naraburns nihil supernum
6mo ago
(text post)
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Israel-Gaza Megathread #2
This is a refreshed megathread for any posts on the conflict between (so far, and so far as I know) Hamas and the Israeli government, as well as related geopolitics. Culture War thread rules apply.
random bullshit: activist greta thunberg posted a picture of herself supporting gaza. sharp eyed observers noticed the subtle dogwhistle in the background of a blue octopus plushie, and she's been forced to delete it and apologize for this dangerous display of antisemitism.
The curious thing is whether this will lead to a Trump vote in the US. The left activist class and normie Dems seem to have a large policy gap now. The masks has come off and the activist really are just marxists (which they could survive) and antisemitic.
I figure a lot of people are fine with having communists sympathizers in their party but people advocating for Jewish genocide is too far and discourages people to vote Dem.
It has happened before. The activists in the 1960's and 1970's were significantly worse and more violent. That's how we ended up with Nixon and Reagan. But we don't have a Nixon or Reagan in the Republican Party 2023 and it is significantly lower status than it was back then. Trump certainly isn't a return to normalcy.
Desantis would seem to have some of that ability. And whose higher status than say Kushner in EITHER party? Or higher than Ken Griffin. Also are prominent Republicans.
Kushner isn't a politician though. He's a rich guy with connections. Ken Griffin identifies as a Reagan Republican and is also just a rich guy and not a politician.
Desantis is pretty terrible at campaigning nationally. Nixon had guys like Roger Ailes and Pat Buchanan running a highly sophisticated election campaign to get him better coverage in the MSM with normies. Desantis is hated by the MSM and seems doomed to be clowned on outside FOX.
I meant that voting for a Republican is considered low status. If you are a giga Chad hedge fund manager voting for tax purposes then yeah you can get away with it. But if you're just some guy names Steve trying to make it in a high status industry and get laid then being a Republican is not a very good thing. I don't think we will get an updated version of "Reagan Democrats" anytime soon.
But that guy doesn't need to tell anyone he's a Republican. I'm not American, but I talked to an American colleague about this recently, and he says no one will ever know who he votes for. My dad takes that attitude as well.
I think you are trying to meme this into existence but it’s not true on mainstream or in business. Sure academia wants to make this claim.
There are plenty of places where Democrats are low status. Oh ya and some guy named Elon whose way past wealth levels to even care about taxes votes GOP it seems for the memes and cultural values.
Last time I looked at the data GOP still had higher incomes.
Fwiw I’ve mostly lived in blue cities. I don’t know anyone high status who votes Dem.
Amadan
"I would put a screwdriver through your eyeballs if I could"
yunyun333 6mo ago
I have a genuine question, because I haven't been able to find a reliable answer:
Is the "blue octopus" actually an anti-Semitic dogwhiste, like, anywhere? Or is this an association that was just invented yesterday to pile on Greta Thunberg?
I've seen the infamous Nazi cartoon, of course, and it's not unique, but octopuses have long been used to symbolize conspiracies. A fishy alien thing with lots of tentacles reaching everywhere makes a pretty convenient metaphor for any group you're accusing of being sinister infiltrators.
I have never before yesterday, however, seen the claim that blue octopus plushies, specifically, are some sort of secret mascot used by white nationalists.
If they are, I seriously doubt that Thunberg was aware of it and deliberately signaling her own hatred of Jews. So this seems a lot like people freaking out over the "okay" signal.
I also suspect that, just like the "okay" signal, we're now going to see actual white nationalists unironically adopting blue octopus plushies as mascots.
TL;DR: at the moment, "free Palestine" is to me way more objectionable than any plushy short of Hitler.
In politics, timing is everything. If Greta had posted that picture before the Hamas attacks, I would have thought it much more acceptable. (Discuss: which is more of a lost cause: limiting global warming to 1.5K or creating a Palestinian state.) To post a "free Palestine" picture so soon after the Hamas attack strongly indicates a causal chain between the attacks and the picture. I strongly oppose rewarding terrorists with attention for their cause.
Hamas, the government of Gaza, has just proven what they prefer to do with what little independence they have. This is literally the worst time to demand more freedom of Palestine in decades.
I think if people on the same side of an issue as yourself commit atrocities on such a scale, that is a great time to shut the fuck up about that issue for a while. "Free Palestine" with or without the "river to the sea" bit (the latter explicitly calling for the destruction of Israel, the former just implicitly demanding it because an independent Palestine would very likely try to conquer Israel) is the explicit goal of Hamas. If you ride on the wave of attention brought by terrorists, don't be surprised if people claim your are doing PR for the terrorists.
Of course, political protests strictly against the Israel response are acceptable.
Amadan
"I would put a screwdriver through your eyeballs if I could"
quiet_NaN 6mo ago
I wasn't asking about the acceptability of Greta Thunberg's political views regarding Gaza, I was just asking if a blue octopus plushie is some secret anti-Semitic symbol or something invented to accuse her of being a Nazi.
There is almost zero chance that the blue octopus was a dogwhistle. Greta is simply a very cringe person who made the very cringe decision that a frowny plushie would be the perfect accessory to her little bit of always-stupid intersectionality. Gaza is being oppwesed by Iswaew that makes me vewwy angwy ヾ( •`⌓´•)ﾉﾞ
Claims that the plushie is in fact a vital prop for neurodivergent people to communicate their emotions are so goddamn eyerolling that they probably reduced Greta's Cachet more than the incident itself.
But then, since most dogwhistles are bullshit in the first place it is certainly gratifying to see progressives fall into the same traps that they have been setting for the past 20 years. Greta has mostly gotten away with minimal damage, but the Israel/Palestine war has for the first time seen the cancel culture machine turned against progressives in earnest. Losing out on a position at a prestigious law firm is the sort of thing that used to be reserved for right wingers. I haven't quite grokked what it is about this subject that has caused such a reversal. Israel's current status as victims, maybe? Or perhaps right wingers are becoming more savvy with the weapons of wokeism.
is this an association that was just invented yesterday to pile on Greta Thunberg?
Pretty much, though perhaps not invented out of whole cloth. The situation is somewhat reminiscent of the 12-hour tabooing of the previously innocuous though perhaps slightly outdated term 'sexual preference' immediately after Amy Coney Barrett used the phrase.
It’s definitely not almost zero chance. There is a ton of antisemitism going around. You can’t just forgive everyone for being a dumb kid who did antisemitism by accident. Someone is pulling the strings.
And Greta is fairly high up decision maker in this food chain. Now perhaps she’s all manipulated by her parents but at some point the people calling for let’s kill the Jews need to be believed and are actually advocating for what they are saying.
I fail to understand how you just accidentally use a Jewish dog whistle while also fairly directly calling for Jewish genocide.
Either that or Americas left is just the global useful idiot. Hamas does literally mean drive them into the sea till they drown and the Gretas are always supporting those types.
She’s almost 21 now. At some point your not dumb kid and you just don’t accidentally do genocide promotion.
Relax man. My wife bought the same plushie - the octopus that can be flipped inside-out to show a smiling or frowning face - a few years ago because she thought it was a funny way to clarify her mood, i.e., actually angry or just hormonally incapable of expressing anything other than grumpiness.
So I for one actually buy the neurodivergent-people-excuse. And not for love of that meaningless term.
I would contest that probability. From my understanding, there is no confirmed case of a plush octopus used to signal antisemitism.
Basically anything can be a dog whistle. If there was a pound note or anything related to money in the background, they would claim that it was related to claims that the Jews controlled global finance. If it was a plush wolf, people would point out that the Nazis named lot of things after wolves. If it was a German Shepard plushy, that is obviously a reference to Hitler's dog. A goblin is /obviously/ just a stereotype of a Jewish person, so a Harry Potter book would be Problematic. Gas stoves are dog whistles for pro Holocaust positions. The signs in the photo were not written in Fraktur, just like the Nazis got rid of Fraktur. They are also written in English, a Germanic (!) language. Of course, England expelled the Jews at some point, so this is a clear call for the Jews to be expelled from both the UK and Israel. Any visible number which contains the digit sequence 18 or 88 is also antisemitic.
If Greta had placed her plushy on a globe, then I would concede that there is a significant probability that this is meant as a homage to Nazi caricatures. As it is, the octopus is the most unobjectionable part of the picture.
Please don't abuse the phrasing "listen to what people say" when you actually mean "speculate what people mean". The entire point of "take them at their word" is to take them at their literal word. If you want to use this phrase, please link a video of Greta Thunberg literally advocating Jewish genocide in those exact terms.
I find it extremely unlikely that the octopus carries any of the significance you’re attributing to it. In addition, she’s “tell[ing] you they support killing Jews” in the same sense that one of your opponents might say that people who say “I stand with Israel” or whatever are directly telling you they’re ok with apartheid and bombing children. The argument is silly no matter who uses it.
Disclaimer: I don’t care about Thunberg in general, and am annoyed to he placed in the position of defending a professional activist. Hamas and mass civilian massacres are terrible.
It’s definitely not almost zero chance. There is a ton of antisemitism going around. You can’t just forgive everyone for being a dumb kid who did antisemitism by accident. Someone is pulling the strings.
There's zero chance that this was an antisemitic dogwhistle. Greta is an individual whose political inclinations and beliefs have been broadcast all over the world and none of them line up with antisemitism. I don't think you understand politics well at all if you think that left-wing opposition to Israel is motivated by antisemitism. The limit of her antisemitism is owning an innocuous plush octopus toy. Nobody is "pulling the strings" to make a slightly autistic (not an insult, she has claimed this about herself) young girl buy a small plush toy. Children routinely purchase stuffed toys all over the world.
And Greta is fairly high up decision maker in this food chain.
Greta has no decision-making authority beyond her own personal statements. She is not some big leader - she was a symbol because she expressed political motivations at an extremely young age. She isn't some well respected guru or thought leader, she's simply a prominent activist. Do you really, seriously think that she'd have any influence at all if she decided to come out publicly and say "Hey everyone, I just saw a really well made /pol/ infographic, turns out I was wrong and the nazis were right - gas the jews now!"?
I fail to understand how you just accidentally use a Jewish dog whistle
The plush toy of an octopus is not an antisemitic dogwhistle, it is a small toy purchased by a child. 4chan has been breaking new ground in discovering and developing new antisemitic dogwhistles (like the OK hand sign and drinking milk) but not even they have managed to get to the point of calling CHILDREN BUYING SMALL PLUSH TOYS the new sign that they're antisemites who are already goose-stepping and heiling Hitler in their heart of hearts. This is utterly paranoid conspiracy-theory thinking that sees vast amounts of meaning in incredibly inconsequential acts.
directly calling for Jewish genocide.
Huh? Where did Greta do that? Can you show me the example of her talking about how Hitler was right and the jews need to be gassed? The sign she was actually holding in reality said "STAND WITH GAZA" - and there's actually a big difference between saying "I stand with Gaza" as opposed to "All the filthy juden need to be exterminated". Remember, people on the left think that it is actually possible for different ethnicities to co-exist, so saying that she stands with Gaza doesn't actually mean that she wants every single jew killed first. Indeed, the girl next to her in that picture has a sign saying THIS JEW STANDS WITH PALESTINE - if she's actually an antisemite who is directly calling for a final solution to the jewish problem, why isn't she trying to murder the girl next to her?
