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naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   37946 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of March 27, 2023

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If you've used right wing websites for any amount of time, you're bound to find someone pointing out the vast and far reaching influence of zionists in the US government, media, and finance. I'm sure you've seen the infographics showing the prolific and far reaching influence of groups like AIPAC or other powerful zionist special interest groups, as well the Epstein/Maxwell Mossad connection.

  • I define "zionist" as people with a real or imagined Jewish identity or loyalty, conspiring to promote their ideological and financial interests at the expense of others. This is done through finacialization, campaign finance and lobbying, and manufacturing consent through media.

  • Race is a social construct. George Soros literally changed his race to white, and worked for the Nazi party during the Nazi occupation of Germany during WWII.

Now, I've heard plenty of arguments pointing all of this out, but what are the arguments against it?

Since I'm capable of self-reflection, I'm aware that Black identity politics have a similar view of white people.

  • I might have a high probability of seeing zionists among journalists/bureaucrats/intelligentsia I don't like.

  • However, a Black person will look above them and see a white person in power nearly 100% of the time. After all, the diaspora of "white" people are quite prolific.

I want to try taking off my magic sunglasses that cause me to see zionists everywhere, and see a different perspective. Most left-coded media either denies that this is happening at all, or accuses you of being a bad person for noticing it. What other arguments are there against it?

I think the fundamental problem with this sort of post is that that the vast majority of people like you do not seem to understand what the word "zionist" means. If you think that the holocaust was bad and that the survivors deserve a homeland of their own, you are technically a "zionist" but that's not how the term is typically used. My first thought reading your post is "Tell me that you are a self-hating jew without using those exact words".

Well, for one thing, George Soros was 14 years old when the Nazis surrendered, so I am guessing the claim that he "worked for the Nazis" involves some serious spinning.

https://youtube.com/watch?v=SGWizajL7tA&t=264

Ignoring the obviously loaded question video title, here's him talking about it.

If you look at the entire story - that he was posing as a relative of a Hungarian collaborationist official, who was himself a traitor for hiding a Jewish relative, and helping said official confiscate property in 1944, that is, at a time when everoyne knew the war would be over very soon, and the confiscation themselves mostly irrelevant.. It's not charitable at all to say that he 'worked for the nazi party'. It's stretching the truth to the breaking point, really.

I define "zionist" as people with a real or imagined Jewish identity or loyalty, conspiring to promote their ideological and financial interests at the expense of others. This is done through finacialization, campaign finance and lobbying, and manufacturing consent through media.

Well then you define "Zionist" wrong. A Zionist is someone who is in favor of a Jewish state in Israel.

I'm guessing the bit you quoted is aimed at pro-Israel neocons in America? Because I can't help but suspect the word "imagined" is doing more work there than at first blush.

And when I see people being anti-Zionist, it's usually the left wing, and it usually has to do with problems in the Gaza strip.

  1. It's happening, but it's a prospiracy instead. Jews aren't necessarily aware of their own thought processes that causes this.

  2. It's happening, but it's the equivalent of Russell conjugation. Non-Jews have a stick in their eyes that prevents them from seeing that were the situation reversed, they could be described in the exact same way. I forget who said it here, but it's about how those without power don't seem to understand the experience of having it.

  3. It's happening, but it's in response to history. Basically, Jews have been so poorly treated by others that they were funneled into doing things others did not want to and built their advantages upon that. In this case, Jews are acting rationally and have learned that they benefit from the existence of a state for their people (and whoever else they want to allow), among other things.

These are just a few I can come up with. This says nothing about evidence, of course, and that applies to both sides of this debate.

I'm aware that Jewish people are smart, and intelligence is a predictor of improved life outcomes. However, you'll notice my post only contains the word jewish once, as I'm specifically referring to the subgroup of zionists. Bernie Sanders (or at least, the idealized 2016 version of him) is "Jewish" but very clearly has a different agenda then zionists do. Netanyahu is clearly a zionist, but is becoming unpopular with Israelis.

Basically, Jews have been so poorly treated by others that they were funneled into doing things others did not want to

I've heard this one before, but I have yet to hear a convincing argument that as to how money lending is an oppressive job. If you were to oppress a people group with high intelligence and labor skills, it would probably look like the Nazis forcing interned Jews to assemble radios and electronic components.

I've heard this one before, but I have yet to hear a convincing argument that as to how money lending is an oppressive job.

It's not an "oppressive" job, but it is one that historically - not just in Europe - was carried out by a minority caste who was generally despised, because unsurprisingly, people who loan you money and then expect to be paid back, with interest, are unpopular. The fact that everyone considers them wicked and greedy and yet they're rich rubs salt in the festering sores, which from Japan to England to Russia would periodically result in a purge of the moneylending class when the ruling class found it inconvenient to repay their debts.

The fact that everyone considers them wicked and greedy and yet they're rich rubs salt in the festering sores, which from Japan to England to Russia would periodically result in a purge of the moneylending class when the ruling class found it inconvenient to repay their debts.

There's a general argument saying that perhaps it's better for long-term stability of society that debts gets annulled from time to time, because otherwise, especially in relatively static farming societies, Matthew effect result in socially undesirable concentrations of wealth, no ?

