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PaperclipPerfector  1mo ago (text post)   35059 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of March 3, 2025

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You may remember racism being declared a public health emergency during the height of Covid. So now the new HHS secretary Robert F. Kennedy is declaring antisemitism a "spiritual and moral malady that sickens societies and kills people with lethalities comparable to history’s most deadly plagues". Since it's a malady and he promised to Make America Healthy Again Health and Human Services will be working with other departments to fight this sick sick wrongthing.

I'm thinking that Trump administration isn't so much "defeating wokeness" as just updating it to their funhouse mirror version.

My rules > your rules, fairly > your rules, unfairly

Your rules, unfairly: Public health covers non-health things like gun control and environmental justice but cannot be used to push back against the woke.

Your rules, fairly: Public health covers non-health things, but at least both sides can use it.

My rules: Public health has to do with health.

Glaring self-serving asymmetry there. The true ordering is: my rules, unfairly > my rules, fairly > your rules, fairly > your rules, unfairly. Can also be generalized: my bailey > my motte > your motte > your bailey.

Pushing for 'my rules, unfairly' also invites 'your rules, unfairly'.

It can be better to stay at 'my rules, fairly' for this reason.

Not if a cardinal value is that following rules is very important, more so than the object level on any individual case.

Well, I'd like to see an entity with any amount of influence that has that cardinal value...

I personally know several (if we count things like ministers of state, GMs of governmental agencies, ceos and judges), its not that rare.

I wouldn't say its common though and most people of influence are often at least "morally malleable" in my experience, like our current Prime Minister in Sweden for instance.

People don't really notice when someone is just quietly doing their job, not being corrupt. People notice corruption scandals and overgeneralise.

If one lives in an area with low social trust and normalised corruption then things are of course different.

I think equating unequal application of rules with corruption is motte-and-bailey, or at least a case of the noncentral fallacy. Corruption evokes images like taking bribes or passing an answer key to a certification exam to ideological allies; this is probably much more rare.

Most cases of rules applied unequally do not feel like you are making biased decisions about applying the rules from the inside - instead, you figure that it is an intended part of the rules that you get to apply discretion, because reality is complicated, and it just so happens that certain cases have a lot of highly valid extenuating circumstances. The outgroup screams that you are applying the rules unequally, but you know they just do this because they are moral mutants and hate the people who deserve discretionary mercy the most. (Everyone here knows examples of when the Blue Tribe does this anyway, so I'll just point out a Red version, which is squeezing of public figures over past sexual indiscretions (ex: Kavanaugh))

Everyone here knows examples of when the Blue Tribe does this anyway, so I'll just point out a Red version, which is squeezing of public figures over past sexual indiscretions (ex: Kavanaugh)

That's a blue version.

Ok, but why is foreign country of Israel one of the two sides? Also, if Republicans want fair rules they can pass them right now, they hold all the branches of government, pretty much.

Because anti-Israelis are mostly not white supremacists, they’re campus leftists. This is about criminalizing campus leftism(may the heroes of Kent state smile down on them), not actually making anti-semitism illegal.

I’m in favor because I hate campus leftists.

Roughly as many jews live in the U.S. as do in Israel.

Nobody's protesting American jews being jewish in universities, America enabling Israel's treatment of Gaza (and Lebanon, Syria to some extent) is what's being protested.

Jewish students at UCLA had to go to court because protesters were blocking Jews from entering the campus and UCLA argued it had no responsibility to stop them from doing so.

https://www.cnn.com/2024/08/14/us/ucla-campus-protests-court-ruling/index.html

There has been a lot of targeting of Jews for being Jewish by protesters over the last few years.

Let me guess. They hassled some zionist activists and they pretended to be targeted for being jewish. I cannot imagine the story playing out any other way. How would they even know which students were jewish?

At my college they were doing "checkpoints" at the dining halls, asking "are you a Jew?" and hassling anyone who said yes. Leftists have a funny term to excuse the tactic, I always forget what it is. "Reflection"?

