountered them (but only on special occasions or when feeling especially holy).

(I think the Druids specifically were already on the shitlist of the (somewhat more religiously tolerant) Romans, possibly due to human sacrifices. Or that might be Roman propaganda.)

There's a chapter about Jewish legal traditions in David Friedman's Legal Systems Very Different From Ours. He describes how the Jews basically got stuck with full on Old Testament Tyrant God, plus a whole bunch of extra rules and laws that Christians have never heard of. And the Jewish response was to take these very specific, very strict, very brutal religious laws and nickel-and-dime them down into irrelevance with what basically amounts to bad faith sophistry. Just the exact polar opposite of a good faith effort to follow the spirit of the law. And I don't necessarily blame them, because the laws are kind of savage. "If your child is disobedient, publicly kill them" was the sample used.

When I finished that chapter, the thought that occurred to me was, more or less: "I suddenly get why all those medieval lords used to confiscate all the Jews property and kick them out. If I had contractual agreements and financial dealings with a group of people, and I learned that their religious/legal system was based around using cheap wording tricks to bamboozle their own fucking God, I certainly wouldn't trust them to keep faith with me. Better to fuck them over first and expell them before they hit me with some 'the contact specified you would be repaid in doll hairs!' level shit."

I already get why all those medieval lords used to confiscate all the Jews' property and kick them out. They really wanted the property.

I had contractual agreements and financial dealings with a group of people, and I learned that their religious/legal system was based around using cheap wording tricks to bamboozle their own fucking God, I certainly wouldn't trust them to keep faith with me.

I'm pretty sure that the last thing that medieval legal systems were based around is good faith following the spirit of the laws, unless "what the lord says, goes" counts as the spirit of the law.

Medieval antisemitism included a number of tropes, some of them straight up falsehood('blood libel' literally was invented to describe the claim that the Jewish religion runs on the human sacrifice of Christian children) and some of them more or less true(Jews really did lend money at high interest rates, really were the main conduit for the trade in slaves out of the Christian world and into the Muslim one, etc).

Islamic antisemitism stems from, among other things, their end times prophecy.

You know, I'm kind of softening on the blood libel bits, WERE they actually sacrificing children.

really were the main conduit for the trade in slaves out of the Christian world and into the Muslim one, etc)

Wait, really? I've never heard that one. Kind of awkward if so.

The medieval mediterranean's main religious groups banned the sale of slaves of their group to other group. Do the math.

There was also a large slave trade from still pagan parts of Europe into the Muslim world mediated by Italian traders(particularly Venetians- this is part of the reason that Venetians have such a bad reputation in older literature), but this was legal. The sale of Christian indentured servants as slaves in the Muslim world was dwarfed by Muslim raiding but when it happened, the perpetrators were Jewish.

What the fuck were they doing other than not being Christian before? Or is it just that they survived when the Druids got wiped out or whatever.

They're not just any tribe that refused to convert. They're the tribe(s). They had the books first. Both Christians and Muslims appeal to the antiquity of Jewish religion to justify theirs (Muslims claim that Allah sends a prophet to all people and yet most all of the "canon" examples cited in the Qur'an are Jewish or draw from Jewish myth)

If you truly are God's chosen prophet/Messiah and you were spoken of in past Scriptures, why do the people who've held those scriptures for centuries reject you? The gentiles will ask.

It's simply a theological and political problem that requires an answer and the easiest answer is to discredit and attack the Jews themselves. As they themselves did to their less monotheistic/faithful brethren.

It's actually "not being a religious bigot" that's a historical anomaly. Europeans were not historically more tolerant of Muslims or pagans or Hindus, etc. The reason antisemitism happened more is because there were more Jews around, not because Jews "did" something to make themselves more unlikeable.

Not to mention all the wars between Catholics and Protestants.

Which remember, only really ended in 1999.

When Jeremy Corbyn (previous head of the UK Labour party and genuinely very antisemitic) was elected as head of the party, I was slightly taken aback to see literally 1/3 to 1/2 of my usual columnists writing articles starting with some variant of "As a Jew, I am horrified to see Jeremy Corbyn...". That's a literal 'literally'. In a country with <1% Jewish people. Later I discovered that it's the same in publishing, and also in finance.

There is also the famous 'white people rule the world' left-wing meme complaining how almost all top CEOs, media people, politicians etc. are white, and then the far-Right got hold of it and pointed out that almost all of those are Jewish and if anything gentile whites are underrepresented.

TLDR: The combination of 'huge Jewish over-representation at the top of most key areas' and 'you will be destroyed if you notice or discuss that over-representation' makes people distrustful. The fact that white people are hounded for far smaller discrepancies makes people resentful.

I don't think Corbyn is antisemitic. I think he's just simple-minded enough to believe the narrative "Hamas are freedom fighters, therefore they are good" and isn't capable of reasoning about it more deeply (not that I think this is a good reason to support Hamas, but that's another topic). It's the same way he was probably exposed to the idea that capitalism is bad because of inequality or something when he was a teenager and therefore decided the USSR is good, and hasn't been able to update his thinking since then.

There is also the famous 'white people rule the world' left-wing meme complaining how almost all top CEOs, media people, politicians etc. are white, and then the far-Right got hold of it and pointed out that almost all of those are Jewish and if anything gentile whites are underrepresented.

As an aside, while it's entirely fair to point out such disparities much if not most of the online right really tell on themselves by being unable to stomach that the reason whites outperform blacks - average IQ differences - is most likely behind their own underperformance relative to Ashkenazis. Watching these people tie themselves in knots trying to avoid this conclusion looks a lot like a progressive journalist reaching for esoteric theories of structural racism to explain why there aren't more black professors at MIT.

that the reason whites outperform blacks - average IQ differences - is most likely behind their own underperformance relative to Ashkenazis

I'm happy to bite that bullet, personally - the evidence is that Orientals and Ashkenazim have higher IQs than average gentile whites, and this explains much of their over-performance.

