site banner

Culture War Roundup for the week of April 3, 2023

This weekly roundup thread is intended for all culture war posts. 'Culture war' is vaguely defined, but it basically means controversial issues that fall along set tribal lines. Arguments over culture war issues generate a lot of heat and little light, and few deeply entrenched people ever change their minds. This thread is for voicing opinions and analyzing the state of the discussion while trying to optimize for light over heat.

Optimistically, we think that engaging with people you disagree with is worth your time, and so is being nice! Pessimistically, there are many dynamics that can lead discussions on Culture War topics to become unproductive. There's a human tendency to divide along tribal lines, praising your ingroup and vilifying your outgroup - and if you think you find it easy to criticize your ingroup, then it may be that your outgroup is not who you think it is. Extremists with opposing positions can feed off each other, highlighting each other's worst points to justify their own angry rhetoric, which becomes in turn a new example of bad behavior for the other side to highlight.

We would like to avoid these negative dynamics. Accordingly, we ask that you do not use this thread for waging the Culture War. Examples of waging the Culture War:

  • Shaming.

  • Attempting to 'build consensus' or enforce ideological conformity.

  • Making sweeping generalizations to vilify a group you dislike.

  • Recruiting for a cause.

  • Posting links that could be summarized as 'Boo outgroup!' Basically, if your content is 'Can you believe what Those People did this week?' then you should either refrain from posting, or do some very patient work to contextualize and/or steel-man the relevant viewpoint.

In general, you should argue to understand, not to win. This thread is not territory to be claimed by one group or another; indeed, the aim is to have many different viewpoints represented here. Thus, we also ask that you follow some guidelines:

  • Speak plainly. Avoid sarcasm and mockery. When disagreeing with someone, state your objections explicitly.

  • Be as precise and charitable as you can. Don't paraphrase unflatteringly.

  • Don't imply that someone said something they did not say, even if you think it follows from what they said.

  • Write like everyone is reading and you want them to be included in the discussion.

On an ad hoc basis, the mods will try to compile a list of the best posts/comments from the previous week, posted in Quality Contribution threads and archived at /r/TheThread. You may nominate a comment for this list by clicking on 'report' at the bottom of the post and typing 'Actually a quality contribution' as the report reason.

12
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

This is not a requirement to be Jewish. They do not go looking for converts, but it is possible to convert into Judaism.

Not a very common thing to see. At least we can admit that they are pretty insular people.

In the one country where there is a large amount of them, Israel, they can't really be said to be very nice to the non-Jews.

This isn't a component of Judaism, and while it may be a fair description of many (not all) socially liberal Jews, it's not a defining characteristic of "Jewishness."

Your main objection seems to be specifically about contemporary leftist SJ-aligned Jews, yet you made reference to historical "ferocious" refusal to assimilate.

Well, yes. Refusal to assimilate. All the Jews that decided to assimilate converted to Christianity, 2000 years ago.

All the Jews that exist now descend from people that had a chance to convert at some point, and decided not to.

And they've taught their descendants not to.

Similarly to the Amish. The Amish exist because they descend from a line of people that decided not to adopt technology and to teach their children not to. There are very few converts.

At any point in time an Amish person can decide to stop living the Amish life. Sure, they could still be considered Amish, but their children or grand-children would not.

The difference between the Amish and the Jews is that the Amish don't control banking and media corporations, don't control people's livelihood, what they buy, are allowed to buy or what they are allowed to think, who they are allowed to vote for.

Imagine if the owner of TheMotte was talking trash about the Amish and the Amish somehow coordinated with payment processing systems, internet infrastructure companies, other corporations to force the owner to close the website.

And when they would try go tell somebody about these events, their media invites would get cancelled or the media that did decide to host them would get banned from internet infrastructure companies, payment processing companies, etc.

This is what happens very often if not always when somebody talks trash about the Jews.

that's still a long shot from saying "Jews cause anti-Semitism because they all cancelled Kanye and are afraid of being Holocausted and won't assimilate."

