Anti-Semitism (was New X-humanist forums (was/is: Not all >H's areExtropians(was RE: >H S...)

From: Brian Manning Delaney (bdelaney@infinitefaculty.org)
Date: Fri Jun 23 2000 - 14:12:23 MDT


"Michael S. Lorrey" wrote:
> Harvey Newstrom wrote:

> > Aargh! Just as we're being accused of anti-Semitism, Mike goes and
> > blames the Jews!
> >
> > Mike, do you have any evidence for this assertion? Are you really
> > claiming that the Jews are behind this attack on the Extropians?
> > Please post some hard evidence. Otherwise, you are just reinforcing
> > these accusations.

> Since half my family is jewish, accusing me
> of anti-semitism is pretty stupid.

Not in the slightest. You're assuming one can't be anti-self --
clearly an invalid assumption (cf. "suicide," and, more
relevantly, "conversion") -- thus, the notion of the
"self-hating Jew." Small point.

I didn't find your post anti-Semitic in any significant way, if
at all.

One of the things about discussing anti-Semitism that's so
frustrating for me is that a level of subtlety is required than
many aren't willing to ascend to. So one's anti-Semitism filters
get tuned far too coarsely: what counts is only something either
very obviously hateful ("Kikes suck"), or something that fits a
simplistic formal (such as grammatical) criterion, "Jewish X do
Y," as in your statement, Mike.

Jews do bad things. One should be able to say that without being
labeled an anti-Semite on the grounds of the statement alone.

If your post had come out of the blue, then the absence of
statements about Italian-American liberals or Irish-American
liberals might be evidence for possible anti-Semitism, but your
statement was clearly addressing a question that had nothing to
do with other liberals.

Because so many Extropians are educated less in the humanities
than the sciences, it may be difficult to discuss this question
fruitfully here. We'd have to discuss at least a bit of Luther,
if not the early Church Fathers. And for many here that might
involve a lot of tedious reading of dusty texts.

And who the Hell wants to do that?! Once we stop aging, we can
get to philosophy, history and such. :)

(Of course, there won't be Judaism anymore at that point,
because the big hyper ai-unity will have sucked up everything
into itself, and thus there'll never be a minion.)

Best,
Brian.



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