Morning Ed: World {2016.02.08.M}
The unemployment rate for elephants in Myanmar is at about 40%, and it’s causing problems.
Greg Grandin takes issue with American posturing about democracy in Haiti.
Here’s how Facebook is handling its Hate-Speech problem in Germany, and here are how some Brazilians are making their own justice.
The Bank of Canada would like to ask you to kindly stop spocking currency.
Yair Rosenberg reflects on Justin Trudeau’s omission of the Jewish in a recent Holocaust remembrance.
Meanwhile, according to an Oberlin student the Holocaust was just white on white crime and Anthony Berteaux writes more on the exclusion of Jews on account of their privilege.
On the bright side, here’s a nice story about Jews and Muslims working at butcher shops together.
The Telegraph’s Charles Moore feels betrayed by the “deal” Cameron made with the EU, but Philippe Legrain says he got even more than expected from the negotiations while Iain Martin says that Cameron is outmaneuvering the Euroskeptics. For now.
It really shouldn’t be surprising that the current Social Justice movement has a troubling relationship with Jewish people because the Further Left always had a weird relationship with Jewish people. The 19th century German socialist August Bebel remarked that “anti-Semitism is the socialism of fools” for a reason. A large portion of the Left tends to view Jews as not disadvantaged enough and therefore a rightful target of wraith. The Social Justice movement is just revising this tendency.Report
Try to see it from their side. You guys are fishing up the narrative. Historical oppression is supposed to lead to present-day underachievement. Not only do Jews and Asians refuse to learn their place and underachieve, but they actually overachieve. So you can see how this puts SJWs in a pickle. Solution? Jews are white, so they were never meaningfully oppressed.
Asians are in a quantum state of oppression. Representation in the technology or at elite universities? They’re basically white. Kimono exhibit at an art museum? Super-oppressed minority.Report
I’m not really sure whether or not overachievement plays a large part in this. The Social Justice movement is more aware of real and imagined racism against the various Asian ethnicities. We see evidence for this in the protests over the Boston Museum’s kimono event or General Tso’s Chicken at Oberlin.
I’m more inclined to see the Further Left’s troublesome relationship with Jews as part of what David Nirenberg’s Anti-Judaism thesis. Under this thesis, the various Western ideologies have defined themselves against an imagined Judaism from Antiquity regardless of where they fall on the ideological spectrum. For the Social Justice movement and earlier Further Left movements Judaism gets associated with whiteness, capitalism, middle class values, and patriarchy. the Further Right sees us as dangerous communist revolutionaries who want to destroy traditional values by various means. In both cases, the hate has nothing to do with what Jews actually believe or do but as the need to have something to symbolize the ideological enemy.Report
Someone made an interesting point over in a thread I’ve been following at facebook that both the extreme left and the extreme right were created in order to persecute the Jews. I’d never heard that before, but it’s an interesting narrative.
Regarding “whiteness”, it’s an evolving social construction and one that is localized, so that, at least in America, being “white” once did not include those of Irish descent, Italian descent, Armenian descent, etc. Calling the holocaust “white-on-white” crime in not only deplorable in the obvious sense, but it’s also ignorant of the history of how race has evolved as social construction in our country.
Someone needs to tell these kids to shut the hell up and go read a book.Report
I don’t know if this is quite correct but there is a truth to it. There is an old saying that “Anti-Semitism is the Socialism of Fools” and Jews do seem to get blamed for things that the far left and far right both deplore: Cosmpolitanism, High Culture and Modernity*, Modern Finance, etc. Jews are the urbanizers destroying the pastoral wonderland.
*There is an interesting turn of the century novel and movie called City without Jews. A very Vienna like city kicks out all their Jews and the entire economy of the city goes to crumbles. No one eats at the cafes, shops at the fashionable shops, goes to the opera, theatre, ballet, bookstores, etc. The author was later murdered by Nazis.Report
I wonder if part of this may be that the far-anything is going to be where a lot of the conspiracy theory believers end up. And in the West, the seminal material for conspiracy theory as a genre is almost all antisemitic.
Such that even if the actually influential people within the far-whatever may not believe in conspiracy theory, the extreme ends of the movement will have an unusually high percentage of people who have paid close and remarkably uncritical attention to the major historical antisemitic screeds.
