what pattern is here? This seems more like a perennial fact.
I'm also curious what David Deutsch would say would falsify his claim, him being a Popperian. What data would he take as proof that this is not the case?
I think he calls it "the Pattern" to distinguish it from the uncountable cases of conquest and slaughter thoughout human history, including many cases of ethnic "cleansing". I agree though that he needs to be more precise in modeling what he calls the Pattern.
my hunch is that if David ever wrote a clear exposition of this idea, it would be very easily shown to be a completely irrational frame. It is a conjecture for which I cannot imagine any fact falsifying.
Christians who blame Jews for the crucifixion of Christ don’t understand Christian theology or have not read and understood the words of Jesus. Jesus was crucified to pay for the sins of everyone reading this. He came to this world to die for our sins, so we can be united with God. I’m speaking to Christians and anyone who will believe. Jesus commands Christians to love and forgive EVERYONE who doesn’t believe.
God chose to bring the Messiah through the Jewish people. Jesus is Jewish. God/Jesus loves the Jewish people. The irrational, growing jew-hate mind virus described here is real and increasing in the world is a spiritual issue. The ruler of this world hates Jews and Christians (John 14:30, 16:11). Speaking personally as a Christian, I have a special love for Jewish people. Unfortunately, I do know Christians who have been influenced by the recent rise of anti-Semitism. This is directly from the pit of hell and I employ anyone who has found themselves attracted to these ideas pray to God that he removes this from your mind (Romans 12:2).
thankful for you. I grew up in a deeply bigoted anti-Jewish culture, Turkey. I became an American citizen four years ago. not in a million years would I think that the thirdworldism and jewhatred of that culture would become acceptable in America. I am not talking about just classic antisemitism. I am talking about a thirdworldist resentment politics fused with the latest version of jew hatred, antizionism. on one hand, I am worried about my family’s safety and about being a Jewish American. on the other hand, I am not worried at all about the jewish community. Jews will be fine. We always have been. I am much more worried about America, this beacon of freedom and liberty. this incredible society that somehow figured out to create a culture that isn’t rooted in ethnic bonds but in covenantal values, meritocracy, individual agency and responsibility, freedom. I will fight for America until the day I die. I owe my life this amazing country. It’s sad to see that a huge chunk of the population don’t understand the absolute exceptionalism of this place and the danger of the ideas they are playing with.
I'm a believing, practicing Catholic. And I will continue to stand up for Jews and for the right of Israel to both exist and defend itself. I can't say that I'm exactly "looking forward" to listening to this conversation with Deutsch because it seems so unsettling of a thesis to me, but I certainly will listen to it.
Pope Pius X: "We cannot give approval to this movement. We cannot prevent the Jews from going to Jerusalem, but we could never sanction it. The earth of Jerusalem, if it was not always holy, has been made holy by the life of Jesus Christ. I, as head of the church, cannot possibly say otherwise. The Jews have not recognized our Lord; we therefore cannot recognize the Jewish people.” Repent.
Thank you for this, Russ. I was/am a fairly strong Israel critic but I have in my contrarian way become more sympathetic to Israel since October 7th. I think the reason is that I sensed something similar to what is articulated here. Both the viciousness of the attack of 10/7 and the way that Israel’s response lives in the front of people’s brains has seemed a kind of madness to me.
I believe Israel’s conduct toward the Palestinians has been something equivalent to apartheid but the pro-Palestinian movement, especially recently, has creeped me out to the point that I wouldn’t join a pro-Palestinian protest at this point. There is something about the anarchic party-like atmosphere that seems like blood-lust for revenge. It does not match the tone of, say, anti-Iraq war protests I attended in my youth.
That being said, I’d like to see this theory fleshed out a bit more. The most out there and almost metaphysical part of the theory is what intrigues me the most. If you had asked me about the beginnings of antisemitism I would have cited the fallout from the Judean revolts and the establishment of Jews as a recognizable outside minority in many places, and so it would make sense that antisemitism became a powerful mind virus. But David Deutsch seems to think it predates all of that and is somehow a Pattern beyond history, as real and as abstract as the mathematical equations that govern our universe. THAT is very intriguing but I’d like to see a complete historical argument to back that up.
Dennis, is "apartheid" the right word when 21% of Israel's population is Arab, and 10% of the representatives in the Knesset are Arab or Druze? Arab citizens have all the same rights of other citizens.
