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Culture War Roundup for the week of September 12, 2022

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That kind of highly-polarised tribalism is a very dangerous game to play. In the short-term, it gets your group what they want, but in the long-term it fuels lots of resentment towards them. This kind of heavily-polarized tribal mindset is the reason that the Jews have been driven out of almost every country they took up residence in. It was only until WW2 - when Jews learned the costs of these cultural traits and adapted their society to be more multicultural and less insular - that their worldwide persecution stopped. And I think that if the Jews ever went back to their insular pre-WW2 attitudes (with the "us against them" mentality that many non-Jews find so distasteful), it would very quickly become socially acceptable to persecute them again.

Like I said, nobody likes freeloaders. You can't be part of a nation while prioritizing tribal loyalties over national identity. This kind of mindset is rightfully viewed as disloyalty at best, and treason at worst. In other words, if you are an American Jew, then you're American first and Jewish second. If you can't handle that - if you view your Jewish identity as more important than your American identity - then you don't deserve American citizenship. Likewise, if the Hasidic Israelis view themselves as Hasidics first and Israelis second, then they don't deserve Israeli citizenship.

Given the way polarization is shaking out in American society, Hasidic people are distinctly small potatoes in the tribalism issue.