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Israel had its first general election since 2022 on Tuesday. Israel is an experiment in ethnonationalism, but it is also an experiment in proportional representation. Every conceivable minority group or special interest has their own political party. There is a party for Russian immigrants, a party for Ashkenazi Haredim, and a separate party for Mizrahi Haredim. Arabs of course vote for entirely separate parties from Jews (by custom, not law).
Israel is the most right-wing democracy in the world. In Israel, you can vote for the racist party (Likud), the extremely racist party (Religious Zionism), or the racism über alles party (Otzma Yehudit, literally "Jewish Power"). You can even vote for the pro-racism but anti-Netanyahu party (Together), or the pretending-not-to-be-racist party (Yashar). If you feel like sticking it to the man, there is at least one viable actually-not-racist party (The Democrats). Some would argue the Arab parties (Joint List and Ra'am) are non-racist, but others would say that they are just as racist but in the opposite direction.
The Knesset has 120 seats, so 61 seats are needed for a majority to form a government. Most of the results are in, and it's looking like deadlock.
Estimated seats by bloc
Netanyahu Bloc - 53
"Change" Bloc - 48
Arab Bloc - 19
In European legislatures, is is customary to have a cordon sanitaire against parties perceived as far-right. In Israel, there is a cordon sanitaire against the Arab parties. The Netanyahu bloc has lost its majority, but there is no clear opposition bloc large enough to form a government. Israeli Arab turnout was through the roof.* Bedouin nomads rode into town on camels to vote. The conventional wisdom seems to be that forming a coalition with any of the Arab parties post-October 7th is political suicide. If no one can form a majority, there could be another election as soon as next year.
*Netanyahu is accusing the Arabs of voter fraud. I have no idea if this means anything.
I thought about posting this as a top level comment, but this seems like as good a place.
What do people think the consequences of Jews leaving the Democratic party will be? Prior to like 5 minutes ago, Jews were up there with blacks as the most left-wing group in America, with something like 80-90% supporting Democrats over Republicans. However as Third Worldism has become the dominant ideology within the Democrat party, Jews are being shown the door. Jewish politicians and operatives who refuse to bend the knee on Palestine are being made to feel very uncomfortable. And the party is starting to nominate anti-Semitic politicians like Abdul El-Sayed to major positions. It's become common knowledge that, regardless of their position on Israel, a Jewish politician could never win the Democratic nomination for President. The Josh Shapiro fantasy lasted all of 2 minutes.
And, contra their reputation for self-loathing, Jews are actually starting to flip parties. According to one recent poll, 64% of Jewish voters will support the Republicans over Democrats this cycle.
Personally, despite being a Gentile, I've always felt a degree of connectedness to Jews to the point where many of my best friends are Jews. I also believe that Ashkenazi Jews are easily the most intelligent ethnic group on the planet. This is reflected in their vast contributions in the scientific and creative fields. Something like 40% of all Nobel Prizes in the sciences have been awarded to Jews. But I also believe that the political influence of Jews over time has been so incredibly negative overall that it undoes all the good things. (Communism is doing a lot of work here).
So for 100 years, you had this small but incredibly smart, creative, rich, and politically active group has pointed like a gun at the Republican party. And now.. it's not. I don't think we'll see the gun turned around and used in the other direction, but this feels big.
A huge decline in Democratic Party organizational ability as ideologically-motivated Jews are replaced with corruption-motivated Third Worlders
A possible easing of the extreme pro-left bias in the legal profession
Less fundraising for Democrats
Of course, this is also not a great place to be for Jews. They paid the Danegeld to the Democratic Party and have been repaid with contempt. But any anti-semitism they feel now will be trivial compared to what they experience when President AOC leads a Democratic trifecta.
Whoever thought the Republicans would be the best best for Jews? We're only 10 years away from this Tweet by Matt Yglesias (often called the worst tweet of all time).
Seems kind of a stretch to blame communism on 'the Jews'. Like yes, Marx was a (secular) Jew, but Engels wasn't. None of the communist dictators in Russia, Europe, Asia or Latin America were Jewish. And the communist impulse (eat the rich, total power for the government) really doesn't require much theory behind it anyway.
Here's the test I would propose:
If you are willing to give Jews credit for modern science, you get to blame the Jews for communism.
I'm not so sure. If Jews made up 20% of communist dictators, you might be able to say that Jews are disproportionately responsible for communism in the same way they are disproportionately responsible for scientific advancement. As it is, Jews have made up 0% of communist dictators (sorry Trotsky). And the reason communism is bad is not whatever bullshit theory Marx and Engels wrote, it's all the killing, repression and poverty caused by its political implementation.
There's a reason that when we think of fascism we think of Adolph Hitler instead of Giovanni Gentile. Fascism is bad because Hitler tried to kill everyone in the world, not because of what an intellectual wrote in a book.
Bela Kun was Jewish. And even still, you at people in Stalin’s circle: [not only] Trotsky; Bronstein; Genrikh Yagoda; you had quite a lot, who were part of the administrative apparatus of the dictatorship.
If you look at his main period of dominance (1930-1953), there's really only Kaganovich. Everyone else got purged. And then he instituted a bunch of antisemitic campaigns like the attacks on 'rootless cosmopolitans' or the Doctors Plot.
I guess comparing scientific advancement with 'communism' isn't really a fair comparison. The science thing has a clear mechanism. The Askenazim are extremely intelligent and therefore contribute disproportionately to scientific progress. But there's no gene for communism. And even if you argue that there's something about Jewish culture that predisposes them to communism (doubtful when looking at extremely right-wing Israel), almost all the examples of Jewish communists are atheists who have no real attachment to their ethno-religious identity, including Marx himself. The only reason anyone cares is because antisemites seek out things to blame on their hated outgroup.
Don’t know if you’ve read K-Mac’s work on the Culture of Critique series, but he performs an analysis of why so many Jews are overrepresented in leftist causes and social movements in the west, spanning across the 20th century up to today. One thing he points out is there’s an operational difference to be distinguished between Jews who ‘happen to be’ involved in various causes, and Jews who are expressly found promoting different causes as part of an attempt to “advance a Jewish interest,” as an identity. His work’s been assailed over the years, but there’s also a lot of support for the framework of his analysis. Multi-level selection hasn’t garnered widespread scientific acceptance over individual selection, but it’s still a fairly hotly debated topic in the realm of evolutionary biology.
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