Israel’s population is about 1/2 Arab and 1/2 Jewish. I think we need to dispense with the fiction that Gaza and the West Bank are Schrödinger’s territory of Israel.
Russ, I look forward to listening to the podcast. Sounds quite similar to Rene Girard's theory of mimetic desire leading to scapegoating. I wonder what Jonathan Bi would say?
Her thesis is that the way the Holocaust has traditionally been taught to Gentiles via Holocaust museums has been to objectify Jews and let Gentiles congratulate themselves about how they themselves wouldn’t be Nazis.
And these museums also tend to teach something to the effect of “Jews shouldn’t be murdered because they’re just like everyone else,” which sidesteps any explanation for the actual mechanism of why Jews have so often been hated throughout history.
Baked into Christianity and its secular successor ideologies was a hatred of Jews for not adopting the universalism of Christianity or Enlightenment values.
So teaching that Jews “are just like everyone else” is, at best, ineffective, and at worst, actually making the problem worse.
For what it’s worth, to rectify this, it seems like Dara Horn has started an educational initiative called the Tell Institute. I find that mission compelling: https://www.thetellinstitute.org/
I also keep thinking of the prescience of that Dara Horn essay on Holocaust education. She also wrote an excellent shorter essay, also in the Atlantic, about a year after 10/7 reflecting on the increasing antisemitism. David Nirenberg's book Anti-Judaism contains an exhaustive description of millennia of historical examples that could fit Deutsch's Pattern. Regarding the Enlightenment attitude toward Jews, as Cynthia Ozick wrote, it was something like "There is no God, and the Jews killed him."
Historically, the claim that Jews ‘didn’t adopt Enlightenment values’ reflects outsider perceptions, not Jewish behavior. Enlightenment thinkers often projected their critique of Christianity onto Judaism, and nationalists later did the same. In reality, Jews were deeply involved in Enlightenment thought—often earlier and more radically than their critics.
So, this hatred wasn't based on valid criticisms but manufactured for other reasons.
To be clear—David talks about this with Russ in the episode—it’s a post hoc excuse. They railroaded Dreyfus, despite him being totally assimilated in Enlightenment France. He wasn’t some poor peasant in the shtetl.
all through the podcast, I kept thinking "yes, and now what?"
I don't think it's hard to spot The Pattern as described, but if we don't know why it happens, we need to find the underlying cause(s), otherwise you're giving in to resignation, no?
describing it as a "virus" or illness probs isn't helpful unless we're planning to dissect affected brains to see if there is an underlying physical issue.
a bit disappointed there wasn't an attempt to explain the causes of the pattern by David.
I am a jew loving Zionist, so please take my list of partial explanations as such ( not justification):
- Identity: jews have strong customs, genetics and identity distinct from the Nations/communities they are in. They aren't fully assimilating and this causes some level of antagonism with the dominant culture.
- Dominant minority: believe Jewish culture (e.g. strong argumentation, policing of trustworthiness) plus genetics mean they are more often than not more wealthy and influential. The market dominant minority is almost always is resented out of jealousy. This is amy chua's idea.
- by nature of having a distinct community that to a degree will help each other out is received as unfair. Nepotism is too strong a word, but the sentiment of that word is what many feel about in-group favoritism from the outside.
That's all I have got. But I have also noticed the pattern and it is perplexing.
The most thorough academic history of the pattern over time is in the book "Anti-Judaism" by David Nirenberg, who is at the University of Chicago. Like Deutsch, Nirenberg offers no theory of the underlying psychological cause(s).
I rewrote this a couple times and decided there simply was no way to put lipstick on this pig but I think you, and Jews in general, ask the wrong question, which is what is it about you that you do that piss off everyone that interacts with you as a people. This predates Christ, Nazis, Rome, etc. Jews couldn't even live with Egypt, Babylon, Assyria, Canaanites, or hell even their own Samaritan brethren and later Christians.
Jews are basically a bully playing victim and wondering why everyone is fine when misfortune befalls them. People like to punch up and us goy aren't the chosen people.
That isn't a commentary on the righteousness of those beliefs but there is a giant cultural tone deafness that has been going on since Sarah tried to have Ishmael killed out of jealousy. The rest of us know you simply can't co-exist unless contained and leashed similar to the way you would treat a rabid animal. That isn't to say anything about individuals but as a whole, well we all know where we stand with Jews and hence no tears shed.