This being why, if you have the pain tolerance to entertain an open, free-flowing conversation with an anti-vax or anti-fluoride or chemtrail or HAARP or 9/11 or most any other variety of conspiracy wingnut that’s not in any way obviously related to Judaism, pretty soon things will swing around to the Rothschilds and the Bilderberg group (just don’t tell them the only thing Jewish about the group is the name of the hotel where it meets).Report
I almost wish that some of the conspiracy theorists knew about real conspiracies. They’re almost as amusing, doncha know.
(nevermind the international incident that involved littering… a gameshow wheel into a river, where it floated downstream… Germans can be frightfully literal, somedays (it had just spun up “I’m outta here”). This is not actually related to conspiracies, at all, as it was all relatively aboveboard (pun intended)).Report
To be slightly fair, I have yet to see anti-Vaxxers talk about anti-Semitic conspiracy theories but it probably exists.
I get why people would want to believe in conspiracy theories. A lot of the pain in our lives is from forces beyond our control. The universe doesn’t care about ways of life dying but human psychology does.
The interesting thing about anti-Srmitism is that it is unlike traditional hatreds. Jews needed to be somewhat successful as bankers and professionals for anti-Semitism to occur because we could be scape goats for ills.
As noted below, anti-Semitism does not fit within traditional leftist frame work. Many Jews are of European origin and don’t get the same level of outward harassment anymore in the U,S. Many Jews are economically well off and well educated. But thinking about anti-Semitism requires a different frame of mind and Jews can be used to sneer at the left like Brandon did above.Report
So, um, Jews needed to be places before they could be hated???
Gee…. this is different from the Rom how?
“many jews are of european origin”
SHHH!! We’re not supposed to admit that! Not with all the (badly done) genetic research showing that we’re all from the mideast!Report
To be slightly fair, I have yet to see anti-Vaxxers talk about anti-Semitic conspiracy theories but it probably exists.
Oh yes. Yes it does. Maybe not much among the merely fearful-for-foolish-reasons folks, but if you meet those with an actual conspiracist framework for who is “pushing” vaccines and what they are really meant to achieve – yes.Report
If you haven’t heard them talk about the anti-semitic conspiracies it means the jews have gotten to them already. Absence of evidence is proof of conspiracy.Report
So is evidence of absence, for that matter.Report
Obviously, if any evidence exists then that also supports the conspiracy theory.Report
I wouldn’t say that the Far Left and Far Right were created for the purpose of persecuting Jews. Both groups have ideological goals that having nothing to do with us. What both the Far Left and Far Right have in common concerning Jews is that they both see us as advocates of everything they oppose. Its how Jews get to be communist revolutionaries dedicated to destroying the markets and bankers wrapping the world in financial chains at the same time.Report
To be perfectly honest, the Russian jews were involved in a lot of terrorism…
And, by a string of “perfectly understandable risk/reward charts,” you could say quite a few things about the connections between Jews and the latest financial crisis in which we (the world at large) almost broke the global economy. [Not that this has anything much to do with carping going on before 2005 or so… idiots will continue to be idiots, and come up with stupid ideas.]
many grains of truth can be found in a sea of sand. But don’t waste your time looking for ’em.Report
Kim, its one thing that your anti-Zionist but this is response is beyond acceptable. The number of Jews involved in Revolutionary action in the Late Russian Empire was miniscule compared to how the Russian Empire treated the Jews. In a modern context, people would say that the Russian Empire was radicalizing it’s Jewish population.Report
Cite sources?
You might have gathered by my second bit of commentary a bit of studied skepticism on the amount of truth people talk about.
Or you might have simply read that I was merely talking about history that’s over a hundred years old! (That anyone might be talking about Jews nowadays as being pinkos is beyond silly!)
How is talking about a bit of truth unacceptable?
