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 Manchu wrote:
Don't get me wrong, anti-Semitism has often enough been associated with religious doctrines, both Christian and Muslim. But you don't need to be a Christian or Muslim to be an anti-Semite. You have heard of that Hitler guy, presumably? And neither is anti-Israel sentiment necessary. Obviously there was no such nation back in the 1920s and 30s. People hate on the basis of difference. Jews have been vulnerable because they are visibly different, thanks to a number of reasons like laws segregating them from the rest of the population.

That guy Hitler who was Roman-Catholic? Yeah, I've heard of him. But let's not get into that discussion.

Anyway, all I've been trying to get across here is simply that the general populace, IN MY EXPERIENCE, does not seem to give a gak about this either way. I only ever see this topic come up in the news here when Ajax plays match, but I also think Sport fanatics are absolute degenerates.

 Manchu wrote:
Don't get me wrong, anti-Semitism has often enough been associated with religious doctrines, both Christian and Muslim. But you don't need to be a Christian or Muslim to be an anti-Semite. You have heard of that Hitler guy, presumably? And neither is anti-Israel sentiment necessary. Obviously there was no such nation back in the 1920s and 30s. People hate on the basis of difference. Jews have been vulnerable because they are visibly different, thanks to a number of reasons like laws segregating them from the rest of the population.

People have been using the anti-israel sentiment to voice their anti semitism and mask it as anti-israel though to an increasing amount.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Soladrin wrote:

 Manchu wrote:
Don't get me wrong, anti-Semitism has often enough been associated with religious doctrines, both Christian and Muslim. But you don't need to be a Christian or Muslim to be an anti-Semite. You have heard of that Hitler guy, presumably? And neither is anti-Israel sentiment necessary. Obviously there was no such nation back in the 1920s and 30s. People hate on the basis of difference. Jews have been vulnerable because they are visibly different, thanks to a number of reasons like laws segregating them from the rest of the population.

That guy Hitler who was Roman-Catholic? Yeah, I've heard of him. But let's not get into that discussion.

Anyway, all I've been trying to get across here is simply that the general populace, IN MY EXPERIENCE, does not seem to give a gak about this either way. I only ever see this topic come up in the news here when Ajax plays match, but I also think Sport fanatics are absolute degenerates.

He wasn't religious he was just pragmatic about it and used it as a temporary thing.

 Soladrin wrote:

 Grey Templar wrote:

 LordofHats wrote:

 Soladrin wrote:
Let me argue then, where else does anti-semitism come from?

A fair amount of modern antisemitism is derived from anti-Israeli sentiment (and yes there is a difference in so far as Israel is a State, and Semite is an ethnic group). Kind of the hazard of creating a 'Jewish State' is that anything that state does has a degree of fallback on Jews, even if they aren't part of that state. Throw in that much of Europe since the 80's has been politically sympathetic to Palestine, or even antagonistic towards 'Israeli Imperialism' in the Middle East and you end up with an environment where antisemitism becomes an issue.

Of course this is where the irony of this particular author writing on this particular subject kind of comes in.

There is also hundreds of years of the culture being anti-semetic. Largely influenced by undesirable religious reasons, but its carried into the general society. It was partially influenced by the fact a lot of banks were run by Jews, a profession traditionally viewed very poorly in Christianity. Borrowers and lenders have a Master/Slave relationship, and bankers in the past were well known to often take huge advantage of borrowers. Especially before regulation. So it leads to a stereotype of a greedy evil Banker, correlated with Judiasim.

Yeah... I guess that's where it helps to be atheist. I don't conflict a person being an arse with the entirety of a race.

It really had very little to do with religion and more to do with bankers being viewed as scum. You didn't have to be religious to not like being screwed over. It has some religious cause on top of it, but it was mostly environmental.

This discussion has been in the background for a while, but events in France have given this issue more prominence. It's a thought provoking and yet uncomfortable read.

