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Culture War Roundup for the week of March 24, 2025

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While numbers of museum are important, if too many people visit the one holocaust museum and is made a ritual that would still be a problem. That and how such museums present history also matters.

The issue is that indeed people do experience religious like powerful and memorable feelings in the summer of floyd, in regards to both visiting museums, but also tv shows, lessons, about slavery and holocaust, in a manner that leads to a grievance culture and in treating groups like Jews and Blacks as utility monsters. It leads to preferential treatment but it also leads to identifying groups like Europeans as permanent oppressors.

Both the way such issues are presented and their central importance is a problem. It would be better for Americans to have museums of history that desacrilize the holocaust and treats Jewish suffering in WW2 as one suffering among others and puts greater importance to American history. Maybe with a slight mention of them being targeted more by the nazis. If that is the central way it is presented, and in rare cases it is focused more, but still contextualized in a manner different that it tends to be presented now, then that would be fine.

Even from a universalist perspective too much has been made of holocaust, colonialism, slavery, in a manner that is used both by ethnic chauvinists who have grievances but also by general far left activists who support any of these specific movements. And also their right wing equivalent that compromise with this.

Also, it would even be better if blacks and Jews had less powerful experience in relation to slavery and holocaust, for the aforementioned reasons. Same applies of course to people who don't belong such groups who share such experiences.

Not saying we should go to the opposite extreme of say censoring anyone who ever mentioning it, but I do think it would be good if people who use them to justify "You don't get to have a nation anymore because holocaust, slavery, colonialism" were to be treated as extremists to be suppressed, instead of treating the whole movement as something sacred. In fact, such movements are not sacred but damaging. And of course there is also the issue of the amount of money taken by the goverment to fund activist groups including Jewish activist groups, holocaust centers, and so on. But certainly, there is some room for groups, even minority groups to care about their particular suffering, but that room must be limited and not limitless, and can't be an imposed dominant culture. Even for such groups, it can lead to too much disregard of the interests of other groups and in a different country part of the social contract ought to be not to prioritize such things too much. So it matters how such things are presented by museums, where there must an actual effort to not only stop the way such narratives are presented, but also to make such sensitivity part of the message.

I.E. Don't present history as a narrative of oppressed Jews and Blacks who never didn't do nothing wrong taking revenge on oppressors but a) talk about how such framing has been common and a genuine a problem, and mention things like opposition to european self preservation as an example of extremism and even make analogy to how nazi disregard of other ethnic groups preserving themselves was bad, and this agenda is also bad b) present sufficient elements or at least a taste of history to counter this that does enter into territory of such groups wronging others. For example the truth of black American violence and the history of discrimination in the postcivil rights USA would be a narrative that ironically provides more balance and counters the actual racist narrative that is dominant today.

Jews could be told that polls that shows that 70% something American Jews oppose European self preservation, more than even American blacks, with Hispancis even supporting it, illustrates an anti european racist attitude that Jews should not have. That some of the hostility towards Jews has been due to Jewish disrespect of other ethnic groups rights which at times Jews pursued through the means of left wing activism (including making right wing movements adopt such left wing agendas), and they have a duty to avoid engaging in that and to respect them. There is plenty in Jewish history in modernity to influence people to not have a perspective of Jews as just an innocent oppressed group that must be privileged and must take revenge. Even more so when it comes to holocaust jewish lobbies since the bad behavior of ADL is undeniable and includes even less well known facets like engaging in Armenian genocide denial.

Also there has been a general movement of maximalist suffering that includes the idea of black american slavery as worse suffering ever, Jewish suffering in holocaust as unique ans worst suffering ever, and this movement has fueled various copies such as the one about Indian graves in Canada. Such approach to history of sacred narratives of maximal suffering even if one were to hypothetically grant that in some cases might not necessarily be promoting falsehoods always, gives licenses for groups to take it further and further.

So knowledge of past atrocities should be used to oppose being screwed over in line with a healthy range of ethnocentrism, and a moral understanding of the universal fate of different ethnic groups, but not to allow particular groups and their champions to create utility monsters.This has happened in this case and needs to be countered.. This is in general, but even more so in particular nations, the grievance perspectives towards the historical majority should be more limited. I think slavery of blacks in the USA makes sense to have some greater presence than the genocide of the Jews in the 1940s, but even that should not be that much present, and framed quite differently as I described.