Historically, that’s usually the way it works, yes. But it does illustrate that social cohesion is probably more of a secondary goal for you. You want social cohesion without burning the heretics. A laudable goal, but the extra constraints make it a greater challenge–possibly an insurmountable one.
No. Historically you just drive the heretics underground - only superficially cohesive. The actual history of schism, reformation, inquisition etc. all point to any such “cohesion” clearly being mere propaganda.
Enforced conformity is not social cohesion. Saudi Arabia and North Korea are not social cohesive societies.
No. I consider any social “cohesion” that requires burning heretics to be a false one. The heretics are part of society.
Ideally, you only have to burn a few heretics, while the rest see the incentive in becoming not-heretics.
Perhaps some are merely driven underground. But that’s good enough, at least for a while, for social cohesion purposes. Society itself only holds together for illusory reasons, after all.
No. That’s not social cohesion. It’s not some arbitrary term. Emotional connections are an important dimension of social cohesion.
Fear is not a positive emotion.
Add “lack of cynicism” to the traits of my progressivism, then.
Not at all. Illusions are powerful! They might be the most powerful trait humans have. We should make use of them for positive purposes. There’s nothing cynical in recognizing that they’re illusions, though.
Consider cryptocurrencies for the moment. Regardless of what else you might think of them, a Bitcoin has value–value in that you can trade it for “real money” or an actual tangible thing. Nothing gives it any value except for the belief that others will take it in trade. It’s a belief about belief (about belief about belief, etc.). The entire thing is an illusion that would fall apart as soon as people stopped believing it. But somehow, it holds together anyway.
The same is true of everything else in society. What gives the office of the president (or whatever) power? Just that people believe in it. If somehow everyone in the US simultaneously just stopped believing Biden was president, he wouldn’t be–or at least, he would lose the powers of the presidency. He wouldn’t be let into the White House, none of his orders would be followed, and so on.
Society is held together by just these sorts of shared illusions. They exist solely in our heads but they still have power.
I disagree. It’s a consensus belief, yes, but that’s not the same thing as an illusion.
The idea that a society can be both cohesive and harbour underground heresy isn’t the same thing at all. It’s inherently contradictory in a way crypto is not.
Terry Pratchett, is that you? I heard you died!
To be honest, I was channeling the book Sapiens, but I’ll take Pratchett. He was a better writer, anyhow.
Whether we call them illusions or shared consensus beliefs is a matter of semantics. Regardless, at a practical level, if the heretics are not causing an uproar, then they are indistinguishable from non-heretics.
And is there a difference, anyway? In any given religion, how many members really believe all the tenets with complete fervor–even in times and places where they would be killed for doing otherwise? All that matters is that they act as though they believe.
Yes, this. I think the popular understanding is problematic everywhere, but particularly and even dangerously so here.
No, it fits perfectly. In their eyes, it’s about defending the civilised US from uncivilised 3rd world immigrants, or from lefties who they believe want to tear down that civilisation. I reckon Arnold Kling was right about their reason for supporting Israel, too.
I can’t even remember the last time I saw a progressive talk approvingly about advances in science and technology, or a way to improve the human condition that wasn’t taking from one group to give to another. The centre left, yes, but they tend to be attacked by self-identified progressives.
Perhaps the problem is terminology, but then I don’t know what to call the axes-of-oppression centred beliefs.
Perhaps it’s the same impulse that makes US conservatives see criticism of America as unpatriotic?
The first two of those are 100% conservative principles, and learning is essential to civilisation from any point of view. Your idea of barbarism appears to coincide more with libertarianism than conservatism.
Good post. It’s easy to forget that however many checks and safeguards you add to a human system, most especially to a government, it still relies on people doing their jobs and following the rules. It relies on a shared belief.
That still doesn’t make the society cohesive. Social cohesion isn’t about appearances.
I don’t know. I’m not the one who brought up religion as an example of social cohesion. If all religions are facade anyway, it doesn’t break my thesis.
Social conformity is the conservative principle, not social cohesiveness. Look at the closely related Community Cohesion definition and tell me that’s what conservatives espouse:
A cohesive community is one where:
- There is common vision and a sense of belonging for all communities;
- The diversity of people’s different backgrounds and circumstances are appreciated and positively valued;
- Those from different backgrounds have similar life opportunities; and
- Strong and positive relationships are being developed between people from different backgrounds in the workplace, in schools and within neighbourhoods.