She’s almost 21 now. At some point your not dumb kid and you just don’t accidentally do genocide promotion.
She did not accidentally promote genocide. A small plush toy was inflated into a fictional dogwhistle in order to discredit Greta after she supported the other side of an incredibly fierce argument in the public space. There isn't a single serious thinker in the world who thinks that Greta Thunberg is a secret nazi.
I don’t understand politics? I see people flying in on hangliders then machine gunning down civilians. Then Greta shows support for them along with many others.
I then see opinion polls that Hamas is mostly supported by the residents of Palestine. Greta and her ilk then show support for the people backing hanglide and machine civilians. Sometimes the obvious answer is the correct answer.
I mean I knew Jews having their hands in everything behind the scenes was a belief. In fact I’ve even posted here that I believe it is fundamentally true. (I just don’t believe in murdering Jews). But I’m of the belief they contribute a lot to society.
Maybe a fairer representation would be she isn’t an anti-Semite directly she’s just fine with genociding high IQ successful people which a lot of Jews fall under.
Being autistic isn’t an excuse. Autistic people get symbolism. I’ve been accused of being on the same spectrum as her. She just happened to pick anti-Semitic symbolism at the same time she was backing a group with a goal of genociding jews.
Then Greta shows support for them along with many others.
Greta showed support for Gaza. This doesn't mean she supports murdering civilians, anymore than an American talking about how they support the troops means they endorsed Abu Graib or the dropping of agent orange on Vietnam. People can support causes even if they disagree with the actions taken by other supporters of that cause.
Maybe a fairer representation would be she isn’t an anti-Semite directly she’s just fine with genociding high IQ successful people which a lot of Jews fall under.
I don't think you're taking this remotely seriously if you believe that she actually supports genociding smart and successful people. This is a comical lack of charity and seems like a wilful attempt to misunderstand her and what she stands for. It isn't particularly hard to work out why left-wingers don't like Israel and support the Palestinian cause, though I suppose it is even easier to simply imagine extremely unflattering caricatures of those you disagree with. What do you actually think is more likely - that an internationally famous and notable left-wing activist is actually a secret nazi who hates smart people and is ok with jews being genocided because they're intelligent (presumably she isn't murdering her jewish friend because said friend is stupid), or that she's actually a left-wing political figure who believes in left wing political ideas?
But to return to the original point, we're talking about whether or not the octopus plush toy she had was an antisemitic dogwhistle. To be perfectly blunt, I don't think you've proven your claim that it is a signifier of hidden antisemitism in the slightest. I pay enough attention to internet culture that I'd probably know if a new antisemitic dogwhistle showed up, and I can honestly state that a generic plush toy of an octopus isn't one them.
I’m not sure how you can describe the recent Palestinian attack on Israel other than it’s a hate crime and genocide. She then posted support for them with no qualifiers. That is being extremely charitable.
The right never gets that. Even say the Proud Boys who leader is Afro-Caribbean was accused in a debate of being a white supremacists organization. If I’m even not using that standard but an easier standard of you just backed an organization that did genocide with no qualifications then it seems to be fair that they back Jewish genocide. There are lines for being charitable, this is not it.
Even the most charitable take is she something like anti-growth so she’s fine with murdering people for that goal. Maybe that’s not anti-semitism but there is no functional difference in the results between antisemitism and her position. It’s almost like a Nazi saying I don’t hate Jews we just needed their land for ethnic Germans to breathe.
Greta holds favorable views of a population that contains a substantial percentage of people who have been shown by word or action to support or excuse brutal acts of terror against Israelis.
Greta holds certain unfavorable views about the Israeli state common among far left anti-colonialist activist types.
The TeeTurtle reversible Octopus plush, which went viral on TikTok sometime before January 2021 [ https://sports.yahoo.com/tiktokers-using-reversible-octopus-plushie-174529042.html ] specifically for its utility in helping people communicate their emotions, is in fact a personal item that Greta owns because she finds it useful in communicating her emotions, and it appears in the photo for this reason alone.
I disagree with others who have conceded that she "accidentally used an antisemitic dogwhistle", as if she wore a number 88 sports jersey or waved her hand in a way that looked like a Nazi salute. To me, the crux of the issue is that a chibi octopus is simply not an antisemitic dogwhistle. Assertions linking it to the sprawling octopus/kraken political cartoon trope seem to me to be an incredible reach and a transparently post-hoc construction invented for this specific case at this specific moment. I obviously can't prove it, but I have a very strong impression that at no point in history has anyone ever surreptitiously included an octopus in a piece of content in order to subtly signal antisemitism to fellow antisemites. When the sprawling octopus trope is occasionally made use of as a representation of Jewish power or conspiracy, it's explicitly not as a 'dogwhistle', it's necessarily the central feature of the work. Political cartoons aren't subtle about what is supposed to represent what. There's nothing inherent about octopuses that's antisemitic, or at least there wasn't until October 21st, 2023. It's the sprawling octopus visual trope that's been considered potentially antisemitic by some, and the plush is about as far away from an example of the visual trope as you can get while still being an octopus.
It seems like there's two different discussions happening here - is Greta potentially an ideological enemy of the state of Israel, whose general support for the Palestinian people as a whole necessarily implies she supports some people who wish to see Israel destroyed and are themselves supporting or engaging in violent acts to further that goal? Sure, potentially, logically you can get there. I'm no fan of Greta, so I have no aversion to any of that being true. Does the potential truth value of that make it any more plausible that her TeeTurtle reversible Octopus plush is inherently, or was being used in this context as, an antisemitic hate symbol? No, I don't think it does, and I apparently am willing to die on the hill that it doesn't!
(The discussion about the terminal moral implications of pro-Palestinian activists' rhetoric is probably the more important one, but the plush thing is what the comment thread is about, so.)
I have a genuine question, because I haven't been able to find a reliable answer:
Is the "blue octopus" actually an anti-Semitic dogwhiste, like, anywhere? Or is this an association that was just invented yesterday to pile on Greta Thunberg?
Not so much Jewish-specific as Jewish-adjacent. The octopus has been a common political cartoon metaphor for malign influence, particularly of strangling and financial and manipulator dynamics, for some times. There's a classic political cartoon regarding Standard Oil from the early 1900s, but it was far from the first. A very cursory google suggests it came in vogue in the 1870s, in Europe as a metaphor for imperialism and in the US as a metaphor for corporate consolidation during the gilded age.
The thing of the octopus metaphor is that it's a single actor with the ability to manipulate or seize many things at the same time, and at an extensive range proportionally far from it's body. In the political cartoon contexts, this is frequently political manipulation and financial influence, and almost always in a malevolent/'strangling' context by a foreign/alien creature... which is a handful of the basic themes of anti-semitic narratives right there.
It's not that there's never been an octopus metaphor related to Jewish influence, but it's not exclusive to it. I wouldn't be surprised that Thunberg was entirely unaware of the overlapping connotations.
That said, I'm in no way familiar with how stuffed octpous is supposed to help with autism, and have no awareness if Thunberg has had it for long, and the chances of it popping up as set-dressing in yet another political stunt is rather low, so... I wouldn't be surprised if someone was aware and wanted it in either.
That said, I'm in no way familiar with how stuffed octpous is supposed to help with autism, and have no awareness if Thunberg has had it for long, and the chances of it popping up as set-dressing in yet another political stunt is rather low, so... I wouldn't be surprised if someone was aware and wanted it in either.
It turns inside out. There's a grumpy blue octopus to communicate that you're unhappy, and a smiling pink octopus to communicate that you're happy.
I'm unsure if Greta has ever needed the happy octopus...
I assume that it is people who were accused of dogwhistling or liking people who were accused of dogwhistling - and now doing the same to other tribe.
Is the "blue octopus" actually an anti-Semitic dogwhiste, like, anywhere?
If anything it would be about octopus in Jew-adjacent context, not blue octopuses specifically. But it is really reaching, especially as it is quite cute one unlike say NROL-39 "Nothing Is Beyond Our Reach" one. And its colour does not even match blue on Israel flag.
If it would be sinister looking octopus maybe I could treat it seriously. This looks like dead bird shitposting. Maybe even understandable one if she accused others of dogwhistling with similarly tortured reasoning.
I assume that it is people who were accused of dogwhistling or liking people who were accused of dogwhistling - doing the same for the other side.
I think it's people who were doing dogwhistle accusations continuing to accuse people of dogwhistling. By a twist of fate, the target of the accusation are their former, and possibly future allies.
A fishy alien thing with lots of tentacles reaching everywhere makes a pretty convenient metaphor for any group you're accusing of being sinister infiltrators.
I don't understand what it means for Thunberg to go on strike these days. She's not a schoolchild anymore, and while I never really understood why it was notable that some kid decided to skip school, she's not even doing that anymore. As far as I can tell she's a full time activist and doesn't work a normal job. So what does she have to strike from?
Being honest, I never understood why I was supposed to care about Thundberg at all. I didn't really care about her tantrum at the UN, I care even less about her opinions on the Palestinian issue. Is she really still influential enough that people care that she has a only-if-you-squint antisemitic trope in her posts?
I do think Greta is the living embodiment of the critique that environmentalists are watermelons — green on the outside but red on the inside. This further cements that connection.
My theory is that Thunberg files the same psychological niche as the Holy Maid of Kent and other similar mediaeval characters. A strident young woman with visions of the future, scolding us to repent our sins. Thankfully the worst that could happen to Greta is if she gets cancelled on Twitter rather than being beheaded for treason.
Like I said earlier, Israel/Palestine conflict is an event where most of the right immediately smells blood in the water and start trying to find lefties to attack. A person with such perceived symbolic value to the other side as Greta certainly serves as prime chum, even if her relevance has been fairly subdued since Covid started.
Like I said earlier, Israel/Palestine conflict is an event where most of the right immediately smells blood in the water and start trying to find lefties to attack.
It's always striking to see the kind of language deployed when progressives suffer an even temporary, self-infflicted, minor setback. I don't think anyone "smelled blood in the water", not any more than at any other moment.
And Hamas hasn't allowed another election since 2008. I think we can be charitable enough to say that a rift between Hamas and the Palestinians might have developed a bit in the last 15 years.
Per this poll, 57% of Gazans have a "very positive" or "somewhat positive" view of Hamas. 49% say Hamas should not stop calling for Israel's destruction.
I don't know, if I were Hamas I would probably wouldn't want my support to appear too high in polls, because their best weapon is the innocents they hide behind. If it turns out that the innocents are pretty much in full support of Hamas, they stop being so innocent and Hamas lose their best shield, both literally in battle and figuratively. Though there's also a lower bound of apparent support that Hamas also has to avoid, at which the Palestinian civilians might decide they have a good enough chance if they start a civil war to stop/disarm Hamas.