It’s not like I’m citing some obscure bit of history, either…
Am I leaving out quite a bit? Of course! Do you really have grounds to think that I’m doing so as to incite Anti-semitism? (If not, what pray tell is so fucking unacceptable? I’m not going to apologize until I actually understand what the fuck is the issue at hand)Report
So a mysterious guy in a black supercar can target them for vehicular homicide?Report
Lee already commented but some thoughts:
1. In some ways, Jews are on over represented minority. There are only 14 to 15 million Jews in the world. The U.S. and Isreal each have over 5 million Jews. The other large Jewish populations are much smaller. In the U.S, Jews tend to be overwhelmingly in the solid middle class and above. We tend to be over represented in the prestige and well educated professions. There are exceptions but they tend to isolate like the Haredi. Among the Boomers you will find more Jews without college educations but not so much among Gen X and younger Jews. We also tend to be heavily over represented at elite colleges and universities. We are less than one percent of the population but 10-25 percent of Harvard, Stanford, etc. My girlfriend’s friends were shocked when I said there were only 14 to 15 million Jews in the U.S.
2. A lot of younger American Jews of European origin consider themselves white. A lot do not and this leads to fighting words situations. A friend of mine from college is Jewish, attended fancy private schools for his entire life and calls himself a guilty white liberal. Others recognize their white privilege because they are not harassed by the police like African-Americans and Hispanics. Sanders screams Jewish to me and so far it really hasn’t been a thing. I can’t tell whether this is because anti-Semitsm has become a taboo in the U.S. or people out of Jewish heavy areas can’t pick it up. I wonder if comedians like Larry David, Amy Schumer, Seth Rogan, and Judd Apatow have normalized Yiddishkeit to a variant of whiteness. I am morbidly curious to see if the GOP would use anti-Semitic dog whistles against Sanders in a general election.
3. There still is not any evidence that the campus radicals are going to take over the Democratic Party. We are talking about small but load contingents at a handful of campuses (albeit elite ones)
4. Despite best efforts, the Democratic Party is still a better fit for American Jews than the GOP. Most Anerican Jews believe in the welfare state, support Israel without being neo-con Hawks, oppose the desth penalty and believe in environmentalism. Christian evangelicals might support Israel but they still manage to make Jews nervous. Jews are urban and cosmopolitan. Evangelical exurban culture is lost on us. Plus our religion really does view things differently.Report
Your off on your numbers regarding Jewish demography. There are over six million Jews in Israel, somewhere between 5 and 7 million Jews in the United States depending on who does the counting, and around 1.5 million Jews elsewhere in the world. Otherwise spot on. Jewish success makes people feel that there are a lot more of us than actually exist. If you ask people how many Jews are there in the world, most will probably give answers in the upper tens of millions. Very few would guess around 14 million living in highly concentrated areas.Report
“I am morbidly curious to see if the GOP would use anti-Semitic dog whistles against Sanders in a general election.”
You mean call him something like white hispanic?Report
I think the GOP tack against a Sanders in the general election will definitely strike at his religion – particularly his lack of Jesuslove. Whether this takes the form of an attack on atheism or an attack on Jewishness I don’t know. I could see both, a lot of dog whistles, especially if Trump gets the nod from team red.Report
I see it *only* coming from the lumpentrumpentariat.
Everyone else would call him some version of self-hating for not supporting Israel in the way the Likud party wants. (a characterization somewhat unfair to the Likud party – to be precise ‘not supporting Israel in the way the most extreme elements of Likud’s ruling coalition want’)Report
It’s actually pretty common for american jews to not support Israel the way Likud wants. Like not surprising at all.Report
Your mistake is trying to use reason to say what will and what won’t play with voters in the general election.Report
“lumpentrumpentariat”
I really like that!
Still, I think attacking Sanders as an atheist is a shrewed political move.
These results are better than they’ve been, but most of the country still would not even consider voting for an atheist: http://www.cnn.com/2015/06/25/living/atheist-president-gallup/
For the record, I’m using the term “atheist” to refer to anything except mainline evangelical Christianity and old WASP Protestantism, including Sanders’ self-proclaimed “spiritual feelings”.Report
I think probability of going after Sanders for his Judaism (outside certain circles) is low, but going after him for being an atheist (whether he is or not) is higher.Report
Yes, and if you can do both at the same time without overtly doing so and thereby losing voters, then why not kill two Jew/Atheists with one Trump?
In any case, if it’s Sanders vs Trump, I think it’ll be one of the nastier races we’ve seen in a long time. Copy that for Hillary versus Trump as well, although I feel like Hillary will be less likely to return fire.Report
I think they will mostly defer on the Jewish angle because (a) they’ll never stop chasing the Jewish vote and (b) a fair number of people in the rooms where these decisions will be made will themselves be Jewish. Some may be atheists, but that’s easier to compartmentalize.Report
Do you think they would allow their personal sense of decency interfere with winning an election? This is politics we’re talking about after all.Report
I think Lee gets it right. Jews are too economically and culturally over represented and have become another form of white. Hollywood is not seen as Jewish anymore, it is seen as white.
