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Notes -
The War at Stanford - The Atlantic
A few interesting things about this article:
The author is a sophomore student-journalist, and it's really good writing, by any standard. It turns out his parents are both top journalists. Nature vs nurture (vs high-status parents faking achievements by their kids to make them look good) is ambiguous, yet again!
One observation he makes that I hadn't seen in other reporting on campus protests, is that college admissions select for people who are "really good at looking really good," which includes strategic political posturing. This reminded me of my own experience at a high school that hyper-optimized for college admission, where I quickly became jaded by classmates openly-performative "activism." Are the elite student protestors my former classmates' gen-z counterparts? If so, how do my elite "betters" actually go on to do good things? Or, if the elite students are genuinely better than me, why are the people who are the best at looking the best mounting their (electrically conductive material, as required by this deliberately mixed metaphor) flagpole to the third rail? Or, is the sophomore student-journalist's observation true, but irrelevant, making this is just a really well-written, yet redundant, article about campus protests?
The Stanford administration banned calls for genocide, in response to the House hearing, but acknowledged to the reporter that this is illegal, due to a California statute requiring all universities to adhere to the First Amendment, not just public universities. I'm curious what the PR and legal discussions leading to this "ban" were, and what may result from it.
A problem with this essay is that it takes everything that a Jewish student says as true, when we don’t actually know if what they allege is true. There are no links to police reports and investigations, and no rigorous comparison of “Jewish student victimization” versus “Palestinian student victimization”. That is problematic because it allows a random anonymous Jewish student the power to change the discourse, because he can tell his story to the author who then writes it in the Atlantic. It’s doubtful that the author has as many Palestinian friends as Jewish friends, or considers everything a Palestinian student alleged to be true in the same way he does for Jewish students.
The piece in the Atlantic is… a story. It is written to persuade the reader. He omits things not part of his narrative, like that a Jewish organization was caught writing a hoax anti-semitic message at Stanford. Similar hoaxes have occurred at other universities: 1, 2, 3. Jewish groups love their hoaxes. If one of the only(?) people caught writing something antisemitic is Jewish, what then is the probability that the other writings and postings are by a Jewish student? We can’t ignore that there would be a strong motive to do this and that it has been done frequently before.
If there have been some altercations and insensitive comments which have victimized Jewish students at Stanford in the year 2024, I expect to see a video recording or audio recording, at the very least I would need it to be confirmed by two gentile witnesses who are not affiliated with Jewish organizations.
edit here’s a Twitter thread of alleged altercations at Stanford in which an Arab or Palestinian was victimized. Are these events real? Well, isn’t that the point — the author picks and choose which hearsay to post in his article. We need a clear breakdown of victimization rates, not more hearsay narratives.
We find it easy to relate systematic behavior regarding black street crime to HBD. It's entirely rational to generalize that analysis to other group behavior. A Jewish journalist writing a journalistic piece about Jewish oppression, particularly in the context of a political hot-button issue, based primarily on hearsay from Jewish witnesses should not be believed unless receipts are provided. It should basically be assumed that they are just trying to manipulate public opinion by spinning the truth, or outright fabricating it. It's the equivalent of crossing the street when you see a hoodlum coming your way.
It's only Jews that you'd be that paranoid around, to be clear? Or does every group get the same assumption of bad faith?
Can you point me to any article in The Atlantic where a white person is published agitating for his ethnic interests? It is a quintessentially Jewish behavior for them to leverage their connections in the media apparatus to spin a story of their own oppression in order to manipulate public opinion.
That's a dodge. I didn't ask about that. I asked if you make the assumption about every group.
Let's recap:
There's a story in The Atlantic where a Jewish person discusses anti-semitism. There are obviously lots of stories in The Atlantic where people of other ethnicities talk about prejudice against them: it's easy to find articles criticising anti-black racism, anti-Hispanic feeling, and so on. Here are two pieces by Asian authors criticising anti-Asian feeling, for instance. I assume I don't need to do the same with black authors; we all know The Atlantic published Ta-Nehisi Coates.
There are also Atlantic stories that are, broadly speaking, anti-woke, or which criticising identitarianism. The Atlantic publishes Thomas Chatterton Williams and John McWhorter, for instance. Here's an article criticising a form of black activism (I can't tell the author's race; would that count as black in the US?). Meanwhile here's an article by a black person talking about anti-black racism. If you're interested in white people specifically, here's Reihan Salam (who according to the US census is a white person) criticising anti-white rhetoric. Here's Conor Friedersdorf (clearly white) criticising hateful anti-white rhetoric.
You have asserted that the existence of an Atlantic article by a Jewish person criticising anti-semitism is evidence of "a quintessentially Jewish behaviour" to "manipulate public opinion". Well, I think it's true enough that Jewish people want for other people to not hate Jews, and that sometimes they write things to that effect. But there is nothing sinister about that, especially since the very same outlet publishes things by other groups asking people not to hate them! Black authors, Hispanic authors, Asian authors, and yes, even white authors also get published saying, "Please do not hate us as a group."
The objection I have is that you take something very obvious and understandable - a member of an ethnic group writing an article criticising hatred towards that same ethnic group - and, in a way that you apparently do not do with any other group, immediately assert some sort of pan-ethnic deceptive nature. Are Jews a race of lying manipulators for this? Well, by the same logic, so are blacks. And Hispanics. And Asians. And whites. Because they all publish pieces in The Atlantic criticising racial animus towards them. Jewish authors are not acting remotely unusually here - they are acting the same way as everybody else.
