This weekly roundup thread is intended for all culture war posts. 'Culture war' is vaguely defined, but it basically means controversial issues that fall along set tribal lines. Arguments over culture war issues generate a lot of heat and little light, and few deeply entrenched people ever change their minds. This thread is for voicing opinions and analyzing the state of the discussion while trying to optimize for light over heat.
Optimistically, we think that engaging with people you disagree with is worth your time, and so is being nice! Pessimistically, there are many dynamics that can lead discussions on Culture War topics to become unproductive. There's a human tendency to divide along tribal lines, praising your ingroup and vilifying your outgroup - and if you think you find it easy to criticize your ingroup, then it may be that your outgroup is not who you think it is. Extremists with opposing positions can feed off each other, highlighting each other's worst points to justify their own angry rhetoric, which becomes in turn a new example of bad behavior for the other side to highlight.
We would like to avoid these negative dynamics. Accordingly, we ask that you do not use this thread for waging the Culture War. Examples of waging the Culture War:
-
Shaming.
-
Attempting to 'build consensus' or enforce ideological conformity.
-
Making sweeping generalizations to vilify a group you dislike.
-
Recruiting for a cause.
-
Posting links that could be summarized as 'Boo outgroup!' Basically, if your content is 'Can you believe what Those People did this week?' then you should either refrain from posting, or do some very patient work to contextualize and/or steel-man the relevant viewpoint.
In general, you should argue to understand, not to win. This thread is not territory to be claimed by one group or another; indeed, the aim is to have many different viewpoints represented here. Thus, we also ask that you follow some guidelines:
-
Speak plainly. Avoid sarcasm and mockery. When disagreeing with someone, state your objections explicitly.
-
Be as precise and charitable as you can. Don't paraphrase unflatteringly.
-
Don't imply that someone said something they did not say, even if you think it follows from what they said.
-
Write like everyone is reading and you want them to be included in the discussion.
On an ad hoc basis, the mods will try to compile a list of the best posts/comments from the previous week, posted in Quality Contribution threads and archived at /r/TheThread. You may nominate a comment for this list by clicking on 'report' at the bottom of the post and typing 'Actually a quality contribution' as the report reason.
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Notes -
Secular Jews created the modern (sympathetic) reaction to antisemitism and the Chareidim in this example are exploiting it to find loopholes in planning or employment regulation. That’s exactly my point, they created nothing. What have the Chareidim ever done to combat antisemitism among gentiles? This indicates a true, underlying lack of concern.
That they exploit some sympathies for Holocaust victims in an attempt to avoid dealing with the law doesn’t mean they care about antisemitism, no more so than putting one’s contracting company in one’s wife’s name for supplier diversity reasons indicates progressive political sympathies. If they cared about threats to the Jewish nation, they would fight for it. If they were concerned by antisemitism, they would do what secular Hollywood and ADL Jews do and at least try - cackhandedly and embarrassingly, of course - to mitigate or stop it by ‘educating’ people on how they were actually very nice and kind. They do none of this because they don’t care.
And what I replied was a description of the reality of the Colombian Jewish community, as per the WJC:
That couldn’t be further from the reality of the Chareidim, for whom Jewish ritual and practice is, whatever you think of it, a deeply central part of daily life.
This quote is literally the reason they don’t fight for Israel and didn’t flee the Second World War. As with Islamists, their material reality is not strictly important, and despite their fecundity, their concern with whether or not they get pogrom’d is actually substantially less than that of most other populations. I’m glad you posted this quote because it really illustrates my point about the deep ideological gulf between secular (including even moderately religious Zionist) Jewry and Chareidim perfectly.
The Haredi in this case are explicitly anti-goy, and they consider the Jews to be historically mistreated by gentiles, and they are very concerned about the Jewish people and Israel. This is evidenced by the quote I cited, which was said confidentially to a secular Jew. I can provide more quotes although it’s a bit annoying because I can’t ctrl-f (the book isn’t online). Your argument that the Haredi haven’t done anything to combat antisemitism and therefore they don’t care about antisemitism is speculative and non-central. It is speculative because we don’t know the extent of Haredi donations to holocaust propaganda or Combat Antisemitism or anything else. It is non-central because they are interested in increasing their size and political power, thereby increasing Semitic power, thereby decreasing the threat of antisemitism.
