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What is the Zionist model of antisemitism*?
Matt Yglesias posted what turned out to be a surprisingly hot take that the downturn in public opinion of Israel is a result of Israeli actions, and that the best way for Israel to fix its public relations problem is to change its actions vis-a-vis the Palestinian issue and foreign policy.
I was surprised at the pushback. This seems straightforwardly true. There was a great chart I saw a few days ago, which I am unfortunately unable to find, which showed that public opinion of Israel has been approximately this low before. It was in 1982 with the invasion of Lebanon and the notoriously brutal siege of Beirut.
Most of the alternative theories fell into two camps.
It’s hard to tell how religious the people in 2. are, but my general impression is, “quite a bit”. Many of them seem to speak of antisemitism as if it were a spiritual fault, another manifestation of the platonic ideal of pure evil. Seen as a spiritual problem, the correct response is to become even more aggressively Jewish. This has the rather large problem of being counterproductive when, e.g. smashing idols goes wrong.
*By “antisemitism” in this post I almost exclusively mean “antizionism”. I use the term to maintain consistency with the pro-Israel literature I am engaging with, not as an endorsement that antizionism = antisemitism.
If you are going to have a specific model of antisemitism, then ideally you should have a model that explains historic instances of it rather than just a single contemporary instance. That it's a result of a downturn in public opinion of Israel as a result of Israel's actions fails to explain pre-1948 antisemitism for reasons I hope are obvious.
I can't speak for the US, but in the UK, neither Yglesias or the proposed alternative theories are a good model. the current wave of antisemitism is basically a coalition between the far-left and Islamists. The older part of the far-left have been playing at this for years, they are not new, and thus there is no rise to explain. The growth of Islamists tracks demographic changes, these types always hated Jews, there's only recently enough of them to be a relevant voting bloc. And the third group of young far-left people (somewhat disproportionately female) can't be explained without explaining why they are both going far-left and anti-Israel. From what I can tell there is nothing so uniquely capitalist about Israel that hatred of Israel is enough to make you go communist too, so the connection is better explained going the other way, perhaps by path dependency regarding still being led by the old far-left... So probably the cold, dead hand of the Soviet Union's reaction to Israel crushing a bunch of Soviet-armed Arabs in 1967 continuing to ripple through history.
I agree. Before the existence of Israel, Jews were collectively accused of spreading communism; spreading capitalism; spreading the bubonic plague; killing Christian babies to make matzo; oppressing people on behalf of the Czar; undermining support for the Czar; and probably a whole bunch of other things.
The basic rule is that whenever something is considered bad, it won't be long before the Jews are accused of it.
What unfortunately lends so much credence to the accusations of the anti-Semites is what when the claims start getting thrown around, almost 'nobody' takes to combatting them to show them why they're factually false. The implied default assumption seems to be that anti-Semites don't actually believe there's a causal arrow between the activities Jews participate in and the negative downstream consequences it stirs up in the societies they inhabit.
I 100% disagree completely with the prescription people like Sam Harris have to anti-Semitism, saying it's just a ridiculous notion to be an anti-Semite (it is) and "we need to tell these people to go fuck themselves." It completely ignores the fact that people actually believe there's a factual foundation to this and the fact that it's never counter-argued or address is often what adds continued fuel to the conspiratorial notions people have.
They were just thrown out of 109 countries over a span of 3000 years with similar complaints each time for no reason. If you have been thrown out of 109 bars do bouncers have a collective delusion or is your behaviour lacking?
Jews need external enemies to unite their own group. Jews are extremely ethnocentric and are loyal to their group instead of their host societies. Jews have a religion which morality is shockingly antagonistic to goyim.
I once got into a discussion with an anti-Semite who leaned in the direction of Jews control this and Jews control that, etc.; and then he went on about the Holocaust. I told him I don't disagree that Jews as a cultural group wield disproportionate influence across various sectors of society, because they certainly do. WRT the Holocaust, how is someone supposed to make sense of the notion that "the Jews" control things and yet are unable to prevent their own extermination? At the core of this belief is the thought that Jews are both superhuman and subhuman. They're not. They're simply one of the most organized groups of people on the planet.
You can ask the same question a number of ways. Why do the West Indians wield so much disproportionate influence in Africa? Why do the Chinese wield so much disproportionate influence in Malaysia? Why do the Jews wield so much disproportionate influence in the west? Simple. Because they're successful at what they do. Would anyone care about the "malevolent influence of the Jews," if they were a failure in everything they did? Jews tend to become successful overtime in most of the areas they've laid down their roots in. Does this mean they've never done anything I think is destructive or harmful? Not at all. I think their domination over the US foreign policy establishment is a tremendous case in point of that.