 Grey Templar wrote:
It really had very little to do with religion and more to do with bankers being viewed as scum. You didn't have to be religious to not like being screwed over. It has some religious cause on top of it, but it was mostly environmental.

That's oversimplifying it (and white washing). Blaming Jews for killing Jesus was quite popular among Christians in the Early Modern period. In the Enlightenment Era, where Western Exceptionalism was inherently tied to Christianity, looking at Jews as both an inferior race riding the greatness of proper Europeans and as having an inferior religion was also very common.

It is impossible to completely separate European antisemitism from Christianity. It's an ugly reality, but it's reality. It is part of the cultural past and thus transitively part of the cultural present.

 LordofHats wrote:

 Grey Templar wrote:
It really had very little to do with religion and more to do with bankers being viewed as scum. You didn't have to be religious to not like being screwed over. It has some religious cause on top of it, but it was mostly environmental.

That's oversimplifying it (and white washing). Blaming Jews for killing Jesus was quite popular among Christians in the Early Modern period. In the Enlightenment Era, where Western Exceptionalism was inherently tied to Christianity, looking at Jews as both an inferior race riding the greatness of proper Europeans and as having an inferior religion was also very common.

It is impossible to completely separate European antisemitism from Christianity. It's an ugly reality, but it's reality. It is part of the cultural past and thus transitively part of the cultural present.

Yes, it was tied to religion in the past. But only so far as the religion had a huge impact on the culture in the past. Its no longer tied to the religion proper. Today its the generic culture.

Well the same is true of the past views of bankers and money lenders. Granted, even today bankers and money lenders get a lot of flak, but it's nothing compared to the "these guys are trash and sinners" kind of attitudes held by Medieval Europe. Money is of course of "root of all evil" (so said some famous guy) and no one ever got a good reputation back then living a life doing nothing but moving money around

 LordofHats wrote:

 Grey Templar wrote:
It really had very little to do with religion and more to do with bankers being viewed as scum. You didn't have to be religious to not like being screwed over. It has some religious cause on top of it, but it was mostly environmental.

That's oversimplifying it (and white washing). Blaming Jews for killing Jesus was quite popular among Christians in the Early Modern period. In the Enlightenment Era, where Western Exceptionalism was inherently tied to Christianity, looking at Jews as both an inferior race riding the greatness of proper Europeans and as having an inferior religion was also very common.

It is impossible to completely separate European antisemitism from Christianity. It's an ugly reality, but it's reality. It is part of the cultural past and thus transitively part of the cultural present.

It's interesting, I recently read a book about Edward the first ('Longshanks' of England). One of his lesser known acts was to make illegal (and punishable by death) the practice of 'silver shaving'; the process whereby merchants and bankers would shave tiny slivers of metal from coins, and then smelt them into larger blocks. In a night of raids by soldiers, some three hundred (mostly Jewish) were taken to the Tower and executed for this crime. It came at a time when Edward's treasury was gasping for breath, trying to finance several costly military expeditions into Scotland and Wales. Interestingly, up until that point in the thirteenth century Britain had been recognised as a haven for Jews (a lot had not long been expelled from Florence).

It's very easy to draw parallels from this instance to other events, across Europe, in the past thousand years and more. Unfortunately, it seems that even in modern societies the same propencities remain in terms of how we function as collective groups; like the Romanies, the lack of assimilation by Jewish people into the parent culture they inhabit means that they are often the first target once times of economic hardship are encountered. It can be for reasons of religion, of renewed nationalism, but in each case they are scapegoated as cause for whatever the current travails are, and separated from the rest of society. I think the fact that educated people know of this (and I'm sure there were similar conversations taking place in biergartens in Germany in the 20's and 30's) unfortunately doesn't seem to have much bearing on the larger sentiments in society, and for the abilities of unscrupulous politicians to tweek people's fears and base instincts.

I'm not sure what the answer is; better education for all? a further entrenchment of liberalism and tolerance?

Is it time for gamers to leave Games Workshop?