‘Jews have no right to defend themselves’ or maybe ‘brown people can never do anything wrong’. Israel pulled out of Gaza in 200, Gaza then proceeded to elect a terrorist group which then started shooting at Israel. Israel blockaded them to prevent the inflow of weapons and promised it would stop if Gaza stopped shooting, it didn’t stop killing random Israelis for 16 years, then tore down the fence and killed more random Israelis, at which point Israel is now bombing them.
There isn’t a reasonable framework in which Israel isn’t well within its rights to bomb Gaza, and Hamas’s habit of putting military facilities in civilian infrastructure guarantees that Israel will kill and displace Palestinian civilians by doing so. You could be Amish level pacifist I guess, but that’s not a pro-Palestine framework. The only framework that allows you to be pro-Palestine is either ‘Palestinians are brown, and thus automatically right regardless of the facts of the case’ or ‘Israelis don’t have the right to defend themselves for some reason’.
It’s clearly not, and if the pro-Israeli side is so simplistic about it why even have a discussion? Do you really think “roll back the extralegal settlements in the West Bank” is the same as “exterminate the Jews in Israel?” Be serious.
He is serious. Rolling back the West Bank settlements is not equivalent to exterminating all the Jews, but it is also not equivalent to leaving Palestinian land. Because the Palestinians are very clear, it is all Palestinian land. They consider Tel Aviv an illegal settlement.
Respecting Palestinian claims to the land does indeed mean exterminating Israel.
This is exactly the sort of thing I'd hate when it was used by the Left against the Right, and turns out... I still hate it. A pox on whoever first decided that "dogwhistles" were a thing. You might as well say she's pro-corporate-monopolies.
On a similar note, a 2015-esque 4chan meme posted yesterday got 15 million view on Twitter. There seems to be a shift in the wind. Naysayers will say that Twitter isn't real life, I remember everybody saying that about the "Tumblr SJWs" in 2009.
RegularBlack🇺🇸 @AmerikahDbeauty
Who do y’all think is keeping us from reparations?
/
There seems to be a shift in the wind
It's less a recent shift in the wind and more a structural factor, shared conditions leading to certain desires and tendencies in people, and meme that resonates with people on the web. It's spreading on Twitter for the same reason it spread on 4chan in 2015, because people want to see it. A seed crystal that was small then, is larger now, and continues to grow.
On a similar note, a 2015-esque 4chan meme posted yesterday got 15 million view on Twitter.
I would be very interested in a high-effort response to the highly memeable reply, "Impressive, very nice. Now let's see the Muslims."
Jews (and, in particular, Ashkenazim) are certainly overrepresented in a lot of interesting places. But my impression is that this is surprisingly true of many minority ethnicities and religious groups--almost as though having a mainstream upbringing results in a milquetoast adulthood. Or, alternatively, that being heterogeneous to the modal citizen of your country is quite naturally going to result in placement at one of the bell's tails. Whatever the case, "look at all the Jews in high government office" is a classic cardiologist problem.
[unnecessarily long, unoriginal, we've discussed this many times before, tldr jews good genes why so hard to notice this]
It is - in a literal sense - true that many minority groups are, sometimes, overrepresented. Again in a literal sense - it's true that having an unusual upbringing sometimes pushes someone towards success.
Say I have $200k in gold bars stashed under my mattress. I'm suspected for corruption, the cops raid my house and find it. Have I done anything wrong? Well, there's nothing wrong with keeping private property in your house. And it's a gift from a friend. Who doesn't get gifts from friends, a bit of money here and there? Again, both - literally - true. You can squint and imagine there's a syllogism there - taking gifts from friends is fine, the gold bars were gifts from friends, so...
The dose makes the poison. If the laundromat's getting a few thousand extra bucks every year, that's usual variation, maybe he's good at advertising. A few million extra bucks ... something needs explaining.
How overrepresented are Jews, exactly? Are they represented about as much as Muslims? What about Hispanics, Blacks, or Native Americans? There's a lot of diversity and unique life experience to go around. Does this help all of them?
But, like, Jews make up 25%-50% of all Nobel prizes, aside from Peace, awarded to US citizens. (note that some of those are half-jewish, but this isn't that important.) They're also 2% of the US population. That's quite the difference! What about Hispanics, Muslims, Indians?
It's not just Nobels. I, like everyone, just click links around Wikipedia sometimes. Especially in math, science, technology. And enough of the names are jewish that you can't help but to notice! In the arts, journalism, or politics - there are fewer jews than in math, but still a lot more than you'd naively expect.
I also spend a lot of the time on the internet, in various places. I'm quite intelligent, as other people are here, so I select for communities of smart and driven people. And in each community, there's an obvious hierarchy of competence and smarts. And, as I spend more time in a community and get to know the smarter people - a lot of them end up being Jewish. Even here, the person whose writing I (currently) appreciate the most happens to be Jewish... This happens in real life too!
But my impression is that this is surprisingly true of many minority ethnicities and religious groups--almost as though having a mainstream upbringing results in a milquetoast adulthood. Or, alternatively, that being heterogeneous to the modal citizen of your country is quite naturally going to result in placement at one of the bell's tails
Does this really, when we take another look at it, even come close to explaining overrepresentation? A lot of Hispanic immigrants, and Muslims, have fascinating cultures and home lives. And gives them a boost in niche, well-known fields. I guess that's why our community sprung from the blog of Scott al-Iskandar, in turn inspired by the rationality writings of E. Y. Khowsjee, and don't forget the reactionary critic Carlos Yarvin.
There is something to explain here. Looking away isn't virtuous, and telling the 100k who liked that tweet to pretend this is just like every other ethnic minority won't help. The usual rationalist explanation is just 'jews have high IQ because genes'. Which seems to fit fine, here, although our friend SS would disagree.
The claim that jewish achievement isn't remarkable, or isn't unique, or something, is something I hear sometimes. Or, it's claimed that said achievement is remarkable, but is, like, cultural, because of the Torah or just trying really hard at school. I don't think these are plausible, when compared to the average non-Jewish example of a white family that really pushes for success at school, or immigrant family with some niche ethnic tradition.
Sometimes one makes an intellectual mistake and it's just - okay, I forgot something important, I did the math wrong - but other times you're just not looking. I think to explain away Jewish achievement in politics or elsewhere with 'every minority is like this' can only explained by not looking.
In the case of politics specifically, that infographic seems to be about the cabinet. So, how Jewish is the Biden cabinet? Let's completely ignore the 4chan graphic, which ... even if it's accurate, it's still not worth looking at as a source of real information, because it's a 4chan graphic. Let's go with Wikipedia. Jews: BlinkenYellenGarlandMayorkasHanes (half) BernsteinLanderKlainZients. And then twenty more of other backgrounds. So a little under third are jewish, which is a ton relative to 2%. And then two Asians, two Indians, one Hispanic. (Also five Black) I don't see muslims. Non-jewish whites are are about where they should be by % of population. *1
This is ... significant. And a lot more so than Asians and Indians, or even Hispanics. It's reasonable to notice, and wonder why. It's reasonable to notice that people don't want you to notice that. It's especially reasonable to notice that if White people were 2% of the population and 30% of appointments, the standards that you'd expect to be applied would declare this to be an extreme case of racism. And then it's ... of less obvious reasonableness to start Heiling the Furher, but it clearly does lead there.
Cardiologists aren't worse people than the average doctor. But people think they are if they aren't subtle thinkers and are disproportionately exposed to anecdotes of them acting poorly, leading them to create and share those anecdotes in a cycle. But before you accuse someone of Chinese Robbering, you should check to make sure the claimed pattern isn't there! Before explaining a claim away as motivated reasoning, it's good to check if it's actually true!
And when you miss something like this, as I did in the not-so-recent past - it's worth asking, why? When I think about something, I'm trying to understand it, not just rationalize whatever the common beliefs and taboos are. And that was as true in the past as it is today. But the explanation that Jews just have good culture, or it's just pattern recognition out of control, came easily to past-me too. Just as easily as the 'rational arguments for God' came to Christian apologists. It's unpleasant to realize you are (ie past-me was) just lazily making up arguments for an assumption you aren't questioning because it's just, like, true, and also it's be terrible if it wasn't true. But it's true! And I got into many arguments about this, and made several very competent defenses of "there's nothing going on here" before, after I bumped into the wall for the fifth time, I noticed the wall.
And if you're bumping around the intellectual plain, guided by invisible walls you aren't even aware of, you might be led to the wrong places.
Now, you're right that minorities often specialize in specific occupations. Patel Hotels, etc. But market-dominant minorities are, usually, high IQ minorities. Indians are well-represented as tech company CEOs. But we've also had a billion of them to pick from by immigration.
And, yeah, when you relate to the elite jews by seeing them on TV and in the news, rather than being in their social circles, that easily leads to conspiracies based on resentment. And the Anna-Marie Loupis from the tweet is a well known covid conspiracist, with claims like lasers caused the hawaii fire because blue color didnt burn. I'm not sure what the right rhetorical move here is if you want to fight antisemitism, but being honest about the cause of elite jews might be better than keeping up the current incorrect norms and creating conditions where people on the alt-right notice the lies!
*1 I'm just including everyone the page lists, not bothering about some people joining late and others leaving early, I don't think that matters here.
I mean, it appears that Ashkenazi Jews are literally the smartest group in the world by average IQ(it’s possible that some Brahmin or middle eastern Christian subgroup, or something like that where there’s a sliced up minority of a minority that’s already notable for high IQ’s, has a higher average IQ, but I haven’t seen any direct evidence). Which raises the question of how much Jewish overrepresentation is specifically Ashkenazi, and I would bet that’s a lot of it.
orthoxerox
I realized I can change my flair color to Barbie pink
hydroacetylene 6mo ago·Edited 6mo ago
Let's look at the list of Israeli PMs (Ashkenazi/Sephardi/Mizrahi):
Ben-Gurion: A
Sharett: A
Eshkol: A
Allon: A/?
Meir: A
Rabin: A
Begin: A
Shamir: A
Peres: A
Netanyahu: A/?
Barak: A
Sharon: A
Olmert: A
Bennett: A
Lapid: A
There are just two PMs that have moms that might theoretically have non-Ashkenazi roots (born in Mandatory Palestine), but that's probably because I can't read the Hebrew Wikipedia, only the English one.
Is it the case of intra-Jewish discrimination? Did the Ashkenazi sponsors of Israel and the overwhelmingly Ashkenazi New Yishuv settlers discriminate against Sephardi and Mizrahi Jews fleeing post-independence pogroms in Muslim countries?
UPD: I also checked the current cabinet. They are younger, so their origins are less clear for many members. I had to resort to phrenology in some cases.
Benjamin Netanyahu: A/?
Yariv Levin: A
Aryeh Deri: S
Moshe Arbel: A (Haredi)
Uriel Buso: A/S
Yitzhak Wasserlauf: A/?
Amichai Chikli: M
Yitzhak Goldknopf: A
May Golan: M
Avi Dichter: A
Shlomo Karhi: S?M?
