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I wanted to update everyone on this important fight, as it will resonate for some time.
The whole Jews are white thing is fake&gay. Being white is not about skin color alone, it's also a matter of historical legacy and shared culture. Like ancient Rome and Greece. Jews don't share the same heritage as us European whites and have been actively genocided by Europeans for about 2000 years.
Hence, they cannot be us, and they likely don't want to either.
Actually you are completely wrong. There are many Irish financiers, hedge fund managers, Wall St traders and bank heads. And the Ashkenazi do share the same heritage in almost every way.
They do share that heritage but it was deliberatly changed by the Greek & Roman elites and Judaism was thence borne. Judaism is a Greek invention, Christianity a Roman one.
In my view the wheel has a challenger for the greatest invention of mankind. In Great I mean large, big, not wonderful as I feel that Abrahamic religion was a mistake.
Rabbinic Judaism clearly owes way more to Persia and Mesopotamia than it does to anything else, just as pre-rabbinic Judaism owed a very great deal, at least originally, from the Egyptians and the Canaanites.
NB that the Pharisees of the NT were the Persianist party (Pharisee being the term for those who followed the fashions of the Jews in Fars or Persia).
Biblical history is not really history. If I asked you for sources for the above what would you give me?
It is Greek history and Greek myth in the Penteteuch and later in the New Testament. Athens.... soz I mean Jerusalem was sacked by the Persians, Athenians & Samites (from Samos)........soz I mean Jews were exiled to Persia.
There was no ancient Israel in the rather poor country of Palestine. Maybe there was a Judah for a short time, but this was in the 1st C and it didn't put up much of a fight against the Romans (because completely outgunned).
Was not arguing that Biblical chronicles were history....but it is clear from the text of the OT itself that at a literary level it was written by individuals familiar with genres used in Canaan, Mesopotamia and Egypt before the Alexandrine conquests.
The very names of the constituent books of the Pentateuch itself follow a Mesopotamian style that is not used by a single Greek or Egyptian text that has survived or been recovered (that I know of), one that precedes the establishment of the Persian empire itself.
There is also archeological evidence that places Israel in the Axial Age, including jewelry/amulets with inscriptions from the OT, Egyptian epigraphy and evidence of princesses from the Beit Omri in the harem of the Assyrian king. The cult practices of pre-rabbinic Judaism are undeniably cognate with some Egyptian and Canaanite ones as well.
"but it is clear from the text of the OT itself that at a literary level it was written by individuals familiar with genres used in Canaan, Mesopotamia and Egypt before the Alexandrine conquests."
Yes the 5th C Greek canon including its history.
"before the Alexandrine conquests"
I would suggest that these were Greek conquests. Athenian. Alexander seems a little too good to be true to me. But the attempt to change culture via the Biblical texts followed the Alexandrian (let's pretend that he existed for 5 mins) conquests rather than preceded them.
Alexander most definitely existed and based his political and personal identity around his claim to having been fathered by an Afro-Levantine God (the serpent Olympias slept with was the embodied form of Zeus Ammon or Ba'al Hamon).
Canaanite and Phoenician are alternate names for the same peoples. Several of the Israelite tribes would have been of Canaanite origin and it is hardly any exageration to say that the Canaanite and Hebrew languages were mutually intelligible. The backsliding into paganism by the reprobate Kings of Israel involved Canaanite rites.
Bullshit. Jews have lived alongside, and been an integral part, of western culture for at least the last millennium. We share almost the same cultural underpinnings as many Christians and have an outsized influence on every culture we're a part of. Superman and Hollywood (I'm really only speaking proudly of the golden age, not the current woke travesty), Jazz music, the justice system, finance and every niche of our culture are influenced by Jews. Some of course is detrimental but most has been foundational from Irving Berlin to George Gershwin and on.
The remnants of the Austro-Hungarian Empire - arguably the world's most culturally profound, cosmopolitan and stable empire of the second millennium - that came to the US and helped create 20th century western culture - was largely Jewish. Enough of this ahistorical nonsense.
Jews are largely driven by millennia-long resentment and hatred of Western civilization and Christianity. When they look at Rome, they think oppression. When they look at medieval Europe and the Renaissance, they see pogroms and murder. When they look at Christ, they see a bastard son of a whore boiling in a pot of excrement in Hell. They are Western civilization's primary historical and metaphysical enemy. A basic understanding of Thomas777 thought (or any history book) will show you this.
Chill out. Reformed Protestants looked at 'medieval Europe and the Renaissance' as, at best, a godless era, and at worst the reign of the AntiChrist and thought the only true Christians are those who the church persecuted. German nationalists idealised the barbarians who fought with, and eventually sacked, Rome. You obviously have a point that Jews have a different perspective on Jesus (though relatively few Jews are familiar with the talmudic passage you cite, not least because it is heavily censored in printed editions), but people of good will with intertwined history try to get on with each other.