It’s not some mystery. In Rome, worship of the gods was part of the civic duty of being a loyal Roman citizen, and the Jews refused. Christianity resented Judaism, upon which it was built, for rejecting Christ. Nearly all anti Jewish sentiment is due to those simple explanations. Babylon, Assyrian, Egypt, had no particular hatred of Jews relative to other petty kingdoms.
Sounds like so many of my more “disagreeable” friends and colleagues. They can be frustrating. Being disagreeable is an unusual quality almost by definition and perhaps it’s become a perennial trope of the intellectual, the critical, or the cynic. It’s easy to dismiss the critic, the cynic, and the intellectual.
I don't disagree fundamentally but that goes to my point in that Russ, and his ilk, keep asking "why do our neighbors dislike us" while being in active denial of inside/outsider dynamics which they themselves have written about extensively. Fundamentally you have, at it's core (i.e. "Not all Jews (tm)") an insular religious sect whom believe they are superior to everyone else, refuse to integrate and in fact go out of their way to spurn the locals who granted them refuge, and have a long history of extreme violence and warmongering which they are proud of which continues to this day and then they wonder "why does everyone have schadenfreude at our troubles". End of the day, people dislike outsiders and especially violent condescending ones who arrive with cap in hands and then can't be bothered to cut the grass. That's not Jew-hatred, that's just normative behavior and Jews playing the age old victimhood game to garner unwarranted sympathy to excuse their anti-social culture, i.e. the term "magical Jew" needs to exist like "magically Negro" as a trope character that represents "a giant asshole of a guest with a persecution complex who cries anytime he gets his just deserts or is expected to obey the house rules/norms"
Jews aren't unique in this as you said, contrary to what many Jews believe including Russ here, but likewise none persist at it as long either; others give up (integrate) or die (often violently; pogroms weren't unique to Jews nor the last two centuries; Assyria specialized in them for example, notice the Picts and Celts are gone too; how about those Cappadocians!!). Other recent living examples, thought not as international sympathetic for historically or locality reasons, are the Ainu, Gypsies, etc. Jews are deluding themselves if they think they have it worse off that Gypsies in a place like FYROM. I'd be willing to bet all the money in my bank account the average mainland Japanese has way more sympathy for Jews (and their "plights") than that of Okinawan. Want to bet if a Micronesian or Jew was fire and only one bucket of water existed, which one the American Samoan or Hawaii would douse?
It really doesn't matter the fairness or the why, as has been said, often, though not always, it's a retroactive narrative. Russ, Deutsch, et al seem to be having an odd angst existential crisis of "it's not fair every one we treat like shit dislikes us" and simply refuse to acknowledge it's self inflicted. Quit being a disagreeable asshole if you ("Jews") don't like getting treated as one to put it bluntly.
I'm going to close this with a great example here from Arnold Kling in his commentary on Russ's post here, "If our enemies want to globalize the intifada, then we need to globalize the IDF. That means strict law enforcement. With respect to radical Islamists, it means intensive mobilization of our intelligence resources and aggressive security measures to find and imprison terrorists."
Notice how a man born in America, who by all measures is American, who works and lives in America, disidentifies himself as an American and instead first and foremost a Jew, an outsider. And his loyalty is to a far away ethnostate. He even openly admits, unlike many Israeli apologists, that Israel is the personification and extension of Jews and, as we all know, those Israeli's of Arab descent are just second class tokens brought like Strom bring out his black mistress, to be seen not heard. And what is his solution "We Jews should claim worldwide jurisdiction and send out state sponsored ethnic deathgangs out to neutralize those ethnicities and religions that dare demand equality with us!!!". I mean imagine if our boy Nick Fuentes wrote "You know what America needs to do, direct our government to send out gangs of white special ops to hunt down and kill those Jews, Spics, and Arab Moslems that demand they not play second fiddle!!!". And then once again, Russ, Arnold, etc. wonder why us untermensch have no empathy for them.
Hello. I listened with considerable interest to your podcast with Prof Deutsch on antisemitism, and like you I found his explanation wanting. His problem is that as an atheist his solution space for that question may be too narrow. I strongly suspect - though could never prove - that historic hatred of Jews is of demonic origin. They remain God's chosen people, and there is a hatred toward them that seems from beyond this world, it is so irrational and self-defeating. It may be non-trivial that Heinrich Himmler had well-known involvement with the occult.
A weird suggestion, I know. Just think about it. For a believing Jew, it shouldn't be that big a reach.