I do also suspect that there is quite a lot of conscious and unconscious discrimination going on - reading people like Scott and Zvi and the various Jewish columnists I read makes me realise that their Jewishness is sotto voce very very important to them, and my experience in real life backs that up. Humans tend to show ingroup bias unless there is lots and lots of explicit structure / ideology to prevent it, and given that Jewish people often tend also to be highly competent as you say, I wouldn't be surprised if non-Jews had to climb a higher bar to be meritorious in the eyes of Jewish bosses. I don't have any proof for that, of course, but that's why I don't like the taboo around Jewish over-representation. It prevents us from having conversations that we need to have.

TLDR: Ingroup preference can only get you so far if you don't have the raw merit to back it up, but I'd be surprised if some ingroup preference wasn't also in play.

the evidence is that Orientals and Ashkenazim have higher IQs than average gentile whites, and this explains much of their over-performance.

define "much". From what I've seen they have a slightly higher IQ, but also a much higher in-group preference and organization. It's the latter that seems to explain most of their success. This leads to the twitter meme of "check the early life section" where so-and-so famous person is always like "born into a jewish family, he attended an elite school and then quickly got promoted."

From what I've seen they have a slightly higher IQ

Ashkenazi IQ is believed to be 3/4 to 1 SD above the mean. That's enormous.

This leads to the twitter meme of "check the early life section" where so-and-so famous person is always like "born into a jewish family, he attended an elite school and then quickly got promoted."

Ah, yes, like Larry Page and Sergey Brin. Or Larry Ellison. Or Marcus Goldman, going back a few generations. As you may recall, the elite schools used to have to beat Jews off with a stick (or a quota). In-group preference is a lousy explanation for Jewish success.

>one of the most legendary bankers of all time
>name is Goldman

The (((scriptwriters))) getting real lazy on this one; how stupid do they think us goyim are? Almost as bad as a large Swiss bank being founded by a guy named "Credit" and the other one "Suisse."

I didn't realize "Marcus" was Goldman's first name, despite it only being the name of GS’s personal online banking service and all. I guess I just never really wondered what Goldman's first name was or just subconsciously assumed it would be something fancier.

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That's a very fair position.

I don't care about religion (it's all kind of silly) or ethnicity but I've been scolded a few times for holding that idea. Told to check my privilege and so on... Why is it wrong to turn that back around?

It's more about those progressive journalists being consistent. Apply that same lense to yourself.

For the avoidance of doubt, I'm not on the side of people telling you to check your privilege.

My guy, can you tell me what it is about the Jews?

My vague understanding is that a bogeyman is needed to explain European failure at ethnocentrism. If we're being replaced and taken advantage of by hostile third-worlders, then saying 'we chose this because we are pathologically altruistic' isn't very satisfying to the highly race-conscious. In step the Jews, who 'made us do it'.

The explanation only works in America because the Jewish minority there genuinely is very influential through AIPAC. It completely fails to explain similar levels of outgroup preference in Canada, Australia, New Zealand and the countries of Europe. Most countries in Europe have Jewish populations of roughly zero, because a certain 1930s dictator killed what Jews they had, and yet you still see even based conservative Belarus importing hundreds of thousands of cousin-marrying 'specialists' from Pakistan.

I think they're just jelly. Jews openly play and succeed at ethnocentrism and have managed to secure support, concessions, money and other things from the world hyperpower.

From a fargroup and external view, what the Jews are doing is pretty obviously the right call, given that they're surrounded by enemies who want them dead for religious and other reasons and have been rounded up and massacred on an industrial scale because of their identity. Their recent moves are a bit sus, but would be considered OK if the loss in political capital was made up for in other ways (territorial gains, another few decades where the surrounding areas of the ME learn they're not to be fucked with).

Antisemitism is understandable, but it always comes across as sour grapes; what would you prefer, a "fair" world where Jews are just like everyone else who pretends they don't prefer their ingroup? I understand Americans at least, who would rather the Jews not abuse their national founding ethos and culture to secure themselves dominant positions in banking, politics, and culture, but if they're not willing to give up on the "we're a melting pot, for reals, and we allow for freedom of religion" idea then the rest is moot.

My pet conspiracy theory regarding Europe was always that our own continental elite - the ilk of Merkels and Merzes and von der Leyens, and their true power base of dynasties owning supermarket chains, publishing houses and car manufacturers - was shocked into action by the left-based attacks on their core interests in the '90s and early '00s. This was when waves of popular protests empowered by the ascendant internet demanded increasingly cushy labour conditions, tanked transatlantic trade treaties that were meant to secure information-economy revenue streams against the internet gift economy, and often even produced geopolitical embarrassment such as when Germany was forced to keep its involvement in the Iraq war a minimum.

Their political intuitions correctly told them that introducing a large culturally incompatible immigrant underclass would amplify existing contradictions in the "uppity left" to the point that it would tear itself apart and stop functioning as a coherent political force (as indeed it did, with all the anti-elite energy having been successfully redirected into a war between those who are horrified at immigrants and those who are horrified at the preceding group), and they probably bargained that no comparable threat to them could emerge from the right (which anyhow they had good experience and infrastructure to manage).

That seems a bit 4D chess to me. 'Let's import so many dysfunctional third worlders that it destroys our left wing movements'. I think the explanation is smaller scale. Among elites, broadcasting comfort with foreign cultures and a lack of interest in crime or welfarism is an effective form of counter-signalling. 'I'm so rich that I don't need to worry about immigrants suppressing wages or raping my daughter'. Multiply that by the whole western world and you get the situation that we're in now.