That sorta did it.

Ah yes, that's why they're smashing up jewish-owned businesses [1], [2], [3], [4], are going after the main jewish student services organization on college campuses - hillel - and yell at protests things like "go back to Europe" and "go back to Poland."

EDIT: But even if the protests were immaculately limited to the Gaza conflict, the fact that we have a substantial diaspora population here means that it will have a political impact, just as there were conflicts between different factions of Ethiopian immigrants/diaspora in the U.S. over the recent Tigray War, there were big Armenian protests in LA over Artsakh, the Cuban expat community has long-exercised outsize influence over the U.S.'s Cuba policy, etc.

1: Historic L.A. Jewish deli hit with antisemitic graffiti

Okay, but the graffiti shown says "Free Gaza", "How many dead in the name of Greed?" and "Israel's only religion is capitalism". All of these are congruent with the claim that "America enabling Israel's treatment of Gaza is what's being protested."

2: D.C. kosher restaurant vandalized on Kristallnacht anniversary

I don't see a culprit mentioned or any evidence for a motive given, is it your contention that Leftists are commemorating Nazi events by targeting Jewish businesses? Does that even seem like it would be on the top 5 Occam's Razor reasons for a window getting smashed in crime filled DC?

3: Brick thrown through window of popular Jewish deli in Tarzana

Nearly identical incident as 2, except this time in LA.

The owner, David Laredo, told Eyewitness News he isn't sure whether it was a targeted attack.

"It's possible with... what's going on today everywhere," he said. "It's possible... but nothing was left that indicates that it was a hate crime... I don't know."

4: Antisemitic mob targets Jewish falafel restaurant in Philadelphia

These protests were started by employees (who presumably aren't anti-semitic enough to not work at a falafel restaurant) who were upset that the owners - Israeli citizens - were donating restaurant profits directly to Isreal. Link

5: 'Same as the KKK': New SJP-affiliated group works to remove Hillel from US campuses

Subtitle:

Drop Hillel claims to be campaigning for non-affiliated Jewish spaces without Zionist connections.

Drop Hillel calls itself a “Jewish-led campaign... advocating for divestment from Hillel” that wishes to “weaken Hillel’s grip on Jewish campus life.”

The call is coming from inside the house.

So when you protest the actions of, say, the Chinese government in West Turkestan/Xinjiang, the appropriate action is to vandalize the local Szechuan takeaway joint just because it happens to be run by a coethnic? That's stupid.

And yes, there are mostly-secular "as-a-jews" who have fully-aligned with the progressive quasi-religion. This is not new; this was the story of the Trotskies and the Kurt Eisners and the Bela Kuns and the Rosa Luxemburgs, and it's now the story of the Peter Beinarts and Norman Finkelsteins, and even much of the modern Reform movement, which, not-unlike many of the mainline protestant denominations, has broadly de-sacralized and merged into the general progressive mainstream. Not for nothing has it been called "the Democratic Party at prayer". These folks are tokens in the anti-zionist movement providing identitarian PR cover the same way Robin DiAngelo and other "white-privileged allies" are for the "antiracist" movement.

So when you protest the actions of, say, the Chinese government in West Turkestan/Xinjiang, the appropriate action is to vandalize the local Szechuan takeaway joint just because it happens to be run by a coethnic? That's stupid.

Sure, this is a good point and I'll concede that the first link you posted was reasonable evidence.

The two window smashing examples are still very weak. There are many reasons a business might sustain that kind of vandalism, - an interrupted burglar, a homeless drug addict, a irate employee or customer, etc. This kind of thing is not uncommon and it should not be a surprise that the target would be a Jewish owned business from time to time. The dubious "eve of Kristallnacht" connection does not strengthen the case - the sort of person who might smash a building is very unlikely to even know what that is.

In the case of the 4th example, we don't need to speculate. We know the reason wasn't because it happened to be run by a coethnic, because we know who the culprits were and they told us exactly why that specific business was being targeted.