Miki Zohar: S/M
Yoav Gallant: A
Bezalel Smotrich: A
Nir Barkat: A
Yoav Kisch: A
Haim Biton: ?
Israel Katz: A
Idit Silman: S
Eli Cohen: S
Ofir Sofer: M
Galit Distel-Atbaryan: M
Gila Gamliel: M
Mordechai Eliyahu: M
Meir Porush: M?
Ya'akov Margi: S
Yoav Ben-Tzur: ?
Orit Strook: A/?
Itamar Ben-Gvir: M
Michael Malchieli: ?
Ofir Akunis: A
Ron Dermer: A
Haim Katz: A
Miri Regev: S
Benny Gantz: A
Gideon Sa'ar: A/M
Gadi Eizenkot: S
Hili Tropper: A?
Yifat Shasha-Biton: S/M
It looks like Israel did a stellar job integrating Sephardi and Mizrahi Jews. It's also surprising how many of the ministers live in the settlements.
It seems relevant that the current Israeli government is a large coalition agreement and Israeli political parties are split partially on ethnoreligious lines, though, doesn’t it? Major confound there.
I’d bet a list of every Jewish Fortune 500 ceo in the G7 plus Israel would be pretty heavily Ashkenazi, maybe a Sephardi or two. Likewise for professors at the top universities in each major economy.
SecureSignals
Civilization is simply a geno-memetic-techno-capital machine
zeke5123 6mo ago
It's possible that Jews engage in a similar behavior that many ethnic groups do, but they happen to be better at it because of their talents. This dovetails with the recent thread on stigmergy vs conspiracy. There is no "conspiracy" needed in the vein of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion to vindicate questions surrounding Jewish behavior and power. "Merit vs conspiracy" is a false dichotomy.
Is it? If you dole out benefits to in group but are very good at hiding it because you are more talented compared to others, then you are superior to others who lack the ability to hide it.
SecureSignals
Civilization is simply a geno-memetic-techno-capital machine
zeke5123 6mo ago
Superiority is defined by many dimensions by my estimation, dimensions that can be reduced towards civilizationally-oriented and eugenic behavior. The talent to deceive others is a talent, but having more of that talent does not make you superior. Maybe a swindler has a much higher IQ and silver tongue compared to his hapless victim, but I consider "merit" along that dimension to be contemptible and would raise the question for how civilizational order should deal with such people.
SecureSignals
Civilization is simply a geno-memetic-techno-capital machine
naraburns 6mo ago
There seem to always be a reaction like this that presumes the only relevant question is the cause of the overrepresentation rather than the meaning or impact of the overrepresentation. Even if what you are saying is true, that this overrepresentation of Jews in the highest policy positions is driven by merit with no other contributing factors that are less savory, like Jewish ethnocentrism, that doesn't allow us to dismiss the implications. Especially as it pertains to the relationship of the US with Israel as well as the identification and loyalty of these Jews to the state of Israel.
As Anthony Blinken told the Israel Defense Ministry in Tel Aviv "I come before you not only as the United States secretary of state but also as a Jew". There is goig to be a certain impact of this Clark Kent dual-identity when so much policy is controlled by people who identify this way.
Well, what is the meaning of overrepresentation? Trump’s admin only had one Jewish person in the cabinet - Mnuchin, unlikely to have had much influence on foreign policy - and their policy was at the very least not less pro-Israel.
SecureSignals
Civilization is simply a geno-memetic-techno-capital machine
Stefferi 6mo ago
Trump famously assigned arguably the most crucial policy position on Israel/Palestine to his Jewish son-in-law who has close ties to Israel. But I do think the difference in representation means something significant. Under the Trump administration, stopping immigration and closing the borders was a top priority although they largely failed due to all the pushback from the administrative state. Then Biden comes into office, the cabinet changes, Jews like Alejandro Mayorkas take over DHS, and what happens? Borders wide open to unprecedented levels of immigration, DHS and Biden Administration makes huge pushes to combat anti-Semitism. DHS/US Intelligence identifies White Supremacy as the greatest domestic threat.
Looking at the massive changes in policy priorities from the Trump Administration- building the wall and stopping illegal immigration, to the Biden Administration- identifying White Supremacy as the greatest domestic security threat, whole-of-society efforts to combat anti-Semitism, massively increasing DHS funding to Jewish NGOs, suggests that this does have meaning and impact on the policy priorities at the highest level of government.
There seem to always be a reaction like this that presumes the only relevant question is the cause of the overrepresentation rather than the meaning or impact of the overrepresentation.
No, this is definitely not what I'm getting at.
There is goig to be a certain impact of this Clark Kent dual-identity when so much policy is controlled by people who identify this way.
I certainly don't deny that!
But "Clark Kent dual-identity" is the fruit of identity politics across the West, and everyone is playing the game. As far as I can tell, Pete Buttigieg has a federal sinecure because he likes to have sex with men; he certainly didn't have any of the experience I would expect a Secretary of Transportation to have, and if he wasn't gay I doubt he would ever have been more than a mayor, and maybe not even that. Sometimes when I say this, people tell me I'm not being fair, but like... here's an interview with the Secretary of Transportation from this past summer, where the bulk of the content is about gay stuff, and Buttigieg's actually job only comes up in connection with criticism of DeSantis. Or in connection with race, consider Kamala Harris, or Ketanji Brown Jackson, or Sonia Sotomayor. These are women who revel in not rising above their identities, but in sinking into them, doing their jobs not for the good of America generally but for the good of their racial in-group.
I think this is bad, but I also think it is dishonest to pretend, or imply, that Jewish people somehow have a corner on the phenomenon.
But "Clark Kent dual-identity" is the fruit of identity politics across the West, and everyone is playing the game.
There are 2 hot wars that the US are engaged in by proxy and none of them have to do with anal sex but both of them have to do with who is in charge of the country they are supporting.
Strangely, when it comes to defending borders, there is this opinion that the Southern US border is not worth defending, but borders of such important countries as Ukraine and Israel are worth billions of dollars (and the blood of millions).
You'd think that ~168 million Americans would be more interested in protecting their own borders but apparently it's the ones with distant relatives in some swamp lands that get to have their borders of choice defended by US taxmoney.
There are 2 hot wars that the US are engaged in by proxy and none of them have to do with anal sex but both of them have to do with who is in charge of the country they are supporting.
Because of how politics works in the US, being public about anal sex is associated with a whole bunch of political positions that have nothing to do with sex, but which have a lot to do with who is in charge of countries.
Are you saying that illegal immigration through the mexican-american border is a similarly shaped problem as military/terrorist invasions?
If Mexico were to invade the US with tanks and soldiers tomorrow , I am 99.9% sure that the Biden administration wouldn’t say “sorry, we are all tied up in Ukraine and Israel, nothing we can do here”.
Similarly if Ukraine were to get swathes of uncontrolled economic migration from Belarussia … would anyone in the US government care? Probably not (they’d certainly advise Ukraine to go easy with any crimes against humanity, but they’d consider it an internal problem they don’t strictly care about).
I don’t even know why I spent two paragraphs on this (obvious) difference between these issues. Using the same word to refer to
a) economic migration
b) terrorists killing and abducting citizens of another state
c) a full blown military invasion aimed at removing the government of another nation
is pure equivocation. Calling this “noncentral fallacy” is like saying that the world trade center needed slight repairs on 9/12 after being damaged by flying debris.
What I want to say: this type of language is not used in good faith.
If Mexico were to invade the US with tanks and soldiers tomorrow , I am 99.9% sure that the Biden administration wouldn’t say “sorry, we are all tied up in Ukraine and Israel, nothing we can do here”.
There are definitely cartel soldiers sent from Mexico to the US. Hamas doesn't have tanks afaik.
Similarly if Ukraine were to get swathes of uncontrolled economic migration from Belarussia … would anyone in the US government care?
Well once the Mexicans start making up ~70% of a given Ukraine area and they decide to have a referendum and declare themselves autonomous from Ukraine and then start blocking roads and taking tribute (tax) at the new borders, then the federal Ukrainian government decides to bomb them and Mexico decides to intervene to protect innocent civilians, yes the US government does get involved at that point.
b) terrorists killing and abducting citizens of another state
Fentanyl kills almost 100K Americans every year, that's a lot more than a few festival goers.
It's not a good effort to insinuate that the language used by someone is not in good faith when you are not arguing against the language actually used by that person.
Here's what you say:
Are you saying that illegal immigration through the mexican-american border is a similarly shaped problem as military/terrorist invasions?
Compared to what you are replying to:
Strangely, when it comes to defending borders, there is this opinion that the Southern US border is not worth defending, but borders of such important countries as Ukraine and Israel are worth billions of dollars (and the blood of millions).
'Defending' a border can mean many things. For instance, it can mean a country protecting itself against the importation of drugs that are killing thousands annually.
What I want to say: Are you aware of just how sophistic your post is? Yes, X and Y are not the same. But when X and Y both result in deaths of civilians, they are similar and can be compared on those grounds.
But I am exactly complaining that “defending borders” refers to completely different problems in these cases.
And to insinuate that the US government uses taxpayers money to (help) solve some of these problems but not others is due to “who is in charge of the countr[ies] they are supporting” * and not to the fact that these are completely different problems … feels very dishonest to me.
* Is this referring to the fact that Zelensky (and Bibi) are Jews? If so … I don’t think that’s the most relevant fact about the US support of Ukraine
younger generations are more pro palestine, but that's mostly because they see jews as white people.
But in the Hamas attacks, many saw an existential threat, evoking memories of the Holocaust and generations of antisemitism, and provoking anxiety about whether they could face attacks in the United States. And they were taken aback to discover that many of their ideological allies not only failed to perceive the same threats but also saw them as oppressors deserving of blame.
“I am in such a state of despair — in my generation, we have been warned how quickly people would turn on us and we just thought no way,” said Nick Melvoin, 38, a member of the Los Angeles Unified School Board who is now running for Congress and keeps a framed picture of Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel marching with the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. in his office. “Now we see, this is how that happens: When you dehumanize the group. This indoctrination that many of us have been warned about hit us like a ton of bricks.”
Attitudes toward Jews’ place in the progressive firmament are intertwined with their understanding of race and power in America. More than 90 percent of American Jews are white, and the country remains among the safest places in the world for Jews, despite a well-documented rise in antisemitic incidents in recent years. Some Jews see their safety as precarious, but some of their allies focus on their privilege.
“The left doesn’t have a level of sophisticated understanding of antisemitism that we need if we are going to defeat white nationalism and fascism in this country,” said Joanna Ware, the executive director of the Jewish Liberation Fund, a philanthropic group created in 2020. “It has been painful to see some people I consider friends or comrades seeming to have a hard time empathizing with Israelis and, by extension, Jews in the United States.”
Not sarcasm, but definitely not a symbol I'd heard of before.
Perhaps less predictably, however, others focused on the octopus, interpreting it to be a kraken, a mythical, multi-tentacled sea beast that was occasionally used in Nazi iconography.