In 140 years they will have a high enough population in NYC and NJ to rule over it politically. They already abused their political power to misuse one billion in educational funds in NYC or extract money via Cars 4 Kids. One of my favorite scams the Hasids did is when they attempted to blackmail financier Steve Cohen. The influential Balkany called Cohen, complimented his Kohanem status, told him he silenced a fellow Jew planning to report him to the SEC, and then requested millions of dollars for his Jewish school. In this case, Cohen ratted him out, but this wasn’t a one time scam. Balkany, by the way, was Rubashkin’s lawyer when he was charged with the largest illegal immigration employment violation in US history.
I think you are confused about the details of what I sent you. I provided you a link about an ultra orthodox community converting gentiles into an ultra orthodox lifestyle, with every law binding, while preventing them from intermingling with the real ultra orthodox or ever making Aliyah to Israel. In other words, a group of Colombians went to an orthodox Jewish rabbi, said they think they have a Jewish soul, the rabbi “converts” them, but they are kept segregated from the real Orthodox Jews. The existence of Ashkenazi in Colombia does not factor into this at all, as they are not parties to the aforementioned interaction. This is an example of how deeply the Haredi care about Jews as racial people, rather than Jews as ritual-practitioners. Were an Ashkenazi to wish to convert to ultra orthodoxy they would be welcomed with open teffilin.
So again, your stories are littered with countless examples of secular Jews ratting out Chareidim to secular and substantially gentile authorities and this proves…that the Chareidim consider them their in-group rather than an out-group they’d like to convert?
I don’t think that a rapidly growing ultra-orthodox population gaining more political power reduces the threat of antisemitism at all (if anything the opposite), but perhaps you disagree. In their brazen conduct, the Chareidim increase antisemitism, and the few who engage regularly with the outside world are almost certainly intelligent enough to realise it. They do it anyway.
We know that the Chareidim (whose perspective you can easily see on their forums, yeshivaworld etc) almost universally despise these secular Jewish organizations for their social liberalism out of the sincere belief that they are trying to corrupt their children in the same way that all similar religious conservatives do for secular progressive advocacy groups.
It would be survivorship bias to conclude that these are rare scenarios. In the first case, it’s one of the most important Hasidic figures showing us his outgroup. In the second case, it’s one of the most important Hasidic figures showing us his ingroup. How the secular Jew responds to fraternizing by the ultra orthodox is obviously a separate discussion topic, as it doesn’t tell us the median belief of Orthodox Jews to born-Jews. We know about these cases because we have been told about these cases, and we would not know about these cases if the secular Jew did not “rat out” the Orthodox. It would be a mistake to quantify the membership of the Italian mob based on how many Italians rat them out, right?
It’s a question of when the gentiles realize the consequences of the population shift. Right now I would put my money on team ultra orthodox. The average American’s intuition is shifting toward Semite-skepticism but the average knowledge about the ultra orthodox among those who aren’t their neighbors is merely that they build funny tunnels. Their best bet is to increase their numbers. Increasing numbers increases political power when you block vote.
The Hasidim don’t care about bad words on the internet, which do not affect them. They care about political pressure against them, and increasing their numbers and influence increase their political advocacy.
That is motivated by their fear of assimilation with the goy. The secular Jew is still Jewish and they want him to be like them.
Is an Evangelical flyover state Republican who desperately wants to convert blue tribe Americans, preaches to them, sees them as brothers going down a lost path, and does everything in his power to bring them to the church part of the same ‘in group’ as them? This is what you’re implying in this case. Wanting to convert someone you hope or dream will be sympathetic to your tribe doesn’t make that person part of the ingroup.
The only difference is that because of the Jewish prohibition on proselytization, the pool of ‘potential converts’ who can be openly evangelized to is limited to secular Jews.
The evangelical does not define his membership by genealogy. He does not make daily prayers to a people and a tribe and a nation. A better example would be an evangelical trying to save a different evangelical who is living in sin. In this case, yes, they are the same ingroup. The Orthodox are compelled by their belief system to consider lapsed Jewry to be their ingroup due to their qualitatively distinct divine spark as described in the Tanya and spoken about by Schneerson, their quasi-messiah. This is a very fitting parallel — per Forward,
Schneerson identifies with secular Jews to an extreme degree:
Is an SSPX hardcore ultra-tradcath who believes the only just form of government is Catholic monarchy under the Pope (but not the current one) the same in-group as a (sex-having) gay liberal Catholic who believes women should be ordained as priests, that Jews don’t have to convert to go to heaven, and that abortion isn’t a sin? This seems like a semantic difference in our positions more than anything.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link