Don't forget the ramping up of soc-jus and other woke shit after Occupy, occupy happens and on a dime mainstream media, news channels and mega corpos start flying gay flags and ultra feminist nonsense, leading to at least a century of intra-class culture war between the left and right.

I do not think that Merkel was that cynical. Also, she reigned for 16 years, most of them before she made the decision to let in refugees in 2015.

The Iraq war was unpopular in Germany from the get-go, and was certainly a reason why Schroeder (whose SPD is a very established party, btw) won one election with the promise not to take part in that adventure.

And Merz would gladly personally drown any number of refugees in the Mediterranean sea if it would increase his popularity.

The CDU today is not in a better position than they were ca 2014. So they would have to have been clever enough to make a 5d chess move (and under their own name, no less, instead of letting the SPD win an election and take the full blame for opening the borders), but stupid enough not to anticipate the outcome.

I don't know, I think at least on an intuitive level she was more than cynical enough. There were many adjacent justifications that she could have told herself and her party allies to rationalise it - a real sense of compassion, and the need to get workers to fill low-level jobs in the face of dipping birth rates (which when you think about it really is almost a flip side of "stop leftists from being able to drive a hard bargain for cushy jobs").

Moreover, I think there was another semi-cynical reason in play for Merkel in particular, which was their ongoing conflict with the European South about austerity (a Merkelian pet project if there ever was one). By inviting all the refuges (who came via many of the same Southern countries) to Germany, she simultaneously piled up Germany's karma supplies (in the eyes especially of those who were starting to feel uneasy about the resentment their policy was inspiring in their southern neighbours), created a concrete debt (since per normal asylum rules many of those refugees would have been the responsibility of Spain/Italy/Greece where they first entered the European mainland) and an implicit threat if they keep resisting German demands (Germany doesn't have to take all those refugees off their hands).

There was a similar phenomenon in Burgerland even before the immigration started. The only reason the elite like the left so much now is that they had the FBI spend 70 years beating the shit out of the left until it was free of all the parts they didn’t like.

My vague understanding is that a bogeyman is needed to explain European failure at ethnocentrism.

I agree, but I would go further. A bogeyman is need for blame for all problems of white people, just as feminists blame essentially all their problems on "patriarchy."

feminism:patriarchy::white nationalism:Jews

I feel obliged to point out that there are Jew-inclusive white nationalists.

I feel obliged to point out that there are Jew-inclusive white nationalists.

Yeah, I remember a few years back there was a white nationalist (forget his name) who wrote some very good articles arguing that it was not the Jews but actually competitive altruism that was the source of whites' problems. As I recall, he didn't really get that far and ultimately gave up on his project.

It seems that there is a deep human need to identify an out-group which can be blamed for a group's problems.

Now mods, I don't know what's going to happen here, but in pre-emptive defense of my boy @SecureSignals here I just really want to stress the fact that this dude asked.

Oh, I'd be happy to see @SecureSignals actually answer the question, and he wouldn't be banned for answering honestly. But he's too strategic for that and he's never going to spell out here on the Motte why he hates Jews so much and what he wants done with them. I'm pretty sure he uses places like this to quietly draw in fellow travelers, and saves the ho- scaring shit for more private venues.

To clarify: actually calling for violence (eg "We should kill the Jews") or making statements that are just boo outgroup (eg "I hate Jews because they're sneaky cunning vermin who hate me") would be against the rules. But going into detail about what you believe Jews have supposedly done, or even genetic theories about their natural animosity for gentiles, would be allowed even if the reasoning is specious.

I mean the post I responded to is just a "waaah why do you care" post, not some bold challenge he should feel bad about shirking. It's not even hard to answer. Over-representation in hostile/degenerate institutions and industries, and really outrageously overt meddling in American politics on behalf of their pet ethnostate, boom done. If any other country tried pulling shit like getting BDS laws passed in the US there would be calls to bomb them.

I mean I think Israel is a good idea and most of what they do wrong is forced on them by their adversaries. Add that to not me blaming Jews anymore than any other white group arguing for anti-white policies and then you have me going "I don't get it."

And I don't!

As I'm sure others don't get my distaste taste for low class urban black culture.

And Jew haters really fucking hate Jews. Many do so more than the a guy who watched an illegal Mexican run over his neighbors kid.

It should take more than "those guys are in the academic institutions with the wokeness!!!!" to generate that much anger/hate/distaste.

A few somewhat relevant thoughts I had just now:

Dishonest individuals and groups (that would be most of them) tend to hate those whom they have already harmed. The violence may come first (started for a variety of reasons including opportunism or simple peer pressure or whatever else) and then the mind will rationalize the aggression, which is one of the human brain's specialties. "I'm good, so if I harmed someone, they must be bad. Ergo I should try to defeat them fully rather than atone, lest they, almost surely being evil and such, harm me in return". This may be especially true when the abusers have not overwhelmingly been forced to admit wrongs and apologize or make reparations. See: Germany after WW2 versus the stubbornly jingoistic Turks who even today will mostly try to blame the Armenians and Greeks for the crime of being genocided, ratherthan admit the historicity or evils of the events.

Antisemitism and the scapegoating, abuse and killing of Jews was so central to Nazism's growth and recreation that to renounce the antisemitism would be to admit that the group whom Neo-Nazi wretches sympathize with or descend from was indeed completely wrong to do what they did. It would be mentally difficult to both fully admit the reality of and condemn the Holocaust while supporting everything else the Nazis stood for.