Yes, the real problem is all of these "Reformed Protestants." Those damn Reformed Protestants, who killed the Son of God, invented communism, led the Bolshevik Revolution, orchestrated the destruction of Germany, led and directed the feminist movement, dominate Hollywood and especially the pornography industry, opened Europe up to mass immigration, pushed America into war in the Middle East for Israel, and are currently leading the charge of multiculturalism for ethno-sectarian reasons! Now tell me: does this sound like reality, Shlomo? Until proven otherwise, I shall remain deeply skeptical of the idea that there is any meaningful quantity of Jews who hold "good will" towards Europe and Europeans (based on our "intertwined history" of... ghettos and pogroms? I guess?).
I didn't say that Reformed Protestants caused all problems. I directly addressed your claim that because Jews have a different historical memory from Europeans, they have irrevocably hostile interests. I pointed out that the same is true of all sorts of European religious and national groups who nevertheless get along, more or less. You appear to be answering some completely different argument (perhaps Moldbug's famous puritan hypothesis).
Partially, but I was more so using the "Reformed Protestant" thing as a rhetorical device so as to emphasize the (as I see it) immensely and especially anti-Christian and anti-European endowment that (Ashkenazi) Jews have left throughout history. I think that it's impossible to deny the inherit tension and enmity that has always existed between Judaea and Europa, regardless of the sort of marginal exceptions (e.g. pro-European/"based" Jews and intra-European conflict) that exist even in the strongest of social trends.
Lenin and Stalin were not Jews and they "invented" communism as it was practiced in the 20th century - as a totalitarian project to remake humanity. Klaus Schwab isn't Jewish and neither are the vast majority of the WEF "young leaders".
And if you want to get real I would contend that industrial capitalism and it's brutal wrenching of people from the commons and farming communities into Blake's "dark satanic mills" for 16 hours a day 6 days a week is what actually "invented" communism.
More Christians killed each other over their religious wars than any Jews ever harmed anyone. You're just a lazy-thinking antisemite with an axe to grind.
You like to point out that Jews have been overrepresented as communists. You ignore that the modern intellectual foundations of free-market capitalism are also disproportionately Jewish, perhaps at least as much as communism. *Milton Friedman, the most important economist of the twentieth century *Other members of the Chicago School included Jacob Viner and Aaron Director *The most cited legal scholar of all time is Judge Richard Posner, one of the founders of the Law & Economics Movement *The Austrian school was founded and popularized by Jews like Ludwig von Mises and Murray Rothbard *Ayn Rand's novels brought free market ideas to a mass public
I don't know if we want to be so proud of the law & economics movement, or Milton Friedman and the Chicago School either. L&E is basically facile justification for tossing the law in the dumpster in favor of economic considerations and Friedman's neoliberal ideas have helped bring us to a nation of corrupt and greedy neo-feudal finance billionaires buying up everything in sight and 80% of the people living hand to mouth. They both certainly nurture a form of capitalism - but nothing one could call free-market capitalism.
Jews are overrepresented everywhere. It doesn't mean Jews created our present reality of greed, corruption and capital-uber-alles. Power begets power and those who go along with the oligarchy's plans are rewarded. The oligarchy, these days, doesn't care what color or creed you are as long as you are on board with the neoliberal globalist program.
The truth is somewhat in the middle between this and the response. Jews are not integral to western culture, like the French and Germans, but they are a lot closer to its center than, say, Estonians or Irish.
Jews make up a small but integral part of European and American culture. The real cultural powers are Britain, France and the USA if you want to speak about the last 200 years. And in most cases you can't tease out Jews from that in any of those countries and say this part is Jewish and that part isn't. Most Jews, even during the 19th and early 20th centuries, were secular in most ways. Especially in the Austro-Hungarian Empire where we were allowed to integrate quite seamlessly into that magnificent and cosmopolitan milieu.
When I was a child (late 60s and early 70s) my pediatrician was a Czech Jewish refugee from Nazism who had won the university medal in classics from the Charles University in Prague. He was a passionate Wagnerian and visited Bayreuth whenever the full Ring cycle was available. A man like that is as Western as it gets.
Yes but most Jews were not on board with DEI nonsense long before 10/7. In fact, I would argue there are far more Protestants involved with DEI than Jews.
It didn't used to be that way and prominent schools have always had wealthy donors. To a great extent DEI is an academic bottom-up exercise. Certain wealthy factions got on board with it but to think they created it is a mistake.
DEI is a perpetual generator of antisemitism and antiAsianism because the enemy of DEI is merit and accomplishment. Carve outs for any group that excels won't work. Andrew Sullivan made a really good case in this essay from last week (and your friend Bari Weiss also thinks DEI should be abolished):
And here is an interesting article I just read now....
"Since Arabs first invaded Africa in the seventh century, murderous raids targeting innocent civilians have been a common feature of the spread of Islam in Africa. Today, in Mauritania, Black Mauritanians whose ancestors were taken into captivity centuries ago and whose status as chattel has been passed down through the generations, live in bondage, serving as slaves to their Arab Berber masters. Even though indigenous Africans in Mauritania were converted to Islam after the Arab conquest, race has trumped religion, and the Arab Berber rulers have treated the Black Mauritanians as they would infidels."
