I for one, am very grateful for Dr. Salk and the current lack of a polio season, for Oppenheimer for helping us win the second world war and prevent the cold war for going hot. Stanislaw Ulam for doing all that work on nuclear rockets that will, hopefully one day open up the vastness of space for settlement and the large number of Ashkenazi in the U.S. for raising our collective IQ.

I think part of this rebound in antisemitism is a generational thing. I'm 50. I lived for a very few years in a largely Jewish neighborhood in The South and there were a few women there with thick accents and numbers tattooed on their arms. The holocaust happened. It was real and when I was growing up, it was well within living memory. The idea that people would seriously deny it always seemed beyond belief. To young people today though, the idea that a major bit of history might be a lie is not a particularly novel concept when their education is steeped in Postmodernism and Social Constructionism. 

Leftists have always had a sort of passive aggressive love/hate relationship with Jews going back to Marx and his Essay on The Jewish Question. Apologists will claim it is actually a defense of Jews...somehow...but if so it is a very inept one that was quoted in several speeches by an odious Austrian during his beer-hall days. Recently, in fairly rapid succession, I saw several comments on various micro-blogging sites to the effect that 'Bolshivism would work fine if no Jews were present'. That at least one who posted comments along those lines was a Bernie Bro makes my head hurt. The decent of the labor party in the U.K. into the most foeted depths of antisemitism is appalling but not really surprising if one has been observing the left since the early to mid 90's. The U.S. far left is not far behind and is so sure of its own righteousness that it cannot see this (among its many other pathologies) in the glare of their own smugness . More disturbing to me is the recent resurgence on the right I've witnessed. In the South, we're at least aware of our past failings, and painfully conscious of how easily hatred can be embraced by ordinary people and how even the best can go down a dark path or simply respond to past injustice by giving in to hate and rage....becoming the very monster one rails against. Ours is a complex and sad tale that nevertheless has, for those who will listen, great lessons in both courage, redemption and dignity. Today, of course, no one is listening.  However, it is perhaps telling that what was once the center of the darkest chapters of antisemitism is one the parts of the country most supportive of both Israel and Jews in general. That is changing as others move in and the children are educated differently than we were. The memory of the holocaust is fading and the healthy and well-justified mistrust of government in general and institutional norms is, unfortunately, resulting in pretty much all things being opened to question, and as we've seen with the generally athiest alt-right, when unmoored from ones foundations, one can very quickly go to dark places. In contrast to the lefts increasingly strident embrace of this odious worldview, the number of anti-semites on the right is still small and largely confined to the margins (Trump's embrace of his Jewish family members and support for Israel is exceedingly popular with the vast majority of his coalition from the populist, to the more libertarian leaning conservatives to the Evangelicals) but it is there. 

This trend on the right is helped by the prominence of powerful Jews amongst the pantheon of of the promoted personalities amongst our tormentors. Names like Mike Bloomberg, Harvey Weinstein, George Soros, Sergei Brin, and other examples of malice and malevolence are all over the news, everybody knows their names, they are talked about all the time and most are some pretty execrable people, some of whom are direct threats to our liberty.... 

...and this is why I think that the anti-semites in general are not merely worrisome, odious and wrong...they are kinda' retarded. 

You know what the Jews would do if they were running the world?

They'd hide it. 

Instead, if there is some cabal type group  acting like Mafia Dons on a global scale, then the Jews are the distraction. 

The WASPy families and their ChiCom Sugar Daddies, the lesser known of the tech-weasels of Palo Alto and whoever might or might not be running whatever transnationalist progressive plot one might imagine are not the ones that the invective is directed at.  All the rage is directed at a handful of their Jewish associates who are getting an inordinate amount of press. 

So if you're actually into conspiracies, and you believe in a 4-D chess theory of world events, then the Jews are probably a distraction to direct our ire away from the real problem.  

If one is unpersuaded by the notion that the world is the plaything of a shadowy group of sinister members of our ruling classes exhibiting heretofore unsuspected degrees of competence, then, like with every other group there are a few bad apples amongst the sons and daughters of Abraham and crap floats to the to the top with them like everybody else. 

I'm still glad we don't have a Polio season. 

And while I emphatically oppose censoring the voices of these antisemitic numbnuts,  I'm quite annoyed that I have to  disavow, decry and denounce their numbnuttery.  

Posted by: Pete Zaitcev at Tue May 5 08:41:17 2020 (LZ7Bg)

Posted by: The Brickmuppet at Tue May 5 09:56:02 2020 (5iiQK)

Posted by: Frank at Tue May 5 20:25:55 2020 (rglbH)

Posted by: Pete Zaitcev at Tue May 5 22:18:18 2020 (LZ7Bg)

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