We all know what “anti-semitism” means, but what is the term for when Jews discriminate against non-Jews? Or when religious Jews move into a neighborhood and non-religious Jews and non-Jews feel slighted or dismissed or marginalized?
For instance, 90035 has become an increasingly Orthodox neighborhood over the past 30 years (even though the Orthodox account for no more than 25% of its residents). I have non-Jewish friends who’ve walked into kosher restaurants and stores and felt everyone staring at them. Many secular Jews and non-Jews don’t like it when religious Jews walk in groups down the middle of a street pushing strollers on the Sabbath and Jewish holidays, only greeting each other and ignoring secular Jews and non-Jews. What about non-Jews and secular Jews who don’t like it when circumcision is the norm because of the influence of Jewish doctors. What if the goyim don’t like it when public schools take off Jewish holidays? Or when the local library branch changes its hours to accommodate Orthodox Jews?
What about non-Jews who don’t like it that much of America’s politics revolves around varying degrees of support for Israel? What if they see it as not in America’s best interests to be so closely aligned with Israel? What if they don’t like the results of Jewish influence in the media and Hollywood?
Steve Sailer wrote:
The Christmas songs that Jews wrote seldom involved religion…
But this long, amiable tradition of Jews helping to enliven a Christian feast day seems, sadly, to be drawing to an end. American Jews, those exemplars of successful assimilation now seem to be de-assimilating emotionally, becoming increasingly resentful, at this late date, of their fellow Americans for celebrating Christmas…
What should be the proper term for when non-Jews feel hurt by Jews?
Steve Sailer wrote: “Although immigration ought to be a topic of fascination for all public intellectuals, most elite discourse on the subject is vacuous and kitschy.”
I wonder why that is. Could it have anything to do with the disproportionate number of Jewish intellectuals who are still resentful that America did not take in more Jews during the 1930s?
Steve Sailer said: “…[I]ntellectual heavyweights of Western civilization are known not
for being right but for being charismatic…”
Sailer wrote:
…the importance of extra-rational charisma in the appeal of egomaniacal, messianic intellectuals like Marx and Freud to younger Jewish students. Over the last 150 years, secular Jewish intellectuals have repeatedly reproduced the traditional brilliant rabbi-student relationship in launching powerful cults. Among the more recent examples have been Ayn Rand (see Murray N. Rothbard’s hilarious 1972 article “The Sociology of the Ayn Rand Cult“), Susan Sontag (see Terry Castle’s hilarious 2005 article “Desperately Seeking Susan“), and Leo Strauss (see the unintentionally hilarious 2003 article “What Leo Strauss Was Up To” by two true believers, William Kristol and Steven Lenzer).
Said another Gentile observer:
So you had all these wild-eyed, charismatic, brilliant people, suddenly without the compression of traditional life. What to do with all that fire and brilliance? Answer: Marx, Freud, civil rights, etc…
All of which does make me ever-so-slightly sympathetic to the idea that these brilliant Jews give out advice that’s almost designed to cripple the people it’s given to. All the while claiming it’s for everyone’s good, and charging a pretty penny for doing so. I could never accuse them of being anything but well-meaning. But I had to learn to see through the posing, the fiery eyes, and the preaching….
Many of the Jewish radical kids went on to do very well for themselves.
Psychologist Byron M. Roth reviewed Richard Lynn’s 2011 book The Chosen People: A Study of Jewish Intelligence and Achievement:
In general, Jews do not differ in any appreciable way from Gentiles in the things they value, with one exception: They have a greater desire to achieve economic and social success, that is to say, they are high in “achievement motivation.” Professor Lynn suggests that, like many personality variables, this may have a partly genetic basis “brought about through having been selected by eugenic customs, persecution, and discrimination.”
Is it good for Jews and good for the world that Jews as a group may not be criticized in polite conversation?
To quantify the statement that “Jews are a small group, but influential in their areas of concentration,” in 2009, the Atlantic Monthly came up with a list of the top 50 opinion pundits: half are of Jewish background.
Over 1/3rd of the 2009 Forbes 400 are of Jewish background, according to the Jewish Telegraph Agency’s reporter who covers Jewish philanthropy.
Joel Stein of the LA Times found in 2007 that people of Jewish background hold a large majority of the most powerful positions in Hollywood.
This is not to say that influential Jews are at all united in what they favor. On the other hand, it is more or less true that Jews hold something of a veto over what topics are considered appropriate for discussion in the press, Jewish influence itself being the most obvious example of a topic that is off the table in polite society.
John Derbyshire wrote: “I can absolutely assure you that anyone who made general, mildly negative, remarks about Jews would NOT—not ever again—be published in the Wall Street Journal opinion pages, The Weekly Standard, National Review, The New York Sun, The New York Post, or The Washington Times. I know the actual people, the editors, involved here, and I can assert this confidently.”
Stephen Steinlight wrote in 2001: “I am also familiar with the classic, well-honed answer to this tension anytime this phenomenon is cited: Israel and America are both democracies; they share values; they have common strategic interests; loyalty to one cannot conceivably involve disloyalty to the other, etc., etc. All of which begs huge questions, including an American strategic agenda that extends far beyond Israel, and while it may be true in practice most of the time, is by no means an absolute construct, devoid of all sort of potential exceptions. I say all this merely to remind us that we cannot pretend we are only part of the solution when we are also part of the problem; we have no less difficult a balancing act between group loyalty and a wider sense of belonging to America. That America has largely tolerated this dual loyalty — we get a free pass, I suspect, largely over Christian guilt about the Holocaust — makes it no less a reality.”