Why dismantle gay marriage? I take it you know that when he published his gay marriage essay in 1989, "Here comes the groom", he was ex-communicated from the more radical politically rambunctious sectors of the gay world. The great change isn't gay marriage, it's divorce. And the biggest change isn't either one, it's the acceptance of contraception. So, go talk to the Archbishop of Canterbury about that since it was the Church of England who around 1919 said artificial contraception was honky dory.
Leave Bari alone, she is a good woman. And no, she was not cool with all this....she has been very outspoken against DEI world even before "DEI" phrase was popular. I know this in part because around 3 years ago I heard her speak....wish I had a transcript of her speech.
"Will Andrew then support the dismantling of gay marriage?" Er, no. Everybody wants their own carve-out, except heterosexual white men who seem content with just being carved up.
Plus the abolition of their exemption from taxation.
Access to public funding via government grants for research and development etc should be available ONLY to institutions that do not practice, or tolerate, affirmative action in either hiring or student admissions.
And the laws concerning fair trading practices should apply to universities and colleges. Misleading advertising and unethical practices should be penalised.
One comment, one point. Comment: "...seeing it as trespassing on their turf, some going as far as to claim that capital is seeking to capture academia,,," How very Marxist of them. Capital capturing the "intellectuals".
Point: I would love to be able to distinguish between Hamas and the Palestinians. But how? Witness the acclamation of the naked women bodies in the videos. Witness the "martyrs" calling their parents about the atrocities. Witness the Palestinian children's educational curriculum. Witness Muhammad's pronouncements in the Koran. Witness the Palestinian Authority paying a stipend for "martyrs".
"The fear is that Ackman and team would seek a special carve-out within DEI on university campuses for Jews. In effect, this would extend DEI to give Jews protection, making them an officially protected class of people." That is where this is going. The donors want to be set aside as victims based on historical events. That is a big part of their identity. White progressives are similar, successful, wealthy, connected, credentialed, but given a pass because they support the victims with grievances. Donors are demanding that they continue to be treated as a carve out. Generally they support deplatforming and the rest of the attacks on privileged and oppressor groups -- white, straight, Christian, men. They are not against DEI or wokeness as a general matter, they support it unless it touches them. The donors are sending the message: DEI, yes. DEI against us, no, you may not. That will be the deal, and the Palestinians and their supporters will find themselves oddly isolated in the months and years ahead. Their case will be deemed "complex" and requiring "nuance".
Their goal is self protection, and continuing the DEI/woke project in a way that does not hurt them or their families. Zero doubt about where they want this to go. Will they pull Iit off? My cynical best guess is yes.
First they came for the white men, and I didn't speak out because I wasn't white. Then they came for the Asian men, and I didn't speak out because Asians are not an under-represented minority at Harvard. Then they came for me, and I let them know their funding was at risk.
Could this really be the start of a DEI rollback? I’m not sure.
Didn’t the donor class (which includes many Jews) start this racial identity movement in order to distract from the economic movement that was Occupy Wall Street? DEI consumed the dissent of the liberal masses and directed it away from the oligarchy.
If they genuinely do seek to dismantle it, I’d think they’d have a new movement prepared to contain the dissent of liberal masses. Otherwise they risk Occupy 2.0 or the rise of something else they’d dislike.
Also, as Niccolo has written, America is now an ideological state and its using its ideology to promote regime change abroad. We’ve only just started using “wokeness” in this way; would we really turn back now?
Finally, the Jews are smart people. How did they miss the trends and see this was the inevitable result of what they had been promoting? Did they have faith that Holocaust awareness would firmly cement them as members of the oppressed, despite their collective wealth?
So many questions. Anyways, I’d welcome meritocracy in America, but I doubt we’ll see it.
Jews are so damn smart and opinionated that they can be found on all sides of just about any issue.
As for "How did they miss the trends and see this was the inevitable result of what they had been promoting?"
There are of course the many Jews, from say Chomsky to Butler to even the gurus of anti-Whiteness like Tim Wise and Noel Ignatiev, who welcome any and all destruction, as long as it leaves enough rubble for them to rule over; as for the liberal-left Jews who seem to create a golem every generation that always inevitably turns on them (Soviets, Civil Rights now Social Justice), their eyes are always on the abstract god called Justice, and they are usually the last to face the truth about how their imaginary utopia never appears; and for the rest of the smart liberal NY/LA Jews (I know many), they are not much different from your average normie liberal who has his left eye poked out and thus can never see that those people chanting about Justice are sharpening knives for them next—and when I tell them "Social Justice is an illiberal post-Marxist movement that uses the language of Civil Rights in order to capture our country and turn it into the Soviet Union of self-esteem" they look at me like I'm nuts (which I probably am).
Either way, Jewish or not, it's very hard to convince prosperous liberals that have always lived in a free society that people marching under the banner of Equality only believe in Animal Farm equality and will soon be stripping away their civil liberties.
The New Left pursued a brilliant strategy by piggybacking on the Civil Rights movement and its language and morality and imagery, and these termites have simply dined so long there is no way to remove them and save the structure of academia at the same time—all will have to be razed, but that is a whole different conversation...
"There are those who seek to conflate support for Palestinians with support for the violent actions of Hamas, and that would be unfair."