“What does the Kraken next to you on the couch mean @GretaThunberg?,” one account with more than 1,000 retweets wrote. “The Kraken was, and is, a well-known sign of the Nazis for the anti-semitic term international finance judaism.” The post included an image from a 1938 Nazi propaganda cartoon showing a person as an octopus whose tentacles are encircling the globe, with a Star of David over their head. (The image appears to be depicting Winston Churchill, who was not Jewish — but to be fair, the Mogen David over the octopus’s head doesn’t indicate the artist had warm and generous feelings toward Jews.)
In a follow-up tweet, Thunberg, who is autistic, clarified that the plush octopus on her shoulder was not a reference to a (frankly, somewhat historically obscure) anti-Semitic canard, but to a common toy used by neurodivergent people to express their feelings. “It has come to my knowledge that the stuffed animal shown in my earlier post can be interpreted as a symbol for antisemitism, which I was completely unaware of,” she wrote. “The toy in the picture is a tool often used by autistic people as a way to communicate feelings. We are of course against any type of discrimination, and condemn antisemitism in all forms and shapes. This is non-negotiable. That is why I deleted the last post.”
If someone had asked me before I'd read these posts about what I associated with the political cartoon meme of an octopus or kraken with its tentacles outstretched around some geographic area that represents unchecked, sprawling power and influence, I might've thought about depictions of a Jewish World Order somewhere down the line, sure, but I also strongly associate it with similar depictions of World Communism/Russia, British colonialism, even oil companies and other international business monopolies.
"Octopus political cartoon" as an image search returns a wide variety of illustrations, many much older than WWII, many much more recent that have to do with more recent issues. This article [ https://neverwasmag.com/2017/08/the-octopus-in-political-cartoons/ ] catalogues a few, many of them going back to the late 1800s. A couple are related to negative assertions about Jews or Jewish conspiracies, most aren't. It's just ... been a common visual trope for when you want to portray some entity as sprawling and overreaching for over a century. I think the first one I thought of personally was the Standard Oil cartoon from apparently 1904.
I could see it if the octopus plush was white-and-blue striped and had sprawling tentacles like the political cartoons. I can definitely imagine a theoretical, unambiguously antisemitic octopus plush. It's just interesting to slide all the way from "the sprawling octopus trope has been used in antisemitic propaganda" to "the sprawling octopus trope is antisemitic" and then to "any imagery featuring an octopus may be an antisemitic dogwhistle in the right context."
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Notes -
random bullshit: activist greta thunberg posted a picture of herself supporting gaza. sharp eyed observers noticed the subtle dogwhistle in the background of a blue octopus plushie, and she's been forced to delete it and apologize for this dangerous display of antisemitism.
I assumed it was a Squiddle from Homestuck, in which case she’d be lucky to escape with a cancellation.
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The curious thing is whether this will lead to a Trump vote in the US. The left activist class and normie Dems seem to have a large policy gap now. The masks has come off and the activist really are just marxists (which they could survive) and antisemitic.
If that were true—which I don’t believe—why would it lead to a “Trump vote”? By which I assume you mean Trump victory.
I figure a lot of people are fine with having communists sympathizers in their party but people advocating for Jewish genocide is too far and discourages people to vote Dem.
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It has happened before. The activists in the 1960's and 1970's were significantly worse and more violent. That's how we ended up with Nixon and Reagan. But we don't have a Nixon or Reagan in the Republican Party 2023 and it is significantly lower status than it was back then. Trump certainly isn't a return to normalcy.
Desantis would seem to have some of that ability. And whose higher status than say Kushner in EITHER party? Or higher than Ken Griffin. Also are prominent Republicans.
Kushner isn't a politician though. He's a rich guy with connections. Ken Griffin identifies as a Reagan Republican and is also just a rich guy and not a politician.
Desantis is pretty terrible at campaigning nationally. Nixon had guys like Roger Ailes and Pat Buchanan running a highly sophisticated election campaign to get him better coverage in the MSM with normies. Desantis is hated by the MSM and seems doomed to be clowned on outside FOX.
It seems like your making the be a Republican very narrow.
The retort would be to asks whether Kamala Harris or Joe Biden are high status? They certainly are lower status than Trump or Kushner.
I meant that voting for a Republican is considered low status. If you are a giga Chad hedge fund manager voting for tax purposes then yeah you can get away with it. But if you're just some guy names Steve trying to make it in a high status industry and get laid then being a Republican is not a very good thing. I don't think we will get an updated version of "Reagan Democrats" anytime soon.
But that guy doesn't need to tell anyone he's a Republican. I'm not American, but I talked to an American colleague about this recently, and he says no one will ever know who he votes for. My dad takes that attitude as well.
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I think you are trying to meme this into existence but it’s not true on mainstream or in business. Sure academia wants to make this claim.
There are plenty of places where Democrats are low status. Oh ya and some guy named Elon whose way past wealth levels to even care about taxes votes GOP it seems for the memes and cultural values.
Last time I looked at the data GOP still had higher incomes.
Fwiw I’ve mostly lived in blue cities. I don’t know anyone high status who votes Dem.
Limit it to white voters.
That’s because you live in blue cities.
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I have a genuine question, because I haven't been able to find a reliable answer:
Is the "blue octopus" actually an anti-Semitic dogwhiste, like, anywhere? Or is this an association that was just invented yesterday to pile on Greta Thunberg?
I've seen the infamous Nazi cartoon, of course, and it's not unique, but octopuses have long been used to symbolize conspiracies. A fishy alien thing with lots of tentacles reaching everywhere makes a pretty convenient metaphor for any group you're accusing of being sinister infiltrators.
I have never before yesterday, however, seen the claim that blue octopus plushies, specifically, are some sort of secret mascot used by white nationalists.
If they are, I seriously doubt that Thunberg was aware of it and deliberately signaling her own hatred of Jews. So this seems a lot like people freaking out over the "okay" signal.
I also suspect that, just like the "okay" signal, we're now going to see actual white nationalists unironically adopting blue octopus plushies as mascots.
Seems unlikely. My mom got my baby daughter the same plushie, I think it’s from IKEA. We’re all Jewish Israelis.
My daughter didn’t like it much though, so maybe she knows something we don’t.
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TL;DR: at the moment, "free Palestine" is to me way more objectionable than any plushy short of Hitler.
In politics, timing is everything. If Greta had posted that picture before the Hamas attacks, I would have thought it much more acceptable. (Discuss: which is more of a lost cause: limiting global warming to 1.5K or creating a Palestinian state.) To post a "free Palestine" picture so soon after the Hamas attack strongly indicates a causal chain between the attacks and the picture. I strongly oppose rewarding terrorists with attention for their cause.
Hamas, the government of Gaza, has just proven what they prefer to do with what little independence they have. This is literally the worst time to demand more freedom of Palestine in decades.
I think if people on the same side of an issue as yourself commit atrocities on such a scale, that is a great time to shut the fuck up about that issue for a while. "Free Palestine" with or without the "river to the sea" bit (the latter explicitly calling for the destruction of Israel, the former just implicitly demanding it because an independent Palestine would very likely try to conquer Israel) is the explicit goal of Hamas. If you ride on the wave of attention brought by terrorists, don't be surprised if people claim your are doing PR for the terrorists.
Of course, political protests strictly against the Israel response are acceptable.
all do not push (much) beyond the status quo.
I wasn't asking about the acceptability of Greta Thunberg's political views regarding Gaza, I was just asking if a blue octopus plushie is some secret anti-Semitic symbol or something invented to accuse her of being a Nazi.
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There is almost zero chance that the blue octopus was a dogwhistle. Greta is simply a very cringe person who made the very cringe decision that a frowny plushie would be the perfect accessory to her little bit of always-stupid intersectionality. Gaza is being oppwesed by Iswaew that makes me vewwy angwy ヾ( •`⌓´•)ﾉﾞ
Claims that the plushie is in fact a vital prop for neurodivergent people to communicate their emotions are so goddamn eyerolling that they probably reduced Greta's Cachet more than the incident itself.
But then, since most dogwhistles are bullshit in the first place it is certainly gratifying to see progressives fall into the same traps that they have been setting for the past 20 years. Greta has mostly gotten away with minimal damage, but the Israel/Palestine war has for the first time seen the cancel culture machine turned against progressives in earnest. Losing out on a position at a prestigious law firm is the sort of thing that used to be reserved for right wingers. I haven't quite grokked what it is about this subject that has caused such a reversal. Israel's current status as victims, maybe? Or perhaps right wingers are becoming more savvy with the weapons of wokeism.
Pretty much, though perhaps not invented out of whole cloth. The situation is somewhat reminiscent of the 12-hour tabooing of the previously innocuous though perhaps slightly outdated term 'sexual preference' immediately after Amy Coney Barrett used the phrase.
Please dial down the heat a notch. This bit is especially boo-outgroup--
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It’s definitely not almost zero chance. There is a ton of antisemitism going around. You can’t just forgive everyone for being a dumb kid who did antisemitism by accident. Someone is pulling the strings.
And Greta is fairly high up decision maker in this food chain. Now perhaps she’s all manipulated by her parents but at some point the people calling for let’s kill the Jews need to be believed and are actually advocating for what they are saying.
I fail to understand how you just accidentally use a Jewish dog whistle while also fairly directly calling for Jewish genocide.
Either that or Americas left is just the global useful idiot. Hamas does literally mean drive them into the sea till they drown and the Gretas are always supporting those types.
She’s almost 21 now. At some point your not dumb kid and you just don’t accidentally do genocide promotion.
Relax man. My wife bought the same plushie - the octopus that can be flipped inside-out to show a smiling or frowning face - a few years ago because she thought it was a funny way to clarify her mood, i.e., actually angry or just hormonally incapable of expressing anything other than grumpiness.
So I for one actually buy the neurodivergent-people-excuse. And not for love of that meaningless term.
She chooses to put one item in the picture. What’s the probability of that one item being associated with antisemitism? 1 in 50k?
It doesn’t make any Bayesian sense to take the assumption it wasn’t on purpose.
I would contest that probability. From my understanding, there is no confirmed case of a plush octopus used to signal antisemitism.
Basically anything can be a dog whistle. If there was a pound note or anything related to money in the background, they would claim that it was related to claims that the Jews controlled global finance. If it was a plush wolf, people would point out that the Nazis named lot of things after wolves. If it was a German Shepard plushy, that is obviously a reference to Hitler's dog. A goblin is /obviously/ just a stereotype of a Jewish person, so a Harry Potter book would be Problematic. Gas stoves are dog whistles for pro Holocaust positions. The signs in the photo were not written in Fraktur, just like the Nazis got rid of Fraktur. They are also written in English, a Germanic (!) language. Of course, England expelled the Jews at some point, so this is a clear call for the Jews to be expelled from both the UK and Israel. Any visible number which contains the digit sequence 18 or 88 is also antisemitic.
If Greta had placed her plushy on a globe, then I would concede that there is a significant probability that this is meant as a homage to Nazi caricatures. As it is, the octopus is the most unobjectionable part of the picture.
