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Nice thesis statement.
What I would be interested to see is evidence in the sacred texts of other religions, or in the histories of other tribes, of humble laments of the sort found in Isaiah, Ezekiel, and Jeremiah -- in contrast with the "them's the breaks" tone of the pagan texts, or the "we got stabbed in the back by vermin within and without" tone of Mein Kampf. Of course I haven't read every mythological treatise of every world religion, so maybe you can teach me something.
With respect to "humble laments", sure there are plenty of Roman myths where the god, and by extension the people the god represents, are humbled in some sort of way. And in terms of literary tone and prophecy Virgil's Aeneid has some similarities.
But ultimately you are misinterpreting Isaiah as being foremost self-criticism and "humility and forbearance in defeat" while leaving out the most important part of Isaiah, which is the prophet Isaiah professing the coming of the Messiah and the destruction of Babylon. Isaiah is another chapter in the Hebrew motif of Yahweh coming into conflict with Civilizational Order, with the Babylonians being the Civilization of the era hated by Yahweh... Another among a very long list: The Egyptians, the Assyrians, the Greeks, the Romans, the Europeans...
Mein Kampf is less like Isaiah and more like a Babylonian who read Isaiah and pieced together that the Jews want to see Babylon destroyed. Or sorry, I guess according to @4bpp it was just God's will that Babylon gets destroyed, nothing to do with the will of the Jews themselves. Prophecies are very real insofar as they symbolically represent plans and wishes.
Isaiah is relevant because it provides literary justification for the Yahweh versus Civilization dialectic that is endemic in Hebrew lore and also identified in Mein Kampf, only in the latter case interpreted from the side of the Babylonians- the side of Civilization, the side of the Romans, or the side of the exasperated Pharaoh who expelled the Jews after they wrought plagues onto civilization and murdered the first-born sons of the Gentiles...
Isaiah is not about forbearance, it's about plotting the destruction of civilization.
This also gets to the heart of the difference between Indo European Paganism and Hebrew religion. The former was meant to organize society into expansive Civilization with a clear hierarchy and social order, and the latter is meant to represent a resistance to the former.
I think we've reached a terminal point in this thread of the discussion, where we are at what Sowell calls a "conflict of visions". I have read Isaiah in its entirety, and I presume you have as well. There is no more data to collect, but we see the data through the lens of different concepts and different values. The truth is, you aren't going to convince me of your reading of Isaiah through dialectic, and I'm not going to convince you of mine, even if we are both being honest and logical. The denial of that truth is a chief delusion of the so-called "Enlightenment". A sower went out to sow his seed; and as he sowed, some fell by the way side...". That's life.
I wish you would have given an example of a source. I'm skeptical of this (that any Roman myth has the tone and general purpose of Isaiah) to begin with, but if it comes without a source on the first stab, I'm doubly skeptical.
Sorry, I don't accept "agree to disagree" when your analysis ignores Isaiah's prophecy of the Messiah and the ultra-violent genocide of Babylon:
Humble forbearance indeed!!!
OK I see, you are quoting Chapter 13 not Chapter 3. Looks like the Babylonians are in for some Old Testament justice.
This is something I will address at greater length in my next post (note that it was me who first brought up Moses in connection with Genocide), but long story short is this: if we compare Mein Kampf and Isaiah, one is self-righteous, entitled, and enraged, and the other his humble, repentant, and resolved. Jamming on the enemy in itself has nothing to do with identity politics.
There is also an important question of fact here. The moral axiom that connects Judeo-Christian foreign policy , so to speak, from the bronze age to the 20th century is this: like a police officer making an arrest, you are obligated to handle your enemies with the lightest touch you safely can -- but no lighter, and them's the breaks. As a matter of fact, in the bronze age, the lightest touch you can safely use, when bordering a near-peer ruthless belligerent, may be enslavement or genocide (what is your other option? "I guess that war is over; whew; you can all go home now; better luck next time wiping us out and raping our wives and daughters "). But I do not believe Jews per se were threat to Germany at all -- even if Marxism was a threat to Germany (which it was), and Jews were disproportionally Marxist (which they were). The 30,000 Jews who won medals for bravery in WWI were certainly not a threat to Germany -- but many of those very men, and their families, perished in Nazi death camps all the same.
