I thought I invented "Hitler is the secular Satan," and was quite proud of the formulation, but apparently it was a case of cryptomnesia. Tom Holland made the connection explicitly in his great book Dominion, which I read but must have forgotten about. On the other hand, Hitler's status in secular demonology is so obvious, I wouldn't be surprised if the formulation had occurred to many people independently.
Anyway, the link attached to the article on this point just leads to an advertisement, as far as I can tell.
Occam's razor (or a simple introduction to social history) is sorely needed here.
Jews were not welcome in conservative parties in Middle Europe in the 19th or 20th centuries. Most, if not all, conservative parties in Germany and Austria were explicitly Protestant or Catholic. No Jews allowed. It was as simple as that. In the region secular or nonconfessional conservatism is very much a post WW2 phenomenon.
Arab nationalism first developed in the two American universities established by Yankee missionaries...Beirut and Cairo. Christians were heavily overrepresented in the student body. Also modern education at the secondary level was pioneered by the churches and these schools acted as vectors for the spread of European ideas about nationalism. Christians were the first exposed.
That’s useful further details, but it does not invalidate my argument. Christians may have been the first exposed, with American University of Beirut being founded in 1866, and of Cairo in 1919, but Arab nationalism still had obvious specific appeal to them. Nor do alumni of these institutions seem to be the only important Christian figures involved in Arab nationalism.
There is a lot of politics between conservatism and Marxism. See the case of Walter Rathenau. Cultural minorities tend not to vote for conservatives as a general pattern. But specifically Christian conservatism would indeed sharpen the appeal of an identity ostentatiously transcending religious identity.
The alternatives to Arab nationalism are political Islam (itself a modern contrivance) or traditional, tribal, politics of the kind that exists in the Gulf and, to an extent, in Iraq. in places like Iraq Christians are defined by their sect while Muslims, Shia and Sunni alike, have tribal affiliations. For those without formal tribes integration via the fabled "imagined community" of a nation is the easy way out.
Rathenau was an extraordinary figure. His assassination set Germany on the path to destruction. A very innovative thinker...very farsighted on industrial relations and social policy. A great believer in compromise and moderation. Kind of brings to mind the late Sir James Goldsmith...the best, most incisive, critic of globalisation.
The Marxist/Jewish nexus is a great paradox. The most backward looking and ultra conservative people in Europe were the pre-war rabbinate in Central and Eastern Europe. AJP Taylor correctly noted that the only monarchists left in Hapsburg empire were Polish Aristos and Jews. Reality gets lost in the online torrent of 'analysis' to say nothing of the fake scholarship of academia.
Habsburg embassies and consulates were the default diplomatic help for Jews. Metternich was close to the Rothschilds and Franz Joseph took the view that Jews were his subjects too. He refused to receive the anti-Semitic mayor of Vienna.
I have noticed various Americans taking a quite sympathetic view of the Danubian monarchy. Timothy Snyder and Matt Yglesias most notably. That what followed it was worse helps this. As does the continuing problems of European order.
The King of Bahrain appointed a Jewish woman his ambassador to the US.
The Habsburgs were pragmatists. In Spain and the Americas they crushed the Jews and part-Jews. In Central Europe they were passive-aggressive. For centuries pogroms/riots were encouraged in Vienna when the court felt it convenient. During the Counter-Reformation the prime internal enemy were the Protestants (mostly in Bohemia). It all changed with the Aufklarung which went hand in hand with the rationalisation of politics and administration. By the 19th c. the dynasty was desperate for support and discovered the virtue of toleration.
Many Americans (especially the 'trads') have a sentimental, somewhat, treacly conception of the Habsburgs. A drier, more analytic, take is called for. It is worth noting that a chap at the university of Lemberg (as it then was in Franz-Josef's day), a Weberian social scientist by the name of Gumplowicz, famously wrote an eerily prescient book on multiculturalism called Der Rassenkrieg. I understand that it is still sought out in second-hand book shops across the old Kaiserlich und Koeniglich lands.