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If it had been a frowning dog, would we be talking about Blondie right now?
No we will just listen to what people say. And when they tell you they support killing Jews we will take them at their word.
If a nazi walked around with an easy bake oven I’m not going to assume it meant he just wanted a cupcake
Please don't abuse the phrasing "listen to what people say" when you actually mean "speculate what people mean". The entire point of "take them at their word" is to take them at their literal word. If you want to use this phrase, please link a video of Greta Thunberg literally advocating Jewish genocide in those exact terms.
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I find it extremely unlikely that the octopus carries any of the significance you’re attributing to it. In addition, she’s “tell[ing] you they support killing Jews” in the same sense that one of your opponents might say that people who say “I stand with Israel” or whatever are directly telling you they’re ok with apartheid and bombing children. The argument is silly no matter who uses it.
Disclaimer: I don’t care about Thunberg in general, and am annoyed to he placed in the position of defending a professional activist. Hamas and mass civilian massacres are terrible.
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There's zero chance that this was an antisemitic dogwhistle. Greta is an individual whose political inclinations and beliefs have been broadcast all over the world and none of them line up with antisemitism. I don't think you understand politics well at all if you think that left-wing opposition to Israel is motivated by antisemitism. The limit of her antisemitism is owning an innocuous plush octopus toy. Nobody is "pulling the strings" to make a slightly autistic (not an insult, she has claimed this about herself) young girl buy a small plush toy. Children routinely purchase stuffed toys all over the world.
Greta has no decision-making authority beyond her own personal statements. She is not some big leader - she was a symbol because she expressed political motivations at an extremely young age. She isn't some well respected guru or thought leader, she's simply a prominent activist. Do you really, seriously think that she'd have any influence at all if she decided to come out publicly and say "Hey everyone, I just saw a really well made /pol/ infographic, turns out I was wrong and the nazis were right - gas the jews now!"?
The plush toy of an octopus is not an antisemitic dogwhistle, it is a small toy purchased by a child. 4chan has been breaking new ground in discovering and developing new antisemitic dogwhistles (like the OK hand sign and drinking milk) but not even they have managed to get to the point of calling CHILDREN BUYING SMALL PLUSH TOYS the new sign that they're antisemites who are already goose-stepping and heiling Hitler in their heart of hearts. This is utterly paranoid conspiracy-theory thinking that sees vast amounts of meaning in incredibly inconsequential acts.
Huh? Where did Greta do that? Can you show me the example of her talking about how Hitler was right and the jews need to be gassed? The sign she was actually holding in reality said "STAND WITH GAZA" - and there's actually a big difference between saying "I stand with Gaza" as opposed to "All the filthy juden need to be exterminated". Remember, people on the left think that it is actually possible for different ethnicities to co-exist, so saying that she stands with Gaza doesn't actually mean that she wants every single jew killed first. Indeed, the girl next to her in that picture has a sign saying THIS JEW STANDS WITH PALESTINE - if she's actually an antisemite who is directly calling for a final solution to the jewish problem, why isn't she trying to murder the girl next to her?
She did not accidentally promote genocide. A small plush toy was inflated into a fictional dogwhistle in order to discredit Greta after she supported the other side of an incredibly fierce argument in the public space. There isn't a single serious thinker in the world who thinks that Greta Thunberg is a secret nazi.
I don’t understand politics? I see people flying in on hangliders then machine gunning down civilians. Then Greta shows support for them along with many others.
I then see opinion polls that Hamas is mostly supported by the residents of Palestine. Greta and her ilk then show support for the people backing hanglide and machine civilians. Sometimes the obvious answer is the correct answer.
I mean I knew Jews having their hands in everything behind the scenes was a belief. In fact I’ve even posted here that I believe it is fundamentally true. (I just don’t believe in murdering Jews). But I’m of the belief they contribute a lot to society.
Maybe a fairer representation would be she isn’t an anti-Semite directly she’s just fine with genociding high IQ successful people which a lot of Jews fall under.
Being autistic isn’t an excuse. Autistic people get symbolism. I’ve been accused of being on the same spectrum as her. She just happened to pick anti-Semitic symbolism at the same time she was backing a group with a goal of genociding jews.
Greta showed support for Gaza. This doesn't mean she supports murdering civilians, anymore than an American talking about how they support the troops means they endorsed Abu Graib or the dropping of agent orange on Vietnam. People can support causes even if they disagree with the actions taken by other supporters of that cause.
I don't think you're taking this remotely seriously if you believe that she actually supports genociding smart and successful people. This is a comical lack of charity and seems like a wilful attempt to misunderstand her and what she stands for. It isn't particularly hard to work out why left-wingers don't like Israel and support the Palestinian cause, though I suppose it is even easier to simply imagine extremely unflattering caricatures of those you disagree with. What do you actually think is more likely - that an internationally famous and notable left-wing activist is actually a secret nazi who hates smart people and is ok with jews being genocided because they're intelligent (presumably she isn't murdering her jewish friend because said friend is stupid), or that she's actually a left-wing political figure who believes in left wing political ideas?
But to return to the original point, we're talking about whether or not the octopus plush toy she had was an antisemitic dogwhistle. To be perfectly blunt, I don't think you've proven your claim that it is a signifier of hidden antisemitism in the slightest. I pay enough attention to internet culture that I'd probably know if a new antisemitic dogwhistle showed up, and I can honestly state that a generic plush toy of an octopus isn't one them.
I’m not sure how you can describe the recent Palestinian attack on Israel other than it’s a hate crime and genocide. She then posted support for them with no qualifiers. That is being extremely charitable.
The right never gets that. Even say the Proud Boys who leader is Afro-Caribbean was accused in a debate of being a white supremacists organization. If I’m even not using that standard but an easier standard of you just backed an organization that did genocide with no qualifications then it seems to be fair that they back Jewish genocide. There are lines for being charitable, this is not it.
Even the most charitable take is she something like anti-growth so she’s fine with murdering people for that goal. Maybe that’s not anti-semitism but there is no functional difference in the results between antisemitism and her position. It’s almost like a Nazi saying I don’t hate Jews we just needed their land for ethnic Germans to breathe.
I think it can be simultaneously true that:
I disagree with others who have conceded that she "accidentally used an antisemitic dogwhistle", as if she wore a number 88 sports jersey or waved her hand in a way that looked like a Nazi salute. To me, the crux of the issue is that a chibi octopus is simply not an antisemitic dogwhistle. Assertions linking it to the sprawling octopus/kraken political cartoon trope seem to me to be an incredible reach and a transparently post-hoc construction invented for this specific case at this specific moment. I obviously can't prove it, but I have a very strong impression that at no point in history has anyone ever surreptitiously included an octopus in a piece of content in order to subtly signal antisemitism to fellow antisemites. When the sprawling octopus trope is occasionally made use of as a representation of Jewish power or conspiracy, it's explicitly not as a 'dogwhistle', it's necessarily the central feature of the work. Political cartoons aren't subtle about what is supposed to represent what. There's nothing inherent about octopuses that's antisemitic, or at least there wasn't until October 21st, 2023. It's the sprawling octopus visual trope that's been considered potentially antisemitic by some, and the plush is about as far away from an example of the visual trope as you can get while still being an octopus.
It seems like there's two different discussions happening here - is Greta potentially an ideological enemy of the state of Israel, whose general support for the Palestinian people as a whole necessarily implies she supports some people who wish to see Israel destroyed and are themselves supporting or engaging in violent acts to further that goal? Sure, potentially, logically you can get there. I'm no fan of Greta, so I have no aversion to any of that being true. Does the potential truth value of that make it any more plausible that her TeeTurtle reversible Octopus plush is inherently, or was being used in this context as, an antisemitic hate symbol? No, I don't think it does, and I apparently am willing to die on the hill that it doesn't!
(The discussion about the terminal moral implications of pro-Palestinian activists' rhetoric is probably the more important one, but the plush thing is what the comment thread is about, so.)
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If killing ~1200 people is a genocide, what is Israel doing to the Palestinians now?
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Not so much Jewish-specific as Jewish-adjacent. The octopus has been a common political cartoon metaphor for malign influence, particularly of strangling and financial and manipulator dynamics, for some times. There's a classic political cartoon regarding Standard Oil from the early 1900s, but it was far from the first. A very cursory google suggests it came in vogue in the 1870s, in Europe as a metaphor for imperialism and in the US as a metaphor for corporate consolidation during the gilded age.
The thing of the octopus metaphor is that it's a single actor with the ability to manipulate or seize many things at the same time, and at an extensive range proportionally far from it's body. In the political cartoon contexts, this is frequently political manipulation and financial influence, and almost always in a malevolent/'strangling' context by a foreign/alien creature... which is a handful of the basic themes of anti-semitic narratives right there.
It's not that there's never been an octopus metaphor related to Jewish influence, but it's not exclusive to it. I wouldn't be surprised that Thunberg was entirely unaware of the overlapping connotations.
That said, I'm in no way familiar with how stuffed octpous is supposed to help with autism, and have no awareness if Thunberg has had it for long, and the chances of it popping up as set-dressing in yet another political stunt is rather low, so... I wouldn't be surprised if someone was aware and wanted it in either.
It turns inside out. There's a grumpy blue octopus to communicate that you're unhappy, and a smiling pink octopus to communicate that you're happy.
I'm unsure if Greta has ever needed the happy octopus...
Ah, okay. It all makes sense now. Now I understand why she would put it in the photo. She wants to communicate that she is upset.
That was the only weird part to me as well. Why on earth would someone have left it in the photo? But this makes a lot of sense.
Someone autistic who has been told it's a convenient way to indicate your mood to others?
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The memes are already being made.
/images/16979975882998393.webp
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Like with all other dogwhistle accusations, I don't think so.
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I assume that it is people who were accused of dogwhistling or liking people who were accused of dogwhistling - and now doing the same to other tribe.
If anything it would be about octopus in Jew-adjacent context, not blue octopuses specifically. But it is really reaching, especially as it is quite cute one unlike say NROL-39 "Nothing Is Beyond Our Reach" one. And its colour does not even match blue on Israel flag.
If it would be sinister looking octopus maybe I could treat it seriously. This looks like dead bird shitposting. Maybe even understandable one if she accused others of dogwhistling with similarly tortured reasoning.
I think it's people who were doing dogwhistle accusations continuing to accuse people of dogwhistling. By a twist of fate, the target of the accusation are their former, and possibly future allies.
Good point, have not considered that and stupidly assumed just two tribes. I guess it may be bit of both.
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And a convenient logo for the sinister infiltrators, though that one is orange.
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I don't understand what it means for Thunberg to go on strike these days. She's not a schoolchild anymore, and while I never really understood why it was notable that some kid decided to skip school, she's not even doing that anymore. As far as I can tell she's a full time activist and doesn't work a normal job. So what does she have to strike from?
When activists protest protesting, do they just not show up?
Of course they show up, who else is going to keep the scabs off their turf?
