Why lies matter
After the Berlin Wall came down, there was a brief period of liberalism in Eastern Europe:
The contemporary left disdains the open society as a neo-liberal capitalist dream; the right fears its skepticism toward tradition. But for the last five decades, most of America and Europe’s prosperity and peace have been based on an open society consensus, which for a brief moment after the end of the Cold War, it looked like Western thinkers like Soros had succeeded in importing to Eastern Europe. Markets opened to foreign investors. In 1991, Soros founded the Central European University with campuses in Prague, Warsaw and Budapest, a US-funded education center committed to critical thought and the study of democracy. Ironically, given recent developments, the CEU’s headquarters moved from Prague to Budapest when the Hungarian government of the time appeared more welcoming than the Czech.
Today it’s getting much darker in Eastern Europe:
That was then. The current Hungarian government, as Guy Verhofstadt wrote earlier this month, is probably the most illiberal and authoritarian in Europe, shutting down newspapers, corruptly capturing major facilities like water and energy, wrenching control of cultural and educational centers. Just like d’Souza, Barr and Trump Jr., the Hungarian government attacks Muslim migrants and Soros. During last spring’s election, when I was last in Hungary, you couldn’t turn without spotting the ruling Fidesz party advertisements, which featured crude photoshopped images of Soros personally cutting open the Hungarian border fences designed to keep out Muslim migrants. Like most authoritarian regimes, the Hungarian government inspires loyalty by stoking the fires of ethnic supremacy. Hungary, which spent centuries fighting the Ottoman Turks, has seen itself as Europe’s border with Islam since long before the current migrant crisis. The American alt-right laps up this talk of a clash of civilizations.
I know that some people think that it doesn’t matter if people lie about George Soros, if the President’s son calls him a Nazi collaborator. All that matters (in their view) is corporate tax cuts. In the short run it might seem like that is true, but in the long run you might say that honesty is all that matters. A society built on lies will inevitably abandon liberalism.
Lies are a way of dehumanizing individuals like George Soros. Once they are dehumanized, it’s much easier for troubled people to justify violence against them, or indeed against entire ethnic groups. Hitler dehumanized the Jews through lies, and Mao dehumanized the rich through lies. And that’s why for me there is only one overriding issue in the midterm elections. Lies. Yes, Hungary and Poland are still a long way from the 1930s, and America is further still, but I’d rather not experiment with how far this demagoguery can be pushed before causing major harm. The risks are too great.
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29. October 2018 at 10:41
Doesn’t seem like there is any choice in the matter. It’s not lies vs no lies. It’s these lies vs those lies, do I want “social justice warriors” or “fascists”? It doesn’t seem like there are many principled people, certainly not many in positions of power. Even a principled person would have to act unprincipled to gain power. But can anyone that actually wants power that much, be principled in the first place?
29. October 2018 at 12:16
@XVO: precisely. Anyone who wants to be president of the US is automatically not the kind of person you want in the job, sadly.
Still, can’t one be ambitious and generally honest? At least we should acknowledge a sliding scale. Politicians should try to at least stay within the bounds of reality, if they want to be overly optimistic about their schemes that’s fine (if you want to keep your plan you can) but that’s different than Trumpian scorched earth obvious lies.
29. October 2018 at 12:29
Great post. Truth matters.
29. October 2018 at 12:44
Apparently they’ve never heard of Lukashenko.
What does this mean other than Jewish domination?
Both parties are highly dishonest, but the Democratic is generally less honest than the Republican.
Then stop feeding the lies of Russophobes.
29. October 2018 at 12:47
Also, what inspires Orban isn’t the alt-right. Remember, he deported Spencer. It’s the Jewish state.
29. October 2018 at 12:48
Do you have any basis whatsoever for this claim? America today is based on Jew lies. Is it abandoning Jew domination? Sadly, no.
29. October 2018 at 13:29
“America today is based on Jew lies.” – um, ok, which ones?
Bonus points for being extra anti-semitic right after the Pittsburgh shooting.
29. October 2018 at 13:39
msgkings. My comment sections sort of prove the point. Alas.