In the Middle East monarchies are vastly more flexible, less ideologically febrile, than republics. Just compare Morocco with Algeria or the Gulf monarchies with horror-shows like Iraq or Syria. Sa'udi Arabia's present moderation would be inconceivable without the monarchy. Then again the Houthis (ultra-reactionary partisans of the local version of Shia imamate/monarchy) would constitute an obnoxious exception to this rule.
IMO modernity radicalises because it demands consistency and is impatient with contigency and singularity. It demands extremities to establish its legitimacy. Monarchies, however, renew themselves naturally via the rhythms of natality and mortality rather than purges and massacres. Gibbon's famous obiter dicta on heredity monarchy is perhaps the best ever take on the subject.
Rathenau's legacy is very timely, given the dreadful mess Germany is in. The TV series BABYLON BERLIN cautiously recovers some of the subject (Weimar era German/Soviet cooperation). Highly recommended.
Intellectual Jews may be "particularly easily seduced by intellectual systems," but intellectual systems don't escape the academy unless they come with moral commandments aimed at moral revolutions—no one is murdering each other over Berkeleyan idealism!
"And ye shall be unto me a kingdom of priests, and an holy nation. These are the words which thou shalt speak unto the children of Israel." Exodus 19:6
The Jews are a kingdom of priests, the priesthood of the Christian world—reading and interpeting (even writing) Scripture, explaining the demands of morality to the flock, defining God as Justice and Justice as God—and the thorn they keep catching on is the positing of an egalitarian universalism while remaining stubbornly particular.
From George Steiner: "Three times a demand was made for perfection and self-sacrifice; three times, that is, a utopian demand was made that collided with ordinary human capacities to respond. Three times, a Jew was at the center: Moses, Jesus, Marx."
And now comes the fourth demand, made from that potent mixture of Marxism and Protestantism called Social Justice. How dare the Jews have their own state—a state where one religion is exalted over others, where members of other tribes will be made to feel less-than? Universalism demands this be opposed and denounced.
Intellectual Jews (the priesthood) keep trying to dissolve their distinctness in a universal solvent aka the Brotherhood of Man, but keep failing because 1) many of their own people are just fine as Jews and have no need to trade their faith for abstract utopianism; and 2) many non-Jews also want to liquidate Jewishness, just in a much more unpleasant way.
Messianic utopianism may be a great way to hold a small tribe together (seems to be the glue that bonds every cult), but out in the larger world it always ends up with the utopians be forced to jump first into the cleansing fire.
Is it about Jews having their own state which exalts Judaism or about Jews demanding universalism everywhere except in Israel? Every single town in my area has a Happy Hanukkah sign next to the creche or a Merry Christmas sign in the local town hall, despite having few Jews. All children learn about dreidels and menorahs and the 8 days of Hanukkah in daycare, public schools and even Catholic schools. Christianity no longer has the pride of place in America. Judaism has been given equal status.
Christian Palestinians are not permitted the right of return and Christians are not permitted to immigrate to Israel. Can you imagine Portugal prohibiting Jewish immigration because it allows only Catholics to immigrate there?
"Christian Palestinians are not permitted the right of return..."
I think we all know that "right of return" is a loaded term that is not just about regaining lost property, but is another way that people have tried to undermine the Jewish state. I think it's helpful to widen our historical lens a bit and realize that the Palestinians were not the only people who were displaced after the collapse of the Ottoman, British and French empires, which all unraveled bw 1914-1948 or so. There was the Partition of India, the Turks and Arabs evicting all non-Muslims (and massacring Armenians), then the Iron Curtain came down across Eastern Europe. Millions of people lost and/or were chased away from their homes (or worse), yet this one dispute has become a global fetish for over 50 years now. I have friends whose families had homes in both pre-Revolutionary Russia and pre-Revolutionary Cuba, but we all know they're never getting any "right of return" nor do they expect any—sometimes History just has winners and losers.
"Christians are not permitted to immigrate to Israel." I'm not an expert here, but our good friend Wikipedia says: Non-Jewish foreigners may naturalize after living there for at least three years while holding permanent residency and demonstrating proficiency in the Hebrew language. Naturalizing non-Jews are additionally required to renounce their previous nationalities..."
"Jews demanding universalism everywhere except in Israel..." I'm not sure that asking for a Chanukah display next to a Christmas tree is "demanding universalism" as much as it's demanding recognition or equal rights, in our country without an established state faith.