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"Down with us!" as those other jews would say
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Being honest, I never understood why I was supposed to care about Thundberg at all. I didn't really care about her tantrum at the UN, I care even less about her opinions on the Palestinian issue. Is she really still influential enough that people care that she has a only-if-you-squint antisemitic trope in her posts?
I do think Greta is the living embodiment of the critique that environmentalists are watermelons — green on the outside but red on the inside. This further cements that connection.
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My theory is that Thunberg files the same psychological niche as the Holy Maid of Kent and other similar mediaeval characters. A strident young woman with visions of the future, scolding us to repent our sins. Thankfully the worst that could happen to Greta is if she gets cancelled on Twitter rather than being beheaded for treason.
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No.
Like I said earlier, Israel/Palestine conflict is an event where most of the right immediately smells blood in the water and start trying to find lefties to attack. A person with such perceived symbolic value to the other side as Greta certainly serves as prime chum, even if her relevance has been fairly subdued since Covid started.
Yeah, I don't think she ever had any influence.
It's always striking to see the kind of language deployed when progressives suffer an even temporary, self-infflicted, minor setback. I don't think anyone "smelled blood in the water", not any more than at any other moment.
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Note that the dangerous display of antisemitism was some bullshit dogwhistle and not implicit support for Hamas.
There is a difference between support for Gaza and support for Hamas? I thought they won an election.
And Hamas hasn't allowed another election since 2008. I think we can be charitable enough to say that a rift between Hamas and the Palestinians might have developed a bit in the last 15 years.
Per this poll, 57% of Gazans have a "very positive" or "somewhat positive" view of Hamas. 49% say Hamas should not stop calling for Israel's destruction.
If I would be polled what I think about terrorists ruling my area - not sure whether I would tell that I hate them.
In such situation reaching this 57% is likely overestimate.
I don't know, if I were Hamas I would probably wouldn't want my support to appear too high in polls, because their best weapon is the innocents they hide behind. If it turns out that the innocents are pretty much in full support of Hamas, they stop being so innocent and Hamas lose their best shield, both literally in battle and figuratively. Though there's also a lower bound of apparent support that Hamas also has to avoid, at which the Palestinian civilians might decide they have a good enough chance if they start a civil war to stop/disarm Hamas.
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True; the "Stand with Gaza" sign was the part where she's supporting Hamas, not the plushie.
What slogan do you want someone who doesn’t want the Israeli state to kill or displace Palestinians to use?
‘Jews have no right to defend themselves’ or maybe ‘brown people can never do anything wrong’. Israel pulled out of Gaza in 200, Gaza then proceeded to elect a terrorist group which then started shooting at Israel. Israel blockaded them to prevent the inflow of weapons and promised it would stop if Gaza stopped shooting, it didn’t stop killing random Israelis for 16 years, then tore down the fence and killed more random Israelis, at which point Israel is now bombing them.
There isn’t a reasonable framework in which Israel isn’t well within its rights to bomb Gaza, and Hamas’s habit of putting military facilities in civilian infrastructure guarantees that Israel will kill and displace Palestinian civilians by doing so. You could be Amish level pacifist I guess, but that’s not a pro-Palestine framework. The only framework that allows you to be pro-Palestine is either ‘Palestinians are brown, and thus automatically right regardless of the facts of the case’ or ‘Israelis don’t have the right to defend themselves for some reason’.
Why is “Israelis don’t have a right to continue to settle on Palestinian land and they should give it back” so hard to say?
Because it's equivalent to "Israeli Jews should be pushed into the sea."
How is it equivalent exactly? Besides the millenia old blood feud that's tied to it, I mean.
Because to the Palestinians, Palestinian land is "from the river to the sea".
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It’s clearly not, and if the pro-Israeli side is so simplistic about it why even have a discussion? Do you really think “roll back the extralegal settlements in the West Bank” is the same as “exterminate the Jews in Israel?” Be serious.
He is serious. Rolling back the West Bank settlements is not equivalent to exterminating all the Jews, but it is also not equivalent to leaving Palestinian land. Because the Palestinians are very clear, it is all Palestinian land. They consider Tel Aviv an illegal settlement.
Respecting Palestinian claims to the land does indeed mean exterminating Israel.
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Except that's not the Palestinian demands(which are "Israelis out, from the river to the sea Palestine will be free, it's all ours").
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Gazans get your shit together? Israel has pulled out of Gaza in 2005 and there has been no attempts to resettle it.
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This is exactly the sort of thing I'd hate when it was used by the Left against the Right, and turns out... I still hate it. A pox on whoever first decided that "dogwhistles" were a thing. You might as well say she's pro-corporate-monopolies.
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Greta Thunberg deletes 'I stand with Gaza' social media post after critics claimed stuffed octopus in photo could be viewed as an 'anti-Semitic' symbol - as she says the toy helps with her autism
That's a headline I didn't have on my bingo card.
On a similar note, a 2015-esque 4chan meme posted yesterday got 15 million view on Twitter. There seems to be a shift in the wind. Naysayers will say that Twitter isn't real life, I remember everybody saying that about the "Tumblr SJWs" in 2009.
My favorite quote tweet:
/
It's less a recent shift in the wind and more a structural factor, shared conditions leading to certain desires and tendencies in people, and meme that resonates with people on the web. It's spreading on Twitter for the same reason it spread on 4chan in 2015, because people want to see it. A seed crystal that was small then, is larger now, and continues to grow.
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I would be very interested in a high-effort response to the highly memeable reply, "Impressive, very nice. Now let's see the Muslims."
Jews (and, in particular, Ashkenazim) are certainly overrepresented in a lot of interesting places. But my impression is that this is surprisingly true of many minority ethnicities and religious groups--almost as though having a mainstream upbringing results in a milquetoast adulthood. Or, alternatively, that being heterogeneous to the modal citizen of your country is quite naturally going to result in placement at one of the bell's tails. Whatever the case, "look at all the Jews in high government office" is a classic cardiologist problem.
[unnecessarily long, unoriginal, we've discussed this many times before, tldr jews good genes why so hard to notice this]
It is - in a literal sense - true that many minority groups are, sometimes, overrepresented. Again in a literal sense - it's true that having an unusual upbringing sometimes pushes someone towards success.
Say I have $200k in gold bars stashed under my mattress. I'm suspected for corruption, the cops raid my house and find it. Have I done anything wrong? Well, there's nothing wrong with keeping private property in your house. And it's a gift from a friend. Who doesn't get gifts from friends, a bit of money here and there? Again, both - literally - true. You can squint and imagine there's a syllogism there - taking gifts from friends is fine, the gold bars were gifts from friends, so...
The dose makes the poison. If the laundromat's getting a few thousand extra bucks every year, that's usual variation, maybe he's good at advertising. A few million extra bucks ... something needs explaining.
How overrepresented are Jews, exactly? Are they represented about as much as Muslims? What about Hispanics, Blacks, or Native Americans? There's a lot of diversity and unique life experience to go around. Does this help all of them?
But, like, Jews make up 25%-50% of all Nobel prizes, aside from Peace, awarded to US citizens. (note that some of those are half-jewish, but this isn't that important.) They're also 2% of the US population. That's quite the difference! What about Hispanics, Muslims, Indians?
It's not just Nobels. I, like everyone, just click links around Wikipedia sometimes. Especially in math, science, technology. And enough of the names are jewish that you can't help but to notice! In the arts, journalism, or politics - there are fewer jews than in math, but still a lot more than you'd naively expect.
I also spend a lot of the time on the internet, in various places. I'm quite intelligent, as other people are here, so I select for communities of smart and driven people. And in each community, there's an obvious hierarchy of competence and smarts. And, as I spend more time in a community and get to know the smarter people - a lot of them end up being Jewish. Even here, the person whose writing I (currently) appreciate the most happens to be Jewish... This happens in real life too!
Does this really, when we take another look at it, even come close to explaining overrepresentation? A lot of Hispanic immigrants, and Muslims, have fascinating cultures and home lives. And gives them a boost in niche, well-known fields. I guess that's why our community sprung from the blog of Scott al-Iskandar, in turn inspired by the rationality writings of E. Y. Khowsjee, and don't forget the reactionary critic Carlos Yarvin.
There is something to explain here. Looking away isn't virtuous, and telling the 100k who liked that tweet to pretend this is just like every other ethnic minority won't help. The usual rationalist explanation is just 'jews have high IQ because genes'. Which seems to fit fine, here, although our friend SS would disagree.
The claim that jewish achievement isn't remarkable, or isn't unique, or something, is something I hear sometimes. Or, it's claimed that said achievement is remarkable, but is, like, cultural, because of the Torah or just trying really hard at school. I don't think these are plausible, when compared to the average non-Jewish example of a white family that really pushes for success at school, or immigrant family with some niche ethnic tradition.
Sometimes one makes an intellectual mistake and it's just - okay, I forgot something important, I did the math wrong - but other times you're just not looking. I think to explain away Jewish achievement in politics or elsewhere with 'every minority is like this' can only explained by not looking.
In the case of politics specifically, that infographic seems to be about the cabinet. So, how Jewish is the Biden cabinet? Let's completely ignore the 4chan graphic, which ... even if it's accurate, it's still not worth looking at as a source of real information, because it's a 4chan graphic. Let's go with Wikipedia. Jews: Blinken Yellen Garland Mayorkas Hanes (half) Bernstein Lander Klain Zients. And then twenty more of other backgrounds. So a little under third are jewish, which is a ton relative to 2%. And then two Asians, two Indians, one Hispanic. (Also five Black) I don't see muslims. Non-jewish whites are are about where they should be by % of population. *1
This is ... significant. And a lot more so than Asians and Indians, or even Hispanics. It's reasonable to notice, and wonder why. It's reasonable to notice that people don't want you to notice that. It's especially reasonable to notice that if White people were 2% of the population and 30% of appointments, the standards that you'd expect to be applied would declare this to be an extreme case of racism. And then it's ... of less obvious reasonableness to start Heiling the Furher, but it clearly does lead there.
Cardiologists aren't worse people than the average doctor. But people think they are if they aren't subtle thinkers and are disproportionately exposed to anecdotes of them acting poorly, leading them to create and share those anecdotes in a cycle. But before you accuse someone of Chinese Robbering, you should check to make sure the claimed pattern isn't there! Before explaining a claim away as motivated reasoning, it's good to check if it's actually true!
And when you miss something like this, as I did in the not-so-recent past - it's worth asking, why? When I think about something, I'm trying to understand it, not just rationalize whatever the common beliefs and taboos are. And that was as true in the past as it is today. But the explanation that Jews just have good culture, or it's just pattern recognition out of control, came easily to past-me too. Just as easily as the 'rational arguments for God' came to Christian apologists. It's unpleasant to realize you are (ie past-me was) just lazily making up arguments for an assumption you aren't questioning because it's just, like, true, and also it's be terrible if it wasn't true. But it's true! And I got into many arguments about this, and made several very competent defenses of "there's nothing going on here" before, after I bumped into the wall for the fifth time, I noticed the wall.
And if you're bumping around the intellectual plain, guided by invisible walls you aren't even aware of, you might be led to the wrong places.
