swampman posted:

Goethestein posted:

you can't state a series of demonstrable facts along with an otherwise uncontroversial theory on privilege because it is superficially similar to antisemitism.

What response would you prefer to get from people, to your OP? You just want everyone to say Wow man thats true... or what? How about this, the reality is that Jews arent overrepresented in positions of power, they are underrepresented in the general population because their lower classes have been repeatedly exterminated for centuries? Makes you think, insh'allah

that isn't actually accurate as a cause. jewish immigrants to america in the period prior to the 1930s were not generally wealthier than any other immigrant class.

how i would like people to respond to the OP is, yes, first to admit that it is a phenomenon. that seems difficult for many. further analysis derives thereof

Goethestein posted:

this person's theory is that jews are so ascendent because they are special. it's important to point out that jews are incredibly racist, and this article is an example. it is not an uncommon opinion. but from where does this specialness derive? it seems to me there are only three options. option one is genetic superiority, the standard of the 20th century racist. option two is some metaphysical superiority granted by a deity, the standard of the pre-20th century racist. and option three is some inherent superiority of their "culture," the standard of the 21st century racist ("I don't hate blacks, I hate their culture.") whatever the individual jew's opinion, this racism could be argued to be a secret of their success. they are actively nepotistic, incestuous and insular. this is nothing sinister; it is how any small, wealthy community acts, magnified by responses to historical oppression. it leads them to get opportunities they did not earn via family connections in the way blacks or hispanics cannot. it is a form of privilege.

Option 4 is that jews arent special but simply popular enough with other white races that other ethnically-grounded organisational forms have been abandoned in favour of jewish capitalism, with which jewish families had centuries more experience and a considerable head start over their contemporaries

swampman posted:

Goethestein posted:

you can't state a series of demonstrable facts along with an otherwise uncontroversial theory on privilege because it is superficially similar to antisemitism.

What response would you prefer to get from people, to your OP? You just want everyone to say Wow man thats true... or what? How about this, the reality is that Jews arent overrepresented in positions of power, they are underrepresented in the general population because their lower classes have been repeatedly exterminated for centuries? Makes you think, insh'allah

i think the OP might be a troll

ilmdge posted:

Goethestein posted:

http://awesome.good.is/transparency/web/1002/almighty-dollar/flat.htmljews are the wealthiest religious group in america

okay, but why not talk about this in terms of class privilege? stripping out a minority group from the wider bourgeois class risks scapegoating an Other for what are institutional issues. jews are heavily represented in the upper class and its related industries, though, yes. but is there a need to discuss jews as a distinct group instead of just talking about the upper classes writ large? does doing so risk validating anti-semitism? what is your interest in identifying the "privilege" of jews? is it a goal of knocking down the idea that they're an oppressed group in the west? or is it an attempt to call out concepts like white privilege, or at least compare them to your "jew privilege" and see where they stand?

if you want to unfurl the vast privilege-oppression matrix and find where exactly the western jew fits on it, i guess i can post some words about that. privilege/oppression basically exist on two separate axes, one of class and one of bigotry (a more social oppression). some minorities suffer in both regards, of course. i think you're right, goatstein, if this is what you're getting at, and that there is indeed a great need to create a matrix like this in a scientific fashion so that people can see where their privileges and oppressions lie.



clearly the creators of this chart were on the right track, and, as you suggest, were striving toward a worthwhile purpose, just as you are in this thread. but they failed to properly ground their synthesis in the scientific rationality of the matrix, and thus our sum privilege according to their well-intentioned chart ends up being a mish-mash of class and bigotry, muddying the clarity of the individual pictures. what we will endeavor to create here, in the matrix, is to mimic the generally accepted perfection achieved in plotting political views in a matrix such as this one:



let's proceed, and i will share some examples.

gays, if you can mentally picture it with me, would be near one side of this matrix. they suffer some general bigotry (bullying, accusations of moral decrepitude and lack of acceptance, and discriminatory laws - although these laws are fortunately on the wane). on the other hand, when it comes to the class axis of the matrix, gay people are just as likely to be born into higher classes as straight people, and they don't face serious hurdles toward economic advancement - on the whole, i think they are actually better off than average in economic terms. so we chart them a moderate distance out on the bigotry axis but leave them basically near 0 on the class axis.

women also have an equal likelihood of being born into any class, but deal with economic issues centered around decades of traditional ideas of gender norms, issues associated with maternity, and general discrimination on the part of male power brokers when it comes to career advancement. in addition, they face the challenges of a bigoted (or "patriarchal") culture that objectifies them, tells them to look or act a certain way, and so on. so we would mark them as disadvantaged in both these metrics.

so on this hypothetical privilege/oppression matrix now we see we can imagine roughly where these two groups would fall. i'd like to put the scientific classification of blacks, trans people, etc. on hold at the time being in the interest of keeping this (relatively) brief and move on to locating the position of the western jewry. do they, in fact, experience some antisemitism? yes, i'd say, there are far right groups that agitate against the jews. luckily, there is the bulwark of the holocaust and general social rejection of explicitly race-based bigotry to keep those with the jewish identity from suffering relatively highly on the bigotry axis.

approaching the placement of the jewry on the class axis is much more tricky. i would argue against your "jew privilege" position, goatstein, and disagree with your proposed placement of the jewish person on the class privilege axis. if there are two equal candidates for a job opening or a promotion, does a jewish person hold an advantageous position (as has been shown for men)? i don't really think so; i do not think there is any active discrimination against "gentiles." i would argue that "networking" and "connections" and so on that might favor the jew are based not on their jewishness, but instead, returning to my introductory paragraph, have their genesis in their inborn economic position. and this is the key with the proposed matrix you are getting at, goatstein. we plot males somewhat in the class "privileged" direction, along with white people. but we likewise place this axis on a scale of household income, so that a female projected somewhere on the negative side of the class axis, but who has a million dollar salary, would be moved far into the privileged side of the axis when we plot them individually.

by doing this, goatstein, we can achieve what you're looking for, individual scores of oppression/privilege. if you want to continue developing this idea, a fun project might be finding the matrix points for the posters on the rhizzone, so that we can see where we stand when we enter into a discussion. we'd find cycloneboy suffering somewhat from social bigotry for his asexuality, but his class position may be far on the right side of the chart due to his inheritance. someone like slashie is a obviously the classic case. we can see a bit of economic disadvantage for being maybe black, but still can position her all the way to the far right of the graph for growing up in the same circles as dorkasaurus rex. this doesn't erase the oppression she suffers socially from the pressures our culture inflicts on women, or black people, and we can sum the oppression of these groups to find her total social oppression. and the fact that she is jewish, goatstein, i would say has very little impact on her placement on our graph. as a leftist, i think both axes matter, of course. but i think it's also important that we have these separate axes, so we don't let things like people's identity overwhelm the significant part of their class analysis (their wealth), and so that identity politics don't derail our criticisms of capital or our revolution. i assume this is what you were getting at, and i hope my post helped you process your thoughts a bit more in the direction you were going.

Goethestein posted:

discipline posted:

what world do you live in where it's encouraged to support historical communism and its leaders

i am speaking about this community. obviously in the real world communism is as popular as pederasty

communism is popular with catholics?