 Pacific wrote:

 LordofHats wrote:

 Grey Templar wrote:
It really had very little to do with religion and more to do with bankers being viewed as scum. You didn't have to be religious to not like being screwed over. It has some religious cause on top of it, but it was mostly environmental.

That's oversimplifying it (and white washing). Blaming Jews for killing Jesus was quite popular among Christians in the Early Modern period. In the Enlightenment Era, where Western Exceptionalism was inherently tied to Christianity, looking at Jews as both an inferior race riding the greatness of proper Europeans and as having an inferior religion was also very common.

It is impossible to completely separate European antisemitism from Christianity. It's an ugly reality, but it's reality. It is part of the cultural past and thus transitively part of the cultural present.

It's interesting, I recently read a book about Edward the first ('Longshanks' of England). One of his lesser known acts was to make illegal (and punishable by death) the practice of 'silver shaving'; the process whereby merchants and bankers would shave tiny slivers of metal from coins, and then smelt them into larger blocks. In a night of raids by soldiers, some three hundred (mostly Jewish) were taken to the Tower and executed for this crime. It came at a time when Edward's treasury was gasping for breath, trying to finance several costly military expeditions into Scotland and Wales. Interestingly, up until that point in the thirteenth century Britain had been recognised as a haven for Jews (a lot had not long been expelled from Florence).

It's very easy to draw parallels from this instance to other events, across Europe, in the past thousand years and more. Unfortunately, it seems that even in modern societies the same propencities remain in terms of how we function as collective groups; like the Romanies, the lack of assimilation by Jewish people into the parent culture they inhabit means that they are often the first target once times of economic hardship are encountered. It can be for reasons of religion, of renewed nationalism, but in each case they are scapegoated as cause for whatever the current travails are, and separated from the rest of society. I think the fact that educated people know of this (and I'm sure there were similar conversations taking place in biergartens in Germany in the 20's and 30's) unfortunately doesn't seem to have much bearing on the larger sentiments in society, and for the abilities of unscrupulous politicians to tweek people's fears and base instincts.

I'm not sure what the answer is; better education for all? a further entrenchment of liberalism and tolerance?

Liberalism isn't exactly helping. Liberal thought is currently heavily biased to the group responsible for the most backward thinking and discrimination in the world right now.

 Pacific wrote:
Unfortunately, it seems that even in modern societies the same propencities remain in terms of how we function as collective groups; like the Romanies, the lack of assimilation by Jewish people into the parent culture they inhabit means that they are often the first target once times of economic hardship are encountered. ?

The Jews of 1930's Germany were the most assimilated Jewish population ever. Most considered themselves German and Jewish second.

It didn't save them.

The question that needs to be asked is why, throughout all of human history, have the Jews been reviled?

What do they do, or evoke from their neighbours that makes them hated?

Pacific wrote:

It's very easy to draw parallels from this instance to other events, across Europe, in the past thousand years and more. Unfortunately, it seems that even in modern societies the same propencities remain in terms of how we function as collective groups; like the Romanies, the lack of assimilation by Jewish people into the parent culture they inhabit means that they are often the first target once times of economic hardship are encountered. It can be for reasons of religion, of renewed nationalism, but in each case they are scapegoated as cause for whatever the current travails are, and separated from the rest of society. I think the fact that educated people know of this (and I'm sure there were similar conversations taking place in biergartens in Germany in the 20's and 30's) unfortunately doesn't seem to have much bearing on the larger sentiments in society, and for the abilities of unscrupulous politicians to tweek people's fears and base instincts.

I'm not sure what the answer is; better education for all? a further entrenchment of liberalism and tolerance?

Well said.

Who knows what the answer is? Its kindof surreal to think that such an ancient social malaise can make such a powerful resurgence in the bastion of modern liberalism in what seems to me as an unprovoked manner. Anti-Semitism seems to have an absolute immortal quality and always becomes the common denominator of racial disdain.

