Christian Antisemitism
Episode Stats
Words per Minute
113.77538
Summary
In this episode, I discuss Christian anti-Semitism and how it relates to Kanye West, Candace Owens, Ben Shapiro, the ADL, Olly Alexander, J6 Insurrectionist, and more. I discuss the deep ambivalence that Christian Jews have toward Judaism, and how this is a symptom of a deeper and more profound anti-semitism.
Transcript
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Hey everyone, I haven't done one of these monologues in too long, but I'm back and I'm
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going to talk about Kanye West, Candace Owens, Ben Shapiro, the ADL, Olly Alexander, J6 Insurrectionist,
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and more. And I'm going to circle around the topic of Christian anti-Semitism.
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And by that, I mean something very specific. So I'm sure that everyone listening to this
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has been exposed to what could probably be called, most accurately, casual anti-Semitism.
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These usually involve Jews being good with money or tight with money or not great athletes
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or something like that. I can remember when I was growing up, there was a joke of
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how do you lose a Jewish cop? You take the toll road, you know, badoom crash.
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The implication that Jews, you know, are very tight with money and wouldn't chase you down
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the toll road. Yeah, I mean, these, in my mind, are the equivalent of, you know, funny jokes
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about Italians or whatever, in the sense that they might be mean-spirited in some cases.
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Uh, they might also contain a kernel of truth, but at the end of the day, they're rather benign
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and maybe even rather meaningless. Uh, but Christian anti-Semitism is something different,
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and I do think it's something more profound. And, uh, as I said on Twitter, um, I think there's
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a kind of pathological ambivalence to it. Uh, there's inherent mixed feelings and contradiction
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to this. And so the Christian anti-Semite can say some rather harsh stuff. Kanye West has talked
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about people in the media and people he's had relationships with in the recording industry
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as basically being a bunch of bastards. He can say some harsh things, but at the end of the day,
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he, what, I guess what's most telling about his anti-Semitism is that he considers himself to be
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a Jew. And by being a Christian or the blood of Christ, he is a Jew. Uh, so that kind of seeming
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contradiction, I think gets at the heart of this deep ambivalence. Jesus came to fulfill the laws
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of Moses. That is the Pentateuch or the, uh, first five books of the old Testament. Uh, he did not come
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to cancel the Jewish scriptures, even though he did, uh, break some of the Jewish laws in his, uh,
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practice. And, um, also is notable for stressing grace and forgiveness above adherence to laws. So
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Jesus, even when he was raging against the Pharisees, even when he was seemingly contradicting Judaism
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was ultimately a Jew and ultimately fulfilling Judaism. Uh, very similar to Kanye, who in his
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anti-Semitic quote unquote outburst is ultimately declaring himself to be a Jew and declaring Jews as,
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so to speak, pointing towards Christ. So this is the profound ambivalence that I think really should
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be taken seriously because you hear a lot of, you know, shrill shrieking in the media of, oh,
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you know, anti-Semitism is on the rise again. It's everywhere. And these mainstream figures like
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Kanye West or Kyrie Irving are being anti-Semitic. And what are we going to do? You know, next thing you
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know, uh, the third Reich is going to come back again. Well, look, that's overstated to begin with,
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but again, I would stress that what we're seeing right now is not mere Jew hatred. It's something
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deeper and something more contradictory. And it is in the minds of the people saying these things,
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an attempt to redeem the Jews. So let me, let me look at this a little more specifically in this ADL
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Kanye West controversy that is happening and just a little Twitter and telegram exchange that I think
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reveals all the fault lines in this, uh, dialectic.