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Culture War Roundup for the week of April 3, 2023

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What is your basis for claiming that Jews, as a people, "consistently pick gold over reputation"?

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.

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.

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.

though I'm not aware of porn being a particularly "Jewish" industry.

Here's a source.

Some of the biggest porn websites are owned by Jews, for example Mindgeek.

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.

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?

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?

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).

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.

And Middle-Easterners and some over people across the planet.

Basically anybody who has at some point in history interacted with them.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Given these 2 facts, one would expect individuals to want to steer clear from a negative stereotype.

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.

Antisemitism can be a rational heuristic if enough individual Jews commit enough harm.

I assume you'd also say this heuristic is reasonable to apply to, say, white people, Europeans, Christians, etc.?

Stereotypes are not always based on rational observations of what most members of a group do.

That was not my claim.

My claim was :

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.

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.

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.

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?"

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!

I assume you'd also say this heuristic is reasonable to apply to, say, white people, Europeans, Christians, etc.?

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.