I think the Pattern more or less exists, but I am not sure if it is specific only to Jews, but rather any minority group that ends up being perceived as successful. There was the massacre of Black Wall Street in 1921 which had all the features of a Pogrom excepted directed towards black people. Jews, with their long history and customs of valuing education and handwashing in times where others did so less, has resulted them in being in this role of the perceived successful minority quite a lot throughout history.
It's frustrating to me when people complain that "Israel doesn't have good PR". They delude themselves to think that the hatred of Jews comes from a rational place and only if everyone could see the truth then the hatred would end.
There was no better "PR" for Israel than October 7th. The Muslims showed the world exactly what they are trying to do to the Jews. The Muslim celebrations around the world removed any shred of uncertainty that any rational person could have. The attempted genocide of the Jews unleashed anger against the Jews instead of sympathy.
The only explanation for this is the supernatural. The temptation to hate the Jew lures in the most sophisticated.
"There was no better "PR" for Israel than October 7th."
Probably true, and this is why polling shows a surge in sympathy for Israel across the western world which then eroded over the subsequent 2 years because of increasing evidence of Israel committing extensive war crimes and demonstrating cuplable indifference to civilian casualties.
On October 8th there were massive celebrations around the world that brought out hundreds of thousands. There were no "Not in my name" signs - only support for the resistance.
It's been said that any other country would be expected to eliminate Gaza to the last grain of sand. But Israel is expected to feed them.
The only war crime was Israel risking its soldiers to protect the aminals trying to commit a genocide against the Jews.
The first paragraph contains an insane and preposterous falsehood. The next two paragraphs explicit calls for massive war crimes. I hope Russ Roberts reads his comments to see where his advocacy of Jewish metaphysical narcissism leads, but probably it's too late. It's really just a sickness.
What rock do you live under? I wked through the celebrations in London and New York in the days after Oct 7. And yes, it may be painful to acknowledge - but those people do intend to murder the Jews.
I don't understand why its called "The Pattern"
what pattern is here? This seems more like a perennial fact.
I'm also curious what David Deutsch would say would falsify his claim, him being a Popperian. What data would he take as proof that this is not the case?
I think he calls it "the Pattern" to distinguish it from the uncountable cases of conquest and slaughter thoughout human history, including many cases of ethnic "cleansing". I agree though that he needs to be more precise in modeling what he calls the Pattern.
my hunch is that if David ever wrote a clear exposition of this idea, it would be very easily shown to be a completely irrational frame. It is a conjecture for which I cannot imagine any fact falsifying.
Christians who blame Jews for the crucifixion of Christ don’t understand Christian theology or have not read and understood the words of Jesus. Jesus was crucified to pay for the sins of everyone reading this. He came to this world to die for our sins, so we can be united with God. I’m speaking to Christians and anyone who will believe. Jesus commands Christians to love and forgive EVERYONE who doesn’t believe.
God chose to bring the Messiah through the Jewish people. Jesus is Jewish. God/Jesus loves the Jewish people. The irrational, growing jew-hate mind virus described here is real and increasing in the world is a spiritual issue. The ruler of this world hates Jews and Christians (John 14:30, 16:11). Speaking personally as a Christian, I have a special love for Jewish people. Unfortunately, I do know Christians who have been influenced by the recent rise of anti-Semitism. This is directly from the pit of hell and I employ anyone who has found themselves attracted to these ideas pray to God that he removes this from your mind (Romans 12:2).
thankful for you. I grew up in a deeply bigoted anti-Jewish culture, Turkey. I became an American citizen four years ago. not in a million years would I think that the thirdworldism and jewhatred of that culture would become acceptable in America. I am not talking about just classic antisemitism. I am talking about a thirdworldist resentment politics fused with the latest version of jew hatred, antizionism. on one hand, I am worried about my family’s safety and about being a Jewish American. on the other hand, I am not worried at all about the jewish community. Jews will be fine. We always have been. I am much more worried about America, this beacon of freedom and liberty. this incredible society that somehow figured out to create a culture that isn’t rooted in ethnic bonds but in covenantal values, meritocracy, individual agency and responsibility, freedom. I will fight for America until the day I die. I owe my life this amazing country. It’s sad to see that a huge chunk of the population don’t understand the absolute exceptionalism of this place and the danger of the ideas they are playing with.
We jews are the Impartial Spectator of the West.
