Greasing The Wheels To Genocide: Why The Collectivist Racism Of Soc Jus Is So Dangerous
We evolved to have empathy for another individual's pain. We connect with them on a human-to-human level.
Groups are different. We can't feel for a large number of people. They aren't quite people to us; they're a crowd.
Accordingly, in a 2013 piece, Frank Furedi wrote about The Holocaust at Spiked:
This stripping away of the individuality of the Jew allowed for the dehumanisation of an entire group, seen to consist, not of different persons, but of an homogenous people. That's what Goebbels meant when he talked about the justifiable punishment exacted on the German Jewish community - the entire Jewish race was responsible for the behaviour of anyone associated with it....The situation today in Europe has virtually nothing in common with 1930s Germany. Despite the escalation of anti-Semitic attacks in recent years, as revealed in a recent European study, the position of Jewish people in Europe is relatively secure. What's worrying is that in many quarters Jewish people are regarded as a unique homogeneous entity rather than as a normal collection of individuals. That, sadly, is always the first step towards the dehumanisation of a people.
Also at Spiked is a related piece by Brendan O'Neill -- about all the people who ignored anti-Semitic murders until one was done by a person on the right:
Post-Pittsburgh, it is hard to escape the conclusion that many observers are more interested in shaming and weakening Trump than they are in truly getting to grips with the new anti-Semitism. After all, where was their rage, their concern about rhetoric, their existential handwringing over hateful ideas and hateful language, back when anti-Semitism was deepening and militarising pre-2016, pre-Trump, most notably in Europe?Back when four Jews were slaughtered at a deli in Paris in 2015. Or when a gunman attacked the Great Synagogue in Copenhagen in 2015, during a bat mitzvah, killing one. Or during the massacre at a Jewish school in Toulouse in 2012, in which a rabbi and three children were murdered. One of them was an eight-year-old girl: the anti-Semitic perpetrator grabbed her by her hair and pushed his gun into her face. It jammed when he pulled the trigger. He changed weapon and shot her in the temple. He shot her in the face for the crime of being Jewish.
[There were] thousands of anti-Semitic attacks in Europe in the past decade, which all have spoken to a terrifying situation where anti-Semitism has now crossed the line from racist incidents into an increasingly militarised effort to demean and dehumanise the Jewish people and their institutions.
One problem, of course, is that many of these attacks - notably the deli massacre, the Toulouse massacre, and the attempted Copenhagen synagogue massacre - were executed by radicalised Muslims. And we don't criticise them too harshly, right? That would be a form of Islamophobia. It has in recent years been treated virtually as 'Islamophobic' to focus too much on the growth of militarised anti-Semitism in 21st-century Europe.
...This is the bottom line: if you did not respond to the slaughter of Jews by Islamists with expressions of profound concern about the nature of political life today, about the threat posed by hateful ideologies, about the safety of Jews in an era of nasty rhetoric, then there is no reason why anyone should pay attention to what you say about the slaughter of Jews by a white, hard-right individual.
Because it looks very much as though your concern is less with the slaughter of Jews than with the question of who is slaughtering them, and whether or not the murderer's identity lends itself to the propagation of your own narrow party-political worldview. In this case, that Trump is a bad person. The wickedness of an anti-Semitic act is judged according to the act's political usefulness: how awful that is.
As Ralph Peters put it:
"Man loves, men hate. While individual men and women can sustain feelings of love over a lifetime toward a parent or through decades toward a spouse, no significant group in human history has sustained an emotion that could honestly be characerized as love. Groups hate. And they hate well...Love is an introspective emotion, while hate is easily extroverted...We refuse to believe that the "civilized peoples of the Balkans could slaughter each other over an event that occurred over six hundred years ago. But they do. Hatred does not need a reason, only an excuse."
David Foster at November 11, 2018 5:08 AM
You don't even have to go to Europe to prove this point. New York had numerous anti-semitic crimes and yet not a single one was rightwing. Of course they don't get any press time. After all, that doesn't help the narrative.
That one phrase, 'the narrative', is so telling. Facts don't have a narrative. The news shouldn't either. Fiction and stories have narratives.
Ben at November 11, 2018 6:55 AM
You're not allowed to call Islam a "hateful ideology" the way you're allowed call Christianity one. You see, it's not about discussing the actual tenets of the religion, it's about proving your superiority to your parents, siblings, childhood neighbors, and the Great Unwashed.
By being tolerant of an exotic religion, no matter how intolerant that religion is, you're showing your intellectual and moral superiority, your enlightenment.
Since you might have known Jews growing up, they're less exotic. As such, their victimhood is only important as it relates to your demonstrable superiority over their attacker and any commenters.
It's like those militant atheists who rail against Christianity, but leave Judaism, Islam, Buddhism alone. It's not about the religion, it's about separating yourself.
It's teenage rebellion, writ large.
Conan the Grammarian at November 11, 2018 7:15 AM
Mmm. He leaves out one huge point: America largely cares for things that happen in America more than it does things that happen in other places.
89 people were killed in the Bataclan attack in Paris, which made news in the U.S. but didn't have the impact that the Pittsburgh shooting did.
Of course, that doesn't fit his "narrative."
Kevin at November 11, 2018 11:44 AM
"...executed by radicalised Muslims."
There is no radicalised about it. Mohammed has commanded his followers to kill the Jews. You could look it up. In the Koran. Any other infidel too.
"It's teenage rebellion, writ large." But with adult weapons.
"The wickedness of an anti-Semitic act is judged according to the act's political usefulness: how awful that is."
Yes it is awful, and it is not only Judenhass, lately it is any act whatsoever.
iowaan at November 11, 2018 11:51 AM
According to this article, 130 people were killed overall in the combination bomb and shooting attack. That's with France having some of the most restrictive gun control laws on the planet.
It looks like this story doesn't fit a lot of narratives.
Conan the Grammarian at November 11, 2018 12:07 PM
"It's like those militant atheists who rail against Christianity, but leave Judaism, Islam, Buddhism alone."
Saul, Yusef, and Nilish aren't going on about how I'm going to burn in hell or how stupid I am for studying the real world to figure out how it works. Neither do they parrot how they're (praying for you!) rather than actually DOING something for a suffering friend or acquaintance.
gcotharn, and a couple of others on here, have. If you don't bring the stupid, I won't point it out.
I guess I'm not militant. I know a man who lives a good life as he sees fit, as inspired by his ideas of Jesus - and he doesn't proselytize. He lives by example, having been "bad", now trying to be good. He's a success by any measure, and that makes us both happy.
Radwaste at November 12, 2018 10:07 AM
"Saul, Yusef, and Nilish aren't going on about how I'm going to burn in hell or how stupid I am for studying the real world to figure out how it works."
I'm going to call bullshit on that one Rad. I've met plenty who do. Especially Yusef.
Ben at November 12, 2018 5:59 PM
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