29. October 2018 at 14:43
I guess E. Harding went full-bore “Protocols of the Elders of Zion.” Anyway, “America today” has Trump and Republicans running all three branches of government. Also, most of the state governors and houses are Republican.
Do you mean the Banks? The Fed? There are a lot of rents captured by finance, but most of those rents go to local Jimmy Stewart banks. Finance has a lot of rents, but health care has more rents. Again, the rents are not captured by your Jewish and foreign caricatures.
Yeah, I know facts won’t matter. But, well, I’ll try.
29. October 2018 at 15:51
“The Jewish State”? Israel? Why would Viktor Orban be “inspired” by Israel?
29. October 2018 at 15:54
Scott,
can you name quotes from Orbàn, or at least circulated views of Orbàn, which are clearly a lie? The charge of “lying” is used so inflationary these days. In 90% of the cases I’ve seen, it’s simply different views on the world, but certainly no lies.
The argument that Orbán is antisemitic is a lie. In fact he is the biggest supporter of Jews and the Jewish state in whole Europe. The EU on the other hand is pretty anti-Jewish, anti-Semitic, anti-Israel. If anyone ever needs more examples: You can see how real anti-Semites like E. Harding hate Orbán. Harding is no exception, that’s exactly how these people tick. Back in the days I heard a lot of antisemitic comments from CNN people like Ted Turner, I never heard something similar from Orbán.
The argument that Orbán tries to gain political influence over public broadcasting, water, energy, courts, cultural and educational centers might be true but we had this argument before. It is a lie in that aspect that Orbán is an exception. Unfortunately this behavior is true for whole Europe. It’s an institutional problem and not a specialty of Orbán at all.
The argument that Orbán is antidemocratic is untrue under the aspect that he has won two-thirds majorities several times, even elections where he was not in power before. Which of the supposedly democratic EU politicians has similar results? Hungary is no less democratic than the supranational EU construct. Rather the opposite is the case.
@Philo
Orbán is the closest ally of Israel in Europe. That tells you everything about the EU, that you need to know.
29. October 2018 at 17:04
“Unfortunately this behavior is true for whole Europe.”
Well, no, it isn’t. There is not a parallel treatment of anti-May media in UK or anti-Merkel media in Germany. When power shifted from Labour to Tories, the Telegraph didn’t suddenly get a huge influx of government ad revenue.
Broad outlines are: Orban packed the court and forced retirement of judges older than 62. Government ad campaigns have blatantly shifted to pro-government media outlets. Private advertisers are pressured, through the regulatory state, to also send advertising to pro-government media outlets.
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-hungary-orban-media-insight/gloom-in-the-newsroom-as-hungarys-independent-media-recedes-idUSKCN1M40SP
A lot of these “soft dictatorships” have sprung up. The government has correct vote counting and does not outright persecute dissidents for being dissidents. Instead, anti-government “happen” to be subject to regulation and tax investigations. The boundaries of electoral law are pushed to undemocratic extremes (such as the ethnic Hungariarians in Romania given the vote).
29. October 2018 at 17:14
@Philo
Read the news:
timesofisrael.com/in-israel-hard-right-hungarian-pm-hails-himself-and-netanyahu-as-patriots/
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Israeli_West_Bank_barrier
The ones that led Trump to rip up the Iran Deal, for starters. The hatred of White people that emanates from the means of mass information is characteristically Jewish, and the hatred of Russia seems to be so as well. The Jews were disproportionately powerful in creating the lies behind the Civil Rights movement (“if only Black people looked just like White…”), and are the only group whose support for (ubiquitous and strongly anti-White) Affirmative Action goes up when it’s framed as hurting Whites. So much of empty American civic nationalist rhetoric, concepts, and imagery is simply a Hollywood (i.e., Jewish) construct detached from anything in reality.
Jewish control arises in two ways: through wealth (which, in the case of Jews, does often come from their disproportionate concentration in investment banks- look at the board of any MSM-quoted thinktank) and through academia/the media, which requires ambition more than wealth. However, both college administration and media ownership is heavily disproportionately Jewish, so it may be money that’s driving the bus here as well.
[citation needed]. Anyway, commercial banking isn’t anywhere near as heavily Jewish in orientation as investment banking.