Why Jews, in particular? They are a very small group. People tend to direct and unleash abuse and violence against those who are small or less able or less willing to defend themselves. The Jews were deemed both small and dangerous due to their high IQs and money and political activity. To be both vulnerable and potentially dangerous is a potent mixture for motivating destruction. The nazis also had genocidal plans against the Slavs of Eastern Europe, whom they viewed as being very low in the racial hierarchy, but deemed it more important to kill the Jews first. The Palestinians also try to claim that the Jews are a tiny pest, but a very dangerous pest. The average Gazan believed that only around half a million Jews lived in Israel, prior to October 7th. This lets the ignorant person believe that it's both important and fully doable to wipe them out once and for all.

Yes please. This is not meant to be bait and I am happy to take the discussion into DM if it helps me improve my mental model of those with these priorities.

I don't know where anti-semitism comes from.

It's lindy.

The main issue is that groyperism doesn't actually fix the problems. It feels fun and powerful to point out dual loyalists on Twitter, but this is a tertiary issue at best.

This individualist free market zionism stuff isn't working anymore.

It actually is though. Young white men are being taken advantage of because we aren't individualist and free-market enough. Working-age white men are the backbone of American industry. They are the ones who will rise to the top in the absense of government intervention. What is dragging them down is

  • Taxes, to pay for redisributionist policies like social securty, medicare, and medicaid, and

  • Degree inflation, which drives up the salary of female-dominated professions like education and health-care (which are themselves government-funded!), therefore driving down the demand for husbands.

Young white men do not benefit from socialized government services. It will also not help to drive all of the rich Jews and high-skill immigrants out of the country. That will reduce the number of high-paying jobs available to young white men.

Young white men are being taken advantage of because we aren't individualist enough

Every problem you proceed to mention only remains unsolved because of a lack of White political organization.

taxes, to pay for redisributionist policies

Somalians can exploit welfare because they are collectively organized. Black activists can secure welfare by guilting Whites for the same reason. Whites do not have the collective which allows them to fight back on this front. One White person complaining on the internet is no match for an activist putting out sophisticated propaganda attacks, working as an appendage to a dedicated hundred-person activist network, where they are being paid to literally plan and plot propaganda all day long, after going to school to learn propaganda techniques. There is a total asymmetry here. I don’t think people realize the extent of the power imbalance. What is an “individualist” to do? You, as a hypothetical wise person, may understand the propaganda they are doing, but the average white person has no idea what they are doing, and so they fall for the propaganda. The propaganda acts as a virus that turns each infected person into a carrier of the message, as we saw with BLM. A small activist network of trained agents — yes, even if they are Somalians — will always “outgun” you in the politico-cultural arena and win.

You cannot effectively organize “individualists” together to promote “individualism”, as there is no underpinning evolutionary energy that encourages such a formation. The Somalians are organized instinctively in a way that humans are designed to organize, tribally, using the same instincts of their earlier hominid ancestors. (Ironically, they just sent a billion dollars to Somalia to fund a tribal civil war — go figure). This gives them an enormous motivational and social advantage. A singular individualist can’t compete, and he can’t draw other individualists to his cause, and he can’t recruit funds from a wealthy individualist, or anything like that. But the activist network can make Jeff Bezos’ ex wife donate half a billion to HBCs, because their propaganda works, because they have hundred-person teams coalescing around the same attack strategy.

Would you play chess with one piece? How often do you think you’ll win? Okay, so you have one queen, awesome. You’re against an opponent with all his pieces. Some of them are stupid pawns, but the stupid pawns are taking centralized orders from someone who went to school for chess and plays it all day and studied all of your past games. You’re going to lose every single game, forever. This is the individualist versus a collective. There is no winning anything, ever, in any scenario.

Wait you think white welfare fraud doesn't exist?

I’m just using the example of “taxes to pay for redistributionist policies” of the OP, with special attention to Somalians because of the recent scandal this week. Redistributive economic policy, even in the absence of fraud, is bad for White people, as Quantum notes, as it benefits the Black/Hispanic cohorts disproportionate to the taxes they put in. In regards to welfare fraud generally, it’s not the case that White people do the sort of organized fraud that you find in “collectives”, though of course there are still White people committing welfare fraud.

Is there anyone advocating for this? How successful are they?

Working-age white men are the backbone of American industry. They are the ones who will rise to the top in the absense of government intervention. What is dragging them down is

  • Taxes, to pay for redisributionist policies like social securty, medicare, and medicaid, and

  • Degree inflation, which drives up the salary of female-dominated professions like education and health-care (which are themselves government-funded!), therefore driving down the demand for husbands.

Young white men do not benefit from socialized government services.

Excuse me, please be respectful of The Social Contract.

Also: damn, the comments section of Know Your Meme is so soy nowadays.

Excuse me, please be respectful of The Social Contract.

Sir, that's the UK (though I thought Nicholas was supposed to be French?)

Don’t worry, that article is heckin wholesome and Inclusive. Nicolas and Le Contrat Social, and James and The [US] Social Contract, are also discussed further down.

Nice how they all leave Gen X completely out of it.

What else is new? We don't exist.

The main issue is that groyperism doesn't actually fix the problems.

This individualist free market zionism stuff isn't working anymore.

It actually is though. Young white men are being taken advantage of because we aren't individualist and free-market enough.

The thing that doesn't work but makes a big show out of being on people's side will always win over the thing that doesn't work and makes a big show out of hating them. I'd expect the establishment would learn that lessen given who's president again (although, to be fair, it looks like he did make some things work this time).

Oh, but you said that free market individualism does work and doesn't hate anyone, well, too bad it's not in play. The establishment is not free-market individualist, even establishment conservatives aren't. The only people in favor of it are two dozen autistic libertarians, and everyone else who pays lip service to it does so cynically. Everybody loves the free market when they wan't to ship people's jobs to China or import 7 zillion low-wage workers, but come recession they'll suddenly discover all their friends are too big too fail. Everybody loves individualism, but somehow can't be bothered to criticize literally any other collective identity that people organize around bar one (or I suppose two), and heaven forbid someone suggests treating everyone's favorite ethnostate the way any other country is treated.

