We are developing the social individualist meta-context for the future. From the very serious to the extremely frivolous... lets see what is on the mind of the Samizdata people.
Samizdata, derived from Samizdat /n. - a system of clandestine publication of banned literature in the USSR [Russ.,= self-publishing house]
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Samizdata quote of the day – This is the first anniversary of the October 7th atrocity This is the first anniversary of the October 7th attacks. The savage invasion of last year in which Hamas broke through the borders of Israel and proceeded to kill, rape, behead, burn, maim, and kidnap innocent civilians predictably provoked the Israeli government to retaliate.
It was perhaps also unsurprising that Israel’s reprisal would be denounced by the usual unholy alliance of Islamists and leftists. These perennial detractors of Israelis and Jews had, for decades, made a habit of not only excusing Palestinian intransigence but also blaming Israel no matter what.
– Ayaan Hirsi Ali
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On the upside, it has revealed to the vast majority who were otherwise ignorant the absolute horror of both the leftists and imported diversities level of antisemitism.
This is exacerbated by police coddling of anti-Jewish protesters which is exactly the sort of thing we mean when talking about Two Tier Justice.
If I was a Jewish inhabitant of one of our major cities, I’d be planning an exit to somewhere less infested with both leftwing nutjobs AND muslims.
John Galt:
If I was a Jewish inhabitant of one of our major cities, I’d be planning an exit to somewhere less infested with both leftwing nutjobs AND muslims.
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Unfortunately there is (still) a lot of overlap between “Jewish inhabitants of one of our major cities” and “leftwing nutjobs”.
Many progressives of Jewish descent are still suffering the whiplash of cognitive dissonance… after decades attacking the Judeo-Christian West their rainbow-coalition “allies” have turned on them.
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Here in Israel the Bibi-Deranged, defeatist Left – which was first embarrassed into silence by the gangland-style execution of six hostages and is now made completely irrelevant by the widely popular Lebanon operation – has tried to use the bureaucracy and media to apply a defeatist, anti-patriotic frame to the October 7 remembrance ceremonies. They kicked this off by starting a divisive public debate about whether the ceremonies would center around the Gregorian or Jewish date.
The massacre occurred on the Jewish holiday of Simchat Torah – a raucously joyous day that caps the Jewish New Year season and restarts the annual cycle of reading the 5 Books of Moses in synagogue… so they tried to gin up a divisive, self-righteous debate about what a “decent” level of public happiness, and tried to discourage people’s “scandalous” insistence on upholding Jewish traditions as a response to the tragedy.
Sigh…
This has only splintered and multiplied the public observances – which is an indication that they have lost control of the narrative.
And the continued war – punctuated by attacks by “good” Israeli Arabs and terror cells – continues to underscore how wrong they were all during Oslo, and how irrelevant and tone-deaf they are now.
John Galt – the left think that Muslims are stupid (they think that all religious people are stupid) and that they, the left, can use the Muslims as a tool to help destroy Western civilization (or what is left of it) – and then just drop the Muslims afterwards.
However, many Muslims are NOT stupid – they are not tools of the left, indeed it may turn out that they are using the left – rather than the other way round (that the left will get a nasty shock at some point).
BenDavid – yes the establishment left people from Jewish families (in Israel and America), they are indeed fools. Their leftism contradicts objective reality at every point – and, eventually, objective reality always makes itself felt. “The Gods of the Copybook Headings” as Kipling put it.
Remember how David Horowitz finally understood reality – when his friend was tortured to death by the Black Panthers for whom he had recommended her to do their accounts. It was not just the murder that woke him up – it was the reaction of his “liberal” friends, who told him to shut up complaining about the murder, as his complaints were “undermining the cause of Civil Rights”.
I hope the establishment types wake up (a true version of “Woke” – rather than the Marxist version) before their children are being raped and tortured to death in front of their eyes, raped and tortured to death by their “friends”.
One message I received this morning from someone in Gaza reflects how some there initially celebrated the actions of Hamas.
But they very quickly saw those actions turn into something which had deadly consequences for people in Gaza as well as those in Israel: “Saturday, October 7th 2023 began with joy of Hamas attacks on Israeli occupation in the morning and horror in the evening.. 365 days have passed and we are still waiting for Sunday morning to come”.