IDK if healthcare has more rents. There seem to be fewer healthcare than investment banking people on thinktank boards.
I don’t have many foreign caricatures at all; far fewer than Sumner does, in fact. There is no doubt Jews control a disproportionate portion of national wealth. And their political donations are certainly something.
They do.
Nice (for the record, I will be voting Republican on the state level this year). Does that somehow refute my point?
jpost.com/Diaspora/Antisemitism/Delegitimizing-Israel-soon-to-be-illegal-in-South-Carolina-533515
Oh; I don’t hate him (especially not for his being inspired by and friends with the Israeli leadership). I don’t mind weak states making friends with stronger ones for common goals insofar as these goals do not contradict my own. I do, of course, find him sadly disappointing on many matters, from treatment of the actual alt-right to treatment of Russia.
Putin and Orban aren’t anti-democratic; Erdogan and Bolsonaro seem to be, though.
By American standards, yes. By objective standards, barely.
@ssumner
How do the comment sections prove your point, rather than the points of the people making the comments?
29. October 2018 at 18:29
Matthew Waters,
I’m talking about Mainland Europe here. The UK might be a positive exception, I have no final opinion on that.
But even in the UK you have a public broadcaster like the BBC. People have to pay about $200 for it. They have to pay, there’s no choice. The media budget of ordinary people is not endless. If you have to pay $200 for state media, you do have way less money left for free media. That’s a major mechanism in Europe, actually. It’s subtle but very effective. As I said: It’s clearly an institutional problem.
E. Harding,
What I don’t get is this: Why are so obsessed about which private citizen owns what? Especially regarding “Jews”. Why would being “Jewish” be a relevant parameter in all this? American Jews are one of the most heterogeneous groups I know of. You are using the wrong parameter.
Not to mention that you sound like a communist, or social democrat, or SJW. These people are obsessed with those things, too.
29. October 2018 at 18:34
I find your framing horrific, but you can look up how much “Jewish control” there is of the banks or the Fed. You can look up the Fed board of Governors, the boards of the individual Fed Banks, the CEOs of banks, etc. They’re actual human beings and not defined by being Jewish or not Jewish.
What actual humans in what actual offices are creating which actual problems? Why does it matter whether they’re Jewish anymore than if they’re Presbyterian or atheist?
I could respond more concretely to rents. But if you start out with asserting “Jewish control” without specific people and actions, then the onus is on you.
29. October 2018 at 18:47
Christian,
I only used the UK because I speak the language and somewhat know the culture. I’m not very versed on Hungary, but what I can glean is similar to other semi-dictatorships like Russia. You can do a lot through contracts, regulation and tax investigations. Is there a parallel of government ad revenue disparities in France, Germany, the Netherlands, etc.?
I also made a point that “everybody does it” is the argument of a child. I deleted that argument. But this favoritism of pro-Orban media outlets is bad. Packing the court and newly forcing age 62 retirement is bad. Going after enemies with stifling, non-ending regulatory investigations is bad. No, it’s not common or anywhere near the same extent in Western European countries.
29. October 2018 at 20:11
E Harding is obsessed with who ‘controls’ wealth, because he is a penniless loser. Penniless losers like Hitler and Harding always find scapegoats. Jews as a group tend to be fairly successful so they catch hell often. Malays feel similarly about Chinese Malaysians.
How do you say ‘clown’ in Russian, Comrade Harding?
29. October 2018 at 21:07
Anyone who thinks that the choice between social justice warriors and fascists is a hard one is a cad, and possibly a fascist.
30. October 2018 at 07:54
@msgkings
Is your brain so weak it is unable to tell the difference between the left wing and right wing? I am hardly against the existence of millionaires and billionaires. I do not, unlike every leftwing group, desire to seize the means of consumption. What matters to me is not the existence of inequality, but to what ends it is used for.
‘Clown’. Come on, msgkings, you can’t be that ignorant.
I don’t know, and I don’t care to find out. The important thing is that it does matter very much in the real world. For whatever reason, the Jews have different preferences than the gentiles. Perhaps it’s because people’s brains are wired to be tribal. But I don’t know anything about psychology.