People see through this stuff. You can't lament that they aren't buying a solution that would actually help them, but that should be the cause for introspection, not just for criticism of others.

Yep. Step one in making things better for young white men is killing affirmative action, which is directly discriminating against them. Step two getting rid of all the indirect discrimination -- includes that degree inflation, regulations that harm industries with a lot of blue collar jobs (which are disproportionately male), bans on disparate impact (which goes to "white" more than "men"), that sort of thing. Taxes probably come after that. Jews aren't even on the map. Randy Fine ought to resign, but his stanning for Israel isn't having a measurable negative impact on white men in the US.

I have no idea how you could combat indirect discrimination. If you have a clear-headed view on how to do this, please let me know.

I don't see how it's possible. Ban IQ tests for job applications and people will find some other way to discriminate against people they think are stupid (that conveniently lines up with whatever other factor that makes them discriminate). Regulations that harm industries with blue collar jobs will always happen because people with white collar jobs have more power and naturally don't know or care about blue collar people. Bans on disparate impact sound good but the statistics can be gamed by anyone who even knows anything about statistics.

To get people to stop discriminating against men you need to figure out how to get women to stop discriminating against men, which will never happen even if you unplugged the internet and somehow managed to bring back the golden age of marketing so powerful it got people to consider bacon a breakfast food.

IQ tests are not indirect discrimination. "Disparate impact" is not indirect discrimination based on race, it's a reason for implementing indirect discrimination based on race. Banning IQ tests for jobs where IQ matters is discrimination against the intelligent (and indirect discrimination against groups which are more intelligent on average). Some of the indirect discrimination I'm referring to is banning criteria that would result in advantages for young white men.

The thing is, I'm not sure banning it stops it. I'm sure there's been attempts to make a human entirely "free" of bias, either through chemical or electrical means. Even the AI models aren't free from Noticing, as some of the researchers are finding out to their own peril (the data pans out to make certain conclusions unpalatable).

I'm not sure it's possible. In much of the world discrimination in the workplace is just a fact of life, to be acknowledged. It can be overcome, definitely, but I'm not sure it can be done by fiat.

I'm not asking to make a human free of bias. I'm asking to make the law not discriminate against young white men. This is a much smaller request.

But that's my point. It's already illegal in many areas to discriminate against people on the basis of race or ethnicity. You think making it illegal to discriminate against white young men in the Harvard admissions process will suddenly make their applicants lily white? They already sandbag Asians heavily. What would change this would be a purging of the entire Harvard staff, which would defeat the point of Harvard as a place for the rich and powerful to rub shoulders and make connections.

In America, the whole "Hispanic" identity was an invention they created out of whole cloth to make it easier to manage. This was then used to make people racist both for and against the umbrella of people they had filed under the Hispanic identity.

It's already illegal in many areas to discriminate against people on the basis of race or ethnicity.

De jure, but not de facto. De facto it's legal to discriminate against whites and Asian in college admissions.

What would change this would be a purging of the entire Harvard staff, which would defeat the point of Harvard as a place for the rich and powerful to rub shoulders and make connections.

If so, OK. Note that's staff and not faculty -- it's the latter you need to keep Harvard elite. It's probably not even necessary, though; purge the regulatory agencies, have the replacements make some threats, and follow through on a few of them, and the Harvard Corporation will get their admissions department aligned. Same for a lot of other schools. The problem is keeping it up long enough that they realize you're serious.

In America, the whole "Hispanic" identity was an invention they created out of whole cloth to make it easier to manage. This was then used to make people racist both for and against the umbrella of people they had filed under the Hispanic identity.

The category is invented (and somewhat incoherent) but it's persisted because it labels (if imperfectly) a real phenomenon. People had no problem with being racist against Mexicans before it was invented, even "Mexicans" who happened to be from Guatemala or something. And the Mexicans had no problem supporting other Mexicans (though not "Mexicans", as indeed they do not today)

Your assessment of the problems is correct, but you also need to look at what lead to these problems. Who was a (self proclaimed) driving force behind the civil rights act? Of course Jews are not a monolith, but they (rightfully, logically) pursue policies in their own self interest which at times is at odds with those of white Americans.

Randy Fine ought to resign, but his stanning for Israel isn't having a measurable negative impact on white men in the US.

A Jewish ethno-nationalist in American halls of power is exactly the problem.

Who was a (self proclaimed) driving force behind the civil rights act?

Black people? The NAACP? John F. Kennedy? Lyndon Johnson? Hubert Humphrey? Everett Dirksen? Thomas Kuchel? Mike Mansfield?

A Brief History of Jews and the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s. Gee I don't know how about bankrolling the whole thing and providing ideological backing in universities.

Step one in making things better for young white men is killing affirmative action, which is directly discriminating against them.

This would probably improve the lot of most Jews, who stand to take some proportion of the spoils currently reserved for URM.

If Fuentes could stomach doing something that indirectly helps them because it also helps him, that is.

This would probably improve the lot of most Jews, who stand to take some proportion of the spoils currently reserved for URM.

Of course it would, most Jews are white and get no help from the DEI stuff. There's a core of leftist mostly-secular Jewish ideologues who help keep most American Jews on the Democrat's side -- that's the truth behind the Noticing our Holocaust-enjoyers like to engage in. The Democrat's rhetorical support for Palestinians provided an opportunity to peel off Jews who were merely self-interested (which as I said below, is perfectly normal) from the leftist ideologues, and Trump took it. Now people like Fuentes are trying to squander that, and will likely succeed.

And if the only response to that reality is calling everyone an anti-semite or a nazi then what is even the point of this?