This would be fair if that was the first time this ever happened.

Rick Sanchez had the same issues in the 2010s.

Norm was joking about it in the 90s

My point of view is that a conspiracy does not need to exist for the results that we see.

I think that Jews in general, going through the historical selection that they went through, led them to inherit characteristics of people that not only cannot assimilate to a wider body of humanity, but also constantly feel under attack from the majority of humanity, and tend to overreact to that perceived attack, therefore triggering resentment.

Kind of like the common psychological phenomenon of somebody feeling insecure, thinking that everybody is constantly judging or scrutinizing them, therefore projecting an aura of awkwardness wherever they go, and causing people to perceive them as they self-evaluate.

These people find each over and bond over their uniqueness and their vulnerability against the rest of the mean world, and when inevitably their behavior causes the rest of the tribe to suffer, they are the first out the door, and the most likely to survive!

Who is most likely to survive a banking riot, the honest guy that doesn't really have any opinion about banking, or the insider Sam Bankman-Fried, who knows that there's a lot of bad things happening in banking, and if they're not coming for him, the pitchforks outside the windows are not good news anyway?

The easiest for rich, powerful Jews to get others to like them, is to personify noblesse oblige.

Be generous with your money, share your wealth, be a role model for others.

What do so many of them do?

George Soros goes and hires people to make US cities more dangerous (soft on crime DAs).

Others found organizations to help people illegally immigrate to the US (break the laws that protect the American people).

Sam Bankman Fried goes and scams a bunch of do-gooders who wanted to improve charity.

And of course the endless stream of progressive media 'stop whiteness now', 'you are racist for having standards of how your country should be that rich Jews disagree with' etc.

This is historical too. So many Jews could not stand that Americans had a right to self-association so they funded the Civil Rights movement.

The Amish like their life a certain way, they like to live among themselves and not mingle with others, like the Jews, but they're not forcing or even coercing anyone else to live their beliefs, drop their borders, accommodate foreigners, accommodate sexual minorities, drug addicts, etc.

The difference between the Amish and the Jews is that the Amish don't control banking and media corporations, don't control people's livelihood, what they buy, are allowed to buy or what they are allowed to think, who they are allowed to vote for.

"The Jews" don't control banking and media corporations - specific Jews do - and they're not uniformly Jewish. As I keep banging on about, Jews come in all sorts of different groups, and increasingly they're not even all that Jewish at all.

Specific Jews do the unbanking.

Specific Jews do the media influencing.

Specific Jews do the ADL, AIPAC, soft-on-crime DA, gun control, illegal immigrant charity... funding.

Specific Jews write the opinion pieces about how all white people are racist.

Specific Jews theorize the critical race, gender, border theories and teach them in colleges.

When you add them all up that ends up making a lot of specific individuals, but that still doesn't add up to the full Jewish population.

What are the other ones doing?

Are they coming out and saying 'us representatives of the Jewish bowling club of Broward County Florida, would like to address the egregious accusations against Kanye West / Nick Fuentes / etc, and show our support...'?

I haven't seen it.

If somebody happens to be an individual Jew who absolutely hates to see right-wing people get banned from media, people lose their job over criticism of powerful people, people get smeared every day for their skin color and other such things.

Then good for them.

But what I would call 'Team Jew' is absolutely opposed to them.

If that one individual is unable to shut down 'Team Jew', to tell their family members, cousins, in-laws, synagogue fellows, other members of the Jewish bowling club etc, to stop being part of Team Jew...

...well then they might become a casualty of the inevitable wave of 'antisemitism' (resentment against 'Team Jew').

That's not a threat, it just seems like a law of nature to me.

No nation in this whole world will endlessly tolerate a small group of people that is constantly undermining the majority

(which is what I perceive 'Team Jew' to be doing, which you may disagree with).

Everything you state is done by leftists. You are articulating objections to leftism.

A majority of Jews in the West are pretty leftist.