There are as many Jewish ideologies as there are ways to screw the White man. Don’t be fooled by the apparent diversity. What matters is the purpose of the ideology, not the exact content.
Now, there actually are cases of Jews standing up for the White race (e.g., Stephen Miller). However, these cases are fewer than you think, and in every instance, it seems to be out of apparent self-interest.
The list is too long to name. But, for a start, look at the recent major hires at any major newspaper.
Hm? Are you also incapable of distinguishing between the left and the right?
30. October 2018 at 08:15
@ssumner: You once banned a poster named ‘Shmebulock Crusher of P***y’. That guy was way less toxic than Harding. Not that you care but either he goes or I go, if I want to go to Stormfront I can just type those letters into my browser. He has crossed the line, you should do the right thing.
30. October 2018 at 09:08
I agree completely Scott.
30. October 2018 at 09:13
I don’t normally like to read your comments section due to the prevalence of Trump cultists and RWNJs. Just glanced at Harding’s comments. Things have gotten worse. Maybe it’s time to inform the FBI before another synagogue massacre.
30. October 2018 at 10:00
Seconded (thirded?). This is bizarre.
30. October 2018 at 10:32
“But, for a start, look at the recent major hires at any major newspaper.”
Okay, which ones? What did they do exactly that you disagree with? Why does their Jewishness matter?
But like I first said, facts don’t matter to you. You haven’t named any particular person or organization. You haven’t given any concrete example. It’s all vague conspiracy theories.
30. October 2018 at 10:38
Sorry, I skipped the top of Harding’s response and only read his “look at hires at major newspapers” comment.
I’m still conflicted about whether to engage with people like Harding. The gaps in logic and evidence-free assumptions in his arguments have to be apparent to him at some point, right? But I’m sorry if it hurt the comment section to engage with him.
30. October 2018 at 11:03
Thank you for this simple, penetrating statement.
30. October 2018 at 11:43
4th’ed. I think 99% of us aren’t here to discuss Harding’s fantasies about Jew anything.
I don’t mind having a beer with people and explaining why a John Birch Society approach to reality is total BS. However, it only lowers the level of conversation on this blog.
30. October 2018 at 12:24
Re: Harding
Would you discuss banning someone who mirrored him on the left, say like Ben Cole, with his MMT, but with an additional dose of hatred for corporations and the Koch brothers, a strong sympathy for Palestinians, but with a muted criticism of Israel, because he knows the boundaries of polite society?
Harding is obviously a screwball, who doesn’t see the ridiculousness in denying Putin’s subversion of democracy and term limits. Also quite weak on principles, turning on Trump because of a remark about the visa lottery program, of which E Harding claims to be a beneficiary.
This acceptance of leftist violence, and feigned outrage when the right takes a small step towards physical confrontation is a much bigger threat than a screwball like E Harding.
The alt-right with good justification says: Our speech is treated like violence, the Antifa’s violence is treated like speech.
Somebody on the left commits felony assault, and gets probation:
https://www.berkeleyside.com/2018/08/08/eric-clanton-takes-3-year-probation-deal-in-berkeley-rally-bike-lock-assault-case
I somehow doubt that probation deal would be available if the defendant belonged to the Patriot Prayer group or The Proud Boys.
Hot off the press: We have from reliable sources, that during 1964 and 1965, Brett Kavanaugh repeatedly kicked a pregnant relative in the stomach.
30. October 2018 at 12:36
XVO, don’t like either side? Then vote for divided government. There’s some security in gridlock.
30. October 2018 at 13:06
Ho, boy.
No, I criticized Trump because of his ridiculous, derogatory, and false statement visa lottery recipients are the “worst of the worst” within each country. That’s me standing up for principle, not against it. Anyway, I was anti-Trump for months when he said that, so I don’t know what you’re on about.
I assume I know more about this than you, or your criticism would be actually specific, rather than denialist.
You aren’t a child. But you act like one, with your refusal to understand the most basic things. Anyway, I was thinking of people like Bret Stephens, Bari Weiss, Jennifer Senior, Michelle Goldberg, Jeff Goldberg, etc. If you haven’t read them, do so. And use your head. I can lead you to water; I can’t make you drink.
