domain:greyenlightenment.com
hydroacetylene
16m ago
Israël seems to have a history of backing credible shots at a Christian state(eg the Maronites), but doesn’t treat Christian’s in its territory any better than other Arabs. This means that there is discrimination against Christian’s in Israël- but Arab Christian’s are one of the world’s genuine high-IQ groups, so they still do very well.
4bpp
Now I am become a Helpful, Honest and Harmless Assistant, the destroyer of jobs
19m ago
There are others around who are far more qualified to make the argument than I am, but my understanding is that the circumstance that Critical Theory is derivative of Marxism is beyond dispute. Wikipedia itself devotes a big section to it, and the introductory paragraph on its history already says,
Max Horkheimer first defined critical theory (German: kritische Theorie) in his 1937 essay "Traditional and Critical Theory", as a social theory oriented toward critiquing and changing society as a whole, in contrast to traditional theory oriented only toward understanding or explaining it. Wanting to distinguish critical theory as a radical, emancipatory form of Marxist philosophy (...)
I suppose that the assertion that is more likely to be disputed is that CT is a driving cultural phenomenon or could be described as the principal philosophical basis of US progressivism, for which it is much harder to show receipts. The only way I can see is to painstakingly show the provenance of defining features and tenets of it - value systems built around class/group interest and oppressor/oppressed dynamics, the fundamental rejection of positivism (lay definition, perhaps: the premise that something like a correct way of reasoning can be discovered and yield a "symbol-pushing" way of generating true statements that should be upheld regardless of human interests) and embracing of textual criticism (dismissal of a "text"'s content in favour of a meta-analysis of who stands to benefit from it being accepted and the motivations of those authoring and conveying it) as a tool to implement this rejection, emphasis on subjective experience, and faith-based anticipation of radical changes to society leading to an improvement of conditions.
One could also point at the high correlation between above-average engagement in the Social Justice movement and explicit self-identification as Marxist with all it entails (being concerned with economic oppressor-oppressed dynamics, anticipating a labor-based radical reorganisation of society resulting in utopia), which would be an unexpected phenomenon that warranted explanation if the two philosophies were not actually closely related.
I am actually with you insofar as I don't think that it is politically sensible or productive to apply the "Cultural Marxism" label as part of public discourse. This seems comparable to me to the erstwhile push to attack Muslims by saying things like "Allah is an Arabic moon god" - it may be true that Islam was shaped by the polytheistic soup of medieval Arabia, and this may even have great explanatory power regarding its culture and tenets, but in a modern context where most everyone is more familiar with Islam than with the medieval Arabic moon god you are trying to link it to, all it will achieve is making you look obsessive and schizophrenic as it suggests that your beef with Islam is just because you are the sort of person who would have a beef with the worship of a moon deity from 1500 years ago.
hydroacetylene
21m ago
And to note, even blacks in South Africa are much better off than in most of the rest of the continent- see the economic migration there(which has been going on for SA’s entire history).
hydroacetylene
23m ago
White South Africans are still there, the boers are probably above replacement, the shrinking of the white population is mostly due to very high black population growth. And nobody really wants the whites to leave, either- they lay the golden egg for the ANC to then steal.
Shrike
24m ago
Why does Israel need an imperial patron?
In the past Israel got along okay without the US (buying military hardware from, notably, France).
Today they are capable of manufacturing most of their own military hardware except for fighter aircraft and helicopters (the bottleneck on the former likely being engine manufacturing). It looks like they are a net food importer but are energy independent. As others have pointed out, they have a growing population and an advanced military.
So why do they need a patron? I'm not trying to be confrontational here, I'm just trying to figure out the argument that they can't survive without a sponsor. It seems like to me that as long as they can prevent sea access from being cut off they should be just fine on their own. Is there a bottleneck that I'm not seeing here?
pigeonburger
25m ago
He probably wouldn't like it because his era was obsessed with industrialization, yeah, but that doesn't mean that the people doing it are not transplanting his ideas from the factory to the movie studio.
ThenElection
26m ago
The issue with a genealogical approach is that theory is more like a lattice than a tree, with extensive lateral gene flow and different branches being reabsorbed into the main.
For instance, we have a Marx -> Marcuse -> New Left -> Social Justice lineage. But what do we make of Carl Schmitt's significant influence on Marcuse (who found his critique of liberalism very strong)? Does that mean woke activism is just a far right extension of Nazi legal theory adapted to modern times?
MathWizard
Good things are good
35m ago
Ah yes, the classic Yankee Doodle strat.
hydroacetylene
35m ago
Pagan polemics against Christianity exist, though. They’re not much about that- some common themes include accusations of magic/sorcery, Christian’s being low class/gullible, and rebelliousness/insufficient patriotism. Not a lot about it being too Jewish.
Contemporary Roman humor made fun of Christian’s as good natured but very strange, often particularly mocking charity and the treatment of slaves as being eccentric.
HermeneuticsOfVibes
43m ago
I completely understand your experience regarding the Russians. In any given domestic situation, the same character is given four different names, and none of these are what his coworkers call him.
Tiber727
56m ago
Here's an 18 minute video that goes into the text and cites how the creators of Critical Race Theory (the actual academic theory) literally say they were inspired by Marx and Critical Theory. It's not that Marx himself would necessarily approve of the goals of CRT, more that CRT adopted Marx's framing of class struggle and class consciousness.
The Jews were seen as troublesome, stubborn bastards too. It was just that they were clearly an ancient people and so got somewhat of a pass. Christians didn't.
After the rebellion this association would have been even stronger. Which explains the Christian efforts to distinguish themselves in their Gospels.
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