You're engaged in the worst kind of Chinese robber argument. "I hate these trends, I notice a lot of Jews are in favor of them, therefore RAAR JOOS!"

No nation in this whole world will endlessly tolerate a small group of people that is constantly undermining the majority

If that were actually happening, they'd be noticed and stopped. Leftism isn't some insidious thing Da Joos are sneaking into the culture. Leftism would not dry up and blow away if not for Da Joos. Leftism is one side in an ongoing culture war, and it's winning a lot for reasons we've discussed here at great length. Da Joos did not make it happen.

If that were actually happening, they'd be noticed and stopped.

Wasn't that the point of the Holocaust?

And antisemitic persecutions before that?

The magna carta

  1. If anyone who has borrowed from the Jews any amount, large or small, dies before the debt is repaid, it shall not carry interest as long as the heir is under age, of whomsoever he holds;

...

Exodus8 Then a new king, to whom Joseph meant nothing, came to power in Egypt. 9 “Look,” he said to his people, “the Israelites have become far too numerous for us. 10 Come, we must deal shrewdly with them or they will become even more numerous and, if war breaks out, will join our enemies, fight against us and leave the country.”

Idk what the Jewish version says, but clearly, Jews have been dealt with as a threat for a very long time.

Well, as I said to SS, "It didn't happen but if it did, they deserved it" is certainly not a novel take.

Idk what the Jewish version says, but clearly, Jews have been dealt with as a threat for a very long time.

Yes, Jews have been dealt with as a persecuted minority for a very long time. Of course the people who hate Jews don't say they are persecuting them for reasons of religious and ethnic prejudice, they say it's because they're a "threat."

Yes, Jews have been dealt with as a persecuted minority for a very long time. Of course the people who hate Jews don't say they are persecuting them for reasons of religious and ethnic prejudice, they say it's because they're a "threat."

Yes, now who should we believe?

The 1000 companies that fired the employee or the 1 employee that keeps claiming that all these companies are biased against him? What should the HR dept do?

It's sheer coincidence that hundreds of different peoples across time and space all coordinated to inexplicably hold this abhorrent hate for such a fine, distinguished people.

This is a tired argument but this was in reply to your remark:

If that were actually happening, they'd be noticed and stopped.

Historically, problematic behavior from a small ethnic group has been noticed and stopped many, many times.

Whether you agree or disagree that the perception of a 'problematic' behavior was accurate or that the behavior was ethically 'problematic', I think we can both agree on that.

Now regarding your 'Chinese robbers' claim, the idea is that highlighting a certain demographic and random event can distort the perception of that demographic.

I agree.

But perhaps we can have data on that?

There was quite a bit of kvetching over this delightfully-titled piece 'The Specifically Jewy Perviness of Harvey Weinstein'.

I'm not going to go through all of them, but I'll assume that like this one, they do not provide any rebuttal that Weinstein is a specifically Jewish-type of pervert, or that Jews are more likely to be perverts than non-Jews.

I do believe that Jews are over-represented in the demographic of 'powerful people that commit sex/or and financial crimes'.

But I don't have data. I don't have data that would show me that it's only because they're over-represented in the demographic of powerful people,

or if on top of being over-powerful, they are also over-perverted.

If somebody had that kind of data to dispute my assumptions, that'd be great!

The Trump-era Jewish [sex] scandals seem to have faded from the news, perhaps due to the Biden family's own affairs making the topic inappropriate to bring up for journalists, compared to the earlier appetite for salacious rumors of the 'dossier' etc.

It's sheer coincidence that hundreds of different peoples across time and space all coordinated to inexplicably hold this abhorrent hate for such a fine, distinguished people.

No, it's not sheer coincidence. Prejudices can be passed down for centuries, and prejudices that are mindlessly passed on like that are usually not rational. Why do you think the Korean woman I mentioned hated Jews? Do you think she'd ever met a Jew? Do you think Jews are undermining Korean culture?