Not unfair, at all. According to a number of polls conducted since October 7th by Israeli newspapers of all "stripes", Palestinian residents of Judea and Samaria support Hamas and it's actions, and is holding at 80%. Conflation? As the Talmud often says: היינו הך (Aramaic, for "[they're] one and the same").
I understand, and wrote my comment to call attention to the wholly artificial distinction that the "campus protesters" make between Palestinians and Hamas when, in fact, the Palestinians don't.
Define 'civilian'. Combatants not wearing uniforms are still combatants. Civilians who actively assist combat operations are also co-belligerents.
What hard evidence is there for massacres beyond claims made by Hamas and Al Jazeera? I have not followed the media closely but I'd be disinclined to believe such claims.
A civilian is a person not a member of an armed force nor a person engaged in hostilities. You can safely assume that hospital patients are civilians. Hospitals in Gaza have been bombed by Israelis, who do not deny it but say that Hamas was hiding in the hospital. You should not bomb a hospital no matter what.
Medical infrastructure is sacrosanct only if it is used for its ostensible purpose. Hospitals that are used to store weapons or ammunition, host command posts or function as points of assembly for armed forces are a legitimate target.
A few years back Amnesty acknowledged that hospitals in Gaza had been used to torture political prisoners. This puts things in perspective. Hospitals that provide Hamas with torture chambers are not what the signatories of the Geneva Convention had in mind.
The Palestinians have a long history of using ambulances to ferry fighters and ammunition. These ruses have been tacitly supported by Western goverments (who finance the humanitarian rackets) for way too long.
International military law does not require that combatants disregard threats to their lives or those of their comrades. Nor does it require that soldiers necessarily prioritise the lives of enemy civilians over their own.
Military law is not a suicide pact for civilised combatants.
DIE is, and always has been, a weapon to use against straight white men and straight white men only. Asians and others are merely collateral damage.
I come down on the side of special carve-out. The destruction of DIE means lifting the foot from whitey's face and that can't be allowed to happen. They're fighting a two-front war here.
The existence of a golem is sometimes a mixed blessing. Golems are not intelligent, and if commanded to perform a task, they will perform the instructions literally. In many depictions, golems are inherently perfectly obedient. In its earliest known modern form, the Golem of Chełm became enormous and uncooperative. In one version of this story, the rabbi had to resort to trickery to deactivate it, whereupon it crumbled upon its creator and crushed him.
Having read Ackman's original letter I'm very skeptical that he was petitioning for special dispensation on behalf of Jews in the heirarchy of the woke. That would imply that he is accepting of the ideology as long as membership is granted in the victim class. Imagine for a moment a white billionaire tearfully proclaiming his new found feelings of oppression. Would the edict include all Jews, both observant and nonobservant? More importantly, is the dispensation only valid when on campus or is there reciprocity with all other campuses (?campi)? Once the local decision has been made, is there a governing body of wokeness which votes on and bestows the honor globally so that membership priveleges are reciprocal and recognized everywhere and in all facets of life? And by what means are the new members able to convey their status when superficially they appear to be members of the oppressor class?
To say that it’s possible that DEI would “fall like dominoes“ is to say that there are still reasonable and clear-eyed people both in charge and in the line of succession that are merely using it as a tool as opposed to dogma. I am not sure that is the case, however.
Elimination of DEI. "Heather Mac Donald's 'The Diversity Delusion' is an invaluable resource of mythbusting fact and a reality-check on the siren calls of identity-based ‘social justice’ that have given rise to the great DEI racket. Detailed, rigorous and copious, it is a devastatingly compelling expose of “how race and gender pandering corrupt the university and undermine our culture......The real shocker.... is not the behaviour of the (hopefully atypical) student ‘protesters’, self-engrossed and feral though it certainly is, but the sycophantic response to and encouragement of it by college administrators. The epidemic of spoilt-brat student behaviour, however caused, could have been stamped out in short order but for the craven virtue signalling of their ‘adult’ academic mentors..” https://grahamcunningham.substack.com/p/how-diversity-narrows-the-mind
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I wanted to update everyone on this important fight, as it will resonate for some time.
Now, back to work on the War in Ukraine essay.
Well...
The whole Jews are white thing is fake&gay. Being white is not about skin color alone, it's also a matter of historical legacy and shared culture. Like ancient Rome and Greece. Jews don't share the same heritage as us European whites and have been actively genocided by Europeans for about 2000 years.
Hence, they cannot be us, and they likely don't want to either.
...exactly. The Jews are the anomaly which postmodernism can't swallow. Hence their exceptionalism will remain perpetual.
Jews do not share the same heritage as you European whites. Not many Irish or Polish are hedge fund managers.
Actually you are completely wrong. There are many Irish financiers, hedge fund managers, Wall St traders and bank heads. And the Ashkenazi do share the same heritage in almost every way.
From a genetic standpoint, Ashkenazi Jews began as Ancient Jewish men who mated with female non-Jewish women from the Italian Peninsula.
But genes are only a part of heritage. Their faith separated them from Christian Europe. So, a bit of both.
They do share that heritage but it was deliberatly changed by the Greek & Roman elites and Judaism was thence borne. Judaism is a Greek invention, Christianity a Roman one.