Term limits, despite their somewhat anti-democratic character, are justified by their improvement of democracy’s vitality. I do think Putin was the right man to be President in 2012, and, with some complaints about his presidency going too long and failing to combat institutional ossification, the right man to stay President in 2018. Has there been some subversion of democracy in Russia under Putin? Yes. But it is nowhere near as extensive as Western imperialists will have you believe. Would the preservation of term limits have been a good thing for Russia in 2012? Perhaps. But nobody knows.
What’s the line? Quote me when I crossed it.
30. October 2018 at 13:07
That’s what I’m planning to do this year.
30. October 2018 at 13:35
@Viking I’m not sure what the left equivalent of talking about the jewish control of the media is — maybe 9/11 truthers? — but if i had a blog and someone kept bringing it up, sure I’d ban them.
Despite his TDS, sumner is not of the left, and I doubt he equates anti-fa’s violence with free speech.
As to Harding and free speech, I don’t think it’s necessary (or desirable) that everyone be allowed to say anything they want in any comments section of any blog. Harding is welcome to talk about Jewish control of the media on his own blog if he wants.
30. October 2018 at 17:09
Re: about Pittsburgh:
http://www.unz.com/akarlin/a-synagogue-and-two-borders/
30. October 2018 at 20:15
Bret Stephans and Bari Weiss did, what, exactly? Write stuff you disagree with? If your standard for being rabidly anti-semetic is finding Jews who write stuff you disagree with, then that’s an extremely low standard.
Yeah, I’m not engaging anymore.
30. October 2018 at 23:20
Honestly, I never thought this kind of paleo anti-semitism would so quickly reach the US. There seems to be a certain unfortunate tradition of it in Europe, the more so the more Eastern the Europe. But until now the US was pretty clear of it, and it seems to crop up everywhere, seemingly without specific casus belli. Then again, if you look at the UK… Seems like the whole world is doing a repeat of the 1930s. The anti trade thing, the nationalism thing, now the anti-semitism, it’s as if it all came in a package.
Hopefully there is some residual antibodies and the recent flare-up of the disease turns out to be more farce than tragedy.
31. October 2018 at 12:49
That’s where you’re wrong, kiddo.
31. October 2018 at 20:12
Not @Harding, that’s pointless, but re: Harding – he’s a good example of what there is to this seedy underbelly of the old/new right. Vague accusations, no backing available, the walking Dunning-Kruger effect, communicating through knowing whispers, decipherable only to the cognoscenti who have deluded themselves in the same way.
There is a word for that in the context of islamist extremism, and it applies to the alt-right too: self-radicalisation. No real trigger, no real reason, save for a vague assortment of grievances, looking for a culprit for their imagined misery, they finally home in on a suitable explanation concocted from whatever information they could get, and a suitable enemy. Important: The enemy must be remote enough so you don’t really see them in their objective reality. It could have been “the plumbers” (hey, they’re everywhere, and try to do without a toilet for one day – you’d be toast: massive power in the hands of one group!). But you may run into a plumber and realize he’s just another person working on a job, sometimes with debatable skills. You probably won’t, however, run into Soros and realize he’s just a person too, with a mix of debatable opinions. And before you know it, we’re at “the jews”.
1. November 2018 at 13:04
“Vague accusations, no backing available, the walking Dunning-Kruger effect,”
I consider my link to screenshots of the Tree of Life Synagogue website and my listing of five specific media writers anything but vague. But YMMV.
Also, my general tendency has been to UNDERSTATE my knowledge about historical subjects when my self-perception is matched against others on standardized tests.
“No real trigger, no real reason, save for a vague assortment of grievances,”
My God. Do you think if the Jews did not behave the way they do, I would be so anti-semitic? It would take an utter moron to believe that.
“Important: The enemy must be remote enough so you don’t really see them in their objective reality.”
Wrong. The dictum of “with Jews, you lose” and my observations of the nature of Jewish perfidy fully applied to my real life as well as my observations online. One Jew I met in real life was actually quite a bit worse in his perfidy and hypocrisy about identity issues than I have described here. I could describe you the incident, but there is no need. I read Jews every day. Do you seriously think I have learned nothing about them from that?