I understand the perception that Jewish communities sometimes do not assimilate, but aren't Muslims in Europe immigrating much faster and assimilating even less? Im not very informed on French and European domestic politics so I'm genuinely curious.

 Soteks Prophet wrote:
The question that needs to be asked is why, throughout all of human history, have the Jews been reviled?

What do they do, or evoke from their neighbours that makes them hated?

Having a bad name in other fairy tale books.

 Soteks Prophet wrote:
The question that needs to be asked is why, throughout all of human history, have the Jews been reviled?

What do they do, or evoke from their neighbours that makes them hated?

Mostly, it is conspiracy theories. They say Jews want to control the world and keep the 'goys' (non-jews) as their slaves, or some similar nonsense.
I think the origin mostly in Jews being 'different'. It is a human trait to dislike those who are different. To Christians, Jews also have a bad name because "they" killed Jesus. Add to that the fact that Jews throughout history have often been wealthy, occupied influentual positions, had different and (to most non-Jews) mysterious customs and rituals and tend to stick together as small but well-organised groups, et voila: the perfect target for conspiracies.


In the modern times, added to this is the behaviour of Israel, which sometimes borders on fascism with its seeming disregard for non-Jewish (read: Palestinian) lives.


Personally, I think it does not matter whether Jews stay in Europe or go to Israel. Here they may be target in antisemite attacks by muslims and nationalists, but in Israel there is always the risk of war.

What why would the jews need to leave europe?

 Asherian Command wrote:
What why would the jews need to leave europe?

Because certain groups in Europe don't like them.

 Iron_Captain wrote:

 Asherian Command wrote:
What why would the jews need to leave europe?

Because certain groups in Europe don't like them.

Well too bad. Thats pretty stupid to think that is an okay thought. If you want to mass exodus anyone at least exodus the blue people. Man. Screw the blue people.

 Soladrin wrote:

 Soteks Prophet wrote:
The question that needs to be asked is why, throughout all of human history, have the Jews been reviled?

What do they do, or evoke from their neighbours that makes them hated?

Having a bad name in other fairy tale books.

If the discussion I overheard two Christians having yesterday is anything to go by, then yup that'll be it ("Jews killed Jesus!" ). These heavily edited, biased and in part fictional texts that people are taught to base their lives around tell them what to think, and even with revisionism they're still hardly PC. Though obviously that's just a part of the issue, culturally similar views develop.

A fear of the other and how easy it is to jump on the scapegoat (coincidentally coming from a Hebrew word) bandwagon when its being going on for so long. If it weren't the Jews then it'd be some other group that people needed to blame their problems on.

Heh, though on the subject of my own witnessing of antisemitism, I think I'll make a game of counting all the swastikas I see at uni tomorrow. Funnily enough I don't see much anti-Muslim or immigration graffiti. A swastika's easy to draw and the slurs uninventive, but for the idiots that scrawl those things anything more is probably a stretch.

 Wyrmalla wrote:

 Soladrin wrote:

 Soteks Prophet wrote:
The question that needs to be asked is why, throughout all of human history, have the Jews been reviled?

What do they do, or evoke from their neighbours that makes them hated?

Having a bad name in other fairy tale books.

If the discussion I overheard two Christians having yesterday is anything to go by, then yup that'll be it ("Jews killed Jesus!" ). These heavily edited, biased and in part fictional texts that people are taught to base their lives around tell them what to think, and even with revisionism they're still hardly PC. Though obviously that's just a part of the issue, culturally similar views develop.

A fear of the other and how easy it is to jump on the scapegoat (coincidentally coming from a Hebrew word) bandwagon when its being going on for so long. If it weren't the Jews then it'd be some other group that people needed to blame their problems on.

Heh, though on the subject of my own witnessing of antisemitism, I think I'll make a game of counting all the swastikas I see at uni tomorrow. Funnily enough I don't see much anti-Muslim or immigration graffiti. A swastika's easy to draw and the slurs uninventive, but for the idiots that scrawl those things anything more is probably a stretch.