Though there are plenty of Jewish Studies programs across the U.S., they are not really filled with non-Jews.Report
Short version, Jews are a victim of their own success. The Volokh Conspiracy piece was a good example. I might deplore what is happening at Oberlin but I have no idea why I should become a free market libertarian because of it.Report
Very few people are expecting Jewish Americans to change their politics over the recent Social Justice outrages. Something similar happened in the 1960s, but focused more on domestic rather international issues, when certain factions of the Black Power movement adopted some explicitly anti-Semitic rhetoric. Jewish Americans still remained squishy liberals for the most part.Report
You can’t be a traitor to a country you can’t vote in.
That is illogical and contrary to the idea of representational democracy.
I deny that it is lawful to term peaceful protestors traitors to a country they don’t want to be in.
(For those people tempted to call everything I write here about Israel, this one actually is discussing Israel)Report
Elephants: They do like their booze, especially fermented fruit. 🙂
Facebook: Seems the Brazilians have a more speech empowering method of combating “hate speech”. Protip, don’t list where you actually live in FB. Duh.
Spocking: Taint illegal. Spock it up.
Holocaust: Doesn’t EVERYONE know that the subject was about the Jews or are people dumb enough to not know who he was talking about?
Jews: Well of course the SJ movement is going to blow back on the Jews. You think the SJW are any less racist than everyone else?Report
The new fives (since 2013) don’t really Spock well, more’s the pity. For one thing, you can’t really write on the polymer banknotes with a ballpoint pen, but mostly the picture of Laurier doesn’t really look like Nimoy.Report
The real issue is that he didn’t carry on the myth that the jews were the only victim of the nazi’s genocidal plans. Jews want to own the nazi genocide but the nazi’s killed a lot of others as well: poles, slavs, the mentally disabled, communists, gypsies, homosexuals and political left. But the way the jews tell it, you ‘d think they were the only victims.Report
The Volokh piece quotes “an Oberlin alumnus”…what, he couldn’t find “some guy on the internet” as a more authoritative ruling on “What SJWs Believe”?Report
Fair point. We should, as a matter of course, be skeptical of claims of hostile social environments in colleges.Report
We should be skeptical of anything David Bernstein writes. That he finds a Facebook post “an equally troubling sign of the degradation of intellectual discourse” is just gravy.Report
That Oberlin story is a pretty prefect sign of the times in today’s modern journalism:
1. Some kid no one knows complains online that some people at his college that he doesn’t ever identify say something dumb — without showing one tweet, blog post, essay, or any published thing of any kind that can be used as an example of this being a thing that actually ever happened once, let alone a sweeping campus trend.
2. Internet news writers writing about it as if it is both a real thing and a serious news story, and somehow an Important Event We Need to Discuss.
3. People on the Internet talking about it as if it’s source is anything but some snot-nosed whiny kid bitching about his college and rationalizing why no one there liked him very much.
4. All of this likely followed by SJWs beginning to defend the stupid thing that no one ever really said in the first place, because now that it’s been attribute to an SJW they can’t let it go.
5. That conversation inevitably being re-written about by even more online journalists.
Yup, I think that about covers it.Report
The context of the Facebook post is not quite what is being assumed. There is basically a Facebook post of Oberlin Jewish students and alumni (about 200 or so) where they air out their frustrations with what they perceive to be an anti-semitic environment. As best as I understand it, this post made it through the filter as being representative of the nature of many of the complaints.
It could well be a fabrication or (more likely) an exaggeration. But it’s not quite the equivalent of an anonymous blog commenter.Report
So it’s not some anonymous blogger, but rather this one guy saying something in a FB comments section?
Well. Criticism withdrawn, then.Report
The cis-het white male tendency to “no-platform” people who don’t meet their definitions of personhood manifest once again.Report
Hey, I am certainly open to believing that reported experiences shared in fora of social grievances should be dismissed or ignored by default. Will consider this further.Report
@will-truman Is it a shared experience?