1. November 2018 at 13:05
I’m actually not that concerned about Soros. His funding is real, but the Jewish threat is much bigger than merely him.
2. November 2018 at 05:11
@ comments section of the Money Illusion
What are good ways to discuss Jews in the US and their disproportionate representation among the wealthy, in journalism and media, in politics and the halls of power, in academia, and in the professions? The left doesn’t shy away from talking about how it can be problematic for whites to be over represented (and hence other people under represented. What would be a responsible way for talking about that with regards to to Jews, who are certainly not a monolithic group of people, but a group of people nonetheless, and who on average, like any group of people, tend to hire people they feel are more similar to themselves, help out people they know, and overall to know a lot of Jewish people. None of that is nefarious; it is just human nature. However, it doesn’t mean that it isn’t problematic. It also strikes me that it would help combat anti-semitism if it people would publicly discuss, in a responsible manner, the fact that among whites, there is something of an ethnic/religious split where Jews tend to have liberal/leftist political views and white gentiles tend to have more conservative/right-wing political views. Hence their is a kind of racial undertone to calling leftists “globalists” or “cosmopolitan” and in calling conservatives “deplorable” and “racist”.
2. November 2018 at 22:01
P Burgos,
the huge difference is here – in the US, whites are the majority (still). Jews amongst whites are a tiny minority. Asians, another heterogeneous group, are also a tiny minority. This is why people generally care more, and reasonably so, about even minor offenses of white people, real or imagined, than about offenses, real or imagined, of small minorities. I find it completely unnecessary to even talk about small minorities who heavens forbid may in this or that respect have an occasional “unfair” advantage. Everybody does, but these unfair advantages matter way more when they’re being had by the majority. Therefore, I find it necessary to talk about majorities handing themselves additional advantages, on top and above of naturally dominating the culture of the country they’re in. It seems obvious to me but I see that it doesn’t seem obvious to everyone.
One more thing. Harding above claims to have been slighted by “a Jew”. What perverse way to frame the issue. He was slighted in some way by a person, but what does that person’s jewishness even have to do with it? Some talks rough to Harding, he blames it on people being jerks. Someone talks rough on Harding while being Jewish, Harding blames it on “the Jews”. Does it get any sicker?
In the vast majority of cases there is no need at all to even discuss the origin of the person, or their gender or sexual orientation for that matter. It is largely irrelevant to almost any issue. This is why we have the rule of law applying equally to everyone. And, btw, just recently in British Columbia a Chinese business owner was indeed found guilty of firing people and replacing them with ethnic Chinese. So at least in Canada, yessir!!, the law applies just the same to minorities being jerks.
4. November 2018 at 03:50
@mkba
Canada, so far as I can tell, isn’t in a civil Cold War. The US is in one, so who has wealth and power is, unfortunately, always a political question just as the factories and office buildings of warring countries are military facilities, as are all the factors of economic production.
4. November 2018 at 04:20
Also, @mkba, I don’t actually care about Jewish over representation in the various fields I listed above, but totally ignoring that over representation seems to play right into the hands of anti-semites, who claim that there is a conspiracy preventing public discussion of what roles Jews play in the life of the nation and that the only place that anyone is actually discussing it is on the anti-Semitic alt-right. Saying something like “it is completely unnecessary to even talk about Jews, who, heavens forbid may have this or that ‘unfair advantage, but it is totally necessary to talk about how evil whites (gentiles) are” is exactly the kind of language that the alt-right uses to justify their belief in a Jewish conspiracy. This is why I asked how to responsibly discuss the role of Jews in the US, i.e. in a way that doesn’t deny the reality of their over representation among the wealthy and influential but also doesn’t fuel anit-semitism. Saying that it is something that shouldn’t be spoken about promotes anti-semitism.
4. November 2018 at 15:38
@ Burgos
I have a different take than mbka. I don’t think the majority/minority dichotomy matters at all. Like he said, these incidents are felt at a personal level. It’s no use telling someone that’s been discriminated against (for example) that it’s OK because their skin color is the majority skin color.
