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Underground > Switchboard >

Do the Jews really run the world?

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16:18 / 14.05.04

hear here

A Haus of Minions

16:22 / 14.05.04

Does that mean we should start deleting threads like this rather than trying to reason with them? I'm cool with that, although so far we've had one full-on anti-Semite, a couple of oddballs and conspiracy nuts who are too dim or bonkerws t notice, maybe 4 or 5 people who have a profoundly limited grasp of European history and would rather talk about it on the Internet than read a book - it's a shame that your friends are feeling unable to remain on Barbelith when I'm finding the general lack of sympathy for these views among what for want of a better term I will call the clueful quite reassuring.

16:44 / 14.05.04

I don't know Tom C, I don't think I've (read) anything like actual anti-sematism on this board in the admittadly relatively short time I've been posting here.

Even this thread seems to veer towards anti-sematism only in a very naive and unconscious way if at all.

Isn't it better to engage in the arguments rather than simply refuse to discuss them? For me that's where Barbelith is at it's best and is often (really!) consciousness raising...

16:47 / 14.05.04

I think that actually having an intelligent conversation with someone who says that - you know - maybe 8 million people didn't die - maybe it was only a few hundred thousand - is giving that position a credibility it doesn't deserve. We should either be pointing at this idiot until he's so bloody humiliated he's prepared to go away and read up about the seriousness of what he's talking about or we should kick em off the site. WE'RE HAVING A SERIOUS DISCUSSION ABOUT WHETHER OR NOT JEWISH PEOPLE ARE REALLY RUNNING THE WORLD!? That to me is a statement that we've already failed.

16:58 / 14.05.04

Tom: I'm pretty much with Haus here. I think there have been some excellent points made on this thread, largely scoring against any anti-semetic "position", and spelling out what a crock of shit the whole idea is. Personally, I'd question the need of starting such a thread in the first place, as it's arguing from a premise that's a) offensive and b) self evidently untrue (to me and the majority of the other posters here). I hope your post above gives the thread starter more pause for thought. As Haus said, I find the number of people who're willing to argue against this crap eloquently heartening, in the same way I found the amount of people who contested Fetch's idiocy heartening.

Onto the whole "unobjective" thing - (this is directed towards the topic starter). Is it really possible to discuss anything unobjectively outside the physical sciences? I certainly don't think the far right views it "objectively" - it functions as belief, blind belief at that, not proofs dereived from testing and analysis. If you really *believe* there is a conspiracy, you're going to go on believing so, despite any evidence to the contary. You can organise the incoming patterns any way you want. I hope this thread, and the others,provides sufficent cognitive dissonance so that you give up any nascent *beliefs* that you're holding about the "conspiracy".

17:15 / 14.05.04

I think that actually having an intelligent conversation with someone who says that - you know - maybe 8 million people didn't die - maybe it was only a few hundred thousand - is giving that position a credibility it doesn't deserve.

I do see what you mean Tom, but equally, if we don't have the conversation and point out the reasons why its an absurd and abhorrant position to take, but simply delete threads and refuse to discuss it, then isn't that only going to encourage the idea that the topic is not brought up because it is 'taboo' not because it is patently wrong?

Our Lady Won't Do That Again

17:17 / 14.05.04

I hoped I'd made it clear that it isn't 'the Jews' we need to worry about, it's the people that don't have beards.

But perhaps I should have pointed out this, this, this and this but I was being polite. My bad.

17:23 / 14.05.04

I'm in two minds about this sort of topic. On the one hand, if we decide to delete this sort of stuff as a matter of policy I can't say that I will become terribly upset. The upshot will be that some of our more - lets be generous here - misguided members will be prevented from talking about certain topics. Again, I don't have a problem that, even though it will elicit rumblings from some.

On the other hand, I am happy to see that the majority of Barbelith is reacting negatively to this. And there are serious questions about the mythology of the Holocaust and its use as a political tool to stifle debate, as well as the role of Israel in US foreign policy. But this thread is going nowhere near that and I'm not sure the advantages are enough to counteract the effect of making people feel that Barbelith is holocaust-denial friendly.

So I'm going to propose a lock and delete and I think we should discuss this in the policy.

Mordant Carnival
(prev. DRR... DRR... DRR...)

17:28 / 14.05.04

I'm in two minds about all this.

On one hand, I'm disgusted, utterly horrified, that anyone here really entertains these ideas. The mere concept of a world Jewish conspiracy is as ludicrous to me as it is revolting. I was horrified that someone could invoke the Protocols of the Elders of Zion and find support. I'm horrified that people seem quite happy to entertain the ridiculous and fallacious claims of Holocaust deniers with a casual "Oh, well, lots of Jews in the media, y'know! Could all have been made up!" I'm horrified at the degree of ignorance I'm seeing, the faliure of reason, the seeming inability of some posters to look objectively at information in the light of the sources of that information. I'm horrified by the way that certain toxic urban myths (The "media is run by Jews" meme, for instance) are being wheeled out as if they were self-evident, universally accepted truths.

On the other hand, the level of ignorance will not be reduced by burying the topic. All one can do is make the relevant information avaliable, and hope against all experience that some of it will sink in. This thread may go some way to acheiving that.

Mordant Carnival
(prev. DRR... DRR... DRR...)

17:34 / 14.05.04

(Ah, and now I see I've cross-posted with L.A.)

17:57 / 14.05.04

I don't know, I thought we were having a discussion about theories on Zionist conspiracies, how they came about, why people indulge in them, and possible actual reasons to trigger people to think this way (ie, general success and cultural seperatism). I think discussions of that sort have merit in identifying how this sort of thing happens in the first place to better understand how to avoid or neutralize it. I don't think anyone here is really trying to prove their thesis on how the Elders of Zion are controlling the price of eggs.

As for Holocost revisionism, I don't think the real issue there is on if it happened or not, so much as the media machine that has sprung from it and how little media machines such as that can be trusted. That is the Underground relevant part here. The mere level of taboo surrounding even dispassionate discussion of it is to me a warning sign of an area where facts will not be checked or challenged where they should. How can they, when anyone who attempts to do so is either labeled as (or is actually entirely) a Nazi Nutbar? In the face of such powerful opposition, conspiracy theory is quite inevitable.

But not having access to reliable data on it either way, the only thing I can do is point at it and say "that's a bit worrysome, isn't it?" I find it unlikely anyone here can do any more as well. So the end effect becomes opening old wounds for little gain, save that of reenforcing the idea that the media produced by influential power structures is not a trusted source, which is fairly a given round these parts to begin with.

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