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naraburns  nihil supernum  2yr ago (text post)   32425 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of October 31, 2022

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Thanks for your effortful comments but I've lost interest in this chain. There are many nitpicks and objections we could discuss (e.g.: Affirmative Action does not substantially harm Jews who, having very high average scores, make it in regardless, but it reduces the relative representation of White Gentiles in prestigious institutions, and accordingly the political power of this competing demographic; iirc Sailer had addressed this years ago, as well as Jewish opposition to AA, that didn't survive this basic observation). What would come out of it, though?

I basically agree with KMac's lens of Judaism as a group evolutionary strategy, provided in the Culture of Critique. Religions in general are group evolutionary strategies, though the effect is understudied. I also accept broad strokes of his characterizations. Where we differ is in value judgements. I am not that enamored with Northwestern Europeans and their Church-molded mentality, and not that unsympathetic to Jewish traits, doctrines and approaches. Even pretty silly and biased critiques like The Authoritarian Personality have more truth than strongly identifying Whites like KMac, who only recognize humblebrag-worthy faults like «too altruistic» or «not clannish», are willing to admit; if anything, my people have been illustrating this spectacularly since February, and no doubt many NWEs would have gone down the same path with modest prodding. It's not just a libel.

The quasi-conspiratorial issues, leftism, ingroup preference, whatever, those are anodyne. The most devastating and perhaps the most contentious point of those KMac raises is the trait of self-deception prevalent in Jews both on individual and organizational level, its unusual strength, unironically reminding one of doublethink, and its scarily opportunistic nature; though perhaps we need another term, because other peoples self-deceive too, just not so productively on average. Either one sees it, or one does not. It changes everything about the topic, and precludes the possibility of productive engagement between the two camps. In my mind, it's an undeniable reality that cripples your observations like «many liberal-left Jews that supported these things are sincerely ideologically universalist and I have not yet seen strong evidence that their positions would be explained primarily in functionalistic terms».

A very typical case in point:

The establishment of the state of Israel in 1948—and Israel’s military victories over larger Arab forces in 1949, 1956, 1967, and 1973, fostered a surge of pride in Jewish Americans. From antiquity until the creation of the Jewish State, Jews were largely people of the book, merchants and scholars. The creation of Israel unified them into one strong peoplehood, with a homeland and with an army committed to defending the Jewish people worldwide. For the first time in centuries, Jews around the world were no longer victims but architects of their own secure haven that they could flee to in crisis. From the establishment of the Jewish State until the beginning of this century, Zionism came to replace religious observance amongst secular American Jews as a core element of their own Jewish identities. […]

The “New Antisemitism,” also known as anti-Zionism or hatred of Israel as an acceptable stand-in for the classical hatred of Jews, initially gained currency in universities and in leftist intellectual circles. It has since metastasized to much of the progressive wing of the Democratic Party. Today, several U.S. congresswomen have claimed that Jewish Americans have dual national loyalties.

And so it goes, into rather absurd places, including the victim card:

While we undoubtedly face grave challenges as American Jews, we must not give up. Until now, due to lack of information and fear of rejection and persecution, many American Jews have been complicit as anti-Zionism morphs into the new antisemitism. Now is the time to stand up, fight back with all our remaining might and hold antisemites accountable.

We must form alliances with groups that share the same Judeo-Christian values of freedom and democracy, inspire today’s Jewish youth to be proud of their people and the Jewish homeland, and bring Israel back to the center of our Jewish life in the diaspora.

Or straight from the horse's mouth, right at the top of the hierarchy of the party preaching universalism:

"You can be, all at once, completely Jewish, completely pro-Israel and completely American,” he said.

Schumer bellowed a pro-Israel message at the annual event, while calling out fellow politician Rep. Ilhan Omar who had questioned the Jewish ability to be pro-Israel and pro-American at the same time.

Stunning and brave. (Can you be at once completely Chinese, pro-PRC and completely American? It seems you can't even work for civilian Chinese semiconductor companies and be American these days. This is the qualitative difference in diasporal lobbying power).

This self-contradictory doublethink, the demand to support your double standard in deed and vociferously deny the existence of double standard in word, comes naturally to those universalists, and it is swallowed without objection by Americans, so I do not believe there will be crippling problems with the transition to a more explicit state of affairs.

Yeah, it's a big topic where's confident opinions come from holistic impressions based on lots of history, contemporary anecdotes and rhetoric, etc so reasonable to end it with that; knowing where you agree with KMac, I can read him if I want lots more details on your perspective. Obviously there are a lot of crank-ish commentators on this topic so good to know what to look into beyond my present indefinite questioning of your perspective here.

I see how the point about self-deception would eliminate the contribution of various observations, and that actually helps me understand your justification for sudden shift in discourse to ethno-centric HBD legitimation quite a bit. So reading KMac would be very helpful for me to see that, yes.

Even harder to analyze than Jewish power is future trajectory of ideological justifications, discourse; seems like intuitions about what is or is not acceptable and pace of change on them are based on one's reception of the vibes. As one needs not just confidence on Jewish double-think but acceptance in rest of society. I do hope the IQ HBD taboo gets eradicated, awfully annoying in dealing with all sorts of mundane policy issues.

My point with the book reference about WASPs was just to point to the extent native American forces contributed to the same left-liberal political dynamics that helped eliminate WASP hegemony, which could undercut some of the more ambitious claims about how non-WASP elite actors contributed to their decline. But we don't need to prosecute such details further, though I do recc the book if you are curious about 20th century WASP decline.

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