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Culture War Roundup for the week of April 22, 2024

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Interesting thoughts. I’d say that outside of hardcore Siege-reading wignats, Jews aren’t a primary concern on the Anglophone right. There is certainly residual antisemitism, and there will always be Hitler fans on the Western far right, and there will be edgy teenagers on Discord who share /pol/ infographics, but I think the embrace of arguably antisemitic views by some mainstream figures is pretty temporal.

On the left actual antisemitism is more rare (the majority of it really is just anti-zionism, American leftists don’t have genuine ethnic hostility to Jews as a race; they just think Jews are white). But as the Muslim population increases rapidly and as hostility towards perceived ‘whiteness’ increases in fervor, I think anti-Zionism will cement itself as an intractable position on the left. I don’t think there’s a way back from that. It’s also a quick spiral, because as Jewish donors move to the right the left cares less about the Jewish vote (Florida is now solidly red, and NYC and California won’t stop being blue anytime soon) and more about the Muslim vote.

I think there’s also another aspect to this, which is that in domestic politics Jewish men (who are obviously the vast majority of big-ticket Jewish donors and political lobbyists) are considered by the left to be White Men™️. It’s not like Dems are ever going to consider Mark Zuckerberg a POC. After the current Gaza fiasco that is especially unlikely to change, leftists aren’t going to carve out a new space for white Jewish guys while “they” are “genociding Gaza”. This inherently pushes Jewish donors to the right, as Hanania noted.

Yeah. I feel the majority of Right wing antisemites might feel that Jewish influence is way larger than their population share should facilitate, but would also take Jewish neighbors in their suburb over other outgroup neighbors all day, every day.

Likewise with Israel-Palestine I get a sentiment of 'Israel are probably breaking international norms/active unethically, but also Palestine being Lebanon 5.0 would be a negative for all involved compared to illegitimate Jewish occupation'