Well it worked pretty well, boomers have already had their opinions set by the television.

I read somewhere an argument about how stable systems were inherently unstable in a changing world. They set up the whole ADL/AIPAC/lobbying/media machine to suppress and drown out dissenters. It worked well. But it works by suppressing rather than adapting. Things change, people get increasingly upset about the anomaly of them funding bombs for Israel to blow up random Palestinians, while the usual suspects in the media are still talking about how Israel is the 'most moral army.' That works if you have total media dominance but not if the battlefield is somewhat contested, it backfires if there are videos of Israeli parliamentarians enthusiastically justifying torture, if they go around shooting unarmed protestors or people trying to get food. Trying to stick to the maximalist narrative just further delegitimizes that media power.

They keep mashing the 'suppress' button but the suppression isn't working. The system is designed to be stable, not to change. The goal and methods and mindset is fixed. There is some evidence of adaptation (Team Israel is working to try and manipulate the Tiktok algorithm and LLM training data for instance) but the system as a whole is breaking down.

Over on another forum, a groyper is swearing up and down that groyperism isn't all about The Jews. And here you go ruining it for them.

Hah, do you mean DSL?

Yes.

Why would someone even lie about that? Their whole thing is pointing out Jewish influence. It completely defeats the whole point to not do that.

Presumably because they know that having positions that wouldn't be out of place in 19th century Eastern European peasants marks them as "low human capital", as another figure on the "right" likes to say.

AT and Hanania arent on the right. They are just oddballs.

Delete Hanania and his followers, and the groypers, and the RINOs, and there's not much of a right remaining. As the last election showed.

The fun fact is that there's never been much of a right. The pre-FDR Republicans were either capitalists (Coolidge) or progressives (Hoover). Eisenhower was a general for FDR endorsed by Truman. Nixon was a pre new-left liberal. Reagan was an open-borders capitalist. H.W. Bush was the dream candidate of /r/neoliberal. W. Bush was a "compassionate conservative" whose signature domestic policy was more welfare for old people (Medicare Part D). Trump is an incoherent populist.

I don't like the gropyers. Nick Fuentes is a Mexican gayhomo larping as a whitenat.

But philosemeticism has clearly run its course in the West. The left discarded race blind meritocracy. Now, the right has too. You can't unring that bell. Saying "Jews have a disproportionate amount of influence in the halls of power compared to their population" can't be taboo if everyone is running around saying that about the whites. If Con. Inc demands its audience stop noticing, they'll be ignored. You can't be a nationalist for America and be a Zionist at the same time. You won't fool anyone.

Yes, that means you, Ben Shapiro.

You can't unring that bell. Saying "Jews have a disproportionate amount of influence in the halls of power compared to their population" can't be taboo if everyone is running around saying that about the whites. If Con. Inc demands its audience stop noticing, they'll be ignored.

This hits the nail on the head. The post-Holocaust Jews advocating against racial consciousness knew what they were doing. Noticing begets noticing. HBD or idpol based arguments on Right or Left will always lead to anti-Semitism as long as Jews are tracked as a distinct group in any way.

There's no stable HBD argument that rules out antisemitism. You can't build an argument around 13/52, that simultaneously avoids questions about Jewish over-representation.

There's no stable idpol argument that rules out antisemitism. You can't complain that blacks are under represented in XYZ, without protestant whites eventually noticing that there are almost no protestant whites in XYZ.

Chesterton's Fence.

There's no stable HBD argument that rules out antisemitism.

Does this argument apply to anti-Asian bias? I know there is some animosity between parts of the right and South Asians, but the success of East Asian immigrants in the US hasn't seen anywhere near the animosity that Jews get, especially from "protestant whites."

Yes, but East Asians have mostly flown under the radar (aside from occasional generic Red Scaring about the CCP or Hyundai getting busted for breaking labor laws) due to being underrepresented in politics (and remember that American politics has lots of east coast bias, while most East Asian Americans live on Hawaii or the west coast). Fox News might as well be the Zohran Mamdani and Israel channel whereas I never hear anything about Michelle Wu.

Sarah Jeong exists but East Asian Americans aren't perceived as grievance mongering to the same extent as American Jews or South Asians. It probably also helps that the East Asian FOBs or would-be immigrants (and note that "Asian" immigration has been much more heavily South Asian in the last 20 years than used to be the case) don't speak English and/or are behind the Great Firewall while South Asians are more active on social media (See: the holy war on twitter over H1-Bs).

Yes.

While people have pointed towards a racist coalition of "everyone but the Blacks," it's pretty tough to come up with arguments for why every stereotype about blacks is true and unchangingly based in genetics, while all stereotypes about Chinese are either lies or bias or cultural coincidence.

To be clear, I have never at any point claimed that the various issues with black Americans are wholly and unchangingly based on genetics. In fact I have argued explicitly against such a claim. I have said many times that if enough aggressive and sustained cultural pressure could be placed on black Americans to abandon the practices and frames of mind which make their culture so dysfunctional, I expect that we would see a substantial (though not complete) narrowing of the gap. The problem is that such cultural pressure is simply completely infeasible under any political paradigm that could credibly emerge in this country in my lifetime.

My apologies, I misunderstood your opinions.

the success of East Asian immigrants in the US hasn't seen anywhere near the animosity that Jews get, especially from "protestant whites."

This would be consistent with any purported animosity toward Jews from gentile whites not being primarily motivated by Jewish success per se, but because Jews feature prominently in politics, Hollywood, mainstream media, academia, and at the ballot box promoting anti-white messaging and anti-white policies.

While East Asian Americans lean democrat and gentile white Americans might be annoyed with East Asians for doing things like studying too hard and ruining classroom fun vibes, East Asian Americans are less prominent when it comes to anti-white rhetoric and are quite prominent as allies in at least one domain (affirmative action).