Yes, let's recap:
I am referring the very long history of largely Jewish-owned newspapers with Jewish-run editorial control publishing articles written by Jews which heavily relies on rumors and hearsay from other Jews to present one-sided on-the-ground accounts and narratives describing salient political conflicts in a way that is intended to boost sympathy for Jews and alert the public to anti-Jewish sentiment. Your response is an article written by this guy (he's white on the census!), and from this guy with 0 actual advocacy for white people, and you apparently don't think you're stretching here.
In contrast with how far you are stretching to attribute this sort of behavior to non-Jewish white people, the pattern of behavior I am referring to stretches back centuries. Take that 1921 news article where Jews are begging America to "save 6,000,000 in Russia", saying "6,000,000 Jews are facing extermination by massacre. As the famine is spreading, the counter-revolutionary movement is gaining and the Soviet's control is waning", (also an interesting statement, for others reasons).
Or the 1936 article, talking about "the European holocaust" well before the war.
Various articles exaggerating conditions - i.e. "6,000,000 facing starvation" in 1920, or "reporting" on the apparent expulsion of "6,000,000 Jewish families" from Russia in the 19th century.
Was there conflict between Jews and Russians or Ukrainians? Absolutely. But in hindsight we can see that this is not journalism, it's Jewish propaganda being presented as journalism. The accounts of conditions on the ground are a combination of truth, exaggeration, and falsehood published to spin a narrative. In hindsight we can acknowledge how stories about 6,000,000 Jews facing extermination in Russia was pure nonsense, but at the time this was the information the public had access to in order to understand the political situation.
Jews especially have the penchant- the means, motives, and opportunity, to relate "their side" of the story as "journalism".
To me this behavior is very obvious and understandable, but just because a pattern of behavior is understandable doesn't mean I can't adjust my priors and acknowledge what is just another chapter in the very long history of Jews presenting their one-sided account of a political conflict as "journalism."
You didn't include any of that in your comment, so obviously I didn't respond to it. What I was responding to was the long record you have here of taking any instance of Jews writing anything, whether about Jews or not, and insinuating that it's evidence of some malevolent racial character. I asked whether you jump to the same overblown conclusions regardless of the ethnicity of the author - and in my judgement, you don't. It is a unique fixation on Jews.
I repeat: what we have here is an article by a Jew criticising anti-semitism. I have pointed to articles by Asians criticising anti-Asian feeling, by black people criticising anti-black feeling, and, yes, by white people criticising anti-white feeling. (Even if you don't count Middle Easterners as white, Conor Friedersdorf is undoubtedly white and he was criticising racial rhetoric that attacks or vilifies white people for perfectly innocent behaviour. It counts.) If a behaviour is carried out identically by pretty much every racial group, then it hardly seems to be something unique to Jews.
You might want to argue that specifically white identitarianism is not published, whereas other racial groups can publish identitarian content. This is true to an extent. The Atlantic probably wouldn't publish e.g. outright black nationalism of the same kind as white nationalism, but it does tend to publish explicitly pro-black-identity black authors more than it would white authors. That's a hypocrisy. It's just hard to see what if anything that has to do with Jews.
(As a side note here, I would gently remind you that Theo Baker's article isn't advocating for Jewish nationalism or anything like that either. It is just a straightforward piece against anti-semitism. The thrust of the article is not to advocate for special privileges or carve-outs for Jews - not the way that e.g. black authors openly advocate for reparations and other special privileges - but rather just to say "please stop attacking us". It is purely defensive.)
But this is what you always do - anything a Jew says is evidence of the sinister racial character of Jews, no matter how innocuous the thing, or no matter how much people of other cultures do the exact same thing. You cite "the very long history of Jews presenting their one-sided account of a political conflict as "journalism"" as if it isn't completely normal and expected for anyone's account of a political conflict to favour their own side. Hamza El Boudali's account of the conflict at Stanford is completely one-sided. Political tribalism is a human constant. Jews and Palestinians are no different to, say, pro-life and pro-choice journalists.
What we don't have is an ethnically Chinese-owned major national newspaper with a Chinese chief editor publishing reports from a Chinese journalist (in fact, a mere Sophomore who only is being published because of his Chinese parents who have connections in the industry), which selectively cites hearsay and reports from Chinese witnesses to "report" on a political conflict involving Chinese nationalism and ethnic Chinese interests on one side, and their political opposition on the other- and trying to pass that off as "objective journalism."
What you are talking about- "an article by a black person criticizing anti-black feelings" is not all comparable to the long-standing pattern of behavior I am identifying- a vertically integrated propaganda apparatus which presents ethnic advocacy as journalism.
I'm sorry but this is just absurd, Theo Baker's article is advocating for Jewish nationalism by writing propaganda for the benefit of the Jewish nationalist side of the conflict. It is not "purely defensive." It is offensive. They are framing the conflict and using their influence to present one side of that conflict while claiming an objectivity that doesn't exist. @coffee_enjoyer pointed out the ways in which this article is one-sided. This is not defensive this is how they have always sought to wrangle control of public opinion. They are the only ones who operate in this way to this extent in the United States.
I certainly agree that political tribalism is a human constant. How do Jews engage in political tribalism? By exploiting their ownership and connection over sources of information. This is how they operate. This it not how blacks or Arabs operate in the United States, they get patronized in various ways but they don't steer the ship.
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