Grudging acknowledgement from the bbc, albeit hidden towards the end of a lengthy article. Still it’s a start.
But many are. I suspect that if the UK were to convert to Islam overnight, we wouldn’t change much in terms of our propensity to violence, or indeed in other social norms such as number of children, how women are treated and so on. The problems that we have with Muslim immigration is not that they are Muslim, but that they are low IQ and lower class even in the countries they come from.
“Stupid” doesn’t always entail “easy to control” — even when you consider stupidity vs genuine intelligence, rather than non-credentialed vs recognized intellectuals.
@BenDavid
Unfortunately there is (still) a lot of overlap between “Jewish inhabitants of one of our major cities” and “leftwing nutjobs”.
No doubt you are right but I am really confused by this fact. Jewish people are very cognizant of their history, and the history of the Jewish people’s relationship with government has, shall we say, not been positive? Government has systematically persecuted Jews for three thousand years, so why would the Jewish people be so pro big government? It almost seems like Stockholm syndrome to me.
When I think of the culture of Jewish people I think of people who work very hard, start their own businesses, work through adverse and challenging circumstances to come through despite it all. Who work in generally isolated communities, often surrounded by Christian and Muslim communities who are quite hostile to them. I think of hardworking people on a Kibbutz digging life out of dirt and supporting each other in a community. Not people who go down to the welfare office for their “entitlements”.
I think of Cuban Americans as a parallel. Hispanics have generally speaking been fairly leftist in their thinking (though again I have never really understood why given the typical character, but that is another story.) The exception are Cubans who are very much anti government, conservative right wingers. Why? Well dealing with Castro will make you think twice about big government.
But Jews have been dealing with Castro like situations since the Babylonian exile. So why are they so supportive of big government?
Maybe it is a religious thing, where they are trained to depend on big Daddy in the sky, but I think, as a general rule, the less observant a Jew is the more leftie he tends to be? I’m not sure if that is true just my small sample size observation.
The Jewish American paleoconservative intellectual Paul Gottfried has often said about many American Jews that regardless of the actual anti-Semites crazies in the democratic coalition, they stick democrat because they believe quite sincerely, despite thin evidence, that the largely white population that make up Republican voters are, in their hearts of hearts, national socialists who would inaugurate the 4th Reich if given the chance. So despite all the actual real anti-Semitism from other minority groups and the far left that also vote democrat they stick with the blue team. Gottfried says no amount of philosemitism and pro-Israel sentiment from Republicans will change this except at the margins. The one exception, noted by Gottfried, is amongst the Orthodox Jew communities, who are conservative ultras, and have large families.
Martin, it makes me wonder at what point that will change; this may also be generational. (The Woody Allens are getting old and dying.)
Of course, the visceral dislike that many Jewish Americans have of the political Right, or at least the noisier parts of the Right, is not helped when you get examples – not necessarily representative- of anti-semite nutjobs such as Candace Owens, and some of those, such as Pat Buchanan, a Catholic, who has been accused of flirting with anti-semitism. Billy Graham, the evangelical preacher and key figure on the Religious Right, was rude about Jews in private.
By the way, Walter Block, a “paleo-libertarian” in the circle of the Mises Institute in the US, seems to have fallen out with some of his erstwhile allies by his vigorous defence of Israel’s legitimacy as a state. Here is an example of the infighting. (This is also a reason why I tend to not call myself a libertarian anymore, but a radical classical liberal, to avoid being confused with the sort of crap on foreign affairs that the Mises Institute and some others come out with.)
I sort of wonder if regular American Jews pick up on some of these things, and as a result, still cannot bring themselves to vote for the GOP, even though, given current events, it is the least-worst option. However, there are bound to be changes, given how many Jewish businessmen, for example, are going to be angered by the rapacity of a Harris administration, if it is elected in November.
@Johnathan Pearce
I find your comment surprising. Candace Owens is not an anti semite. What happened there is that she had a disagreement with Ben Shapiro over the right foreign policy of the US toward Israel. I think Israel is important and has an absolute right to exist, but I don’t think that gives them unrestricted (or come to that, any) access to the US Treasury. And if that is anti-semitism then certainly both she and I are such. Perhaps we are wrong, but that is different than having a pathological hatred of Jews. On the contrary, as a culture I am a huge admirer of the Jewish people and what they have done in extremely challenging circumstances.