I'm a believing, practicing Catholic. And I will continue to stand up for Jews and for the right of Israel to both exist and defend itself. I can't say that I'm exactly "looking forward" to listening to this conversation with Deutsch because it seems so unsettling of a thesis to me, but I certainly will listen to it.
Pope Pius X: "We cannot give approval to this movement. We cannot prevent the Jews from going to Jerusalem, but we could never sanction it. The earth of Jerusalem, if it was not always holy, has been made holy by the life of Jesus Christ. I, as head of the church, cannot possibly say otherwise. The Jews have not recognized our Lord; we therefore cannot recognize the Jewish people.” Repent.
Thank you for this, Russ. I was/am a fairly strong Israel critic but I have in my contrarian way become more sympathetic to Israel since October 7th. I think the reason is that I sensed something similar to what is articulated here. Both the viciousness of the attack of 10/7 and the way that Israel’s response lives in the front of people’s brains has seemed a kind of madness to me.
I believe Israel’s conduct toward the Palestinians has been something equivalent to apartheid but the pro-Palestinian movement, especially recently, has creeped me out to the point that I wouldn’t join a pro-Palestinian protest at this point. There is something about the anarchic party-like atmosphere that seems like blood-lust for revenge. It does not match the tone of, say, anti-Iraq war protests I attended in my youth.
That being said, I’d like to see this theory fleshed out a bit more. The most out there and almost metaphysical part of the theory is what intrigues me the most. If you had asked me about the beginnings of antisemitism I would have cited the fallout from the Judean revolts and the establishment of Jews as a recognizable outside minority in many places, and so it would make sense that antisemitism became a powerful mind virus. But David Deutsch seems to think it predates all of that and is somehow a Pattern beyond history, as real and as abstract as the mathematical equations that govern our universe. THAT is very intriguing but I’d like to see a complete historical argument to back that up.
Dennis, is "apartheid" the right word when 21% of Israel's population is Arab, and 10% of the representatives in the Knesset are Arab or Druze? Arab citizens have all the same rights of other citizens.
Israel’s population is about 1/2 Arab and 1/2 Jewish. I think we need to dispense with the fiction that Gaza and the West Bank are Schrödinger’s territory of Israel.
Russ, I look forward to listening to the podcast. Sounds quite similar to Rene Girard's theory of mimetic desire leading to scapegoating. I wonder what Jonathan Bi would say?
I’m excited to listen to this.
I keep mulling over Dara Horn’s essay from several months before October 7: https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2023/05/holocaust-student-education-jewish-anti-semitism/673488/
It’s chilling in its prescience.
Her thesis is that the way the Holocaust has traditionally been taught to Gentiles via Holocaust museums has been to objectify Jews and let Gentiles congratulate themselves about how they themselves wouldn’t be Nazis.
And these museums also tend to teach something to the effect of “Jews shouldn’t be murdered because they’re just like everyone else,” which sidesteps any explanation for the actual mechanism of why Jews have so often been hated throughout history.
Baked into Christianity and its secular successor ideologies was a hatred of Jews for not adopting the universalism of Christianity or Enlightenment values.
So teaching that Jews “are just like everyone else” is, at best, ineffective, and at worst, actually making the problem worse.
For what it’s worth, to rectify this, it seems like Dara Horn has started an educational initiative called the Tell Institute. I find that mission compelling: https://www.thetellinstitute.org/
I also keep thinking of the prescience of that Dara Horn essay on Holocaust education. She also wrote an excellent shorter essay, also in the Atlantic, about a year after 10/7 reflecting on the increasing antisemitism. David Nirenberg's book Anti-Judaism contains an exhaustive description of millennia of historical examples that could fit Deutsch's Pattern. Regarding the Enlightenment attitude toward Jews, as Cynthia Ozick wrote, it was something like "There is no God, and the Jews killed him."
Historically, the claim that Jews ‘didn’t adopt Enlightenment values’ reflects outsider perceptions, not Jewish behavior. Enlightenment thinkers often projected their critique of Christianity onto Judaism, and nationalists later did the same. In reality, Jews were deeply involved in Enlightenment thought—often earlier and more radically than their critics.
So, this hatred wasn't based on valid criticisms but manufactured for other reasons.
To be clear—David talks about this with Russ in the episode—it’s a post hoc excuse. They railroaded Dreyfus, despite him being totally assimilated in Enlightenment France. He wasn’t some poor peasant in the shtetl.
all through the podcast, I kept thinking "yes, and now what?"
