Archie wrote: ↑Mon May 05, 2025 10:58 pm
I guess you could argue over the definition of "country" and dispute the exact number, but Jewish expulsions are certainly "a thing." Some of most famous ones would be the 1290 expulsion from England and the 1492 expulsion from Spain. And of course Germany in the 1930s. In my mind, getting hung up on the precise number is losing the forest for the trees. The key point is how Jews have consistently clashed with their Gentile neighbors.
A lot of minority groups are persecuted by dominant cultures throughout history. What makes Jews unique in that regard is that there were very intense religious differences and the dominant Christian culture at the time refused to let the Jews practice their religion in the way that they saw fit.
Many cultures have been wiped out or absorbed by more dominant cultures. This happened to Greece even. For whatever reason, the Jews have persisted in holding firm to their religious beliefs and cultural independence for thousands of years. Many other religions often just convert.
Obviously, most random dudes on Twitter are on Talmud scholars, so they will get things wrong when discussing the Talmud. But there is good reason to say that the Jews have viewed "the goyim" as lesser and that this has been a significant aspect of Jew-Gentile relations.
The problem isn't that they are not scholars, it's that they have no idea what they are looking at and a lot of false memes spread virulently like black propaganda. People often accept these as true when they simply aren't.
I don't think that Jews have historically viewed "goyim" as lesser but that's a deep question that is worth researching and discussing. The Jews did see themselves as obligated to uphold hundreds of laws that the gentiles didn't but a ton of those quotes that say things about how they viewed gentiles is just wrong or misrepresented. In Judaism, the gentiles are supposedly responsible for following just seven Noahide laws (you can easily google this) and even that is unfair in my opinion, but people get the facts on that wrong very often.
The Protocols text is regarded by most as inauthentic. But I would argue that even if we treat it as a work of fiction or political philosophy, the caricature it portrays is distinctly recognizable. And I think that is why it caught on after the Russian Revolution. People saw its predictions as relevant and surprisingly accurate.
It is human nature to fear and mistrust anybody or anything that you see might have power that you don't understand. Just because the meme caught on doesn't mean that it was accurate or even remotely fair. These people didn't see the memes as accurately but they provided and explanation for what they perceived as mysterious. This is how any kind of false conspiracy theory spreads. There is always a degree of fear or stress plus an information gap (mystery).
But I thought you said you wanted to talk about demographics. Ok, so why aren't you posting about demographics? Let's see what you've got.
I will definitely get to it. I will look at Hilberg's methodology and then we can dissect that in great detail but I need to have a chance to review that and I'm doing a lot of other work. I've always been curious how they came up with the 6 million estimate myself so it will be interesting to see your pushback on it.