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PaperclipPerfector  10mo ago (text post)   26436 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of January 15, 2024

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What a timely discussion on this MLK day.

The traditional antisemitic trope of Jews is them being shrewd manipulators, which is not exactly the same as being smart. Ask an antisemite why Jews are over-represented in the Ivy League, and they will probably say that it is because the Jews in academia collude to favor Jewish students over gentiles, helping them cheat and so on.

One could hypothesize that aside from Jews being good at getting into competitive schools through sheer intellectual aptitude, another factor could be that competitive American schools have largely been shaped by Jews. Perhaps Jews made Ivy League schools into schools that would admit a lot of Jews.

elite institutions sought to limit the number of Jewish students a century ago—and how the advent of that quota system has shaped U.S. higher education ever since.

back then, restricting the people who got in was an attempt to thwart a certain kind of ethnic diversity. And today, there are probably unspoken quotas in existence that are meant to enhance a certain kind of diversity.

Here we see some kind of 100-years cycle of antisemitism :

That’s true, although what’s interesting is that the idea of dismissing Jews, of loathing Jews because of some supposed connection to a foreign government, strikes me as awfully reminiscent of the old trope of Jews as clannish and untrustworthy that you saw in the 1920s and ’30s. In the 1930s, the idea was that they’re not trustworthy, they’re trying to lure us into war on behalf of a foreign power. And how is a lot of anti-Zionism fashioned now, except that the Jews aren’t trustworthy, they’re trying to lure us into wars on behalf of foreign powers?

Jews luring us into foreign wars?! Where are all these progressives getting that idea from? Perhaps they just happen to be in charge when billions of dollars of US taxpayer money get disbursed in foreign wars.

“One of my responsibilities as Secretary is determining, on behalf of the United States, whether atrocities have been committed,” Blinken, who is Jewish, said Monday at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum

He is also dealing with appeals from Ukraine’s Jewish president, Volodymyr Zelensky — who similarly cites the Holocaust as shaping his outlook — to do more to stop Russia’s attacks.

What's that story with the golem again? Perhaps they should teach it in Ivy League schools.

I think one deciding factor in the ranking of elites is not necessarily who is smarter, or who is more hard-working, as they are plenty of brilliant, hard-working people that never get into the spotlight, but most importantly who is most capable at conveying that they are the smartest and most hard-working. Something like 'showmanship'?

Historically it seems to me that American Jews were most effective at that one aspect of status-seeking. From the father of propaganda Edward Bernays to the 'Warner' bros (Wonsal/Wonskolaser before Anglicization), Hollywood Mogul Weinstein, the Talented Jeffrey Epstein... It appears to me that Americans who are exceptionally good at media manipulation tend to be disproportionately Jewish. Was Sam Bankman Fried the smartest, most hard-working crypto bro? Probably not, but somehow he had a way with the media.

A similar idea is expressed in the WW2 era concept of 'Big Lie'. Some people at the time seemed to think that Jews had an unusual ability to convince others of things that were not necessarily true (ie they ought to be over-represented in elite American schools). Interestingly, that same concept has apparently been applied to other things since, including the Ukraine war and Trump's elections issues, in a 'reclaiming the n-word' sort of way, perhaps?

Ironically, one who appears in so many ways to infuriate American elites and American Jews seems to have employed some of the same tricks for his rise to power.

“He was rich. He was vulgar. He was a city guy … and the women—business, sex and a guy who loves the attention. You couldn’t beat it.’’ So the tabloid writers used him and their papers thrived. But it turns out that he was using them too. To keep his name in print, to build his brand, to learn the kinds of lessons that have helped him put together a run for the White House the likes of which has never been seen. Talk to some of those tabloid writers now and they can see—with some discomfort—that the seeds of Trump’s celebrity were nurtured in their notebooks.

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