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Culture War Roundup for the week of September 18, 2023

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It proves that rationalists are disingenuous about caring for rationality which is what one would expect.

There has been a history of movements calling themselves rationalist in the last 200+ years and usually they are atheistic leftwing cults of reason where a very ideological, fanatical and close minded group proclaims their views to be rationality itself and also scientific. If you look even in the French revolution they were rationalists although of a more murderous sort.

It really hollows out any criticism of far right identity politics or woke non jewish identity politics from their substance, since those making such criticisms share the same pathologies and just find their own prejudice in favor of Jews to be uniquely fine. To be fair what is called far right identity politics often includes not just extremists but even moderates, so some of those people who are treated as far right extremists should not be criticized to begin with.

I do think someone who is a genuine moderate can make criticisms of extreme identity politics, albeit I don't oppose any form of identity politics for any group a priori. It is about the amount and whether it is motivated by a view of history that is "what is mine is mine and what is yours, is yours". I also oppose this even to the level of smaller groups and the individual.

Ideally in my view people should respect their own and try to better their lot (as individual, family or nation) while following the golden rule and respecting the same rights in others and not seeking to do better by trampling over others. And it is fine to be angry when others are unwilling to do so and are out to get you and mistreat you. And to indeed defend yourself from their bad behavior. It is also good to oppose and be disgusted at this behavior even when it doesn't directly lead to your specific tribe being mistreated which is how I feel.

If this norm is common enough in a society you got justice, and internationally you do end up having something closer to international justice.

But any form of justice requires a punishment mechanism and also disapproval of those who violate it. It is a trap in my view that a good thing (disapproval of leftist or Jewish racist bad behavior) should be memetically aligned with bad things like sharing the same levels of ethnic extremism which isn't necessary to share to oppose this. Moderate tribalism to support your group when mistreated is sufficient, if one doesn't misunderstand what moderation means to mean too little. Or even without direct tribalism which is fine in moderation (and bad if too little or too much), it is also moral and good to oppose this behavior on a more general universalist grounds for being utterly immoral and criminal.

Extreme forms of tribalism, like the form promoted by many who have captured institutions in favor of Jewish identity politics today (n addition to others of progressive stack), obviously is in the mentality that they own history both the past, present and future. Fully the mentality of what is yours is mine and what is mine is mine. Where their vilification of others is kosher, but where their wrongdoing is antisemitic conspiracy theory.

Not everything related to the enlightenment degenerated in extreme cults, so there is something to what I argue here related to the enlightenment even if this fanaticism and hypocritical tribalism is part of its historical trajectory as well. Hell the enlightenment even had key figures who were highly critical of the Jews from an internationalist perspective, condemning them as misanthropes. And these figures have also been branded dishonestly with the typical one sided racist manner of most of those who use that word who care zero for nuance as antisemites.

My thesis is that seeing all the evil and all of racism as historically existing just in the Jews is obviously false, others had and can have this extremism as well, but there has been and there is a genuine problem of racism against non Jews that both the Jewish community it self had and has (and the result are racist hate groups like the ADL), and even there are non Jews have become that by identifying with the Jewish ultranationalist vision of the world. And it is part of a general pattern of extreme tribalists. The general alliance of tribalism of progressive associated identities aka progressive stack today is of an extremist and ultranationalist sort.

Coming to terms with the fact that their shit also stinks and striving to genuinely promote a more evenhanded perspective on the moral evaluation of different identity groups would be a valid demonstration of not sharing this pathology.