If Oberlin college (and many other liberal arts colleges!) have moved to discounting the Holocaust as a trifle that was likely deserved (or whatever that story was supposed to have communicated about what today’s liberal arts students believe about Jews), then surely there would is a bunch of of class syllabus/published academic papers/video of student protests/scans of flyers from the student union/screen captured tweets and social media posts to toss in with his reporting? I mean, if its such a large and growing movement and all?
True Story: About five or six years back, I was listening to the Lars Larson show and the host was going on about how Obama and the government were ruining America. Some guy called into the show to say that he had applied for a job both with the state and federal government. He said both governments turned him down, because the head of HR for both the Feds and the State told him he was highly intelligent, and they don’t like hiring intelligent people in the government. He said they told him they only hired dumb people, because those people didn’t question when they were asked to do things that didn’t make sense.
For the next few days, people on the show referenced that guy like crazy. They were outraged! Why was the mainstream media not covering the fact that the HR mangers for the State and Federal government told intelligent people that they only hired stupid people? People should know what was going on!
If this journalist from the Washington Post has found evidence of all this holocaust apologetics sweeping liberal arts campuses and I’m just missing it with my Google-fu, well, then the bad is on me. If he hasn’t — if he’s just reported what some person posted in a comments section of a FB post — then it’s as newsworthy and relevant as the guy who called in to Lars Larson that day.Report
You’re mistaking a blog post on Washington Post’s website with a news piece on Washington Post’s website. This isn’t an article on anti-semitism at Oberlin, but an account shared by someone*.
It seems to me a reasonable response to point out that most of these items are anecdotes, difficult to verify and subject to exaggeration and/or poor memory and/or fabrication for personal effect. Two-hundred hypersensitive students signing the petition, though? Well, maybe. Or maybe they’re right but this student is exaggerating considerably (which, seriously, could well be the case).
The degree of incredulity given here, though, seems to me to be related that the alleged perpetrators are not the desired perpetrators, and that those using this testimony for their ideological benefit are people disliked.
* – Someone apparently known by Legal Insurrection’s author William A Jacobson, and contacted by Bernstein. Reading through I was incorrect about it being on the forum. Apparently a friend on Jacobson’s feed. A lefty, though, apparently, and we know how they are.Report
I’m not sure why something being an anecdote means it can’t be discussed in the national media.
Certainly the methodology behind science journalism is much more robust, but no one is throwing any science reporting forward as the pinnacle of what a good news story should be.Report
I agree, though I think it’s quite reasonable to point out that this sort of thing is very difficult to verify the accuracy or completeness of.Report
By all means!
Lets have night after night of 24/7 coverage and discussion of the KKK and neo-Nazis proudly supporting Donald Trump. Lets wade through the comment boards at Ace-o Spades and Gateway Pundit for their comments about the Negro problem, or a lengthy discussion on why the conservative movement as exemplified by Ann Coulter wants to repeal the vote for women.
I mean, if we want to go nutpicking, this SJW would hate to be thrown into that briar patchReport
The thing at Ace of Spades was fascinating. When the Trumpkins arrived, half the contributors said “What the Holy Hell is this?!” and the other half said “Hold on, we should hear them out and try to understand where they’re coming from…”Report
Not a regular reader of AoS, but my impression is that the bloggers, as opposed to the commenters, have been consistently on the side of the first group and against the second.Report
Ace himself seems rather anxious to understand where the Trumpkins are coming from. Gabriel and Jeff were in the first category. The DecisionDesk people seem to have gone off on their own.Report
I was reading “Trumpkins” more as “Alt-Rights using Trump as a stalking horse,” but that was probably wrong of me to do. (I need the Academy of Definitions to define “Trumpkin” for us rigorously.)Report
It’s a fair distinction. I don’t think Ace has embraced the Dark Enlightenment or anything, but hasnt been clear on where he thinks “Justified concerns” end and “That’s not acceptable” begins.
Or at least wasn’t six months ago. I’ve not read him in a while.Report
In reference to the earlier comment from @chip-daniels , I would be surprised to find comments in AoS that made any reference to “the Negro problem” or anything like that at all. It’s ignorant to assume anything else. Critical commentary vs BLM and an all-encompassing dislike of Political Correctness, sure, although, at least according to a Google site search, precious little of the latter or on any recent “race” matters.