Your alternate hypothesis appears to be "Everyone has always hated Jews because they deserve it." So what did Jews from Exodus to 13th century England do to deserve being hated? It certainly wasn't manufacturing media you dislike. If I understand your argument correctly, it's something like, Jews are - biologically? or culturally? - compelled to undermine and attack whatever culture they are living in. It's just a thing Jews do. All of them (modulo a rounding error of "Not All Jews"). That's why everyone from the Babylonians to King John to the Nazis wanted to get rid of them. There exist, ahem, more historically grounded explanations, but you reject them for the more gratifying justification "No, they were asking for it."

Why do you think the Korean woman I mentioned hated Jews? Do you think she'd ever met a Jew? Do you think Jews are undermining Korean culture?

It's possible that she would have known due to local events.

I'm not too familiar with Korea or Korean antisemitism.

I know of one family active in the East that may have generated some antisemitism in China

the Sassoon family that was involved in the Opium trade which had a huge historical impact.

Like an older, oriental version of our very own Sackler family.

You can tell me whether she met a Jew and whether you think Jews are undermining Korean culture.

If American culture is undermining Korean culture, then I could see somebody blame some Jews for that.

I'm not too familiar with Korea so I couldn't tell.

Your alternate hypothesis appears to be "Everyone has always hated Jews because they deserve it." So what did Jews from Exodus to 13th century England do to deserve being hated?

According to the Scriptures, one man from God's favorite Jewish family went to Egypt and quickly rose in power.

God placed him in such circumstances and gave him such good advice that he was able to save Egypt and his Jewish brethren from a famine.

Then Pharaoh may have gotten jealous, due to that man's rapid rise to power and control of the kingdom's resources (grain supply that God had advised him to store leading to a monopoly during the years-long famine).

For some reason Pharaoh wanted to enslave the Jews and the Jews had to force him to let them go through various God interventions.

I don't know what the Egyptians themselves wrote about the episode.

For 13th century England, the story is a little bit more familiar, and already explained in the link I posted

What happened was that, if landowners could not pay their debts to the Jews, they forfeited the property they had put up as collateral. As Jews could not own land, this then reverted to their master, the king, who systematically built up his holdings. It meant that the Jews were accidental agents in a substantial land transfer to the king, and in increasing his powers nationally.

Basically the Jews were helping the {federal} government) increase its power at the detriment of the locals.

Concentrating the power in the hands of a minority. They didn't have a Wall Street to Occupy back then, but the story is similar throughout history.

Today we can see Jewish advocacy groups push for federal hate crime laws or federal gun laws, or EU-level anti-homophobia, pro-refugee laws, etc.

It's just a thing Jews do. All of them (modulo a rounding error of "Not All Jews").

Well, I already explained why I think there was a selection.

The insider who knows that pitchforks might be coming is more likely to have an exit plan ready, and thus survive and transmit his cunningness to living people today.

I don't know what the ratio is, or can be.

I think that there are some key players, let's say an Epstein or a Wexner or a Soros, the owners of Disney, media companies, porn companies...

But around that there are some other more minor key players, the Marx, the feminist, holocaust and critical theory writers...

And then there are foot-soldiers within the media, within these NGOs or within the bureaucratic machines, that make all of it come together.

It only takes something like <5% of the African-American population to be seriously dangerous to get the 13-60 murder figure, so I don't know what proportions of American Jews it takes to create the JQ.

A lot of them are already dead, too, they just keep living in the brain of impressionable goyim.

the Nazis

I have some ideas about that one.

Weimar Republic perversions.

Economic crisis blamed on Jewish activities (true or false?). Jewish communist revolutionaries.

Jewish transgenderism researchers

There exist, ahem, more historically grounded explanations, but you reject them for the more gratifying justification "No, they were asking for it."

What does 'historically grounded' mean? The past is a foreign country, and history is written by the victors.

Team Jew has been trampling on the carcass of the West for a while, so I'm a little bit skeptical of their production.

Plus lately I've grown more and more suspicious of experts in general.

Not a good argument, but I think some can see it as fair if they've been around a Western government in the last few years.

More comments