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 -
Yes it's not Jews in Hollywood, it's Jews in academia, government, the media and Hollywood.
As Joe Biden puts it:
There's a disconnect between the existence of Jews in those areas and the accusation that it's the relevant identity. To do this, you would have to argue that the motivations and thought processes are distinctly about being Jewish. Your own article notes the following.
So now you have to demonstrate that left-wing Jews are being motivated by their religion, not their political ideology.
Yes they are. Or at least it's something that Jewish people have that led to such an over-representation of Jews in these movements. Not that other people cannot have these traits/motivations.
That influential Jews have clustered heavily on the left-wing side does not mean that religiousness is the cause of their left-wingness. Perhaps there is something about the population of Jews that makes them likely to become left-wing.
Of the revolutionary, government-destabilizing kind. After all, Jews as a population always had a tendency to support at least one minority ideology, which was that unlike everybody else, they would only marry Jews.
From an intellectual point of view, one could see how individual Jews could historically be perceived as thought-criminals compared to the rest of the society they lived in, that followed different customs and different (religious) values.
I didn't talk about religion, I believe it has to do with biology. Being Jewish is about ethnicity, about the 'Early life' section of wikipedia.
Jewishness is transmitted by the mother, hardly ever through conversion, the traits that are stereotypically associated with Jewishness such as 'high verbal IQ', 'academic prowess', 'accumulating wealth', and some other ones are probably inherited or influenced by some inherited factors.
The religion itself has an impact as well, as it's a supremacist religion, but because it shaped these populations over centuries by evaporative cooling, similarly to the Amish, the religion is not a requirement. Many Jews that identify as atheists still hold jewish supremacist views. The nationalism arose from religious precepts but became a custom.
For example Albert Einstein was an ardent zionist but not very religious afaik.
So I would say that while the religion was the historical driver of jewish nationalism/supremacism, over time it led to selection of traits that result in nationalism/supremacism/minority-driven revolutionary movements that do not necessarily require religious beliefs.
These days many Jews seem to be driven by the meme of the Holocaust as a uniquely awful tragedy more than traditional religious beliefs.
But the fact that these less-faith-driven Jews still are a fertile ground for strong political activism over such memes may speak to certain qualities that they've inherited without the faith: the tendency to believe themself a chosen people that is unfairly targeted, uniquely persecuted, utterly unable to assume any blame for any possible reason...
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link