In my view the wheel has a challenger for the greatest invention of mankind. In Great I mean large, big, not wonderful as I feel that Abrahamic religion was a mistake.
Rabbinic Judaism clearly owes way more to Persia and Mesopotamia than it does to anything else, just as pre-rabbinic Judaism owed a very great deal, at least originally, from the Egyptians and the Canaanites.
NB that the Pharisees of the NT were the Persianist party (Pharisee being the term for those who followed the fashions of the Jews in Fars or Persia).
Biblical history is not really history. If I asked you for sources for the above what would you give me?
It is Greek history and Greek myth in the Penteteuch and later in the New Testament. Athens.... soz I mean Jerusalem was sacked by the Persians, Athenians & Samites (from Samos)........soz I mean Jews were exiled to Persia.
There was no ancient Israel in the rather poor country of Palestine. Maybe there was a Judah for a short time, but this was in the 1st C and it didn't put up much of a fight against the Romans (because completely outgunned).
Was not arguing that Biblical chronicles were history....but it is clear from the text of the OT itself that at a literary level it was written by individuals familiar with genres used in Canaan, Mesopotamia and Egypt before the Alexandrine conquests.
The very names of the constituent books of the Pentateuch itself follow a Mesopotamian style that is not used by a single Greek or Egyptian text that has survived or been recovered (that I know of), one that precedes the establishment of the Persian empire itself.
There is also archeological evidence that places Israel in the Axial Age, including jewelry/amulets with inscriptions from the OT, Egyptian epigraphy and evidence of princesses from the Beit Omri in the harem of the Assyrian king. The cult practices of pre-rabbinic Judaism are undeniably cognate with some Egyptian and Canaanite ones as well.
"but it is clear from the text of the OT itself that at a literary level it was written by individuals familiar with genres used in Canaan, Mesopotamia and Egypt before the Alexandrine conquests."
Yes the 5th C Greek canon including its history.
"before the Alexandrine conquests"
I would suggest that these were Greek conquests. Athenian. Alexander seems a little too good to be true to me. But the attempt to change culture via the Biblical texts followed the Alexandrian (let's pretend that he existed for 5 mins) conquests rather than preceded them.
"Canaanite"
Phoenician?
Alexander most definitely existed and based his political and personal identity around his claim to having been fathered by an Afro-Levantine God (the serpent Olympias slept with was the embodied form of Zeus Ammon or Ba'al Hamon).
Canaanite and Phoenician are alternate names for the same peoples. Several of the Israelite tribes would have been of Canaanite origin and it is hardly any exageration to say that the Canaanite and Hebrew languages were mutually intelligible. The backsliding into paganism by the reprobate Kings of Israel involved Canaanite rites.
Bullshit. Jews have lived alongside, and been an integral part, of western culture for at least the last millennium. We share almost the same cultural underpinnings as many Christians and have an outsized influence on every culture we're a part of. Superman and Hollywood (I'm really only speaking proudly of the golden age, not the current woke travesty), Jazz music, the justice system, finance and every niche of our culture are influenced by Jews. Some of course is detrimental but most has been foundational from Irving Berlin to George Gershwin and on.
The remnants of the Austro-Hungarian Empire - arguably the world's most culturally profound, cosmopolitan and stable empire of the second millennium - that came to the US and helped create 20th century western culture - was largely Jewish. Enough of this ahistorical nonsense.
Jews are largely driven by millennia-long resentment and hatred of Western civilization and Christianity. When they look at Rome, they think oppression. When they look at medieval Europe and the Renaissance, they see pogroms and murder. When they look at Christ, they see a bastard son of a whore boiling in a pot of excrement in Hell. They are Western civilization's primary historical and metaphysical enemy. A basic understanding of Thomas777 thought (or any history book) will show you this.
Chill out. Reformed Protestants looked at 'medieval Europe and the Renaissance' as, at best, a godless era, and at worst the reign of the AntiChrist and thought the only true Christians are those who the church persecuted. German nationalists idealised the barbarians who fought with, and eventually sacked, Rome. You obviously have a point that Jews have a different perspective on Jesus (though relatively few Jews are familiar with the talmudic passage you cite, not least because it is heavily censored in printed editions), but people of good will with intertwined history try to get on with each other.
Yes, the real problem is all of these "Reformed Protestants." Those damn Reformed Protestants, who killed the Son of God, invented communism, led the Bolshevik Revolution, orchestrated the destruction of Germany, led and directed the feminist movement, dominate Hollywood and especially the pornography industry, opened Europe up to mass immigration, pushed America into war in the Middle East for Israel, and are currently leading the charge of multiculturalism for ethno-sectarian reasons! Now tell me: does this sound like reality, Shlomo? Until proven otherwise, I shall remain deeply skeptical of the idea that there is any meaningful quantity of Jews who hold "good will" towards Europe and Europeans (based on our "intertwined history" of... ghettos and pogroms? I guess?).
I didn't say that Reformed Protestants caused all problems. I directly addressed your claim that because Jews have a different historical memory from Europeans, they have irrevocably hostile interests. I pointed out that the same is true of all sorts of European religious and national groups who nevertheless get along, more or less. You appear to be answering some completely different argument (perhaps Moldbug's famous puritan hypothesis).