There's no stable HBD argument that rules out antisemitism. You can't build an argument around 13/52, that simultaneously avoids questions about Jewish over-representation.

That doesn't seem right to me, if anything stable HBD arguments would notice the higher average IQ of jews and say antisemitism is combination of invalid jealousy and valid concern about ingroup bias, same as lefty feelings about white people in general are.

That doesn't seem right to me, if anything stable HBD arguments would notice the higher average IQ of jews and say antisemitism is combination of invalid jealousy and valid concern about ingroup bias, same as lefty feelings about white people in general are.

As an actual HBD understander I have to step in here - this is not something that HBD proponents would proclaim. IQ and its heritability is one of the most basic aspects of HBD, the very first thing you learn when you get started. When you start talking about jews through the lens of HBD you start talking about things like ingroup preference(which you did, to your credit, mention), distinctions between verbal and visual IQ, levels of neuroticism, etc. There's some interesting information in there, like the obvious-in-hindsight knowledge that the European portion of Ashkenazim genetics came from Italians, or that several of the genetic diseases that are common amongst jews relate to the same kind of neurotransmitters that are involved in verbal IQ.

I don't care enough about jews to go through all the evidence and declare one way or another that the field supports antisemitism, but I can confidently state that your view here isn't correct. At no point does HBD support the idea that antisemitism is caused by jealousy - if you're being intellectually honest, the difference in population size between Ashkenazim and gentiles means that there's actually a higher population of gentiles at any given level of IQ than there are jews. If you want to bring out the jealousy argument, it would actually be running in the opposite direction. I'm not going to do it because I have better things to do, but it would actually be possible to take population numbers and IQ averages to work out how much jewish overrepresentation in certain fields is due to IQ and how much is due to ingroup preference and kinship networks.

It's really tough to make arguments built around "Noticing" patterns which will be able to stop people from holding all kinds of folk prejudices. If evolution doesn't stop at the neck, why does it stop at morality? If my aunt Hilda was absolutely right about the niggers, why was she completely wrong about the kikes?

The argument that IQ is measurable while morality is not, is just a case of looking for your keys under the streetlight. Pay attention to the race of criminals, but ignore Epstein and Weinstein, ignore the ethnicity of the Bolsheviks and the cultural Marxists, etc.

Encouraging race blindness is the best way for Jews who wish to remain distinctive within larger societies to survive.

The argument that IQ is measurable while morality is not, is just a case of looking for your keys under the streetlight. Pay attention to the race of criminals, but ignore Epstein and Weinstein, ignore the ethnicity of the Bolsheviks and the cultural Marxists, etc.

You forgot to mention them urging Pilate to have Jesus crucified.

The Soviets mostly were not Jewish. I have not heard the claim that Jewish Soviet officials were especially heinous, statistically speaking.

Epstein and Weinstein were, first and foremost, rich bastards. I do not think that once you control for "being a high society member" or "being a Hollywood exec" (which is well explained by HBD on intelligence), there is anything left to indicate that Jewish men have a higher incidence of sex pestery than gentiles.

Jews were over-represented in communist circles disproportionately in Russia and Germany, they even tried to do a failed coo in germany. The jews in power were later purged in communist party.

The Soviets mostly were not Jewish. I have not heard the claim that Jewish Soviet officials were especially heinous, statistically speaking.

During the early parts of Soviet history there were a lot more of them. From the 1917 Revolution to around the late 20s-early 1930s. Which means there were a lot of Jewish party members participating in particularly ugly war crimes during the Red Terror. Some of these had the character of an ethnically and religiously motivated pogrom more than class warfare, especially many of the actions against the Russian Orthodox Church.

Stalin kicked most of them out (along with most of the other ethnic minorities) because he was staring down the barrel of a huge war with other foreign powers and he needed a more Russian centric communist party to get the largely Russian population on board for it.

Now none of this particularly reflects on Jews specifically. Vicious ethnic and religious persecution of various kinds was very common for most of European history. Many other communist revolutions were used as a cover for ethnic and tribal warfare. And in Russia specifically, the government using one designated favorite ethnic minority as a stick to beat everyone else into line was a standard part of government structure.

It doesn't rule out anti-semitism because jealousy may be "invalid" but it's also going to happen. You can't "rule out" antisemitism, any more than you can rule out other such sentiments. Aside from dissolving the identity utterly, but that's not going to happen with most identities, and certainly not with Jews.

The left discarded race blind meritocracy. Now, the right has too.

Well yes, the younger right is. I don't think it's the same cohort changing their mind over time. But I wonder to what degree the young right feels the intellectual drift of the left has forced them to be like the left, grudgingly, or even if the left's diversity machine arrayed against them wasn't around, they'd pursue identity politics anyway. As in even if the country 95% white, we should stoke white consciousness.

I can only speak for myself here, as someone who would broadly call himself aligned with JD Vance (millennial with a similar enough upbringing that I deeply sympathize with his reactionary streak, even if I'm skeptical about whether or not he has a coherent policy solution).

White consciousness would be unnecessary and arguably ridiculous in an America with Reagan era demographics, and I have no desire to live in a world of "affirmative action, but for the chuds" (I work a company that's something like this and in practice it frequently feels like working in Idiocracy.). When concerns about "diversity" or the "underrepresented" meant ADOS blacks it at least had a reason (and no, I'm not some Wignat who thinks that ADOS blacks aren't Americans. They are, if anything, among the most American ethnicities. Equity is probably not possible in my lifetime but if ADOS Americans and American Indians were the only affirmative action demographics it would be an acceptable outcome.), even if I strongly oppose the likes of Kimberle Crenshaw.

