6 Replies to “Christopher Hitchens on antisemitism”
Jews are hated because unlike Christianity the Jewish religion teaches ethnic and religious hatred, neither do i believe Hitchens claim that the Christian version is cruder then Judaism. I consider the influences of Platonism and Aristotelianism and the Enlightenment on modern Christianity to make the religion far superior then Judaism.
Hitchen is himself part Jewish and an excommunist and i know from experience that neither Jew nor Muslim will admit that there could be anything wrong with there religion, personally i rather be a postchristian humanist then a postjewish humanist (communist).
He is right though that Judaism and Christianity has disrupted the natural state of being in many area’s of Europe.
Aheim,
Everything that you have written about Jewish people, including the traditional religion of the Jewish people, in your comment is exactly the opposite of what is true. You are displaying the holding of perverse obscene wrong views about, and antipathy felt toward, Jewish people that is a normal, normative, culturally engrained part of culturally Christian-European Christian and Post-Christan culture. You are displaying either utter ignorance of the world or utter profound ignorance of your own mind, and base meaness.
Self-criticism is the core essence of Jewish culture. Egalitarianism and aversion to injustice are the other main aspects of Jewish culture.
My ethnicity is Jewish – Jewish-Russian(Ukrainian)-Polish.
I am not an adherent of the traditional religion of the Jewish people, Judaism, and I know, like, I think, most Jewish people know, that the chauvanistic – but not imperialist and not supremacist – aspect of the traditional religion of the Jewish people, which is an aspect that is part of the traditional religions of other peoples, is not beneficial. It is completely innocuous – utterly harmless – to non-Jewish people, but it has been for millenia, very harmful to Jewish people. It incites, and it has incited, for millenia, malice toward Jewish people in very ignorant very egocentric people who are not Jewish.
Daniel, it is great that you are an Ukranian-Jew, but i am a Lowdutch-Humanist and as such i simply compair Jewish culture to Lowdutch culture and western culture in general.
I simply don’t see the positive traits you mention when i compair orthodox or liberal jewdry to my own culture.
When i think of jewdry i am reminded of people like Spinoza who where outcasts within the Jewish community in Amsterdam, or the many Jewish ghetto’s in Dutch cities that where created because the Sephardic Jews wanted to keep with there own kind.
Most positive, or even negative cultural changes within Dutch society where caused by native Dutchmen: The medieval Christian cults, the Reformation, enlightenment, early socialism and the antileft of today are all native Dutch products.
So i must keep to my observations and remind you that any positive trait you give Jewdry is in fact done better by the Dutch.
Aheim,
You are very ignorant about Jewish people and Jewish culture.
You wrote,
“I simply don’t see the positive traits you mention when i compair orthodox or liberal jewdry to my own culture.”
I know that you don’t. That is, to a large degree, precisely because of the actions of Jewish people.
Jewish people, in general, are the most self-critical people in the world. Jewish people are the most suicidaly, derangedly and delusionally, unjustly, wrongly “self-critical” (critical-of-other-members-of-their-own-group-of-people) – who are are a group of people who, for centuries, have been obscenely vilified by Christian European people and Muslim Arab and Muslim non-Arab Middle Eastern people, who for centuries have wrongly perceived Jewish people, hated Jewish people, falsely accused Jewish people of horrific crimes, repeatedly mass-murdered Jewish people, passed oppressive laws against Jewish people, and treated Jewish people with intransigent contempt (“I know that you are guilty, you lying Jew.”), and who utterly usurped the traditional religion of the Jewish people, and who utterly usurped the cultural historical and mythological narrative of the Jewish people, and whose religions, Christianity and Islam, are derivations of the traditional religion of the Jewish people, and whose religions, Christianity and Islam, are religions that, as tenets, explicitly cosmically vilify the Jewish people.