I don't know, is there? "There's a general argument" seems awfully vague and evasive to me, almost as if you want to make an argument that you do not want to state explicitly. So please elaborate. I'm particularly interested in how you think such an annulment should be executed vis a vis moneylending classes.

What’s ironic is that very notion was written into the founding documents of the Nation of Israel, the Year of Jubilee. No generational debt, and everyone has a home property they can return to.

They were never forced to be money lenders, though. They held lots of other skilled urban jobs. And despite what some sources say, there were no prohibitions on Jewish land owning that would prevent them from simply living as farmers.

I think it has to do with the fact that for a long time Christians were not allowed to do money lending, and Jews didn't have to rely on Christians' good will in order to get into that business.

My understanding is that Christians at the time weren't allowed to charge any interest, as that was considered usury.

What about the Hibernian conspiracy?

And more.

Yet more.

☘☘☘They☘☘☘ don't want you to know who's really in charge. The Jews take the heat, but the media, government and major companies are run by ☘☘☘them☘☘☘.

Terrible idpol response:

  • There aren't state laws mandating Irish potato famine education courses in 23 out of 50 US states.

  • The US doesn't give disproportionate amounts of money to Ireland, and then also have to give money to their neighbors to incentivize them to play nice with the irish.

  • Ireland has never been caught spying on US politicians or planting Stingray units around the White house. (However, in fact checking this, I did discover that the IRA got weapons from the USSR once.)

  • Our relationship with England is not actively sabotaged by the Irish.

While clever, this works the same for Italians or Germans. You could even stretch it to work for Asians too.

Isn't it a bit odd that Irish-Americans are less than 10% of the population but they make up around half of all Presidents historically and almost all modern Presidents? And look at this list of major bank CEOs. Bit strange that a single digit percentage ethnic group ended up in charge of almost all American banking. Coincidence? "Prospiracy"?

And this small group also ran the Fed for almost the entire 20th century? Yet another bit of happenstance or a "prospiracy" where they just all happen to independently desire control over money and banking? The coincidences and prospiracies are piling up. Let's admit the fact that in-group bias and ethnic affinities exist. And one small group inexplicably gets almost all the presidencies and banking CEO positions.

You say this is identity politics. I say yes, of course: they are playing identity politics and they're winning. The evidence is right in front of us.

Crackpot rightoid identity politics response that probably doesn't meet posting standards:

Honestly, just posting that as a rebuttal would probably have been okay, but explicitly saying "I don't think this meets posting standards" and then posting it anyway with spoiler tags is just obnoxious. Post what you want to say and stand by it, or do not.

God dammit, not the Droods again, I can't withstand the memes...

Did someone mention droods?

I watched a Let's Play of that once and remember nothing but 'What the hell did I just watch?'

Clearly given your username this isn't really a good faith post.

Can you explain? Is there some meme I don't know about?

It's a reference to the naming scheme that was used by the ban evasion subreddits for Million dollar extreme, which follows the Number, Currency, Rhymes-with-extreme pattern. Sure, I might be biased, but I've been reading a lot of rationalist stuff recently, and I've been reconsidering some of my viewpoints. (I'm a problem theorist, not a conflict theorist.)

"6 Gorillion" is a common revisionist jeer at the number of Jews killed in the Holocaust.

Would you please explain to me the thought process behind including this in your reply? If you genuinely believe this to be a bad faith actor then the appropriate response would either be to ignore and move on or to publicly register them as such first. Actual engagement, while an enticing option, is their intended goal - granting it to them just doesn't make any sense.

Alternatively you don't actually think that but you want to call out their belonging to a group/antisemitic signalling, in which case you may want to address that (e.g. Are people of differing ideological beliefs allowed to post here? Are they capable of posting here within the rules? Are usernames even useful for anything other than marking a continuous personality across conversations/threads?).

Would you please explain to me the thought process behind including this in your reply?

I would think it obvious. I understand that rationalists suffer from a form of institutionalized autism where in they genuinely believe that you can separate the reliability information from the source (IE that someone has lied dozens of times before should not be taken as evidence that they might be lying now) but that doesn't make theirs an accurate model of the world. Obvious bad faith actors are obvious and should be treated as the degenerative communal disease that they are.

To be clear, we are not talking about humans here, we're talking about alphanumeric strings on an an anonymous internet forum. IE the intellectual equivalent of bacteria in a gut.

What makes @GorillionRialGraphene a bad faith actor? Where are they lying?

The theme of my username is commonly associated with trolling campaigns.

I am aware that this is a very hot button issue to ask, and had cleared it with a mod before posting.

A post can be a bit, but not entirely, bad faith. Being "bad-faith" doesn't prevent its topic from being interesting to discuss. Maybe the 'best response' to a bad faith post is an earnest one. Maybe you want to convince readers, if not the poster. Even the worst poster - maybe an earnest response will plant a seed of doubt, or something.

What other arguments are there against it?

Jews are the highest-IQ subpopulation, are concentrated in big cities, and have a culture promoting intellectual endeavours. Is it really a surprise they are overrepresented in fields that draw from urbanites with high IQ and high work ethic?

The higher IQ applies to the ashkenazim and is thought to be from selection in the late middle ages and after, but the pattern of concentrating in certain elite professions and the majority getting mad about it applies to jews much more generally, and so is presumably not explained by it.

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