The problem now is that (especially if the left and libertarians get their way concerning immigration, and skilled/educated legal immigration is arguably worse here from a political perspective) we don't have mid-late 20th century demographics, and the "underrepresented" could be taken to include the entire world. It's entirely possible (and arguably probable) that white Americans will remain the sin eaters/punching bags for everyone else's problems long after they become merely the largest plurality, and long after it's become the case that white Americans merely fare "average" in terms of outcomes.

In practice, "diversity" is a means for white progressives to render their conservative white opponents demographically irrelevant given that skilled immigrants from pretty much everywhere assimilate into the educated white progressive milieu (and yes, American Jews are largely the alpha pluses of this group but it's fundamentally a gentile white, dare I say Yankee thing).

Beyond that, it's merely a matter of aesthetic preferences. Am I small-minded enough to find it especially grating to be condescended to about "privilege" by the kids of either robber barons, genocidaires, or some other variety of "civil war/political loser" (Allow me to pick on Konstantin Kisin for a second. I'm not going to take the word of someone who left Russia as a preteen child whose father got exiled by Boris Yeltsin's government for excessive corruption to be especially authoritative.) back home? Yes. Would I rather live in a place where people are mostly like me? Yes, and if that makes me a bigot so be it. I'm not a big fan of the Bush family but I don't see how things are going to get better for people like me if we hand Ramaswamy the keys.

I had a tiff with conservative Jew Katya Sedgewick on X, someone I've interviewed and have been mostly supportive of...until Octobers 7th and everything that came after severely scrambled matters.

She says a day or two ago that her primary concern is the fate of Jews in America. That it's existential and no other policy concerns matter in comparison. I point out how blatantly idpol this is and she denies it. I think some conservatives believe Jewish idpol to be necessary in order to repel all the other idpols. The one idpol to rule them all, if you will, as it's as close as one gets to defending liberal individualism and modernity against 99% of idpols, which are anti-that. Jews are a stand-in for a more abstract idea.

So, speaking as someone who's been accused of giving special protection to Jews on the Motte and even being a Zionist myself:

I've been a subscriber to Bari Weiss's Free Press for a while but I'm cancelling my subscription. Why? Because every damn issue is about how Nick Fuentes or Zohran Mandani or whoever said anything negative about Jews or Israel is an existential threat. I have mostly enjoyed the Free Press's coverage on issues, but it became very, very noticeable that they're iconoclasts and contrarians (or at least willing to platform heretical views) about everything except Jews and Israel. On that topic, any synagogue in the country being spray-painted is worthy of a headline, and no article will ever suggest Israel is anything but a victim of calumny.

I get that it is personal for Weiss, but it's like every Jew became unhinged after October 7. To be fair, so did the Left, and now the Right's anti-Semites are crawling out of the woodwork. It's hard to blame Jews too much for feeling like everyone is out to get them more than ever when it really does seem like everyone is out to get them more than ever. But it's also a little hard to feel sympathetic to people like Weiss who think articles mocking everyone else's idpol are hilarious but don't you dare make light of hers.

Being concerned about the fate of your own ethnic or religious group is normal. That's not idpol as it's been during the culture war. The culture war idpol has been "being concerned about the fates of SOME ethnic groups is OK, but about others is pernicious racism". We're never going to make blacks stop caring about black issues or Asians caring about Asian issues, and we shouldn't try. Same goes for Jews, same should go for gentile whites. Sure, ideally, there's many cases where one should put ethnic interests aside, but these need to be reached by political negotiation, not unilateral disarmament.

We're never going to make blacks stop caring about black issues or Asians caring about Asian issues, and we shouldn't try. Same goes for Jews, same should go for gentile whites.

Best I can do is in-group preferences for me, but not for thee.

For a large segment of white Americans, it’s actually “in-group preferences for thee, but out-group preferences for me.” Discussed, amusingly enough, in a Jewish magazine.

It isn’t all just white liberals providing the fun though. White normie conservatives will also do shit like publicly forgiving their son’s black murderer while denouncing those who do some Noticing over the incident.

Being concerned about the fate of your own ethnic or religious group is normal. That's not idpol as it's been during the culture war. The culture war idpol has been "being concerned about the fates of SOME ethnic groups is OK, but about others is pernicious racism".

Isn't that exactly what western Zionists are doing? Jews are allowed to look out for Jews, but Christians aren't allowed to look out for Christians. Imagine a Heritage Foundation report about how over-represented Jews are at prestige schools and professions, and how correspondingly under-represented Protestant Whites are. Do you think the ADL and Bari Weiss would say that was acceptable?

Isn't that exactly what western Zionists are doing? Jews are allowed to look out for Jews, but Christians aren't allowed to look out for Christians.

Zionists? What does this have to do with Israel?

Imagine a Heritage Foundation report about how over-represented Jews are at prestige schools and professions, and how correspondingly under-represented Protestant Whites are. Do you think the ADL and Bari Weiss would say that was acceptable?

The ADL wouldn't, but the ADL is just Jewish-tinged leftism. I don't know about Weiss, I haven't read her lately, but if what amadanb says, probably not -- but that's her self-interest. Personally I don't see why the Heritage Foundation would make such a report -- they're not a Christian organization. But if some Protestant organization were to make such a report, it shouldn't be considered racism or unacceptable; it's just self-interest and should be looked at in that light. Doesn't mean any recommendations they make should be followed, of course; that's actually one of the OTHER problems with the ADL, that they are somehow looked at as the voice of authority rather than a pro-Jewish interest group.

Being concerned about the fate of your own ethnic or religious group is normal.

Or nation. That's another group. And it stands above idpol.

Again, that only works if the smaller groups can come to an agreement. Making your own interest only that of the nation while everyone else is fighting for their own is a great way to get robbed.


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