For your second paragraph I find the argument sympathetic, "tokens in the anti-zionist movement providing identitarian PR cover" is a reasonable perspective to me, but the implication proposed by the Democratic Party at Prayer article seems to be that these same Jewish progressives would be against the removal of Jewish spaces on campus or if the Jewish identity itself was under attack, so the DiAngelo analogy isn't wholly isomorphic in a way that actually matters to Satanistgoblin's original claim.

The protestors often don't make fine distinctions like that. American Jews have been targeted.

I'm thinking that Trump administration isn't "defeating wokeness", just updating it to their funhouse mirror version.

The realignment means the Republican party is now the political home for people with conspiratorial mindsets, whether Left-wing or Right-wing. JD Vance informs us:

https://x.com/JDVance/status/1884695947327758491

Reminder - the conspiracy theory was pathologised by the CIA in the 60s to discredit alternative theories about the JFK assassination. Prior to that conspiracies were an important part of a healthy breakfast. But seriously, prior to the CIA propaganda the conspiratorial mindset did not have the stigma of irrationality and mental instability it does today. It was, quite sensibly, accepted that powerful groups behind closed doors can be easily tempted to conspiratorial behaviour.

Reminder - the conspiracy theory was pathologised by the CIA in the 60s to discredit alternative theories about the JFK assassination.

The conspiracist playbook: accuse people and institutions of crimes and then see the inevitable backlash as confirmation of said accusations.

The neoliberal playbook: commit crimes like you derive sustenance from the process and darvo anyone who notices.

Ah, well, the costs of compromising with the left to get elected...

The idea that HHS has any reason to be involved here is bizarre.

Personally I'd rather them consider anti-semitism a plague than gun ownership, but objectively both are wrong.

One may recall the before-times; when one Geirge Carlin was considered a philosopher and social commentator par excellence. One particular insight of his, which today seems less likely to be considered insightful by those aligned with his politics, was that "Fighting for peace is like screwing for virginity.". It was always dumb, if one abhors war to such an extent, one never wages even a defensive one, one will eventually lose to those who are willing to wage even aggressive ones. And the latter will be the only ones remaining.

If one were to, in the face of an ideology championing idpol, employ liberalism, think of how small the coalition would be and how tempted each group would be to switch, given the promises of racially and sexually preferential treatment. Liberalism is a sort of disarmament, only works if ones enemies follow suit.

Can the genie of idpol be put back into the bottle? It seems not as it preys on the base instincts of the masses of prefering preferential accomodations, over meritocracy, as in the latter they the vast majority won't make. But if the game is rigged, if nepotism is tolerated, then success isn't a matter of innate excellence, which is outside of ones control, but of correct connections, which one can at least in theory work to establish.

"Fighting for peace is like screwing for virginity."

To which some wiseacre responded "You have a better way of making more virgins?".

Can the genie of idpol be put back into the bottle? It seems not as it preys on the base instincts of the masses of prefering preferential accomodations

Here's the problem: Jews are a very small minority. Anti-semitism being of central concern in the Western mind is not like preferences for the Indian lower castes or black Americans, it's a product of ideology and/or elite power.

One doesn't have to do this for democratic reasons and one could argue it's not even good for Jews to do this.

Here's the problem: Jews are a very small minority.

Is that really a "problem"? Even if it is, at 2-5% of the US population (depending on who you ask and how you slice it) Jews are a larger minority than say Muslims or Trans people.

Transpeople have power because they nestled into a coalition that pushes the interests of all agreeable minorities that then supported them for ideological reasons.

That's something different that groups large enough to get benefits purely for vote-buying reasons.

Here's the problem: Jews Cubans/Irish are a very small minority. Anti-semitismCastroism/Orangism being of central concern in the Western mind is not like preferences for the Indian lower castes or black Americans, it's a product of ideology and/or elite power.

Or it's that geographically-concentrated diaspora groups are pretty good at organizing and affecting policy, like any other politically-serious interest group.

Fair.

