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Notes -
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.
And even worse: things which were once considered bad when Jews did them may later come to be considered good, but new infractions will be discovered or invented to pin on Jews so that their perceived moral value among gentiles never improves.
For many centuries, Christians were forbidden to lend money, so if a Christian wanted to borrow money, he had to borrow from a Jewish moneylender (cue centuries of stereotypes about greedy Jews). Over time, Christian countries liberalised and secularised, and now there are just as many gentile moneylenders as Jewish ones, if not more so. But has this resulted in a rehabilitation of Jews in the gentile imagination, or an acknowledgement that it was wrong to stereotype Jews as greedy when in many cases they were completely shut out of many lines of work other than finance? Has it fuck. Gentiles are allowed to engage in the behaviours that resulted in the "greedy Jew" stereotype without incurring any of the associated negative status.
It's such transparently rigged, unfair bullshit.
?? The greedy jew stereotype is the butt of jokes, not something people seriously hold. Serious antisemites are much more likely to rant about dual loyalty or jews r pedos conspiracy theories.
In the last three years I have seen plenty of people discussing in complete seriousness how all of the banks and financial institutions are controlled by Jews and that this is bad.
American Jews are more than 10x over-represented in wholesale financial services, and there are substantial parts of the industry (though not close to a majority) where access to senior positions is gated by Jewish social networks.
This is a long way from Jews controlling finance, but when you can't safely tell the truth except on a pseudonymous online forum or in left-wing spaces dominated by machine politicians elected by unassimilated immigrants from Goatfuckistan, it isn't surprising that people postulate a more powerful conspiracy than the one that actually exists.
The same applies to Hollywood and probably the US MSM more broadly.
Hollywood has been kicking out Jews because of diversity initiatives. Just about all Jews are white in this context.
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