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Culture War Roundup for the week of January 30, 2023

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I don't want to blame Americans if it's not their fault, but this kind of thing - the whole progressive angle of antifa and the rest of it- is largely driven as an online phenomenon

In part, unfortunately, there's a particular type of usually female, mostly-secularized, American urban liberal Reform Jew, who is unconnected with many day-to-day or theistic aspects of the religion, but for whatever reasons still wants to feel a very strong Jewish identity. This almost always manifests as extreme neuroticism, persecution complexes, and substitution of political ideology for theistic moral precepts.

I don't know if you can blame individuals in this archetype for all of the "Gringotts is Antisemitic!" panic, but I've seen multiple such individuals give ideas like this credence and credibility, at least in lefty identity-driven circles. So it seems likely to me that on balance they're contributing to the trope.

I'm tempted to pattern-match this to how deracinated people on an identity's periphery are more likely to develop toxic simulacra of that identity - Hitler was Austrian, not German; Ghandi developed his ideas about Indian nationalism while living in an ex-pat community in Zimbabwe; it took American "blacks" to invent Pan-Africanism, etc. - but that reeks of a just-so story and I'm not sure if the full historical record bears it out. It's an idea I've been playing with for a while, however.

I'm tempted to pattern-match this to how deracinated people on an identity's periphery are more likely to develop toxic simulacra of that identity - Hitler was Austrian, not German

Nitpick, this always seemed like a historically illiterate jab at the dictator. Austria not being in Germany is a pure accident of political history, the main population speaking German and being just as ethnically close as Bavarians, Hessians, Saxons, Prussians, Thuringians, and Westphalians are to one another. Austria did not join in 1871 because they were part of a large multiethnic empire under the Habsburgs and Bismark thought forcing them would destablize Eastern Europe and possibly cause Prussia to lose control over the politics of new state. Nowadays, 150 years later, there's been identity drift in Austria, in the same way there would have been if any other random prince hadn't joined the reich. In the 1930s, this was not the case.

I'm tempted to pattern-match this to how deracinated people on an identity's periphery are more likely to develop toxic simulacra of that identity

I've always assumed it was due to the whole defining characteristic thing.

Even in Australia/America/other immigrant societies there's kind of a joke about how ethnic groups here are far more invested in their kitsch and acting stereotypically 'whatever', whilst when they go back home it's far more about nuanced regional identities and nobody stresses on it too much.

In part, unfortunately, there's a particular type of usually female, mostly-secularized, American urban liberal Reform Jew, who is unconnected with many day-to-day or theistic aspects of the religion, but for whatever reasons still wants to feel a very strong Jewish identity. This almost always manifests as extreme neuroticism, persecution complexes, and substitution of political ideology for theistic moral precepts.

I knew someone like this as an undergraduate, at a university with fairly few Jewish students (not the US). She was my first encounter with a progressive - a left-wing person who wasn't "liberal" in any sense, and who in a previous generation could have been a perfect Mrs. Grundy. Intensely compassionate, intensely neurotic, and ironically also autistic enough to almost constantly upset/annoy people inadvertently, causing fights and anxious situations for her. (Who would have thought that Muslim feminists might not appreciate being invited to a Slut Walk?) Quite fun to be around, if only to see the fireworks.