…and conservatives want institutionally-governed, hierarchical public order based off a monopoly of violence, since that’s what is the norm, up to and including now. Again, that’s not the same thing as good public order.
You say this as if the two are completely separate concepts.
Tell that to the group embracing climate denial, anti-vax, creationism, foetal personhood and other nutbaggery.
No, I don’t “selectively quote much.” That’s the only bit of the data that you quoted that was relevant to a question of a majority of antisemitic violence, and it’s, uh, not great for you to treat that as a selective quote.
Your cite also says that “We find that antisemitic hate crimes are occurring especially in politically progressive areas of the country. The New York metropolitan area and the Northeast in general, and urban centers in Florida, California, the Northwest and the Midwest are experiencing the majority of antisemitic incidents. …” and I mean, yeah? Those are areas with higher Jewish populations.
But then you go personal and wrong as hell:
blithely dismissing denying that there is such thing on the Left comes off badly.
Good thing I didn’t do that.
LOHD’s repeated automatic verdict of not guilty to any responsibility is troubling.
Bullshit.
Me too.
Cite please.
For fuck’s sake, it was the first sentence of my third post in this thread, and the first one that addressed anything other than a particularly bankrupt analysis of progressivism itself as fundamentally antisemitic, and also my first post longer than two sentences. That wasn’t “many posts in.”
I don’t know why you’re so profoundly misrepresenting what I’m saying, but anytime you wanna stop would be dandy.
For what it’s worth, a similar statement appears in that article:
In the past, sentiments regarding American Jews’ alleged dual loyalty were mainly exploited by extremists on the far right. Lately, it seems also to be manifested in left-wing discourse and actions that support or legitimize marginalization of Jews in the U.S. by blaming them for Israel’s policies.
And that seems right on point. I absolutely think that’s happening, and it’s awful and needs to be stopped. My objection is the misrepresentation that it’s mainly progressives engaging in antisemitic behavior, or that it’s due to fundamental flaws in progressive ideals. That misdiagnoses the problem and makes it harder to solve.
Has anyone here said it’s mainly progressives engaging in anti-Semitic behaviour?
Re progressive ideals, which part(s) do you disagree with? That the oppressor-oppressed framing is an important and widely adopted progressive idea, or that it has contributed to the development or toleration of anti-Semitism on the left by labelling Israelis as an oppressor group?
Follow the conversation if you’re interested; I’m not interested in quoting the back-and-forth between puzzlegal and dseid to show you.
This part, and the nonsense that followed it:
But also:
The Israeli government is oppressive–profoundly so.
What’s contributed to the rise of anti-Semitism on the left is conflating the Israeli government with the Israeli population as a whole, and then broadening that to Jews as a whole. That’s fucked up, and it’s happening, and it’s anathema to the leftist principles I’m familiar with. Intersectional views of oppression, rights, and justice necessarily recognize that people can oppress in one circumstance and be oppressed in another; that citizens are not the same thing as their government; and that collective punishment is never acceptable.
But there are stupid people everywhere, including in the left, and stupid people fail to make those distinctions, and some of them get really grotesquely antisemitic about it. It’s despite leftist principles, not because of them.
No, but she read the news created by conservatives, for the purpose of deligitimizing high education.
Universities that are so beholden to antisemitism that they’ve fired the administrators who tolerated antisemitism on campus.
And i watched that testimony. Gay, of Harvard, did the opposite of “proudly defending antisemitism”. She called it hateful several times, and said she rejected it. What she said she supported was freedom of speech, and what she tried to say was that the university would take incidents case by case to determine which were over the line. Her sin wasn’t supporting antisemitism, but tolerating too much of it in her advocacy of free speech. Do you think the ACLU “proudly defends Nazi philosophy”?
And I’ve attempted not to publicize my general location, but i give up. I said i have friends at a couple of college campuses. Those campuses are Harvard and MIT. My husband works at Harvard, a good friend works at Harvard, and i know some students there. I also teach a square dance class at MIT and am a member of the square dance club, and I’m there every week, and i interact with a lot of MIT students. I don’t just mark their attendance, i chat with them, try to support them, and hang out in the same Discord chat groups as several of them.
Neither my husband nor i are uncomfortable being Jews on campus, either.
