Culture Anti-Semitism and Collective vs. Individual Guilt
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Antisemitism only applying to jews would be like saying Antilatinism only applies Romanians or something. Yeah okay you can define any word as anything. But words should actually mean what they're comprised of.
There should be a push to be more accurate and at least call it Antijudaism or something.
When Chinese people accuse others of 'sinophobia' they get laughed at, because what they're really upset about is racism or at least perceived racism. The jews shouldn't get special privileges for being jews, otherwise I demand a hyper specific but vague word for people who hate people like me. :V
There should be a push to be more accurate and at least call it Antijudaism or something.
When Chinese people accuse others of 'sinophobia' they get laughed at, because what they're really upset about is racism or at least perceived racism. The jews shouldn't get special privileges for being jews, otherwise I demand a hyper specific but vague word for people who hate people like me. :V
No, they absolutely don't and never have. Irregardless is a great example, but here are other examples as well.
Sinophobia is a joke because the CCP uses it excessively, it's not the name that's dumb.
I disagree.
Come on now. The jews don't scream 'antisemitism' at every mild inconvenience?...
And the entirety of language history disagrees with you. Words are defined by how they are used commonly, because that's what language literally is: a set of sounds that have commonly known meanings. As long as those sounds are used to express those meanings and understood that way, that's what those sounds mean.
There's no central body determining the meanings of words. The dictionary itself is actually 100% self referential.
First, don't treat them as a group. Group based guilt is the root of the problems of the 20th century.
And yes, there are grifters who use it too often. But the term itself had enough of a history of being used right that it semisurvived being used wrong, like the word 'racist'.
There are also grifters who are X who claim bias against X never happens. Most commonly, it's seen with straight people who claim that they are allies, and hatred of straights isn't real. White people who tear down "it's okay to be white" signs. But it exists everywhere.
Aldarion
Neoreactionary Monarchist
Thing is that people are neither and both at the same time. When you get a group of people, they will do stuff that individuals will never have attempted. In Bosnia and Croatia, before the war, you would think that countries were idyllic multi-ethnic paradises... once you ignored all the pro-Serbian discrimination. And then Yugoslavia began to break apart, and everybody started murdering each other. And Westerners, and Americans in particular, so certain that things such as ethnicity and culture are irrelevant and can be papered over with a bit of paperwork saying that somebody "belongs to a country" have no clue at all what exactly had happened.
But what happened is the simple fact that collective is more than a collection of individuals. You cannot predict behavior of a group by merely looking at its constituent members and then summing them up. Behavior of a group of people depends heavily on their group values, identity, historic relations and how powerful they feel. As a result, end behavior may well be - and often will be - radically different from anything a model based on individual(istic) assessment could have predicted.
Sure, Muslims may not be guilty all the stuff historical Muslim empires did. But simply the fact that said stuff is rooted in Islam and that Muslims are, well, Muslims, still means that allowing Muslim immigration is a bad idea. And all of the above means that any sort of mass immigration and diversity is a fundamentally bad idea.
You are talking about predicting behavior. That's all well and fine. I'm talking about individual guilt. These are two separate things. When a group of X does Y, people who are X but not in the group aren't guilty of Y.
More, I'm not saying that grouping people up is a bad predictor, I'm saying not to do it because giving into collectivism is where most of the shittiest things come from.
I still disagree. If words don't have strict meanings, they have no meaning at all.
Tomorrow I could brainwash a bunch of normies into thinking "Abhorsen" is the single most antisemitic word imaginable, potentially getting you into trouble in about a dozen countries.
That doesn't sound reasonable at all to me, so therefore "Abhorsen" cannot just randomly get a new definition because a bunch of retards said so.
TheRejectionist
TheRejectionist
Agreed.
Aldarion
Neoreactionary Monarchist
I agree that guilt shouldn't be collectively assigned and that predicting behavior isn't the same, but too often first will be used to dismiss the second.
Individualism and collectivism are both bad when taken to extreme. Collectivism is more dangerous (especially in the short run), but extreme individualism can be just as destructive in the long run. And "not grouping people up" can be dangerous even on an individual level, as it is impossible to get to know every person on an individual level and so assuming a "blank slate" by default can lead one to make lethal mistakes... case in point.
Though TBF, maybe organic phenomena such as ethnicities and nation-states shouldn't be placed onto individualism-collectivism spectrum to begin with... but they do have impact there, so... eh.
I'm not saying individualism can't be bad, what I'm saying is that the bad of individualism is orders of magnitude less than collectivism. When collectivism goes bad, it goes really bad (Communism, fascism, US's chattel slavery, ESG, etc).
When individualism goes bad, its an issue of just that individual (school shooter, guy who wants to know what it's like to kill someone, serial killer, etc).
If you get 90% of the population to believe this, then yes, you would have changed the meaning. Probably even 70% would do.
Did you ever read the story 'Frindle'? That's literally how words work.
It's an anarchic process, similar to the free market, and that's why it works so well.
Aldarion
Neoreactionary Monarchist
While technically true, you also have to consider that these two things are not unconnected. Excess to one side can easily lead to excess to the opposite side - think of a cytokine storm in human immune system. Extreme individualism of libertarian stripe for example would, due to advocation of open borders, lead to mass migrations and diverse societies - which then leads to conflict and then either genocide or authoritarianism (and then potentially genocide anyway). Likewise, collectivist oppression will lead to individual response (terrorism etc.).
It's not American. The more appropriate word is USAian. Because after all America is a big place well beyond the confined of the so-called United States of America. Just because I'm anti-USA and mocking USAians by refusing to use their own term of reference totally isn't reflective on me.
Native Americans is a terrible term. I don't care if actual indigenous people far prefer to use the term of Native American. They also aren't American Indian even if that's more accurate. As a White liberal I deem the most accurate term to call them is "Indigenous First Peoples of America."
What? Since when is language meant to be a tool of communication as opposed to pandering to oddly specific autistic hangups that coincidentally seem to be motivated by some ideological reasoning to change said traditional use of language now?
Native Americans is a terrible term. I don't care if actual indigenous people far prefer to use the term of Native American. They also aren't American Indian even if that's more accurate. As a White liberal I deem the most accurate term to call them is "Indigenous First Peoples of America."
What? Since when is language meant to be a tool of communication as opposed to pandering to oddly specific autistic hangups that coincidentally seem to be motivated by some ideological reasoning to change said traditional use of language now?
So now a Red Indian is an IFPA ?
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Open borders isn't necessarily libertarian. In fact, if anything, we believe in private borders. Some libertarians are believers in closed borders, some in open borders. Same with abortion.
Aldarion
Neoreactionary Monarchist
That is why I said "extreme individualism of libertarian stripe". Tolkien for example was libertarian yet still believed in ethno-states.
There's one place individualism has always failed: War.
It would be absurd to demand Israel (though of course the UN and US both are doing exactly that) treat Gazans as individuals. Every Gazan vote, poll, almost every organization, and the testimony of hostages on "civilian" participation, young and old, male and female, in their kidnapping, shows Gazans to collectively be Israel's enemy. There certainly are individual Gazans who are not, but War has no way to single them out, and Israel cannot win a war by wasting resources trying, except to the extent necessary to play along to insane international demands.
How close America is to Civil War, and which groups must be collectively placed on one side or the other, and which groups must internally divide in a civil war of their own . . . well that's a question that will be very important in the next decade.
TheRejectionist
TheRejectionist
I mean it is relevant to the discussion how it started all of this antisemitism.
That's rich coming from you, considering how you consider every problem that affects EU or USA is other countries' fault.
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