It’s just not their thing. I have, on the other hand, seen trademark Ace rants directed against Alt-Right types and the politicians connected to them. In short, AoS still pretty much defines “South Park conservative.” I don’t think left partisans here would like the site, and it will tend to be, you know, conservative on immigration and “radical islamism” and the like, and I don’t like the site for other reasons – but assuming it’s going to fit some leftwing stereotype is an indicative mistake.
Gatewaypundit – a site I never visited very often even when I was frequenting con blogs – looks to have gone full Trump (something you should never do, by the way), and seems to have a “blacks are the real racists” tone, but even that’s a far cry from the old racism. I think it’s kind of a terrible site, and have no intention of returning there on my own, but even it won’t fit the stereotype.Report
Trump has so successfully cleaved the conservative base in two, I am not entirely convinced he ISN”T a Hilary plant.
It is …interesting to say the least, in seeing the Erick Ericksons and Aces of the blogosphere deal with their rabid fans.
For me, it just goes to show who was taking the decades of dogwhistles seriously, and who wasn’t.
Or rather, did Erick really think that Floyd R. Turbo ever gave two farts about the capital gains rate?Report
Or rather, did Erick really think that Floyd R. Turbo ever gave two farts about the capital gains rate?
I think that one of the things that is happening in this election cycle is that a particular genie (of relatively substantial size) is getting out of its bottle. From the other side, Floyd didn’t ever really care about the size of the EITC, either; he cared about jobs, and both parties have been ignoring his concern.Report
Yeah, agreed. I think the Democratic Party establishment (and Hillary) are gettin Berned by the same genie. She’s doing it to both sides as each deserves.Report
There was a piece over at Slate Star Codex about class, and one of the points was that leftists use economic class as the sole indicator of class membership, when it is much different.
Floyd believes that Trump and he are members of the same class of Labor, while the community college adjunct is in the Elite class.
I’m not uncritically endorsing the idea, but it does explain an awful lot of whats going on with respect to both parties.
Maybes its not a matter of membership in a common class as members of different classes forging alliances.
So for example, Erick Erickson is not only in a different class than some of his followers, his class has different alliances.Report
Man, I really need to do my post on a revamped 2D political axis with High/Low Republicans/Democrats. Much more relevant than right/left/libertarian/statist.Report
Personally, I think any reduction of politics and political movements to identifications with class, in any of the conceptions you choose, will fail and the reason is that it reduces people’s world views to easily digestible, and therefore necessarily false!, bite size chunks. Part of this is a holdout of Marxist thinking about these issues (the part he was right about!), and part of it is the risk-free, armchair, theoretical intellectualization of complex social dynamics, which intellectuals LOVE to do. (Who doesn’t just adore a really good theory?? especially one that reaffirms your worth as the type of person who can understand it without being subject to it?) Wrap it up in a nice tidy bow and it’s already boughten.
In reality, I think Trump’s supporters are as varied as conventional Democratic voters are. Is there any single class-identity marker that accounts for why tens of millions of people identify as Dems? Or conservatives? Why should there be for Trump?
The fact that all the pinheads can’t understand Trumpism constitutes a key insight into the question Why Trump?, seems to me.Report
You know who else liked theoretical intellectualization of complex social dynamics?
This guy
http://huggingthehorse.tumblr.com/post/64066128460/the-adventures-of-marx-and-engels-34Report
The fact that all the pinheads can’t understand Trumpism constitutes a key insight into the question Why Trump?, seems to me.
Tribes.
Since we’re talking about SSC, the essay of theirs that has recently been bugging the crap out of me is this one:
I can tolerate anything except the outgroup.
I think that the outgroup has started to notice things.Report
Man that’s a long essay. (Did you read the whole thing? Be honest. I did some skimming…)
I don’t know about the Tribal Theory as it applies to Trump. I mean, surely after the fact Smart Guys will study datasets and diagnose and propose identity markers and whatnot. So in that sense, the Tribal Theory won’t be proven wrong. It’s just that right now, on the ground, I don’t think it predicts anything useful. A bunch of people are pissed off at politics as usual; a bunch more are pissed off about immigrants beating down wages; a bunch of others are pissed about offshoring of working class sectors; some are racist xenophobes; some are tired of feeling ashamed for not adopting PC rhetoric; etc etc.