Partially, but I was more so using the "Reformed Protestant" thing as a rhetorical device so as to emphasize the (as I see it) immensely and especially anti-Christian and anti-European endowment that (Ashkenazi) Jews have left throughout history. I think that it's impossible to deny the inherit tension and enmity that has always existed between Judaea and Europa, regardless of the sort of marginal exceptions (e.g. pro-European/"based" Jews and intra-European conflict) that exist even in the strongest of social trends.
Lenin and Stalin were not Jews and they "invented" communism as it was practiced in the 20th century - as a totalitarian project to remake humanity. Klaus Schwab isn't Jewish and neither are the vast majority of the WEF "young leaders".
And if you want to get real I would contend that industrial capitalism and it's brutal wrenching of people from the commons and farming communities into Blake's "dark satanic mills" for 16 hours a day 6 days a week is what actually "invented" communism.
More Christians killed each other over their religious wars than any Jews ever harmed anyone. You're just a lazy-thinking antisemite with an axe to grind.
Klaus Schwab, WEF, and "WEF Young Leaders" are irrelevant overall.
You like to point out that Jews have been overrepresented as communists. You ignore that the modern intellectual foundations of free-market capitalism are also disproportionately Jewish, perhaps at least as much as communism. *Milton Friedman, the most important economist of the twentieth century *Other members of the Chicago School included Jacob Viner and Aaron Director *The most cited legal scholar of all time is Judge Richard Posner, one of the founders of the Law & Economics Movement *The Austrian school was founded and popularized by Jews like Ludwig von Mises and Murray Rothbard *Ayn Rand's novels brought free market ideas to a mass public
I don't know if we want to be so proud of the law & economics movement, or Milton Friedman and the Chicago School either. L&E is basically facile justification for tossing the law in the dumpster in favor of economic considerations and Friedman's neoliberal ideas have helped bring us to a nation of corrupt and greedy neo-feudal finance billionaires buying up everything in sight and 80% of the people living hand to mouth. They both certainly nurture a form of capitalism - but nothing one could call free-market capitalism.
Jews are overrepresented everywhere. It doesn't mean Jews created our present reality of greed, corruption and capital-uber-alles. Power begets power and those who go along with the oligarchy's plans are rewarded. The oligarchy, these days, doesn't care what color or creed you are as long as you are on board with the neoliberal globalist program.
The truth is somewhat in the middle between this and the response. Jews are not integral to western culture, like the French and Germans, but they are a lot closer to its center than, say, Estonians or Irish.
Jews make up a small but integral part of European and American culture. The real cultural powers are Britain, France and the USA if you want to speak about the last 200 years. And in most cases you can't tease out Jews from that in any of those countries and say this part is Jewish and that part isn't. Most Jews, even during the 19th and early 20th centuries, were secular in most ways. Especially in the Austro-Hungarian Empire where we were allowed to integrate quite seamlessly into that magnificent and cosmopolitan milieu.
When I was a child (late 60s and early 70s) my pediatrician was a Czech Jewish refugee from Nazism who had won the university medal in classics from the Charles University in Prague. He was a passionate Wagnerian and visited Bayreuth whenever the full Ring cycle was available. A man like that is as Western as it gets.
Ignorant provincial Americans have no idea how integrated most Jews were into European culture in the places they were permitted to.
Where are these provinces?
In your mind.
They were expelled hundreds of times, usually after whichever leader they were bribing lost power
> Or should the donor class take the opportunity to wipe out the DEI Megaplex?
You realize that that same donor class is responsible for this Megaplex in the first place, right?
One of the many paradoxes, yes.
More like hypocrisy.
Yes but most Jews were not on board with DEI nonsense long before 10/7. In fact, I would argue there are far more Protestants involved with DEI than Jews.
Most of the wealthy donors are on board with DEI. Which is why thou shalt not criticize DEI. Wealthy donors and free speech are incompatible.
It didn't used to be that way and prominent schools have always had wealthy donors. To a great extent DEI is an academic bottom-up exercise. Certain wealthy factions got on board with it but to think they created it is a mistake.
Donating money without strings attached sounds rather quaint nowadays. That's why we have Substack - to be as free as possible from big donors.
DEI is a perpetual generator of antisemitism and antiAsianism because the enemy of DEI is merit and accomplishment. Carve outs for any group that excels won't work. Andrew Sullivan made a really good case in this essay from last week (and your friend Bari Weiss also thinks DEI should be abolished):
https://andrewsullivan.substack.com/p/the-day-the-empress-clothes-fell
And here is an interesting article I just read now....
"Since Arabs first invaded Africa in the seventh century, murderous raids targeting innocent civilians have been a common feature of the spread of Islam in Africa. Today, in Mauritania, Black Mauritanians whose ancestors were taken into captivity centuries ago and whose status as chattel has been passed down through the generations, live in bondage, serving as slaves to their Arab Berber masters. Even though indigenous Africans in Mauritania were converted to Islam after the Arab conquest, race has trumped religion, and the Arab Berber rulers have treated the Black Mauritanians as they would infidels."
https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/news/articles/arab-enslavement-black-africans
Cool. Will Andrew then support the dismantling of gay marriage? He is at fault for quite A LOT of what is wrong at present.