I think it is odd the confusion on this point: unmitigated support of Israel and its government is not a pre-requisite to eschew the label anti-semite. I don’t know much about Buchanan except that he is a crusty old dude who never seemed to look you in the eye, and Billy Graham is an interesting figure about whom I have uncertain and mixed feelings about. But I don’t imagine any Baptist preacher is particularly anti-semitic.
Disagreeing with a Jewish person or a lot of Jewish people is no more anti semitic than disagreeing with a woman or a lot of woman is misogynistic. It is part of a pattern used, ironically, but the left to squelch disagreement.
You know what is a sign of anti-semitism? Standing in a crowd chanting “gas the jews”. Beating up jewish students on campus. Chanting “from the river to the sea.” That seems pretty common these days, and, AFAIK most of them are wearing Kamala buttons. I am baffled why this is not obvious to most Jewish people.
(FWIW, I think it is part of a different thing that baffles me — the idea that fascism is a “far-right” ideology. The very idea of fascism is one of collectivism, the name comes from the idea of a bundle of sticks bound together being stronger. It is about the idea that the people and industry are there to sever the state. These are absolutely far left ideas. The patriotism and nationalism that pervade fascism, which is one place that there is some similarity to the right, is really just a means to an end rather than the end itself. FWIW, this nationalism idea is one place I very much depart from the right. I find the idea of “dulce et decorum est pro patria mori” quite repugnant, and backward. The state should serve the people not the other way around.)
The irony is that had they held their noses and elected Pat Buchanan, it’s likely there would be much fewer pro-Hamas supporters in the US, as Buchanan’s immigration policy was basically to heavily curtail immigration from the kind of places where support for Hamas and Hezbollah is common. Instead they voted for the Clintons and Obama and so on. Maybe these democrats were personally more polite to middle class Jews than Pat Buchanan or Richard Nixon were but they also had no problems letting in tens of thousands of radical Muslims in the US.
I do think Candace Owens is mad, but see her as someone Ben Shapiro and co took on as a diversity hire because they probably thought it was great having some feisty black woman ‘owning the libs’, and it blew up in their face when she turned her ire on the Jews.
I thought he’d already fallen out with most of the Mises people before this because he had very authoritarian views on COVID. Block frequently come off as one of the most weaponised autistic libertarians.
Fraser, seriously?
Owens peddles conspiracy theory crap that goes way beyond what’s acceptable. She’s a kook.
https://youtu.be/Q0DYYoYzDmA?si=SKCuQQoZObyni67c
https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/world/us/from-israel-did-9/11-to-stalin-was-a-jew-candace-owens-craziest-conspiracy-theories/amp_articleshow/112629019.cms
This comment is in response to the one you make below
We’ve reached a stage where reputational information should no longer be gathered from people talking ABOUT the subject. Concepts of honor and honesty have been degraded. Even the sites we come to trust should be viewed skeptically, as they frequently give us well-intentioned information culled from liars.
Now, if you want to know about a John Doe, you need information directly FROM John Doe.
I’m frequently amazed how often someone about whom I’ve been warned in dire terms turns out, in first person, to be reasonable and normal.
Martin,
The right sees the left/right dichotomy as collectivism vs. individualism, the left sees it as internationalism vs. nationalism. Thus national socialism is left from the right’s perspective and right from the left’s.
It is generally agreed that serious debate requires that the meaning of terms is established beforehand. Good luck with that.
The claim that socialism and communism are absolutely totally 100% completely the opposite of fascism and nazism is the Great Fraud of the 20th century.
– FA Hayek, The Road to Serfdom
@Johnathan Pearce
Owens peddles conspiracy theory crap that goes way beyond what’s acceptable. She’s a kook.
I didn’t say she wasn’t a kook, just not an antisemite. I don’t know enough about her to say she is or isn’t kooky. I have heard her speak a few times and sometimes I agree and sometimes I think WTF. However, that particular incident with Shaprio was not at all what it was made out to me. One can disagree with US foreign policy to Israel without hating jewish people.
I did also want to say that I regret getting off track on this thread. Given the solemnity of the day I spent some time reading some articles about October 7th in all its horrifying details. And as always in such horrible circumstances the revelation of the human spirit as decent people do decent things in the midst of the indecency.
