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Culture War Roundup for the week of December 15, 2025

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Jews are the ones correctly interpreting these things in both cases. The Harry Potter goblins were a representation of Jews written by a Gentile.

There's a certain strain of leftist that strains to attach antisemitism to Rowling, but her depiction of goblins was straight out of folklore, not Rowling expressing her covert Jew-hatred. Or are you going to adopt the leftist frame that akshually, goblins were metaphors for Jews even in the Dark Ages?

(No, they were not. Metaphors for many other things, but not Jews.)

The Grinch and Scrooge are metaphors for Jews written by Christians telling a story of their Conversion to Christianity through Christmas.

... have you even read Dickens or Doctor Seuss?

Is your theory that every gentile who writes about an ugly, greedy monster is actually writing about Jews, even if subconsciously? That says more about you than some hypothetical ur-Jew floating in the collective gentile consciousness.

Or are you going to adopt the leftist frame that akshually, goblins were metaphors for Jews even in the Dark Ages?

I've seen someone unironically assert this on Tumblr, in the context of calling the anime Goblin Slayer antisemitic. Because goblins are always and everywhere an antisemitic caricature, a deliberate stand-in for Jews, and always have been, thus anyone who uses goblins as an antagonist element is a deliberate antisemite.

I've seen this claim too, but I don't remember ever seeing it before Rowling became a bete noire and people were trying to pin antisemitism and racism et al on her.

I once got lectured by a Jewish person that "lizard people" (i.e., the myth about secret aliens controlling the world) is an antisemitic meme. And I'm like... do you really want to insist on that association?

I once got lectured by a Jewish person that "lizard people" (i.e., the myth about secret aliens controlling the world) is an antisemitic meme. And I'm like... do you really want to insist on that association?

Yeah, the tendency to reflexively react to criticism of "elites" — open, secret, or alien — controlling the world with "You mean the Jews, right? You're totally talking about us Jews!" isn't a good look. When you can watch someone put a standard lefty "eat the rich" rant on Tumblr, and immediately get piled on as a "Nazi" who wants to genocide all Jews because, between ranting about Musk, Bezos, and Klaus Schwab, they dared bring up George Soros; because the only reason anyone would ever mention Soros in a negative context is entirely because Soros is Jewish and they hate him because he's Jewish, because they must be an antisemite who hates all Jews — well, it's hard not to think this probably fuels at least a little antisemitism.

And back on the earlier point, it's not just goblins and reptilian aliens, either. How about the claim that the tengu of Japanese folklore are an antisemitic caricature? I mean, just look at those noses. I, mean, sure, the conventional explanation is as a more humanized form of their older depiction as bird-men:

The tengu in art appears in a variety of shapes. It usually falls somewhere in between a large, monstrous bird and a wholly anthropomorphized being, often with a red face or an unusually large or long nose. Early depictions of tengu show them as kite-like beings who can take a human-like form, often retaining avian wings, heads, or beaks. The tengu's long nose seems to have been conceived in the 14th century, likely as a humanization of the original bird's bill.

But, no, that doesn't stop people from claiming, like on Twitter here: https://nitter.poast.org/nerdtechgasm/status/1931926279106036079 that "it's not a theory" at all that the tengu are antisemitic depictions of a group of Jews who arrived in Japan in the 3rd Century and became the Hata clan.

I think Jews see all conspiracy theories as latently antisemitic because of bitter experience - most conspiracy theorists and conspiracy-focused political movements will eventually graduate to Jewish conspiracies and old-fashioned anti-semitism. This process appears to be happening to Zoomer MAGA as we speak.

It's possible to see the Grinch as a Jewish-to-Christian conversion story, I suppose. But A Christmas Carol is certainly a story of a Christian redemption, no Jews involved.