This thread was going so well until..the above ignorance.

The crucifixion of Jesus is a historical fact, attested to by not only Christian, but Jewish and Roman historians.

The historical fact is that Jesus was killed by the Romans, at the behest of the Jews. So historically, gentiles and Jews had a hand in the death of Jesus. Which by the way, is exactly what the bible teaches... that all people had a hand in his death, because if you believe the teaching of the Bible then you realize that he died for our sins..(all of our sins, jew and gentile). We all crucified Him.

At least that's what I believe the bible teaches.

GG

Is it time for the Smurfs to leave Macragge?

 Grey Templar wrote:

Yes, it was tied to religion in the past. But only so far as the religion had a huge impact on the culture in the past. Its no longer tied to the religion proper. Today its the generic culture.

Bollocks. At least in the Netherlands. I don't know about France, but I'm pretty sure Germany is similar to us in this regard.
Antisemitism is not even remotely the generic culture here outside of fringe groups like neo-nazi's and (possibly) radical muslims. Anti-Islamism is the xenophobia-du-jour for people looking to blame an outside group for their own failures these days.

As to the soccer thing, I believe the chanting there is because the team that is being slandered (well, insofar as being called a jew can be considered slander) with these calls hails from Amsterdam, a city with a historically rather large Jewish population. (I have no idea how things are in that regard today, nor am I particularly interested.)

 Soteks Prophet wrote:
The question that needs to be asked is why, throughout all of human history, have the Jews been reviled?

What do they do, or evoke from their neighbours that makes them hated?

It's the hair. Everyone is super jealous that they can grow a proper Jew-fro, just like everyone is also jealous of the Afro. The rest of the world is hating on the fact that they can't have such superfly hair.

 Grey Templar wrote:
Liberalism isn't exactly helping. Liberal thought is currently heavily biased to the group responsible for the most backward thinking and discrimination in the world right now.

Well said. When I think of the most backward, hateful regimes in the world, they are invariably bastions of liberalism like North Korea, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Iran, and so on.

 Grey Templar wrote:


Liberalism isn't exactly helping. Liberal thought is currently heavily biased to the group responsible for the most backward thinking and discrimination in the world right now.

Liberal thought is biased towards the Republican party, who knew !?

It's odd about the football thing.

We have a similar (ish) thing over here with Spurs


http://www.spiegel.de/international/europe/football-why-tottenham-and-ajax-fans-have-a-jewish-identity-a-926095.html

http://www.tottenhamhotspur.com/news/y-word-consultation-update-210314/

Short answer to OP question: no.

If you are a Jew in France, you should be more afraid of dying in a car accident, or from cancer, or… than from a terrorist attack, because those are statistically way, way more likely. You do however have a bigger chance of being a target, which raise it from basically negligible to basically negligible but a little bigger.

 Soteks Prophet wrote:
The question that needs to be asked is why, throughout all of human history, have the Jews been reviled?

What do they do, or evoke from their neighbours that makes them hated?

Well, first they are a minority, second they were successful in showing the world the hatred they were subjected to. Other minorities suffered a similar amount of hate but did not get a comparable exposure.
There is nothing “special” about the Jews justifying this hatred.

 LordofHats wrote:

 Grey Templar wrote:
It really had very little to do with religion and more to do with bankers being viewed as scum. You didn't have to be religious to not like being screwed over. It has some religious cause on top of it, but it was mostly environmental.

That's oversimplifying it (and white washing). Blaming Jews for killing Jesus was quite popular among Christians in the Early Modern period. In the Enlightenment Era, where Western Exceptionalism was inherently tied to Christianity, looking at Jews as both an inferior race riding the greatness of proper Europeans and as having an inferior religion was also very common.

It is impossible to completely separate European antisemitism from Christianity. It's an ugly reality, but it's reality. It is part of the cultural past and thus transitively part of the cultural present.