Almost all Jewish people experience, to varying degrees, as a psychological coping mechanism, and almost all Jewish people have, for centuries, experienced, to varying degrees, as a psychological coping mechanism, a deep profound form of Stockholm Syndrome. Almost all Jewish people internalize, and allow, in various ways, both subtle and gross, and further, in various ways, both subtle and gross, the propagation of lies that vilify Jewish people, which are currently, in this era, manifested mainly as lies that vilify the country of the Jewish people, Israel. Some few, but relatively many, Jewish people who have severely succumbed to Stockholm Syndrome have, for centuries, been fervent, and the most influential, propagators of lies that vilify Jewish people.
In Western societies (Jewish-based, European-based, Christian and Post-Christian societies) the leaders of anti-Jewish religious and political movements have often been Jewish.
Aheim, there is currently a huge, intendedly genocidally, anti-Jewish movement in the world now, the modern Islamic-Supremacist political movement, and a huge global colluding anti-Jewish movement, and you, here, on this thread, which is about Western anti-Jewish bigotry – which has been the main factor in the ability of the of the modern Islamic-Supremacist political movement to have become as huge and as dangerous as it has become – verbally attacked Jewish people.
Ahiem, note that you, here, on this thread, which is about Western anti-Jewish bigotry, verbally attacked Jewish people, and that you attacked Jewish people before I, in defending Jewish people, in a way that is quite rare for Jewish people, talked about the the harmful actions of non-Jewish people toward Jewish people.
The positive aspects of Western culture that you attribute to Christian ethnically European people were, in fact, developed by people who were Jewish.
Ahiem, note that I am saying this, which is true, only after you, here, on this thread, vilified Jewish people.
Aheim, you are my family member and my fellow human being. I do not wish you any harm. I wish you well. May we all be happy.
The following is my recollection of a teaching of the Buddha (the “Awakened One”) that has been helpful to me.
The Nine Forms of Self-Conceit (The nine forms of the unbeneficial wrong self-view that is held by almost all human beings – all normal human beings – all non-awakened human beings.)
Viewing oneself as superior when oneself is inferior
Viewing oneself as superior when oneself is equal
Viewing oneself as superior when oneself is superior
Viewing oneself as equal when oneself is inferior
Viewing oneself as equal when oneself is equal
Viewing oneself as equal when oneself is superior
Viewing oneself as inferior when oneself is inferior
Viewing oneself as inferior when oneself is equal
Viewing oneself as inferior when oneself is superior
Aheim, everything in this realm of existence is temporary. In this birth, you have been born into the situation that you were born into, and, in this birth, I have been born into the situation that I was born into.
Every living being experiences the results of their own actions. Every living being is the owner of their own actions and is the inheritor of the results of their own actions.
Aheim,
To clarify,
When I wrote that you are my family member, I meant, and mean, that you are my fellow living being.
HaHa, i knew by claiming that the Lowdutch people are better at expressing traditional Jewish traits that i would get an over the top, and highly neurotic response: You Jews are so easy to play.
Naturally your response has to be long, and the many points you make have to be self contradictory, though not to you personally.
An example of contradictions, that are caused by your inability to understand the postchristians, enlightenment mindset.
You consider selfcritical to be similar with suicidal and ”selfdestructive”, but that is a typical Abrahamic belief found in Christian and Jewish people alike. From a socratic point of view selfcriticism is the search for the good outside common culture, to understand natural inclinations and how society works by stepping outside of society and thus constructing a metaphilosophy out of many elements.
Selfcriticism from a humanistical point of view is therefor ”positive”
Another contradiction is how you claim that Jewish people are highly selfcritical, but you claim that it is unusual for a Jew to be openly self critical and i am not allowed to be noncritical of Jews myself. Too me that sounds contracitory because as a humanist i belief in an open culture of people sharing the same truth and being part of the same culture: Jewish culture on the other hand has a manichaen dualism which devides the world into Jews and nonjews, like the Muslim and earlychristian.
This basically means that by your definition Jews are selfcritical but only within there own social group, other nonjewish social groups being unimportant for establishing the truth of selfcriticism.