I thought this article was poignant about a group of women who tried to treat the bodies of the murdered girls and women with dignity after the horrific indignities visited on them. A small blessing in the midst of hell.
https://news.yahoo.com/news/saw-holocaust-many-dead-bodies-070000915.html
It is worth remembering individuals, names, stories. Because a single death is a tragedy, a million deaths or 1200 deaths, is a statistic.
Fraser Orr – the less religious a “Jew” (or rather someone from a Jewish family) is, the more leftist they tend to be – that is not always true (Ayn Rand and so on were atheist and anti Big Government), but it is generally true.
The same is true for Christians – “Christians” who believe in God “in a very real sense” i.e. not-at-all (regarding God as a personification of “the poor” or of “history”) tend to be leftists – whereas Christians who actually believe in individual (individual – not “societal” not “Collective Salvation” into a perfect world here on Earth) survival after death – tend to be anti Big Government, pro liberty.
Again it is not always true – but it is generally true.
Mostly, mostly NOT always, if someone does not believe in God they put government in the place of God.
This includes high ranking people in the Churches who really mean government when they say “God” – as it is clear that they do not actually believe in a person-God or in individual survival after death.
The decline of the Christian churches is understandable if one remembers that the churches are now often controlled by people who do not believe in Christianity – indeed despise Christianity.
K. Harris and Tim Walz, who support industrial scale abortion (including allowing babies to die after they are born) and the “Trans” agenda for children, both go to church and are welcomed by “Christian leaders” – “Christian leaders” who share their hatred and contempt for Christianity.
An open atheist may be anti Big Government – pro liberty. But an atheist who pretends to be religious – is always, at least in my experience, a Big Government person, indeed a supporter of tyranny.
I’m sure your last sentence is correct, but I find from my reading of history that people who buy into conspiracy theories about Jews and Israel have malevolent views about Jews in general. At the very least, Owens ans those like her contribute to a perception that many Jews must have that some on the Right are unpleasant.
As Martin and others have pointed out, this appears for the moment to be dwarfed by the degradation of much of the Left. And it goes back to Marx. Of course, many on the centre left are Jewish, albeit secular, and appalled by what’s going on. This may explain why current politics is in flux. A lot of people have had to wake up.
Johnathan Pearce.
I think that Candice Owens is a special case – in that she supports things, such as Medieval blood libels, that even hard core Jew-haters mock.
I suspect that what has happened to Candice Owens is not political – but is stress related, the lady has been placed under extreme stress for some years. To be blunt – I suspect mental illness. But I am not a doctor – and I have never met the lady, so I am just guessing.
Paul, I am not so willing to cut CO slack, or pass this off as her being ill. That’s too easy. Also, as you and I are believers in the existence of free will, and we are not determinists, I think CO has the ability to focus her mind on looking at reality, of not evading it. And she is not doing that. I also think she is a grifter, maybe cynically calculating that being shocking over this issue, being transgressive, works. It works for Tucker Carlson in his recent embarrassing interview of a “revisionist” historian about the Holocaust, and even the likes of Alex Jones and so on have managed to make money out of their profile. It is a grubby situation.
Maybe she is under pressure, but she put herself in that position. I really don’t think she deserves sympathy. Not on this issue.
Some other thoughts about this grim anniversary:
We have learned what a cesspit much of Western Higher Education is. Many of those who follow this and similar blogs knew this already, but awareness has spread to the wider public, and in a way that has shocked many. It has been an ugly spectacle. I hope more donors or potential donors withhold funds from these institutions. I hope that many more people choose to bypass Higher Ed. and go into careers without attending it, or go to those places that aren’t infected. Centre-right/genuine liberal politicians should make it a priority to combat the rot. One good way to do this is to reverse the tide of credentialism, in which even basic jobs require a university degree. If there is one swamp that needs to be drained, HE is it.
There were very different reactions to the killing of George Floyd, and the progrom of 7 Oct, 2023.
I think the apparent contradiction can be reconciled in the minds of the protester by claiming that Israel, like the US, is a racist country and founded by settlers who had no legitimate right to be there. Look at the message of the 1619 Project, which holds that the US is founded in oppression, not on the basis of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Similarly, a large part of the “decolonisation” movement holds that Israel as a modern state should not exist, that those who settled and bought land in the 18th, 19th and 20th centuries are imposters, and that because some people were displaced, that a great evil was done. Now I am sure that some of these people are anti-semitic and know they are evil, but in a lot of those who attend protests, they think about this through an oppressor/victim dynamic. Again, this is in large part the result of decades of Marxian teaching, with an added dose of guilt that those who are successful and prosperous are made to feel.