But, moving on, I think the issue of Jewish overrepresentation in some areas of life is a well known and well discussed phenomenon. The issue — in my mind at least — is when the speaker then goes on to assume: (1) that the outcome isn’t based primarily on competence (2) that tribal Jewishness or some kind of Jewish lie is the primary motivation of Jews, and (3) we are in need of a solution based on the sole fact that these people are Jews. This is an example of anti-semitism looking for the flimsiest of excuses to rear its ugly head.
If somehow “overrepresentation” was really the primary motivation for all of this then the subject matter would be ALL overrepresentations –not just Jewish overrepresentations — and Jews and Jewishness and “Jewish lies” would all be irrelevant misdirections taking away from the primary message. And, yet, here we are.
4. November 2018 at 19:46
@ Scott H
Thanks for the response. In part I am curious about how to talk about this because nations with disproportionately successful minority groups aren’t an unusual thing throughout the word. Amy Chua, of “Tiger Mom” fame, actually wrote a book about how globalization and rising inequality can help destabilize the politics of nations with what she called “market minorities” ( the title of the book is “World on Fire”. One example of what can happen are the “boat people” of Vietnam, most of whom were actually from disproportionately wealthy ethnic Chinese communities in Vietnam.
I also think that focusing on competence doesn’t fix the problem, especially when it comes to things like journalism/political media, politics, and many parts of academia, as it is hard to say that there is any sort of cross cultural metrics of merit in those fields, and hence they are all a zero sum game where if a person of one race or ethnicity gets the job that means that someone else does not, and there is no obvious benefit to some customer on the other end. This is in contrast to things bought and sold in the private sector, where there is obviously competition and merit.
Another thing that I think is problematic is that in the US, wealth buys a lot of political and cultural influence. For folks who aren’t wealthy, and who don’t work as white collar professionals in the high cost metros, that fact can seem awfully unfrair.
TLDR; The more I write about this, the more I come to think that the problem (and why anti-semitsm is on the rise in the US now) is that people are increasingly viewing the world and the nation through a zero-sum lense. I suspect technology and the Great Recession have contributed to this, but I also think that people are increasingly seeing politics as a winner take all game, and are coming to view everything in relation to politics. Anti-semitism now appears to me not to be some sort of ever present vice within an individual (though I am sure that does happen sometime) but a kind of flawed story that feels “right” to people when they threatened by other people who are wealthier and culturally distinct. So for me at least, this answers the question of why these sorts of “lies” take hold, and the kind of politics that would be necessary to combat those sorts of lies. I am very pessimistic that we will get a politics that isn’t nasty and doesn’t try to cast the world in zero sum terms. You certainly don’t seem to get that with Democrats and Republicans. So I guess Sumner is stumping for libertarians?
4. November 2018 at 20:48
P Burgos,
misquoting me doesn’t advance the state of the discussion (“evil white people”???).
Scott H
I see all these issue, one is majority/minority, and it is true that being discriminated against as a majority doesn’t make it right. Competence / overrepresentation is another issue, but it doesn’t solve the problem either. The Nazis in their internal papers framed the holocaust as legitimate self defense because the “German people” was in danger of being undone by “the Jews”. The nazis thought “the Jews” were dangerously competent. And Pol Pot did the same with the intelligentsia. Then we get zero sum game, the crisis etc. Well the crisis is over, back to the regular programming of great wealth increases all over the planet but nothing is good enough: we have resentment everywhere and the widespread suspicion that somehow, somewhere, the other guy is getting more.
None of this is rational, I see it as an episodic, generational mental disease, a kind of global mass hysteria where people for a couple decades will believe utter nonsense and create misery for millions for no reason at all. I mean – people believed in communism as a cure-all against all evidence from the Soviet Union and its satellites. Then in 1989, overnight, almost the entire political class world wide became neoliberal. Had anyone truly thought through communism, they would have either stuck with it or never espoused it to begin with. But no, everyone just went with the current global fashion. And here we are, neoliberalism is abandoned just as thoughtlessly as it was adopted. For my part I never thought 2008 was an argument against neoliberalism or globalism and I am sticking with it just as well in the now.
5. November 2018 at 05:03
@ Mkba
I intentionally misquoted you as attempt to illustrate how easily your words could be twisted, and how they would be interpreted with anti-Semitic leanings.