The growth of anti-Semitism is horrible - but rather fascinating.

There's been new research showing the origins of how Judas was described in the Gospels as a Jew. Of course, all the other disciples and Jesus were jewish too, but Judas was the one singled out. In the earlier documents, and certainly in the letters of St Paul, Judas was not demonized, nor described as jewish. The story of Judas as the villain was worked up later; It seems the gospels were written, circa 60AD, at a time when the early Christian church was trying to separate itelf from, and establish dominance over, their main monotheistic rival, Judaism. Hence anti-Semitism was given a big boost by the early Christian church.

The Russian Tsars were big factors in the growth of anti-Semitism, incidentally; the fake document The Protocols of the Elders of ZIon, used for much anti-Jewish propaganda, even recently by the Iranian regime, was probably funded by Nicholas II. Hitler thought it was genuine.

I've just read Kershaw's two volume Hitler biog; he was not Catholic, indeed the Nazis set out to break the power of the Catholic church. Nor was he vegetarian (he ate sausages). I wouldn't even say he loved animals - when he attempted to impress women, he'd do so by beating his dogs.

re the current reference; there is real truth in it, and it worries me, especially the fact that jews feel endangered in France. But the toxic mix in society isn't just caused by the growth of intolerant Islam - it's also fired by anti-Arab racism, too, sponsored by Western governments. Those who launched 9/11 seem to have achieved their aims of destabilisation and sectarian conflict, just as did the assassins of Franz Ferdinand, some of the few people to benefit from World War 1.

Of course, what's ludicrous is that Hitler posted jews both as untermenschen, an ignorant Bolshevik rabble, but also as manipulative genius capitalists who controlled the international banking system. More ludicrous still is that many of those silly fantasies still exist, and are promulgated by modern European parties.

The Jewish emigration rate tends to be a reasonably good yardstick by which to judge the rise of xenophobia in a country. The emigration to Israel from France has held steady at about 800-2000 per year since 1965 through to about 2012. But in 2013? That went up to 3,000. In 2014? About 7,000 Jews left France for Israel. Last year, there were about 50,000 official enquiries from Jews in France asking about the circumstances surrounding the right of return. Crunching the number of queries compared to the number of emigrations over the last year few years, it's expected that around 15,000 Jews will leave France for Israel this year, according to the Jewish Agency. Many others still are heading to London and America, to the point where new synagogues are actually being established with entirely French congregations.

According to practically all recent polls, the majority of Jews (about 80%) no longer feel safe in France. The extreme left and right are on the rise, and with rising numbers of anti-semitic immigrants from the Middle-East, and a surge in the number of racist attacks (from rapes to murder to people spitting on them in the street), there is a feeling beginning to set in that France is no longer a place to bring up your children if you wish to pass on your Jewish heritage.

 Hivefleet Oblivion wrote:
Nor was he vegetarian (he ate sausages).

In Hitler's defense, sausages are delicious.

 Soladrin wrote:
I'm sorry what? I'm going to just say I keep up with all the news in my country and this is not a thing here.

Might want to try to keep up a bit more.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2015/04/10/nazi-chants-at-dutch-soccer-game-expose-an-ugly-blot-on-the-beautiful-game/

It was a beautiful day for soccer in the Dutch town of Utrecht. Spring sunshine filled the stadium as the local team, FC Utrecht, kicked off against perennial powerhouse Ajax Amsterdam.

As the beautiful game slowly played out on the field, however, things in the stands quickly got ugly.

“Hamas, Hamas, Jews to the gas,” sang a section of the home supporters towards the fans visiting from Amsterdam, a city historic in part for its Jewish community. “My father was in the commandos, my mother was in the SS, together they burned Jews, because Jews burn the best!”

The anti-Semitism was caught on video and quickly circulated among Dutch media. FC Utrecht issued an apology as Jewish organizations demanded action by soccer authorities.

This was not a spur of the moment action. To chant something so utterly hateful... that's something deep in the psyche.