I can recommend On Settler Colonialism, by Adam Kirsch, and What Justice Demands, by Elan Journo, who both touch on the issues in the above paragraph.
Johnathan Pearce – you may well have a point about both Candice Owens and Tucker Carlson, Mr Carlson is now saying that he did not know that Mr Cooper was pro National Socialist, but it does not take much research to find that Mr Cooper posted, with approval, photographs of Adolf Hitler visiting Paris in triumph in 1940 (it does not take high intelligence to work out that someone who supports Hitler’s conquest of Paris is pro Nazi).
I first noticed gross disregard for truth from Mr Carlson with his backing of the idea that space aliens are visiting Earth. Do not mistake me, some people really do believe that space aliens are visiting us – they are totally sincere, but their belief dominates their lives – nothing else is important to them, and understandably so – as if space aliens really were visiting Earth right now, then other matters would be of trivial importance. Yet Mr Carlson, after pushing the space aliens are visiting Earth story, just went back to other stories – totally forgetting about the space aliens. In short – he-never-really-believed-it, Mr Carlson was just pushing the story for “clicks”.
However, I must take issue with you when you say “the killing of George Floyd” – Mr Floyd was not “killed”, he died of drugs he willingly consumed.
There has been both a book, by David Horowitz, on this case and a documentary film, no one can honestly say they really think Mr Floyd was “killed”. As for the judge and jury – they knew perfectly well that Mr Floyd had not been “killed” and they did-not-care, which makes them far worse than Candice Owens or Tucker Carlson. Neither Owens or Carlson send people they know (they know) to be innocent, to prison to be cut up with knives.
Minnesota has not been corrupted by slavery, because it did not have slavery (other than the slavery practiced by nomadic tribes – and they did practice slavery) – but it has been corrupted. And, I have to say, the international media cheered on the corruption.
Sadly this corruption, of ordinary people (on juries) is not confined to Minnesota – I can think of many cases in big cities where the jury, in both civil and criminal cases, ruled on political grounds – they found the innocent guilty and the guilty innocent, knowing-what-they-were-doing – even laughing about it afterwards.
It is not possible to live with these people – because they will not allow their political opponents (or people they believe to be their political opponents – even if they are NOT) to live in peace.
The education system, with its moral relativism, and (yes) the media, including the entertainment media, has utterly corrupted many people.
I do not believe that they are the majority of the population of the United States, or anything like the majority of the population of the Unites States (as the saying goes “81 million votes, but NOT from 81 million voters”), but there are large numbers of such utterly corrupted, utterly evil, people – they are capable of anything terrible, anything utterly vile. They cheer on such things as leaving babies to die, and the sexual mutilation of children – they make evil their good.
I repeat – they will not allow other people to live in peace, so they, by their own behaviour, make it impossible to live with them.
Mostly, mostly NOT always, if someone does not believe in God they put government in the place of God.
I think this is somewhat true but there is one important exception. In my experience libertarians have a very strong tendency to atheism. I think because libertarianism is a principled position based on logical analysis, and you can’t hold a lot of the God associated nonsense if you are logical and analytical. I’m not saying you can’t believe in a remote creator idea even though you have to stretch the bounds of credulity on that, what I mean is you can’t believe the prayer fixes things, the Bible is a fabulous moral code, we are all born in the sin of Adam nonsense.
In my experience conservatism and leftie liberalism is more of an emotional or cultural reaction than a logical analysis. Logical analysis is tacked on to the feelz. Not always, but mostly.
Fraser Orr – you have a point about many libertarians.
However, I think my other point, that people who pretend to believe in God but who really do not – tend to be leftists, stands.
When I hear a priest or minister (or Bishop, Cardinal,….) say they believe in God “in a very real sense” (i.e. not at all), I know I am hearing a leftist, ditto if they define God as “the poor” or “history”.
“However, I think my other point, that people who pretend to believe in God but who really do not – tend to be leftists, stands.”
Absolutely. I have met loads of them. I have known vicars who are openly atheist.