But those are only tribes if you identify a group of people whose cohesion is dependent upon already accepting those various (or singular) positions. And that might be the case for some already-identified groups. Personally, tho, I think Trumpism has emerged from a bunch of people coming to their own views on this stuff and deciding that they’re ready to – and willing! – to throw the establishment GOP out the window.
ETA: Oh, and the reason I said that pinheads not getting Trumpism holds the key to Why Trump is that his supporters are tired of people who intellectualize the world of policy and governance and politics to such a degree that they are incapable of undertanding what matters to “the common man”. Chip said it right: yer average GOP voter is told that lowering the capital gains tax is an ESSENTIAL conservative view, but they could really give a rats ass how much rich people are being taxed.Report
Won’t matter. Trump is going to win New Hampshire so hard tomorrow, he’s going to carry Vermont, too. Democrats are going to vote for him. He’ll come in first, second, and third place, all at the same time. They just aren’t even going to know what to say about it at National Review, those p***ies.
…Gonna be huge.Report
This is basically how watergate started, and no one is saying that was a shoddy news story.
What content is covered and the relevance and veracity of such, I believe, is a direct function of what the populus is interested in hearing. Don’t like what plays on the nightly news? Stop watching, but look around and see that most of the others really really seem to care about what’s going on with the Kardashians.
And this dynamic of course is as old as broadcasting. There’s a particularly telling passage in “Dharma Bums” where the characters are walking through a suburban neighborhood and talking about all the mindless denizens glued to their TV sets.Report
There was a discrimination case in Connecticut 10 (20?) years ago that was resolved in favor of the police department, saying they could refuse to hire someone that was too smart.Report
Yup. Back in 1999. For some reason it made the rounds again in 2014 as a seemingly new story.Report
I posit that this is the actual goal of this exercise, because spinning up SJWs and getting them to do something silly or stupid through their zeal is as much fun as spinning up any other flavor of evangelical.Report
Well should Lee and I feel silly for our serious answers? I contend that these various campus protests are probably anthills but I also think that they can be unwelcoming for dissenters and I can see why Jewish students would feel targeted and harassed.Report
200 signatories to a document is a huge step up in credibility from an anecdote by “an alumnus”.
Had Volokh led with that, I wouldn’t have challenged the assertion.Report
For what it’s worth, here’s a regular news article on what’s going on at Oberlin.Report
I pride myself on following leftist thought closely, but have to say I haven’t encountered widespread anti-Semitism beyond the fringe cranks.
However, its also possible that its a thing like the OJ trial, where you think you know people, then suddenly there is a trigger and suddenly the bitter denunciations of “bankers” slides easily into “Zionists” slides into “Jews” and you are left looking at the fellow traveler and wondering who the hell he is and why you never got that part of him before.
Which relates to the dogwhistling from the GOP to Floyd R. Turbo; his fear and anxiety about his job becomes fodder for people pointing his rage in the direction of immigrants, labor unions, urban poor, anyone except the ones who actually outsourced his job.
Maybe Lee Atwater was an outlier, maybe the elder GOP statesmen never really meant for the mob to seriously want to round up the Mexicans into cattle cars. But the mob heard what they wanted to hear.
As much as a part of me relishes the thought of class warfare from the left, I know it wouldn’t stay so easily within the boundaries of our romantic fantasies. It would spin out of control just as easily as the “Strapping Young Bucks” stuff did.Report
Here is a good article from someone on the far left that goes to Lee’s points:
http://www.slate.com/blogs/outward/2016/02/08/pinkwashing_creating_change_and_anti_zionism_is_protesting_israel_necessarily.htmlReport
By good, I hope you mean demonstrates how clueless the Far Left can get when it comes to Jew-hatred even if they are Jews.
The entire article was dumb but it does demonstrate an important difficulty that pro-Israel Jews are dealing with when we debate Anti-Zionists. We aren’t debating against Actual Palestine but a Fantasy Palestine. They are going to compare Real Israel to the Palestine they want to exist rather than the one that might actually exist.Report
If I had Canada’s refugee policy during the Holocaust [1], I’d pretend I didn’t know it was about Jews too.
1. “None is too many.”Report
There was a reason why Peyton Manning endorsed Bud. Smart move.
http://mashable.com/2016/02/08/peyton-manning-budweiser/Report