As for Bari, she was cool with all of this until Israel got targeted on campuses some time ago.
Why dismantle gay marriage? I take it you know that when he published his gay marriage essay in 1989, "Here comes the groom", he was ex-communicated from the more radical politically rambunctious sectors of the gay world. The great change isn't gay marriage, it's divorce. And the biggest change isn't either one, it's the acceptance of contraception. So, go talk to the Archbishop of Canterbury about that since it was the Church of England who around 1919 said artificial contraception was honky dory.
Leave Bari alone, she is a good woman. And no, she was not cool with all this....she has been very outspoken against DEI world even before "DEI" phrase was popular. I know this in part because around 3 years ago I heard her speak....wish I had a transcript of her speech.
"Will Andrew then support the dismantling of gay marriage?" Er, no. Everybody wants their own carve-out, except heterosexual white men who seem content with just being carved up.
How about zero public funding for these elite institutions?
Then their wealthy private donors can do with them as they please. No need to comply with DEI, or allow free speech.
All sorts of threats are being made and nothing has been resolved just yet.
Plus the abolition of their exemption from taxation.
Access to public funding via government grants for research and development etc should be available ONLY to institutions that do not practice, or tolerate, affirmative action in either hiring or student admissions.
And student loans should no longer be exempt from the Bankruptcy Act.
And the laws concerning fair trading practices should apply to universities and colleges. Misleading advertising and unethical practices should be penalised.
One comment, one point. Comment: "...seeing it as trespassing on their turf, some going as far as to claim that capital is seeking to capture academia,,," How very Marxist of them. Capital capturing the "intellectuals".
Point: I would love to be able to distinguish between Hamas and the Palestinians. But how? Witness the acclamation of the naked women bodies in the videos. Witness the "martyrs" calling their parents about the atrocities. Witness the Palestinian children's educational curriculum. Witness Muhammad's pronouncements in the Koran. Witness the Palestinian Authority paying a stipend for "martyrs".
Yeah "context", as in the US constitution. That senator was disgusting.
"The fear is that Ackman and team would seek a special carve-out within DEI on university campuses for Jews. In effect, this would extend DEI to give Jews protection, making them an officially protected class of people." That is where this is going. The donors want to be set aside as victims based on historical events. That is a big part of their identity. White progressives are similar, successful, wealthy, connected, credentialed, but given a pass because they support the victims with grievances. Donors are demanding that they continue to be treated as a carve out. Generally they support deplatforming and the rest of the attacks on privileged and oppressor groups -- white, straight, Christian, men. They are not against DEI or wokeness as a general matter, they support it unless it touches them. The donors are sending the message: DEI, yes. DEI against us, no, you may not. That will be the deal, and the Palestinians and their supporters will find themselves oddly isolated in the months and years ahead. Their case will be deemed "complex" and requiring "nuance".
This is the crux of the debate on the donor side.
Their goal is self protection, and continuing the DEI/woke project in a way that does not hurt them or their families. Zero doubt about where they want this to go. Will they pull Iit off? My cynical best guess is yes.
First they came for the white men, and I didn't speak out because I wasn't white. Then they came for the Asian men, and I didn't speak out because Asians are not an under-represented minority at Harvard. Then they came for me, and I let them know their funding was at risk.
nailed it!
Could this really be the start of a DEI rollback? I’m not sure.
Didn’t the donor class (which includes many Jews) start this racial identity movement in order to distract from the economic movement that was Occupy Wall Street? DEI consumed the dissent of the liberal masses and directed it away from the oligarchy.
If they genuinely do seek to dismantle it, I’d think they’d have a new movement prepared to contain the dissent of liberal masses. Otherwise they risk Occupy 2.0 or the rise of something else they’d dislike.
Also, as Niccolo has written, America is now an ideological state and its using its ideology to promote regime change abroad. We’ve only just started using “wokeness” in this way; would we really turn back now?
Finally, the Jews are smart people. How did they miss the trends and see this was the inevitable result of what they had been promoting? Did they have faith that Holocaust awareness would firmly cement them as members of the oppressed, despite their collective wealth?
So many questions. Anyways, I’d welcome meritocracy in America, but I doubt we’ll see it.
Jews are so damn smart and opinionated that they can be found on all sides of just about any issue.
As for "How did they miss the trends and see this was the inevitable result of what they had been promoting?"
There are of course the many Jews, from say Chomsky to Butler to even the gurus of anti-Whiteness like Tim Wise and Noel Ignatiev, who welcome any and all destruction, as long as it leaves enough rubble for them to rule over; as for the liberal-left Jews who seem to create a golem every generation that always inevitably turns on them (Soviets, Civil Rights now Social Justice), their eyes are always on the abstract god called Justice, and they are usually the last to face the truth about how their imaginary utopia never appears; and for the rest of the smart liberal NY/LA Jews (I know many), they are not much different from your average normie liberal who has his left eye poked out and thus can never see that those people chanting about Justice are sharpening knives for them next—and when I tell them "Social Justice is an illiberal post-Marxist movement that uses the language of Civil Rights in order to capture our country and turn it into the Soviet Union of self-esteem" they look at me like I'm nuts (which I probably am).