If you want a good non-Jewish example, Cuban exiles in the swing state of Florida have prevented normalization of relations with Cuba against all rational geopolitical interest for the last 40 years.

Yes, hence my edits in the quote.

So there can either be pro-black or pro-jewish identity politics? Majority of US who are neither are shit out of luck.

Yeah, I've heard the term "woke right" bandied about in the last few months and I'm only starting to get it now.

The funniest part is that this is the opposite of what the people who came up with it meant.

What did the people who came up with it mean?

There's a lot of motte and bailey around it, but they meant it as a catchall term for the illiberal right, and/or factions of the right that stray too far from the (lowercase "l") liberal consensus. I think "anti-semitism" / skepticism of Israel would put you firmly in that category, given that the term's owner went on some bizarre "imagine the backlash against peaceful Muslims, if ISIS set off a nuke"-esque rant about Epstein.

I think the term "woke right" has value to describe rightists who make arguments that sound like they've come straight from an ardent progressive but just with certain groups swapped. For example, people who believe in HBD when it comes to explaining the black/white achievement gap on most metrics, but who come up with elaborate non-IQ related explanations for why Jews and east Asians do better than white people i.e. "group evolutionary strategy".

I agree that there is a useful version of the term, but I consider it part of the motte-and-bailey game. I keep seeing people use it to describe Joopoasters and advanced racists so it soaks up their vibes, and than slapping it on relatively mild dissident figures who are not so hot on liberalism anymore. I don't know if he's still doing it, but that was essentially the entirety of James Lindsay's timeline for a while.

I think it was originally used in reference to "white identity politics," i.e. a perceived desire for white preferential treatment in a similar vein as affirmative action, DEI, etc.

There's something funny in a through-the-looking-glass sort of way about the way the term "woke" has evolved the past decade or so. In entering the mainstream, it became a way to describe old-school racism/sexism/bigotry/etc., just in a "progressive" direction, using a term that sounded nice, in a way that would be palatable to people who liked to think of themselves as against old-school racism/sexism/bigotry/etc. But it quickly became identified with that underlying thing it was describing, and now it's being used to describe the old old-school racism/sexism/bigotry/etc. in the traditional direction, as a way to denigrate it. Perhaps because terms like "racism," "sexism," etc. lost their edge due to constantly being used to describe completely innocuous and often virtuous things, while terms like "woke" kept being used to describe things that were traditionally called "racist," "sexist," etc.

I've quoted Shakespeare before, that a rose by any other name smells just as sweet, and shit by any other name stinks just as foul. Observing this real-time shuffling of words around meanings has been fascinating. It seems that activists who helped to popularize the term "woke" have a real, good faith belief that changing the words we use really, truly, actually changes the underlying thing in some real way - they get high off their own supply, so to speak.

I know I keep getting down voted for pointing it out but it is the plain truth that democrats are the real racists and always have been.

Contra the priestly caste's narrative of the "Southern Strategy" the Democrats and Republicans never really "switched sides" on the bigotry versus meritocracy debate, so much as the incentives of FPTP voting forced Democrats to switch tactics in the wake of the Civil Rights Movement.

I also agree that its been fascinating and amusing to watch the id-pol left (and right) be hoist by its own petard.

Grill-pilled normie: so you believe that a person's racial background is the most important thing to consider when evaluating thier past behavior and future prospects, and you want to abrogate portions of the US Constitution and civic canon to enable a system of racial preferences/spoils.

Id-pol Leftist: i might quibble with some of the wording but yes.

Grill-pilled normie: Isn't that kind of racist?

Id-pol Leftist: No, it is Woke. The so-called "colorblind" meritocracy must be destroyed if justice is to prevail.

Grill-pilled normie: so judging people by the color of thier skin instead of the content of thier character is "woke".

Id-pol Leftist: now you're getting it. The concept of "character" is just some bullshit invented by old dead white men as a means of oppressing women, free thinkers, and members of the LGTBQ+ community where as race is based in SCIENCE.

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