domain:firsttoilthenthegrave.substack.com
OliveTapenade
2hr ago
There are absolutely places where being a Zionist will get you punched.
No, it's not as radioactive as white nationalism, but so what? There's plenty of room for Zionism to be unpopular and provocative and something that might make Jews afraid without it being exactly as bad as the worst thing in modern politics.
The fact that Zionism is not yet as universally loathed as Nazism (though, again, there are certainly crowds people who think it ought to be) doesn't seem to prove anything, to me. Unless you're asserting that it should be?
You're also equivocating a bit between 'Jews' and 'Zionists', so I suppose I'll ask directly. Do you think that Jews should get punched just for being Jews? Or Zionists just for being Zionists?
(And to pre-empt any attempt to turn it around, no, white nationalists or neo-Nazis should not be punched either.)
It seems to me that by any reasonable standard Zionism is quite widely and publicly hated. I mean, anecdotally I know Jews who have been taking self-defence classes and buying more home security and avoiding wearing any outward signs of Jewishness in public because they're afraid of being harassed or possibly attacked. Some of those fears are exaggerated, in my view, but they're not totally unjustified.
PierreMenard
2hr ago
The mods were just following orders. Is it really anybody's fault that no one but Nazis can seem to follow pretty simple rules?
PierreMenard
2hr ago
A strange backwards situation in which the feeble try to tell the mighty what is allowed.
Interestingly, when one considers the relationship between the US and Israel, a straightforward interpretation is that the mighty would be the US.
Yet who is telling who what is allowed? Whose billionaires are broadcasting Superbowl ads and emptying their government's coffers to fight whose wars?
Was mid-century Germany justified in telling the feebler Eastern-European countries how to treat their civilians?
Goodguy
2hr ago
I think that most of the men who admire brutal chariot-riding conquerors are not thinking strategically, they just valorize virile amoral masculine strength for emotional reasons, in many cases I would guess because they feel inadequate as men and feel disconnected from modernity and so they are attracted to an archetype of brutal masculinity that has the extra advantage of pissing off politically mainstream people.
PierreMenard
2hr ago
And plenty of contexts where it's no problem at all or even a given. Not quite the same thing as being a White nationalist. Is it OK to punch a Zionist yet?
Amadan
"I would put a screwdriver through your eyeballs if I could"
2hr ago
Forgotpassword
2hr ago
I just don't think Islam is particularly viable to run a successful modern economy/society unless you happen to be sitting on a large oil deposit.
Amadan
"I would put a screwdriver through your eyeballs if I could"
3hr ago
In reality, yes. But the comparison is frequently made (because all "indigenous" folks are the same), to the extent that some leftists on Twitter have said things along the lines of "Actually, Native Americans would totally be justified if they started suicide bombing white people."
hydroacetylene
3hr ago
Most of our religious people are not evangelical. We have religious Jews, Mormons, and tradCaths, but no evangelicals that I know of.
Sloot
3hr ago
Yeah… although I’m sure there’s a non-zero amount of men into the BBW or feeder fetish, most of men claiming they’re into “thicc” girls is just euphemistic cope for them being unable to pull slim chicks.
hydroacetylene
3hr ago
A big chunk of Lebanon’s problems are due to the different ethnic groups being at each other’s throats, though I suppose that’s partially made up for by the HBD advantage of 1/3 of the population having an average IQ of 100 instead of 80.
hydroacetylene
3hr ago
Israel keeps one of America’s #1 enemies, Iran, in check. Israel provides an overwatch that prevents Hezbollah, a very anti-American power, from dominating Lebanon. The Israeli military has in the past carried out strikes on anti-American regional powers that America was no doubt very pleased with, eg against Syria.
Does this necessarily mean that Israel is worth the price tag? No, but there’s genuine geopolitics reasons to play nice with them.
netstack
Texas is freedom land
3hr ago
Palestinian casualties have always far exceeded Israeli ones
It’s not for lack of trying, though.
Hamas appears to be limited more by Israeli tech and funding advantages than by its own morality. Israel…it’s less clear. I would argue they are operating further from their maximum capability than Hamas. Whether that’s due to conscience or to realpolitik, I’d still call it “restraint.”
Or to put it another way: if Hamas wanted to cause more casualties among Israeli civilians, what would it do differently? Because I get the impression it’s taking all the opportunities it can. The scarcity of such opportunities, and the horrific penalties it pays in return, doesn’t excuse much.
OliveTapenade
3hr ago
There are, to be fair, plenty of contexts today where you would be afraid to publicly admit to being a Zionist, even by just a minimal definition of it (i.e. thinking it's good that Israel exists and wanting it to continue existing free of attack).