Either way, Jewish or not, it's very hard to convince prosperous liberals that have always lived in a free society that people marching under the banner of Equality only believe in Animal Farm equality and will soon be stripping away their civil liberties.
The New Left pursued a brilliant strategy by piggybacking on the Civil Rights movement and its language and morality and imagery, and these termites have simply dined so long there is no way to remove them and save the structure of academia at the same time—all will have to be razed, but that is a whole different conversation...
"There are those who seek to conflate support for Palestinians with support for the violent actions of Hamas, and that would be unfair."
Not unfair, at all. According to a number of polls conducted since October 7th by Israeli newspapers of all "stripes", Palestinian residents of Judea and Samaria support Hamas and it's actions, and is holding at 80%. Conflation? As the Talmud often says: היינו הך (Aramaic, for "[they're] one and the same").
Those polls are about Palestinian residents (and I don't put much stock in polls anyway). I was referring to campus protesters in the USA.
I understand, and wrote my comment to call attention to the wholly artificial distinction that the "campus protesters" make between Palestinians and Hamas when, in fact, the Palestinians don't.
Whether they support Hamas or not, civilians should not be massacred.
Define 'civilian'. Combatants not wearing uniforms are still combatants. Civilians who actively assist combat operations are also co-belligerents.
What hard evidence is there for massacres beyond claims made by Hamas and Al Jazeera? I have not followed the media closely but I'd be disinclined to believe such claims.
A civilian is a person not a member of an armed force nor a person engaged in hostilities. You can safely assume that hospital patients are civilians. Hospitals in Gaza have been bombed by Israelis, who do not deny it but say that Hamas was hiding in the hospital. You should not bomb a hospital no matter what.
Vigorously disagree.
Medical infrastructure is sacrosanct only if it is used for its ostensible purpose. Hospitals that are used to store weapons or ammunition, host command posts or function as points of assembly for armed forces are a legitimate target.
A few years back Amnesty acknowledged that hospitals in Gaza had been used to torture political prisoners. This puts things in perspective. Hospitals that provide Hamas with torture chambers are not what the signatories of the Geneva Convention had in mind.
The Palestinians have a long history of using ambulances to ferry fighters and ammunition. These ruses have been tacitly supported by Western goverments (who finance the humanitarian rackets) for way too long.
International military law does not require that combatants disregard threats to their lives or those of their comrades. Nor does it require that soldiers necessarily prioritise the lives of enemy civilians over their own.
Military law is not a suicide pact for civilised combatants.
DIE is, and always has been, a weapon to use against straight white men and straight white men only. Asians and others are merely collateral damage.
I come down on the side of special carve-out. The destruction of DIE means lifting the foot from whitey's face and that can't be allowed to happen. They're fighting a two-front war here.
The existence of a golem is sometimes a mixed blessing. Golems are not intelligent, and if commanded to perform a task, they will perform the instructions literally. In many depictions, golems are inherently perfectly obedient. In its earliest known modern form, the Golem of Chełm became enormous and uncooperative. In one version of this story, the rabbi had to resort to trickery to deactivate it, whereupon it crumbled upon its creator and crushed him.
"Blowback" in modern terminology.
Dang, one little kerfuffle and DEI bites the dust? Must be the white supremacy and strait male patriarchy again...smh
Having read Ackman's original letter I'm very skeptical that he was petitioning for special dispensation on behalf of Jews in the heirarchy of the woke. That would imply that he is accepting of the ideology as long as membership is granted in the victim class. Imagine for a moment a white billionaire tearfully proclaiming his new found feelings of oppression. Would the edict include all Jews, both observant and nonobservant? More importantly, is the dispensation only valid when on campus or is there reciprocity with all other campuses (?campi)? Once the local decision has been made, is there a governing body of wokeness which votes on and bestows the honor globally so that membership priveleges are reciprocal and recognized everywhere and in all facets of life? And by what means are the new members able to convey their status when superficially they appear to be members of the oppressor class?
To say that it’s possible that DEI would “fall like dominoes“ is to say that there are still reasonable and clear-eyed people both in charge and in the line of succession that are merely using it as a tool as opposed to dogma. I am not sure that is the case, however.
Elimination of DEI. "Heather Mac Donald's 'The Diversity Delusion' is an invaluable resource of mythbusting fact and a reality-check on the siren calls of identity-based ‘social justice’ that have given rise to the great DEI racket. Detailed, rigorous and copious, it is a devastatingly compelling expose of “how race and gender pandering corrupt the university and undermine our culture......The real shocker.... is not the behaviour of the (hopefully atypical) student ‘protesters’, self-engrossed and feral though it certainly is, but the sycophantic response to and encouragement of it by college administrators. The epidemic of spoilt-brat student behaviour, however caused, could have been stamped out in short order but for the craven virtue signalling of their ‘adult’ academic mentors..” https://grahamcunningham.substack.com/p/how-diversity-narrows-the-mind