Clearly from a socratic and humanistical point of view, that doesn’t count as selfcritical because the self continues to indentify with the group.
There are other typical Jewish-Christian traits in the way you conceptualise reality that are not understandable to the humanist, i will make a list of them.
claim1: I do not understand Jewish culture.
Response: This originates from Jewish dualism, of course i understand you because as a philosopher i don’t believe you are inately different from other people around me.
claim2: The belief that Jews are a special people who are specially hated, and only the Jews themselves and no other ethnic group experiences this prosecution.
Response: Again this orginated in the Jewish dualistical mindset. If a people believe that there are only two groups of people, then clearly you create conditions for the persecution of weak minority by the powerfull majority.
In truth society has at one time or another been devided by Muslims and Christian, Christian and Muslim, peasants and aristocrats, protestants and catholics, catholics and protestants, socialists and conversatives, conservatives and socialists… etc.. and all the later groups are claimed to have persecuted the former groups.
This dualistical mindset which contradicts the humanistical holistical mindset is the main cause for persecution within Jewish-Christian population groups.
Claim3:
Christians-Muslims have stolen our culture and changed in ways we don’t like it.
Response: Again this is an Abrahamic belief: The idea the God has given the Torah, Jewish lifestyle and Jewish plight to the Jews and that these belong only to the Jewish. From my humanistical point of view you can not claim rights to cultural products, only to material products: That means that i can read the Bible, make klezmer music and eat rolmops in a traditional Jewish way and i would not be stealing or corrupting these cultural aspects because they don’t belong just to you, or the Jewish people.
Now about your claims that many Jews can be found in religious-ideological movements in Europe’s past, you will just have to write a short compilation of these movements naming the main players and prove that they are Jewish. I know you won’t do that in any succesfull manner because that would take effort.
Now that i have proven that this isn’t about the Jewish but about a conflic between the Jewish-Christian mindset and the Humanistical mindset. I hope, though doubt that you will understand.
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Jews are hated because unlike Christianity the Jewish religion teaches ethnic and religious hatred, neither do i believe Hitchens claim that the Christian version is cruder then Judaism. I consider the influences of Platonism and Aristotelianism and the Enlightenment on modern Christianity to make the religion far superior then Judaism.
Hitchen is himself part Jewish and an excommunist and i know from experience that neither Jew nor Muslim will admit that there could be anything wrong with there religion, personally i rather be a postchristian humanist then a postjewish humanist (communist).
He is right though that Judaism and Christianity has disrupted the natural state of being in many area’s of Europe.
Aheim,
Everything that you have written about Jewish people, including the traditional religion of the Jewish people, in your comment is exactly the opposite of what is true. You are displaying the holding of perverse obscene wrong views about, and antipathy felt toward, Jewish people that is a normal, normative, culturally engrained part of culturally Christian-European Christian and Post-Christan culture. You are displaying either utter ignorance of the world or utter profound ignorance of your own mind, and base meaness.
Self-criticism is the core essence of Jewish culture. Egalitarianism and aversion to injustice are the other main aspects of Jewish culture.
My ethnicity is Jewish – Jewish-Russian(Ukrainian)-Polish.
I am not an adherent of the traditional religion of the Jewish people, Judaism, and I know, like, I think, most Jewish people know, that the chauvanistic – but not imperialist and not supremacist – aspect of the traditional religion of the Jewish people, which is an aspect that is part of the traditional religions of other peoples, is not beneficial. It is completely innocuous – utterly harmless – to non-Jewish people, but it has been for millenia, very harmful to Jewish people. It incites, and it has incited, for millenia, malice toward Jewish people in very ignorant very egocentric people who are not Jewish.
Daniel, it is great that you are an Ukranian-Jew, but i am a Lowdutch-Humanist and as such i simply compair Jewish culture to Lowdutch culture and western culture in general.
