naraburns nihil supernum
11mo ago
(text post)
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Israel-Gaza Megathread #1
This is a megathread for any posts on the conflict between (so far, and so far as I know) Hamas and the Israeli government, as well as related geopolitics. Culture War thread rules apply.
I think slave morality is a feature of modern Western hegemony. All it took was 9/11 (casualty rate of 1/10th of the Israeli death rate so far per capita) for American bloodlust to explode to current-Israeli proportions. Ann Coulter infamously spoke for many Americans when she said after 9/11 that
"We should invade their countries, kill their leaders and convert them to Christianity. We weren't punctilious about locating and punishing only Hitler and his top officers. We carpet-bombed German cities; we killed civilians. That's war. And this is war".
Diversity and tolerance are luxury patrician ideologies, Americans will be no different if or when the time comes.
Ann Coulter infamously spoke for many Americans when she said after 9/11
Yet the meme from that era that survives to this day is the ‘religion of peace’ one. It seems it would be better to describe this as an emergency belief, a temporary unprincipled exception to the general notion of virtuous victimhood that reasserts itself as soon as passions die down.
Note also the WWII analogy: the myth she invokes is absolutely central to the current incarnation of slave morality. Hitler was an avatar of absolute evil precisely because of his blatant disregard of human rights and universalism. He oppressed the weak and powerless more than anyone ever had. This was so unspeakably, cosmologically evil that it easily excuses the unprecedented suffering inflicted upon the German population, the sacrifice of hundreds of thousands of young Americans, becoming an accomplice in Stalin’s crimes etc. When Americans start comparing themselves to Hadrian instead, I’ll believe they’re getting uncucked.
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Notes -
I think slave morality is a feature of modern Western hegemony. All it took was 9/11 (casualty rate of 1/10th of the Israeli death rate so far per capita) for American bloodlust to explode to current-Israeli proportions. Ann Coulter infamously spoke for many Americans when she said after 9/11 that
Diversity and tolerance are luxury patrician ideologies, Americans will be no different if or when the time comes.
Yet the meme from that era that survives to this day is the ‘religion of peace’ one. It seems it would be better to describe this as an emergency belief, a temporary unprincipled exception to the general notion of virtuous victimhood that reasserts itself as soon as passions die down.
Note also the WWII analogy: the myth she invokes is absolutely central to the current incarnation of slave morality. Hitler was an avatar of absolute evil precisely because of his blatant disregard of human rights and universalism. He oppressed the weak and powerless more than anyone ever had. This was so unspeakably, cosmologically evil that it easily excuses the unprecedented suffering inflicted upon the German population, the sacrifice of hundreds of thousands of young Americans, becoming an accomplice in Stalin’s crimes etc. When Americans start comparing themselves to Hadrian instead, I’ll believe they’re getting uncucked.
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