Reports of antisemitism at Harvard and MIT are vastly overstated. Does it exist. Sure. Just like it exists everywhere else.
But here’s an article about a suit some Harvard students are bringing about the rampant antisemitism
I note that it’s illustrated with a photo of students who are protesting the war in Gaza, and that none of the signs say anything that i read as antisemitic. The worst accuses Israel of genocide. None say “from the river to the sea” or “globalize the intifada”. I guess one says “free Palestine” and another says “end the occupation”. I personally feel those fall within the realm of legitimate political discussion.
And here’s a an op-ed about how evil Harvard is
https://www.wsj.com/articles/harvard-antisemitism-task-force-derek-penslar-israel-hamas-67391846
I’m sorry that it’s pay walled, but I’m not going to support it by spending a gift link on it. I’ll just tell you that it explicitly equates anti-Israeli sentiment with antisemitism, and bitches that Harvard is not only investigating antisemitism on campus but is also investigating islamophobia, because “antisemitism can’t be condemned by itself”, blithely ignoring that in addition to a rising wave of antisemitism we are ALSO experiencing a surge in attacks on Arabs and Muslims.
Here’s an op ed piece from the Harvard Crimson, the main student-run paper, that discusses some of the issues at Harvard. It talks about the varying definitions of antisemitism, and about discourse on campus.
Thanks for those links. The lawsuit itself repeatedly conflates opposition to Israel’s policies with antisemitism, in a way that I think is pretty pernicious; but it also contains a lot of descriptions of awful antisemitic behavior on campus, and what sure looks like a failure of administration to address it fully. One example:
A video that went viral on social media shows a group of students swarming a Jewish Israeli
Harvard Business student, holding their keffiyehs open to surround and physically restrain him
while screaming, “shame!” over and over again. Ibrahim Bharmal, a Harvard Law Review
editor and a Civil Procedure teaching fellow, and Elom Tettey-Tamaklo, a Harvard Divinity
student and residential proctor, were among the assailants and are under FBI scrutiny for their
assault. Harvard has not imposed any discipline on Bharmal and has done nothing to sanction
Tettey-Tamaklo other than relieving him of his proctor responsibilities.
If this is accurate–and I have no reason to think otherwise–this is obviously unacceptable.
Oh. Shit. I promise this isn’t a rhetorical flourish. After I wrote that, I Googled Ibrahim Bharmal, and came across this first-hand account:
That’s quite a different take on the events from what shows up in the lawsuit, and it makes me wonder what else in the lawsuit isn’t represented fairly.
Oh wow. That’s a very different take indeed. Thanks for those two posts.
It may be a surprise to @Spice_Weasel that this thread was created to discuss those news reports, that she was so manipulated.
Mainly because that was not what motivated this thread. This thread spun off because of what I shared in a different thread, about how the elite institutions are being now targeted by the Right but that antisemitism on campuses is not new and has been present and oft ignored at less elite institutions, sharing my daughter’s experience, which was something that was never exploited by the Right, as it did not serve their agenda.
This thread was to explore the nature and breadth of that sort of thing. Including I think why in general progressives Jewish students don’t officially complain about it much or even to their non Jewish friends. (Often because they, correctly, see themselves as individuals as having had various advantages, higher SES backgrounds, good educational opportunities, no structural discrimination, so on. Unseemly to be complaining about a few words or spray paint or being disinvited to a group when other groups have it much worse, are not intersectionally privileged like they are. They are not being shot or targeted for traffic stops even. They are often btw not supporters of Israeli policies under Bibi. Even protest against them.)
They expect that they’d get scoffed at. Eyes rolled at. Not believed. Many of the responses in this thread would only validate their expectations. The experiences of those who do complain already do.
College students, of course, might misunderstand the idea of intersectionality. It’s not a points-game, where if you’re “intersectionally privileged” your score is too high to complain. The entire point of intersectionality is that a person isn’t either oppressor or oppressed, but that our multiple strains of culturally-influenced experiences can lead to benefiting from inequality in certain ways and suffering from it in other ways.
Certainly there’s antisemitic shit coming from some leftists on campus. It should be criticized for many reasons; among those reasons, but certainly not most important, is that it’s anathema to the idea of intersectionality to look at Likud’s horrific policies toward Palestinians and to conclude that Jews are the problem.