I simply don’t see the positive traits you mention when i compair orthodox or liberal jewdry to my own culture.
When i think of jewdry i am reminded of people like Spinoza who where outcasts within the Jewish community in Amsterdam, or the many Jewish ghetto’s in Dutch cities that where created because the Sephardic Jews wanted to keep with there own kind.
Most positive, or even negative cultural changes within Dutch society where caused by native Dutchmen: The medieval Christian cults, the Reformation, enlightenment, early socialism and the antileft of today are all native Dutch products.
So i must keep to my observations and remind you that any positive trait you give Jewdry is in fact done better by the Dutch.
Aheim,
You are very ignorant about Jewish people and Jewish culture.
You wrote,
“I simply don’t see the positive traits you mention when i compair orthodox or liberal jewdry to my own culture.”
I know that you don’t. That is, to a large degree, precisely because of the actions of Jewish people.
Jewish people, in general, are the most self-critical people in the world. Jewish people are the most suicidaly, derangedly and delusionally, unjustly, wrongly “self-critical” (critical-of-other-members-of-their-own-group-of-people) – who are are a group of people who, for centuries, have been obscenely vilified by Christian European people and Muslim Arab and Muslim non-Arab Middle Eastern people, who for centuries have wrongly perceived Jewish people, hated Jewish people, falsely accused Jewish people of horrific crimes, repeatedly mass-murdered Jewish people, passed oppressive laws against Jewish people, and treated Jewish people with intransigent contempt (“I know that you are guilty, you lying Jew.”), and who utterly usurped the traditional religion of the Jewish people, and who utterly usurped the cultural historical and mythological narrative of the Jewish people, and whose religions, Christianity and Islam, are derivations of the traditional religion of the Jewish people, and whose religions, Christianity and Islam, are religions that, as tenets, explicitly cosmically vilify the Jewish people.
Almost all Jewish people experience, to varying degrees, as a psychological coping mechanism, and almost all Jewish people have, for centuries, experienced, to varying degrees, as a psychological coping mechanism, a deep profound form of Stockholm Syndrome. Almost all Jewish people internalize, and allow, in various ways, both subtle and gross, and further, in various ways, both subtle and gross, the propagation of lies that vilify Jewish people, which are currently, in this era, manifested mainly as lies that vilify the country of the Jewish people, Israel. Some few, but relatively many, Jewish people who have severely succumbed to Stockholm Syndrome have, for centuries, been fervent, and the most influential, propagators of lies that vilify Jewish people.
In Western societies (Jewish-based, European-based, Christian and Post-Christian societies) the leaders of anti-Jewish religious and political movements have often been Jewish.
Aheim, there is currently a huge, intendedly genocidally, anti-Jewish movement in the world now, the modern Islamic-Supremacist political movement, and a huge global colluding anti-Jewish movement, and you, here, on this thread, which is about Western anti-Jewish bigotry – which has been the main factor in the ability of the of the modern Islamic-Supremacist political movement to have become as huge and as dangerous as it has become – verbally attacked Jewish people.
Ahiem, note that you, here, on this thread, which is about Western anti-Jewish bigotry, verbally attacked Jewish people, and that you attacked Jewish people before I, in defending Jewish people, in a way that is quite rare for Jewish people, talked about the the harmful actions of non-Jewish people toward Jewish people.
The positive aspects of Western culture that you attribute to Christian ethnically European people were, in fact, developed by people who were Jewish.
Ahiem, note that I am saying this, which is true, only after you, here, on this thread, vilified Jewish people.
Aheim, you are my family member and my fellow human being. I do not wish you any harm. I wish you well. May we all be happy.
The following is my recollection of a teaching of the Buddha (the “Awakened One”) that has been helpful to me.
The Nine Forms of Self-Conceit (The nine forms of the unbeneficial wrong self-view that is held by almost all human beings – all normal human beings – all non-awakened human beings.)
