KilroywasNOTHere
"BEEP!"
Situations of chaos and uncertainty foster all sorts of hysteria and conspiracy thinking. This isn't even entirely unjustified, because in many cases, the elite -- feeling the heat themselves -- will try to screw over the masses. The problem is that you get very excessive manifestations of this kind of thing. (Who in his right mind believes that Jacob the deli owner is part of an evil cabal that wants to rule the world?)
Yet any unassimilated minority is always, by design, something of an "outsider". And in crises, in-group/out-group thinking becomes the dominant mode. (Which, to be clear, is completely natural, and indeed a function of evolution itself.) If it is also a minority who cultural ethic tends towards hard work in often profitable sectors, then envy becomes involved as well.
The other side of the coin is that such a minority that refuses assimilation can -- by design -- never be fully rooted within its host society. This tends to encourage the members of this group to support cosmopolitanism in said society, because that produces attitudes beneficial to the group (e.g. increased toleration). Additionally, it will lead to the society being more open to cultural mixing, which makes the group in question "NOT the only 'Other Guy' in the room".
Which explains why you see a lot of left-wing/progressive Jews in the West, while Israel (where these incentives are absent) tends far further right-wing/conservative. You also see that the "regular, common guy" Jews will more often tend right-wing, while there's a separate cosmopolitan elite that's completely inter-mingled with the gentile cosmopolitan elite. (They share the same goals.)
You can easily see how these factors conspire (no pun intended) to keep anti-semitism alive.
I'm less optimistic, although things can go in many directions. You already have people within the MAGA movement talking about, ah... "Jewish space lasers", so that tells us something. Meanwhile, the aforementioned cosmopolitan elite within the Jewish community has indeed hitched its wagon to that of the establishment.
The best thing sensible Jews can do, I think, is the best thing sensible gays can do: make it clear that they're not with those lunatics. The culture war is about ideas and values, more than anything else. Our enemy wants it to be about race and class and such things. There are elements within the populist opposition that think along those lines as well. The same thinking that divides society along those lines, however, is the thinking that can make one believe that Jacob the Deli owner is part of some evil cabal..
(Which means, yes, that the progressive elite -- Gentile and Jewish -- is in fact contributing to the likelihood of new pogroms in the future.)
Right now, the MAGA movement is primarily a faction catering to white Americans. I believe, as you know, that when the current iteration of the 'spoils system' runs out of spoils to distribute, the disaffected working class regardless of ethnicity will flock to the populists. At this point, if one seeks to avoid anti-semitic swerves, it is essential that all regular guys -- essentially, Americans who just happen to be Jews -- side with the populist movement.
The progressive elite will call them race-traitors who side with the (supposed) anti-semites, but this nonsense must be ignored. The fact is: when that hour comes, those who side with the populists will see their side triumph three decades later. Those who side with the establishment will be rounded up and dealt with after such time.
As such, the question of anti-semitism later in this century can -- to a great degree -- be settled by Jewish patriots.
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Okay, here goes:
1) Your question is, basically, "if there is no hard evidence -- such as videos that can be trusted -- and what we believe relies on which testimony we trust, won't that lead to something like the 'twitter hive mind' and its tendencies towards cancel culture?" -- at least, that's how I understand what you said.
2) My anwer is that for almost all of human history, no photos, videos and audio recordings existed. Yet this kind of hysteria-prone group-think was NOT the norm.
3) Periods of such hysteria and group-think DID exist, but such reactions are linked to times of chaos and uncertainty.
4) Generally speaking, for almost all of history, people with responsibility had to think hard about all "facts" they heard, because acting on bullshit opinions would have bad consequences. So in a world where you HAVE to rely on witness testimony for nearly everything, you also HAVE to be good at judging which testominy is legit. People who are bad at this tended to suffer for it!
5) Thanks to photos, videos and audio recordings, we got used to having the facts displayed before our eyes. It was no longer needed to critically examine every source. We got lazy.
6) The evidence-based paradigm is falling apart now. Supposed "hard evidence" can be faked! We're back to the "you have to judge what story you trust" kind of world. But, and this is the key, we LOST our ability to properly judge that! We got lazy! Modern tech pampered us!
7) The current wave of social hysteria ("cancel culture") is in part CAUSED by the above point. People are used to getting hard facts, but cancel culture is all about subjective interpretation. Because most people are too mentally lazy/weak to interpret what is true, they instead just go with the herd and treat the (supposed) majority opinion as a fact. Which means that anyone opposed to "THE MESSAGE" is automatically AN EVIL LIAR.
8) Once the current period of chaos is over, we'll be back in the old situation. New generations will re-learn the critical thinking skills, and we'll treat information the way our ancestors did. "I trust this man, because he's only said true things in the past. I don't trust that man, because I've known him to lie three times this month." Basically, we'll get much better at drawing our own conclusions. (Which is now an almost-extinct skill!)
9) For these reasons, my answer to your question is that something like cancel culture will NOT become the norm, just as it wasn't the norm in the past.
10) But I add that just as there have been periods of social hysteria in the past, there will also be periods like that in the future. Obviously.
so what happens when human judgment fails for whatever reason? Call me an outlaw or a barbarian or whatever but there is a reason why I cling to my 2nd amendment rights like my life depends on it.