I don't think it's hard to spot The Pattern as described, but if we don't know why it happens, we need to find the underlying cause(s), otherwise you're giving in to resignation, no?
describing it as a "virus" or illness probs isn't helpful unless we're planning to dissect affected brains to see if there is an underlying physical issue.
a bit disappointed there wasn't an attempt to explain the causes of the pattern by David.
I am a jew loving Zionist, so please take my list of partial explanations as such ( not justification):
- Identity: jews have strong customs, genetics and identity distinct from the Nations/communities they are in. They aren't fully assimilating and this causes some level of antagonism with the dominant culture.
- Dominant minority: believe Jewish culture (e.g. strong argumentation, policing of trustworthiness) plus genetics mean they are more often than not more wealthy and influential. The market dominant minority is almost always is resented out of jealousy. This is amy chua's idea.
- by nature of having a distinct community that to a degree will help each other out is received as unfair. Nepotism is too strong a word, but the sentiment of that word is what many feel about in-group favoritism from the outside.
That's all I have got. But I have also noticed the pattern and it is perplexing.
The most thorough academic history of the pattern over time is in the book "Anti-Judaism" by David Nirenberg, who is at the University of Chicago. Like Deutsch, Nirenberg offers no theory of the underlying psychological cause(s).
I rewrote this a couple times and decided there simply was no way to put lipstick on this pig but I think you, and Jews in general, ask the wrong question, which is what is it about you that you do that piss off everyone that interacts with you as a people. This predates Christ, Nazis, Rome, etc. Jews couldn't even live with Egypt, Babylon, Assyria, Canaanites, or hell even their own Samaritan brethren and later Christians.
Jews are basically a bully playing victim and wondering why everyone is fine when misfortune befalls them. People like to punch up and us goy aren't the chosen people.
That isn't a commentary on the righteousness of those beliefs but there is a giant cultural tone deafness that has been going on since Sarah tried to have Ishmael killed out of jealousy. The rest of us know you simply can't co-exist unless contained and leashed similar to the way you would treat a rabid animal. That isn't to say anything about individuals but as a whole, well we all know where we stand with Jews and hence no tears shed.
It’s not some mystery. In Rome, worship of the gods was part of the civic duty of being a loyal Roman citizen, and the Jews refused. Christianity resented Judaism, upon which it was built, for rejecting Christ. Nearly all anti Jewish sentiment is due to those simple explanations. Babylon, Assyrian, Egypt, had no particular hatred of Jews relative to other petty kingdoms.
Sounds like so many of my more “disagreeable” friends and colleagues. They can be frustrating. Being disagreeable is an unusual quality almost by definition and perhaps it’s become a perennial trope of the intellectual, the critical, or the cynic. It’s easy to dismiss the critic, the cynic, and the intellectual.
I don't disagree fundamentally but that goes to my point in that Russ, and his ilk, keep asking "why do our neighbors dislike us" while being in active denial of inside/outsider dynamics which they themselves have written about extensively. Fundamentally you have, at it's core (i.e. "Not all Jews (tm)") an insular religious sect whom believe they are superior to everyone else, refuse to integrate and in fact go out of their way to spurn the locals who granted them refuge, and have a long history of extreme violence and warmongering which they are proud of which continues to this day and then they wonder "why does everyone have schadenfreude at our troubles". End of the day, people dislike outsiders and especially violent condescending ones who arrive with cap in hands and then can't be bothered to cut the grass. That's not Jew-hatred, that's just normative behavior and Jews playing the age old victimhood game to garner unwarranted sympathy to excuse their anti-social culture, i.e. the term "magical Jew" needs to exist like "magically Negro" as a trope character that represents "a giant asshole of a guest with a persecution complex who cries anytime he gets his just deserts or is expected to obey the house rules/norms"
Jews aren't unique in this as you said, contrary to what many Jews believe including Russ here, but likewise none persist at it as long either; others give up (integrate) or die (often violently; pogroms weren't unique to Jews nor the last two centuries; Assyria specialized in them for example, notice the Picts and Celts are gone too; how about those Cappadocians!!). Other recent living examples, thought not as international sympathetic for historically or locality reasons, are the Ainu, Gypsies, etc. Jews are deluding themselves if they think they have it worse off that Gypsies in a place like FYROM. I'd be willing to bet all the money in my bank account the average mainland Japanese has way more sympathy for Jews (and their "plights") than that of Okinawan. Want to bet if a Micronesian or Jew was fire and only one bucket of water existed, which one the American Samoan or Hawaii would douse?