Now, you're right that minorities often specialize in specific occupations. Patel Hotels, etc. But market-dominant minorities are, usually, high IQ minorities. Indians are well-represented as tech company CEOs. But we've also had a billion of them to pick from by immigration.
And, yeah, when you relate to the elite jews by seeing them on TV and in the news, rather than being in their social circles, that easily leads to conspiracies based on resentment. And the Anna-Marie Loupis from the tweet is a well known covid conspiracist, with claims like lasers caused the hawaii fire because blue color didnt burn. I'm not sure what the right rhetorical move here is if you want to fight antisemitism, but being honest about the cause of elite jews might be better than keeping up the current incorrect norms and creating conditions where people on the alt-right notice the lies!
*1 I'm just including everyone the page lists, not bothering about some people joining late and others leaving early, I don't think that matters here.
I mean, it appears that Ashkenazi Jews are literally the smartest group in the world by average IQ(it’s possible that some Brahmin or middle eastern Christian subgroup, or something like that where there’s a sliced up minority of a minority that’s already notable for high IQ’s, has a higher average IQ, but I haven’t seen any direct evidence). Which raises the question of how much Jewish overrepresentation is specifically Ashkenazi, and I would bet that’s a lot of it.
Let's look at the list of Israeli PMs (Ashkenazi/Sephardi/Mizrahi):
There are just two PMs that have moms that might theoretically have non-Ashkenazi roots (born in Mandatory Palestine), but that's probably because I can't read the Hebrew Wikipedia, only the English one.
Is it the case of intra-Jewish discrimination? Did the Ashkenazi sponsors of Israel and the overwhelmingly Ashkenazi New Yishuv settlers discriminate against Sephardi and Mizrahi Jews fleeing post-independence pogroms in Muslim countries?
UPD: I also checked the current cabinet. They are younger, so their origins are less clear for many members. I had to resort to phrenology in some cases.
It looks like Israel did a stellar job integrating Sephardi and Mizrahi Jews. It's also surprising how many of the ministers live in the settlements.
I think Israel has some history of discrimination by Ashkenazi against non-Ashkenazi Jews, but I’m unsure how much.
I updated my original comment with the members of the cabinet.
It seems relevant that the current Israeli government is a large coalition agreement and Israeli political parties are split partially on ethnoreligious lines, though, doesn’t it? Major confound there.
I’d bet a list of every Jewish Fortune 500 ceo in the G7 plus Israel would be pretty heavily Ashkenazi, maybe a Sephardi or two. Likewise for professors at the top universities in each major economy.
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There are two explanations: Jews are better or Jews have some weird conspiracy power.
I do think the bigger objection is the number of blacks (that appears political and not merit).
It's possible that Jews engage in a similar behavior that many ethnic groups do, but they happen to be better at it because of their talents. This dovetails with the recent thread on stigmergy vs conspiracy. There is no "conspiracy" needed in the vein of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion to vindicate questions surrounding Jewish behavior and power. "Merit vs conspiracy" is a false dichotomy.
Is it? If you dole out benefits to in group but are very good at hiding it because you are more talented compared to others, then you are superior to others who lack the ability to hide it.
Superiority is defined by many dimensions by my estimation, dimensions that can be reduced towards civilizationally-oriented and eugenic behavior. The talent to deceive others is a talent, but having more of that talent does not make you superior. Maybe a swindler has a much higher IQ and silver tongue compared to his hapless victim, but I consider "merit" along that dimension to be contemptible and would raise the question for how civilizational order should deal with such people.
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There seem to always be a reaction like this that presumes the only relevant question is the cause of the overrepresentation rather than the meaning or impact of the overrepresentation. Even if what you are saying is true, that this overrepresentation of Jews in the highest policy positions is driven by merit with no other contributing factors that are less savory, like Jewish ethnocentrism, that doesn't allow us to dismiss the implications. Especially as it pertains to the relationship of the US with Israel as well as the identification and loyalty of these Jews to the state of Israel.
As Anthony Blinken told the Israel Defense Ministry in Tel Aviv "I come before you not only as the United States secretary of state but also as a Jew". There is goig to be a certain impact of this Clark Kent dual-identity when so much policy is controlled by people who identify this way.
Well, what is the meaning of overrepresentation? Trump’s admin only had one Jewish person in the cabinet - Mnuchin, unlikely to have had much influence on foreign policy - and their policy was at the very least not less pro-Israel.
Trump famously assigned arguably the most crucial policy position on Israel/Palestine to his Jewish son-in-law who has close ties to Israel. But I do think the difference in representation means something significant. Under the Trump administration, stopping immigration and closing the borders was a top priority although they largely failed due to all the pushback from the administrative state. Then Biden comes into office, the cabinet changes, Jews like Alejandro Mayorkas take over DHS, and what happens? Borders wide open to unprecedented levels of immigration, DHS and Biden Administration makes huge pushes to combat anti-Semitism. DHS/US Intelligence identifies White Supremacy as the greatest domestic threat.
The "big winners" of DHS grants under the Biden Administration have been the Jews, who saw funding for the NonProfit Security Grant Program balloon from $180 million to $305 million, and just now US Senators have proposed an increase to $500 million in funding.
Looking at the massive changes in policy priorities from the Trump Administration- building the wall and stopping illegal immigration, to the Biden Administration- identifying White Supremacy as the greatest domestic security threat, whole-of-society efforts to combat anti-Semitism, massively increasing DHS funding to Jewish NGOs, suggests that this does have meaning and impact on the policy priorities at the highest level of government.
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No, this is definitely not what I'm getting at.
I certainly don't deny that!
But "Clark Kent dual-identity" is the fruit of identity politics across the West, and everyone is playing the game. As far as I can tell, Pete Buttigieg has a federal sinecure because he likes to have sex with men; he certainly didn't have any of the experience I would expect a Secretary of Transportation to have, and if he wasn't gay I doubt he would ever have been more than a mayor, and maybe not even that. Sometimes when I say this, people tell me I'm not being fair, but like... here's an interview with the Secretary of Transportation from this past summer, where the bulk of the content is about gay stuff, and Buttigieg's actually job only comes up in connection with criticism of DeSantis. Or in connection with race, consider Kamala Harris, or Ketanji Brown Jackson, or Sonia Sotomayor. These are women who revel in not rising above their identities, but in sinking into them, doing their jobs not for the good of America generally but for the good of their racial in-group.
I think this is bad, but I also think it is dishonest to pretend, or imply, that Jewish people somehow have a corner on the phenomenon.
There are 2 hot wars that the US are engaged in by proxy and none of them have to do with anal sex but both of them have to do with who is in charge of the country they are supporting.
Strangely, when it comes to defending borders, there is this opinion that the Southern US border is not worth defending, but borders of such important countries as Ukraine and Israel are worth billions of dollars (and the blood of millions).
You'd think that ~168 million Americans would be more interested in protecting their own borders but apparently it's the ones with distant relatives in some swamp lands that get to have their borders of choice defended by US taxmoney.
Because of how politics works in the US, being public about anal sex is associated with a whole bunch of political positions that have nothing to do with sex, but which have a lot to do with who is in charge of countries.
And neither Israeli Jews nor any plausible near-future ruling clique in Ukraine are notably pro-anal-sex.
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Are you saying that illegal immigration through the mexican-american border is a similarly shaped problem as military/terrorist invasions?
If Mexico were to invade the US with tanks and soldiers tomorrow , I am 99.9% sure that the Biden administration wouldn’t say “sorry, we are all tied up in Ukraine and Israel, nothing we can do here”.
Similarly if Ukraine were to get swathes of uncontrolled economic migration from Belarussia … would anyone in the US government care? Probably not (they’d certainly advise Ukraine to go easy with any crimes against humanity, but they’d consider it an internal problem they don’t strictly care about).
I don’t even know why I spent two paragraphs on this (obvious) difference between these issues. Using the same word to refer to
a) economic migration
b) terrorists killing and abducting citizens of another state
c) a full blown military invasion aimed at removing the government of another nation
is pure equivocation. Calling this “noncentral fallacy” is like saying that the world trade center needed slight repairs on 9/12 after being damaged by flying debris.
What I want to say: this type of language is not used in good faith.
There are definitely cartel soldiers sent from Mexico to the US. Hamas doesn't have tanks afaik.
Well once the Mexicans start making up ~70% of a given Ukraine area and they decide to have a referendum and declare themselves autonomous from Ukraine and then start blocking roads and taking tribute (tax) at the new borders, then the federal Ukrainian government decides to bomb them and Mexico decides to intervene to protect innocent civilians, yes the US government does get involved at that point.
Fentanyl kills almost 100K Americans every year, that's a lot more than a few festival goers.
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It's not a good effort to insinuate that the language used by someone is not in good faith when you are not arguing against the language actually used by that person.
Here's what you say:
Compared to what you are replying to:
'Defending' a border can mean many things. For instance, it can mean a country protecting itself against the importation of drugs that are killing thousands annually.
What I want to say: Are you aware of just how sophistic your post is? Yes, X and Y are not the same. But when X and Y both result in deaths of civilians, they are similar and can be compared on those grounds.
But I am exactly complaining that “defending borders” refers to completely different problems in these cases.
And to insinuate that the US government uses taxpayers money to (help) solve some of these problems but not others is due to “who is in charge of the countr[ies] they are supporting” * and not to the fact that these are completely different problems … feels very dishonest to me.
* Is this referring to the fact that Zelensky (and Bibi) are Jews? If so … I don’t think that’s the most relevant fact about the US support of Ukraine
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younger generations are more pro palestine, but that's mostly because they see jews as white people.
leopards, meet face
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Sarcasm?
Not sarcasm, but definitely not a symbol I'd heard of before.
https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/greta-thunberg-octopus-palestine-israel-gaza-1234859322/
If someone had asked me before I'd read these posts about what I associated with the political cartoon meme of an octopus or kraken with its tentacles outstretched around some geographic area that represents unchecked, sprawling power and influence, I might've thought about depictions of a Jewish World Order somewhere down the line, sure, but I also strongly associate it with similar depictions of World Communism/Russia, British colonialism, even oil companies and other international business monopolies.
"Octopus political cartoon" as an image search returns a wide variety of illustrations, many much older than WWII, many much more recent that have to do with more recent issues. This article [ https://neverwasmag.com/2017/08/the-octopus-in-political-cartoons/ ] catalogues a few, many of them going back to the late 1800s. A couple are related to negative assertions about Jews or Jewish conspiracies, most aren't. It's just ... been a common visual trope for when you want to portray some entity as sprawling and overreaching for over a century. I think the first one I thought of personally was the Standard Oil cartoon from apparently 1904.
I could see it if the octopus plush was white-and-blue striped and had sprawling tentacles like the political cartoons. I can definitely imagine a theoretical, unambiguously antisemitic octopus plush. It's just interesting to slide all the way from "the sprawling octopus trope has been used in antisemitic propaganda" to "the sprawling octopus trope is antisemitic" and then to "any imagery featuring an octopus may be an antisemitic dogwhistle in the right context."
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