Now how did Hitler think when the shoe was on the other foot, and his own tribe was being a pest and got their asses kicked? If the allied cause was a Jewish conspiracy like Hitler charged, then he should have expected Old Testament justice at Versailles. Austria and Prussia, and their union in the German Empire, had fought bloody wars of aggression against the allies with whom they sought terms at Versailles, and in some cases against their fathers and grandfathers. So by Hitler's own logic, the allies would have been within their rights to push for a final solution to the German Problem while they had the upper hand. But the Versailles treaty, hard as it was on Germany, was not the Holocaust (not the same ballpark, not the same sport) -- and yet what did Hitler say about it? Vae Victus? No. What did we do to deserve this? Not exactly. He said it was an unfair, unjust, absolute abomination. Poor baby.
And that's identity politics: group justice with double standards. It is holding that your people are entitled to prey on others whenever the opportunity presents itself, and whining in self-righteous indignation when the shoe is on the other foot. The Hebrews didn't do that, and neither did the pagans.
Of course it does, the friend/enemy distinction is the essence of identity politics. When the Hebrews do it it's just "Old Testament justice" but when Hitler identifies Jews as adversarial then it's identity politics? Give me a break.
I'm sorry but this just shows a total ignorance of the Hebrew bible, which consists exactly of cycles of the Israelites genociding people according to the will of Yahweh and then acting like whiny victims when the shoe is on the other foot. Jews to this day still publicly celebrate the mass murder of the first-born sons of the Gentiles in Egypt. And don't get me started on Purim...
It is also just a plain fact that US intelligence shortly after WWII regarded Jews as a security threat to the United States. And of course nearly all Communist spies were Jewish. The idea that the entire notion was just "Hitlerian Identity Politics" is total bunk. There was more of a 'there' there.
Overall your analysis too heavily relies on these extremely high-level characterizations of Mein Kampf. If you are going to cite books from the Bible can you also cite passages from Mein Kampf that demonstrate your point rather than your over-reliance on super high-level characterizations of that work?
I've been accused of a lot of things -- but total ignorance of the Hebrew Bible, that's my new favorite.
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This is the same org that recently said right wing extremism is the greatest threat to US national security. I never took them seriously as you seem to, but maybe I should have another look.
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When the Hebrews do it it's "this is something written in a book, secular historians don't think it actually happened, and it's not something to do today".
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At least cite Isaiah correctly, you are missing a 1 in front of your chapter numbers. You are thinking of Isaiah chapters 13 and 14, not 3 and 4.
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What are the references to? They don't seem to be from the book of Isaiah. For example you have
But Isaiah 3:14-16 reads
This is all about God's judgment upon Israel, and in any case doesn't match the themes of fleeing, slaughtering, prisoners, or infants.
Putting part of your post in quotes and googling leads me to this reddit thread: https://old.reddit.com/r/DebateReligion/comments/11a4ttc/isaiahs_prophecy_of_the_destruction_of_babylon_is/
which misquotes Isaiah over and over. Did you check those with the original source (the Bible) before you posted?
Of course I've read the original source, that provides a good summary. The summary is less annoying than pasting the verses, but here you go: It is Chapter 13 and 14:
Any reader can compare what is actually Isaiah with your tripe about Humble forbearance. I cited a summary of the claims as I already knew about the prophecy. The chapter given is wrong, but the point is not misrepresented anybody can read it himself.
Funny, that was going to be my argument, too (except for the word "tripe").
I think Thomas Sowell is hands down the most notable right-leaning political thinker of our lifetime, and Conflict of Visions is Sowell's favorite Sowell book. I hope you'll read it if you haven't.
I'm going to guess it's yet another "liberalism was great until Identity Politics ruined everything." And following that train of thought leads people like you actually trying to make the ridiculous argument that the Hebrew Bible and the Roman Pantheon are not identity politics. That is all they are, if you strip away the Identity Politics they are meaningless.
The entire conservative critique of "Identity Politics" is incoherent, and the incoherence is well-embodied by your argument here. The Hebrew Bible isn't identity politics? One of the most absurd things I've ever heard in my life.
Amusingly this is what Kevin MacDonald, superfan of the Scottish Enlightenment, actually believes.
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lol. What does you not accepting it look like? Whatever it is, knock yourself out.
I can't agree to disagree because I don't even know how you incorporate Isaiah's prophecies into your analysis. You just ignore them and then end the conversation when they are brought up.
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