It really doesn't matter the fairness or the why, as has been said, often, though not always, it's a retroactive narrative. Russ, Deutsch, et al seem to be having an odd angst existential crisis of "it's not fair every one we treat like shit dislikes us" and simply refuse to acknowledge it's self inflicted. Quit being a disagreeable asshole if you ("Jews") don't like getting treated as one to put it bluntly.
I'm going to close this with a great example here from Arnold Kling in his commentary on Russ's post here, "If our enemies want to globalize the intifada, then we need to globalize the IDF. That means strict law enforcement. With respect to radical Islamists, it means intensive mobilization of our intelligence resources and aggressive security measures to find and imprison terrorists."
Notice how a man born in America, who by all measures is American, who works and lives in America, disidentifies himself as an American and instead first and foremost a Jew, an outsider. And his loyalty is to a far away ethnostate. He even openly admits, unlike many Israeli apologists, that Israel is the personification and extension of Jews and, as we all know, those Israeli's of Arab descent are just second class tokens brought like Strom bring out his black mistress, to be seen not heard. And what is his solution "We Jews should claim worldwide jurisdiction and send out state sponsored ethnic deathgangs out to neutralize those ethnicities and religions that dare demand equality with us!!!". I mean imagine if our boy Nick Fuentes wrote "You know what America needs to do, direct our government to send out gangs of white special ops to hunt down and kill those Jews, Spics, and Arab Moslems that demand they not play second fiddle!!!". And then once again, Russ, Arnold, etc. wonder why us untermensch have no empathy for them.
See David Mamet in the WSJ today. Same theme:
https://www.wsj.com/opinion/jews-face-horrors-with-humor-c0fd5057?mod=opinion_lead_pos5
Hello. I listened with considerable interest to your podcast with Prof Deutsch on antisemitism, and like you I found his explanation wanting. His problem is that as an atheist his solution space for that question may be too narrow. I strongly suspect - though could never prove - that historic hatred of Jews is of demonic origin. They remain God's chosen people, and there is a hatred toward them that seems from beyond this world, it is so irrational and self-defeating. It may be non-trivial that Heinrich Himmler had well-known involvement with the occult.
A weird suggestion, I know. Just think about it. For a believing Jew, it shouldn't be that big a reach.
I think the Pattern more or less exists, but I am not sure if it is specific only to Jews, but rather any minority group that ends up being perceived as successful. There was the massacre of Black Wall Street in 1921 which had all the features of a Pogrom excepted directed towards black people. Jews, with their long history and customs of valuing education and handwashing in times where others did so less, has resulted them in being in this role of the perceived successful minority quite a lot throughout history.
Big fan of EconTalk — I'd be curious to hear your thoughts on this article about the nature of antisemitism https://nonzionism.com/p/what-is-antisemitism
It's frustrating to me when people complain that "Israel doesn't have good PR". They delude themselves to think that the hatred of Jews comes from a rational place and only if everyone could see the truth then the hatred would end.
There was no better "PR" for Israel than October 7th. The Muslims showed the world exactly what they are trying to do to the Jews. The Muslim celebrations around the world removed any shred of uncertainty that any rational person could have. The attempted genocide of the Jews unleashed anger against the Jews instead of sympathy.
The only explanation for this is the supernatural. The temptation to hate the Jew lures in the most sophisticated.
"There was no better "PR" for Israel than October 7th."
Probably true, and this is why polling shows a surge in sympathy for Israel across the western world which then eroded over the subsequent 2 years because of increasing evidence of Israel committing extensive war crimes and demonstrating cuplable indifference to civilian casualties.
On October 8th there were massive celebrations around the world that brought out hundreds of thousands. There were no "Not in my name" signs - only support for the resistance.
It's been said that any other country would be expected to eliminate Gaza to the last grain of sand. But Israel is expected to feed them.
The only war crime was Israel risking its soldiers to protect the aminals trying to commit a genocide against the Jews.
The first paragraph contains an insane and preposterous falsehood. The next two paragraphs explicit calls for massive war crimes. I hope Russ Roberts reads his comments to see where his advocacy of Jewish metaphysical narcissism leads, but probably it's too late. It's really just a sickness.
What rock do you live under? I wked through the celebrations in London and New York in the days after Oct 7. And yes, it may be painful to acknowledge - but those people do intend to murder the Jews.