OliveTapenade
3hr ago
I usually try to avoid blocking - in particular, in a case like this, the result would be that the front page would consistently have these large, highly-active threads, with dozens of responses to something I can't see. Realistically I suspect I'd just want to read the blocked content anyway, just to see what's going on!
OliveTapenade
3hr ago
That generally makes sense as an explanation - I would take it as related to the collapse of mainline Protestantism, and more generally the end of the WASP class. Historically the supreme court is almost entirely what we would call 'mainline Protestant', but in the last few decades mainline Protestantism has firstly almost entirely collapsed and secondly gone quite liberal in terms of politics. Religious conservatives, bar a small handful of impressively stubborn confessional types, are almost entirely either evangelicals or Catholics. Evangelical Christianity in the US began as a movement against an intellectual establishment that they perceived as having succumbed to heresy. There may be many good things about evangelicalism, but it has inherited a certain anti-intellectual streak, and it has never managed to reconcile with cultural elites. It was and remains low-class.
So as you say, that leaves Catholics. The Republicans have made heavy use of them.
hydroacetylene
3hr ago
Even Americans are told we should make reparations to Native Americans, not all pack up and move back to Europe.
Native Americans don’t want us to leave, they want our money and to have better conditions for themselves.
OliveTapenade
3hr ago
I agree there's an important distinction to make there. Noticing and talking about Jewish overrepresentation is certainly not hateful or problematic in itself. It's an interesting observation, and one that may have positive and negative effects, for both Jew and non-Jew alike. I believe there are actually some meditations on the theme by Jews themselves.
Folamh3
3hr ago
Going just by raw numbers, in the back-and-forth of action and reaction, it really looks a lot like the Israelis are constantly escalating and the Palestinians are constantly deescalating - there is not a single instance of Palestinians killing Israelis that was not followed by Israelis killing more Palestinians, and no single instance of Israelis killing Palestinians that was not followed by Palestinians killing fewer Israelis.
This just seems like a fundamentally dishonest framing. Hamas fires dozens if not hundreds of rockets at Israel every year. These rockets are slapdash affairs with no guidance system to speak of, and the Iron Dome renders most (but not all) of them ineffective. Without the Iron Dome, it's obvious that Israel's casualties would be an order of magnitude higher at least.
Describing Hamas firing hundreds of rockets at Israel (most of which miss or are shot down before they can hurt anyone) as Palestine "de-escalating" the conflict - I mean, really? If you repeatedly shoot at someone, the fact that you're a lousy shot and/or they were wearing full body armour does nothing to exculpate you.
hydroacetylene
3hr ago
The CMRI are fringe nut jobs who bought holy orders from the mafia and consider other tradCaths apostates.
MaiqTheTrue
Zensunni Wanderer
3hr ago
I see this as a blind spot for most of us simply because we are secular and live in a secular culture. To them, religion is a very deep very powerful personal thing. And trying to see this through a secular lens when those involved see it through the lens of religion seems like a mistake. To me, the fact that one person is catholic and another is baptist doesn’t mean much, nor does it mean much to those people. If we’d go back to the time of the reformation, this becomes the most important thing to know about them.
In MENA, religion is not just a sort of interesting thing that is just sort of one of dozens of ideas and hobbies and interests a person might have. It’s important and one of the cardinal things about how that person sees the world. And for that matter it’s a big part of how others see them and they see others.
PierreMenard
3hr ago
Mainly at the level where I think, boy, it'd be really nice to read the Motte without the same two or three people every time yelling about the Jews.
I agree with you! I can't wait for anti-sionism to be so mainstream that Jews are afraid to publish their pro-Israel opinions and have to get together on obscure pseudonymous message boards to dare express that 'perhaps Jews have a right to self-determination'.
urquan
The end desire of the system is Kubernetes for human beings
3hr ago
I believe the scotus size was set by statute, meaning that the house is required to consent to an expansion of the court size. If only the senate and president had to conspire to add additional justices, I figure it would have happened already.
NelsonRushton
4hr ago
Let's start with number three, because that is the one that surprises me. (1) The city government of NYC is woke AF, (2) so is the administration of Columbia U, and (3) one element of the woke agenda is a strong leaning toward both Palestine and BLM to the point of permitting illegal protests for both. Do you affirm or deny (1), (2), and (3)?
What surprised me most in the reaction was this amusing line:
Well... yes.
Yes, there's a correct way to be Catholic. It involves believing and acting in accordance with Catholic teaching, which is very clear on some of those subjects.
How is that controversial?
More options
Context Copy link