is-the-fire-real

finding the fire to carry

Documenting my Jewish conversion and reblogging pretty stuff. Otherwise, I don't do bios but I do answer questions.

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I Think You're Right, And Want To Draw Specific Attention To The "I"m A Good Person" Part Of Your Analysis.

I think you're right, and want to draw specific attention to the "I"m a good person" part of your analysis.

I have written about this before (very long post here--not necessary to read and contains trigger tags, but I'm adding it for completionism), but a really important part of leftist antisemitism is the calming of a baseline insecurity about their own moral value.

For some stuff I didn't discuss in that linked essay: a lot of USian cultural Christianity is defined not by Puritanism, but by a misinterpretation of Calvinism.

Calvinism has an entire theological framework, but the most important part is that no one on Earth can ever know if they are part of the elect who go to heaven or one of the many people who go to hell. While many flavors of Christianity provide reassurance that the individual won't go to hell thanks to baptism, ritual, conversion, prayers, etc., Calvinism denies all of these reassurances. This was supposed to redirect people from obsessively worrying about hell. Culturally it had the opposite effect.

The brainworms in the center of the skull of every USian are, basically, the question: "Am I a good (enough) person?"

Being a Good Person is conditional--after all, you might pretend to be a Good Person all your life only to not be part of The Elect, and hence you were faking the whole time. Being a Bad Person is permanent and earns you eternal condemnation. Being around Bad People greatly increases the chance of you being a Bad Person, because you cannot save Bad People. They were bound to hell before they were ever born. You must therefore root out all the Bad People to prove that you are Good.

While many leftists pay lip service to ideas of restorative justice, forgiveness, and psychological healing from religious trauma, they don't mean a word of it. They just say that because that's what Good People would say, and more than any political goal, they want everyone to think they are Good People. This allays the baseline anxiety of whether or not they are going to go to hell--whether that is a literal hell, or for the skeptics, the dread that after they die, everyone will find out all those little shitty things they've done throughout their lives which will retroactively make them Bad People and cancel out their Good People status forevermore.

Antisemitism is portrayed as a right-wing problem by leftists because Bad People are antisemites, and to be associated with Bad People means they're not The Elite Good People, and the very thought of that is more frightening than the thought of death.

If admitting you made a mistake is worse than dying, then of course, you'll do and say anything at all to avoid admission, including, as we've seen in several violent cases, dying.

I'm sure I'm not the first person to notice this but it IS super weird to see so many leftists

get told they're being rampantly antisemitic

fact check (which is a good instict!)

realize they've been hitting Antisemite Bingo with every post they make

...and instead of going "oh shit, I didn't realize it was that baked into all of society, I really need to listen to more Jews about this and do better not to perpetuate hatred towards them"

they go "well, I do all of this, and I'm a good person, so those filthy Jews Zionists must secretly control the media!"

It's especially weird when they know better than to do this to any other minority, but somehow when it's Jews it's acceptible as long as you call them Zionists before hate-criming them.

This is probably why the denial is so high, though. They HAVE to believe leftist antisemitism isn't a problem, because if they believe it's a problem then THEY are the problem, and that interferes with their mental image of themselves as Righteous Revolutionaries.

I Think You're Right, And Want To Draw Specific Attention To The "I"m A Good Person" Part Of Your Analysis.

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