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PaperclipPerfector  2d ago (text post)   8754 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of December 15, 2025

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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.

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