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Yes, and that is still a thing. There are a lot of people in the Democrat constituency who are calling for student loan debt to be forgiven.
If somebody plays a roleplaying game with rewards after quests, with a choice each time between gold or reputation (gained by giving away the gold to the needy). And they consistently pick the gold over the reputation.
What is their reputation going to be like?
Perhaps the Jews of England in the 13th century did not have any choice, and really had to do money-lending.
Is that true? Or was there no choice that they liked?
Would a Jew be able to convert and own land, integrate into the farming community? Would that have saved them from expulsion?
What about now? 2023 America? What is stopping a young American Jew from joining the US military or buying a plot of land to farm?
Who is forcing them to go to Ivy League, get into the money-lending industry or the media / entertainment / porn industry?
You haven't provided any explanation on your end. We are just to believe that millions of people through history had the same irrational behavior and beliefs for no reason.
Who would make the best decision, prejudiced backwater Korean woman, 13th century English peasant, or expert rationalist EA investor when offered to invest in FTX?
Your last few posts have been rather extreme reaches to connect "Thing I don't like" with "Other thing I don't like."
Are we still talking about Jews here? What is your basis for claiming that Jews, as a people, "consistently pick gold over reputation"?
I don't think anyone claims there were literally no other occupations for medieval Jews, as obviously not every Jew was a money-lender. But it was one of very few high-paying professions open to them. What is your point here? We know historically why moneylenders were not popular, but are you claiming that banking/lending is inherently disreputable, that anyone who takes that up as a profession deserves an occasional purging, and that Jews have a propensity for it because of their Jewishness?
Do you see how in your rather shotgun approach to "Why hating Jews is rational," you are completely failing to present any kind of coherency?
Nothing. There are Jews in the military, and I'm sure there are Jewish farmers. Since you again seem to be implying something about what occupations Jews go into, why don't you give me some facts about what professions Jews are or are not disproportionately engaged in, and then explain your theory of its significance.
Nothing. What's wrong with going to the Ivy League, or wanting to go into finance or media and entertainment? Do you consider it disreputable for non-Jews to do that? ("Porn" seems to be something you inserted just because it implies exceptional degeneracy, though I'm not aware of porn being a particularly "Jewish" industry.)
What am I supposed to be explaining? You are the one presenting the thesis ("Jews are grubby and dishonorable and deserve what they get"), which means you are the one with the burden of justifying your claims. I'm challenging them, and I've explained why your claims are largely specious.
Europeans have had a prejudice against Jews for centuries for reasons of ethnic and religious prejudice, of the sort that are common in every society throughout history.
It's not complicated, and if you want to claim that no, it's actually because Jews are in fact wicked child-stealing, well-poisoning, money-grubbing parasites, you need to provide some evidence. "Well, obviously people didn't just hate them for no reason" is not an explanation.
Individual Jews have historically chosen to be money-lenders which is a profession, like tax-collector, that people do not like members of. So much so that the Jewish money-lender became a stereotype.
I don't know how many money-lenders in a given group you need for that group to be associated with greedy money-lending, maybe only 1 in 100 or 1 in a 1000, but that is definitely what happened.
Given these 2 facts, one would expect individuals to want to steer clear from a negative stereotype.
Regarding the military, it seems that
they make up less than 1%,which is under-represented.
It's an issue considering how enthusiastic individual Jews can be for American soldiers to be engaged in various foreign lands.
Here's a source.
Some of the biggest porn websites are owned by Jews, for example Mindgeek.
Individual Jews appear to be prominently represented in high-profile financial crimes.
For example in the news recently, Sam Bankman-Fried (FTX), Charlie Janice (Frank) or Elizabeth Holmes (Theranos).
Interestingly, Bankman-Fried was the #2 individual donor to the Democrat party (after Soros, also an individual Jewish financier), while Janice's scheme was to bring (fake) student loan debtor information to JPM.
Part of the Democrats' platform was to use the power of the government (remember the Magna Carta, explicitly written to protect the people from individual Jews influencing government), to meddle in the way student loans were repaid.
Do some individual Jews support Democrats to steer their student loan policies toward regulations they will personally profit from financially?
Yes, somewhat. While it is not necessarily dishonorable to work in finance, it is most certainly one of the levers of the power of the powers-that-be which I consider to be profoundly immoral. Same for media, and entertainment as well.
If the people in charge shared my ethics then I would not necessarily see it as immoral (then again, the industry would look much different).
And Middle-Easterners and some over people across the planet.
Basically anybody who has at some point in history interacted with them.
You already conceded that people don't like owing money to people, so money-lending is a profession that tends to carry a bad reputation.
What other explanation do you need?
There's also the war-mongering, the exploitation of government power for one's own personal goals...
The issue is that when a very distinctive individual from a minority becomes incredibly infamous due to spectacular ignominy, all of the other individuals who share traits in common with that individual, work in the same industry, have similar business practices, come under heightened scrutiny.
I don't know how many spectacularly nefarious individuals it takes for that minority to catch a durable bad reputation.
If exposure to the harm that these very special individuals commit has catastrophic consequences, then it might be worth it [rational] to shun the whole group, even if minor benefits are lost from the 'good ones' in the process.
Antisemitism can be a rational heuristic if enough individual Jews commit enough harm.
Stereotypes are not always based on rational observations of what most members of a group do. If a few Jews become famous for being moneylenders (and there were relatively few Jews in medieval England), then it's very easy to see how "Jewish moneylenders" became a stereotype.
"Most moneylenders were Jewish" does not imply "Most Jews were moneylenders," nor does it come close to imply, as you do, that there is something inherent to the Jewish character that makes them seek money above other things.
Why? You think Jews in a position to become rich in the only avenue available to them would have said "Hmm, better not do that, people might think even less of Jews than they do now?"
Really, your entire post is a bunch of anecdotes and ad hoc reasoning, strung together to justify "Why I don't like Jews."
Chinese cardiology.
I assume you'd also say this heuristic is reasonable to apply to, say, white people, Europeans, Christians, etc.?
That was not my claim.
My claim was :
Choosing to become a money-lender does indicate something about the character of an individual, that they choose wealth over reputation.
For example Sam Bankman-Fried chose wealth / power over reputation.
They could have. Or simply 'being wealthy is not worth having a whole village/town hate me and my family'.
It's a choice that individuals have made in history. The ones that were spectacularly successful with that strategy (avoided the pitchforks) ended up migrating all over the world it turns out, and now they are in charge of the Western world's media and academia and telling me that I shouldn't dislike them for being money-lenders.
That's the thing with greed, it gives you power.
There are no fat people that got so fat that they managed to take over society and tell everyone else : 'you're not allowed to tell me to go on a diet!'
And if you tell me, but not all Jews are money-lenders.
That's true. But the people that claim to speak on behalf of groups of or all Jews (the ADL, the World Jewish Congress, etc) never disavow money-lenders.
If you don't want me to believe that most if not all Jews support greedy money-lenders who push for open-border propaganda, feminism (contraception, anti-family policies, promiscuity) etc, then show me these groups of Jews who disavow them!
Very much so. If a Japanese woman told me that she stays away from white Americans due to the crime rate of American servicemen, I would understand.
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