Viewing oneself as superior when oneself is inferior
Viewing oneself as superior when oneself is equal
Viewing oneself as superior when oneself is superior
Viewing oneself as equal when oneself is inferior
Viewing oneself as equal when oneself is equal
Viewing oneself as equal when oneself is superior
Viewing oneself as inferior when oneself is inferior
Viewing oneself as inferior when oneself is equal
Viewing oneself as inferior when oneself is superior
Aheim, everything in this realm of existence is temporary. In this birth, you have been born into the situation that you were born into, and, in this birth, I have been born into the situation that I was born into.
Every living being experiences the results of their own actions. Every living being is the owner of their own actions and is the inheritor of the results of their own actions.
Aheim,
To clarify,
When I wrote that you are my family member, I meant, and mean, that you are my fellow living being.
HaHa, i knew by claiming that the Lowdutch people are better at expressing traditional Jewish traits that i would get an over the top, and highly neurotic response: You Jews are so easy to play.
Naturally your response has to be long, and the many points you make have to be self contradictory, though not to you personally.
An example of contradictions, that are caused by your inability to understand the postchristians, enlightenment mindset.
You consider selfcritical to be similar with suicidal and ”selfdestructive”, but that is a typical Abrahamic belief found in Christian and Jewish people alike. From a socratic point of view selfcriticism is the search for the good outside common culture, to understand natural inclinations and how society works by stepping outside of society and thus constructing a metaphilosophy out of many elements.
Selfcriticism from a humanistical point of view is therefor ”positive”
Another contradiction is how you claim that Jewish people are highly selfcritical, but you claim that it is unusual for a Jew to be openly self critical and i am not allowed to be noncritical of Jews myself. Too me that sounds contracitory because as a humanist i belief in an open culture of people sharing the same truth and being part of the same culture: Jewish culture on the other hand has a manichaen dualism which devides the world into Jews and nonjews, like the Muslim and earlychristian.
This basically means that by your definition Jews are selfcritical but only within there own social group, other nonjewish social groups being unimportant for establishing the truth of selfcriticism.
Clearly from a socratic and humanistical point of view, that doesn’t count as selfcritical because the self continues to indentify with the group.
There are other typical Jewish-Christian traits in the way you conceptualise reality that are not understandable to the humanist, i will make a list of them.
claim1: I do not understand Jewish culture.
Response: This originates from Jewish dualism, of course i understand you because as a philosopher i don’t believe you are inately different from other people around me.
claim2: The belief that Jews are a special people who are specially hated, and only the Jews themselves and no other ethnic group experiences this prosecution.
Response: Again this orginated in the Jewish dualistical mindset. If a people believe that there are only two groups of people, then clearly you create conditions for the persecution of weak minority by the powerfull majority.
In truth society has at one time or another been devided by Muslims and Christian, Christian and Muslim, peasants and aristocrats, protestants and catholics, catholics and protestants, socialists and conversatives, conservatives and socialists… etc.. and all the later groups are claimed to have persecuted the former groups.
This dualistical mindset which contradicts the humanistical holistical mindset is the main cause for persecution within Jewish-Christian population groups.
Claim3:
Christians-Muslims have stolen our culture and changed in ways we don’t like it.
Response: Again this is an Abrahamic belief: The idea the God has given the Torah, Jewish lifestyle and Jewish plight to the Jews and that these belong only to the Jewish. From my humanistical point of view you can not claim rights to cultural products, only to material products: That means that i can read the Bible, make klezmer music and eat rolmops in a traditional Jewish way and i would not be stealing or corrupting these cultural aspects because they don’t belong just to you, or the Jewish people.
Now about your claims that many Jews can be found in religious-ideological movements in Europe’s past, you will just have to write a short compilation of these movements naming the main players and prove that they are Jewish. I know you won’t do that in any succesfull manner because that would take effort.
Now that i have proven that this isn’t about the Jewish but about a conflic between the Jewish-Christian mindset and the Humanistical mindset. I hope, though doubt that you will understand.