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PaperclipPerfector  5mo ago (text post)   29527 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of November 13, 2023

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Current leading headline on Drudge Report-

MUSK: JEWS GETTING WHAT THEY DESERVE

Links to a tweet by Matt Yglesias, who happens to be Jewish. Yglesias in turn is quoting Musk, who in turn is quoting some Twitter rando (I think) saying that Jewish communities have pushed for the same sort of hatred against whites that they oppose when it's against Jews, and so he doesn't care when they come to the shocking discovery that many of the immigrants they support flooding the country with discover that these immigrants are antisemitic. Musk simply says that the rando speaks the truth.

Here's the actual Musk tweet: https://nitter.cz/elonmusk/status/1724908287471272299#m

So, uh, how did Yglesias's clearly uncharitable interpretation of things get blasted to the top of the most popular conservative leaning news aggregator? It feels like the Gina Carano situation all over again.

This, combined with Nikki Haley's recent bizarre "Israel doesn't need the US, we need them" nonsense makes me think the GOP is trying to make some sort of push regarding foreign policy towards Israel. Or maybe it really is all one big conspiracy lol?

Edit: Also to pre-empt any claims of antisemitism on my part, if Israel decided to turn Gaza into a parking lot tomorrow my reaction would be somewhere along the lines of "Eh, that's unfortunate."

It's really crazy how much the discourse is shifting. Tucker Carlson now directly calling out Jewish mega-donors for facilitating "White Genocide" (his words) in contrast with their pearl-clutching over campus opposition to Israel. Even some left-wing commentators like Kyle Kalinski are Noticing at levels never seen in our lifetimes.

There's a Civil War at the Daily Wire, with Candace Owens delivering a scathing endorsement of Nikki Haley as "president of Isreal" and Ben Shapiro responding with bridge-burning insults. Nikki Haley, for her part, has said she would respond to the rise in Anti-Semitism by de-anonymizing social media, for "National Security". With Nikki Haley's own campaign channel considering this clip from the Republican debate to be worthy of actually posting on the channel, Owens isn't far off.

This all does make me concerned for a Nikki Haley surge, although Trump isn't less pro-Israel than Haley, and Biden has proven to be sufficiently pliable and his administration isn't exactly composed of people who are going to threaten American loyalty to Israel regardless of anything Israel chooses to do.

I've never liked the term "white genocide." The word genocide itself is just a word that gets to be claimed by the victor, as the definition is broad enough to be applied to nearly every conflict...

Any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such: killing members of the group; causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group; deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life, calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part; imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group; [and] forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.

Destroying a group "in whole or part" is just up to the interpretation of the victor. So if you have no power, like white nationalists, claiming you are being genocided is just going to be dismissed and valid complaints about i.e. demographic replacement are discredited.

In any event, this should just confirms that Jews are right to be wary of encroaching antisemitism.

In the past I've described antisemitism as anti-fragile. So let's say Jews are going to respond to antisemitism. What are they going to do that isn't going to further and visibly validate the arguments made by antisemites? Pushing for greater authoritarianism in the public discourse is their only strategy, and it's becoming less effective quite rapidly.

On the other hand, I think this rhetoric is going to have a real deterrent effect on Jews. You are going to be less likely to see people like Jon Stewart say things like "Jews and blacks should gang up on whitey." Even the ADL is relatively mum recently despite Musk now overtly endorsing DR rhetoric, likely due to the negative PR campaign started by Keith Woods.

Some of their efforts are going to be put towards rolling back DEI and fixing the homogeneity of news media after the way this has been reported. A lot of heavy-handed rhetoric is being thrown around but there's still the question of what can realistically be done which will define how things shake out in the end.

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