Race and religion are correlated with the same areas of the brain responsible for ethnocentrism, racism and xenophobia. It boils down to the in-group vs. the out-group and tribalism. All religions bifurcate the world into this kind of psychological division, and they all have their own vocabulary for describing the world. In Islam you've got Muslims and Infidels. In Christianity you've got Christians and Pagans. In Judaism you've got Jews and Gentiles. In Communism you’ve got the communists and the counter-revolutionaries. Nations do this as well to justify all their violent activities as all empires have. The British were carrying a white mans burden and the French had a civilizing mission and the Russians were carrying out their internationalist duty when invading Afghanistan and the US is preserving democracy when it’s dropping bombs on everybody else. It goes on and on.
And I've read Culture of Critique as well but not all Jews see their behavior as advancing some kind of nefarious "Jewish interest," at the expense of everyone else (even Kevin MacDonald admits as much). Jews disagree with each other all over the place (if we're simply talking about them as an ethnic or cultural group). Ultra / Orthodox see themselves as a religion and see the secular Jews as "slackers." Conservative Jews see themselves as a "religious family," and oppose Satmar's opposition to Zionism. Reform Jews see themselves as a "nation," and simply want to preserve their historical heritage.
Jews have disproportionate influence. They are nepotistic and work as a team for their special interest. A small dedicated lobby working for a specific issue can push the mainstream. That is what lobbying is about. It doesn't mean they are superior. There are plenty of cases in European history of one ethnic group having the upper hand in an empire over another. That doesn't require others to be inferior.
The issues with jews is that their interests are not our interests. Open borders migration and diversity makes sense for an ethnic minority protecting its interest. It doesn't benefit wider society. Promoting their ethnic subinterest over the majority's causes conflict. This is why throughout history they have been kicked out by the host population.
Christians and Muslims want to convert the non believers. The jews see the goyim as cattle with no soul.
Between this post and this one, the mods are now discussing whether you have earned the permaban you were promised last time you crashed out about Jews.
For now I am inclined to just tell you to chill out, despite the fact that I warned you no leniency would be granted last time. The reason for this is not because I think there is any chance you will moderate your behavior and stop being absolutely unhinged every time you post about Jews, but because threads about Israel and Jews always wind up here, and it's hard to say you are significantly worse than several other posters, who are more verbose and circumlocutious when they argue that Jews are monstrous and evil, but are expressing essentially the same sentiments.
The next post I see from you in the mod queue is probably going to be the trigger, though.
So just to review one more time for all our Joo-posters: you are allowed to hate Jews. You are allowed to say you hate Jews. You are allowed to advance theories about Jewish "behavior" and why they deserve hatred. But you cannot just "boo" your outgroup (e.g., Jews do this, Jews do that, Jews are blah blah blah) without pinning these accusations to specific groups. "Jews" are not a "specific group." You cannot realistically argue that there is something inherent to every single person of Jewish heritage that causes them to act a particular way. (I mean, if you want to, go ahead and present your biological/genetic evidence for this claim.) You cannot realistically argue that every single person in the "Jewish community" thinks a certain way or that everyone practicing the Jewish religion believes a certain thing. Because that is very obviously not true. So if you want go off on "Jews," you are almost certainly on thin ice, not because "Jews" are a protected class but because we mod people for doing exactly the same thing wrt every other group.
As always, you must proactively provide evidence in proportion to the inflammatory nature of your claims, and since claiming that an entire ethnic group is inherently treacherous, malevolent, and hostile to "our" interests is clearly inflammatory, you need to very diligently dot your i's and cross your t's every single time. And you don't.
Just as an example:
Really? "The Jews"? All Jews? All religious Jews? All Jews who are culturally Jewish regardless of their religious inclinations? You can argue (as some people do) from selected Talmudic excerpts that there is a strain of Judaism that considers "goyim as cattle with no soul." I think this is pretty clearly bad-faith cherry picking and you still need to, you know, point at the actual scriptures that say this (even @coffee_enjoyer only manages to produce some distorted and disputable texts to argue that that's what the nefarious Jews actually mean), but there are at least words you can point to as evidence that some Jews think things like this. There are rabbis who shitpost on Twitter and you can say "See, some Jews talk shit about goys."
But that's not sufficient evidence to claim "An ancient text says this, therefore all Jews believe this." Or "A prominent rabbi said this, so this is representative of what Jews think and we can indict them all on the basis of his words." It should go without saying that such standards would indict essentially every religious or ethnic group. But we've been over this before. Jew-haters gonna hate, but we're still going to apply the rules. Evenly.
You continue to post on very thin sufferance.
Funny how we have other people openly post about genociding Palestinians and that doesn't seem to get anyone banned.
Searching for the exact term "muslims believe" leads to 314 search results on the motte. Many of these comments are negative. There are over a thousand comments with the phrase "Russians are". Do they need specification as well?
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Yes. And so “Jews” are like any other group in such regard. Whether you or I think it’s legitimate for them to do so is beside the point. You’re describing basic behavior.
Do I dislike particular Jews because they advocate politics antithetical to my own? Yep. Do I dislike them because they follow the religion of Judaism? No. Unless you’re telling me what you’re really against are Zionists, in which case I’m with you there.
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