And if "Christianity no longer has the pride of place in America", I don't think it has anything to do with Jews, Israel or Chanukah but the collapse of religion that's spread throughout the West.
Palestinians are the world’s only hereditary refugees and are effectively paid by UNRWA not to make peace with Israel, as then they stop being refugees and the money stops.
The Palestinians have been very ill-served and victimized by their own leaders, who have rented out their cause to other actors and their needs—the Soviets and their obsessive Jew hatred and florid denunciations of "capitalist imperialism", which was pretty rich coming from a country that occupied all of Eastern Europe; the various dictators and theocrats of the Muslim world, who gin up Jew hate as a way to keep the hate flowing anywhere but in their direction; and the many apparatchiks of the UN, who need a stead supply of helpless victims so they can play White Savior, the priest/martyr role of our age—and people like Arafat did this so the graft could keep flowing and they could get rich spilling blood while playing the role of revolutionary "freedom fighter", which is much easier than the challenge of building and running a state.
Making peace means giving up claims to your land. That is a hard pill to swallow for a people still tied to a land and their ancestry. This is a hard thing for moderns to understand as the connection between a people and their land has been severed.
My point was about Christian Palestinians and how the world has overlooked their plight and suffering, lumping them in with the Muslims and Christians (like American Christian Zionists) putting Jewish interests over Christian ones. All the talk about Palestine and Israel completely overlooks Christians, focusing on Jews v. Muslims/Arabs.
So Jews can return to Israel even though that undermined a Palestinian state but Christian Palestinians cannot return because that would undermine a Jewish state. Double standard.
I also think you blithely dismiss the importance of symbols and Christianity being dethroned as the primary and superior religion of the US. It's largely due to Christianity failing to assert itself and its cultural superiority but other factors include other religions demanding the pride of place. Not just Judaism of course, but they were the first.
Being an ethnostate means your ethnicity has claims others don’t. Lebanon was supposed to be the Christian state in the Middle East, but Christian identity did not work the same way internationally and the local Lebanese Christians did not see the need to welcome Christians from elsewhere in the Middle East.
Except being Jewish isn't an ethnicity. It's a religion. If it were an ethnicity, then Hebrews who converted would be able to return to Israel and non-Hebrew Jews wouldn't be able to use the right of return (when their ancestors were never there). See Ivanka Trump for example. Yes, I know she isn't immigrating to Israel but she could yet Richard Hannania's family wouldn't be able to return if they wanted to. Again, I'm fine with states preferring their own group, however they define that, but note that this isn't allowed in the West but defended elsewhere. I believe the US should limit non-WASP immigration and demand assimilation, despite being 180 degrees from a WASP but imagine the outcry if the US said we want to remain a white, Protestant nation and will change our immigration laws accordingly?
Was Lebanon founded as an independent state as a haven for Christians in the Middle East or was it seen as a Christian state by virtue of its Maronite Christian population? The reality is that pan-Arabism, even for Christians, was a political dream. The reality is we lump Arabs all together, even Christian ones, and they see themselves as different. I expect Chaldean Catholics would strongly prefer to live peacefully in Iraq, their ancient homeland, rather than in Lebanon, if they had their way. The same for the Jews of Persia. Unfortunately, this isn't the way things worked out.
Judaism is a religion. You don’t stop being a Jew just because you stop believing in Judaism. There are some odd legal wrinkles since religious Parties have been swing votes in the Knesset. Zionism was not a religious project.
Lebanon as the Christian country was not as explicit as Israel as the Jewish country.
But it is precisely Israel as ethnostate that is the reason why it generates such rage. The ethnic origins of western societies has to be deconstructed.
That graph regarding percent of the population scientist/masdrassa affiliated since the first madrassa is god awful. Two axis, measuring the same thing, but with different intercepts and scale ratios? Glancing at it is looks like the lines intersect at ~40 years instead of closer to 90. How the hell does something like that get into a paper?
I have a few other thoughts about the essay, but goddamn, that graph :D (Not that it is Lorenzo's fault, mind you.)
Only a person unfamiliar with Edward Said and his work could describe him as driven by a desire to escape dhimmitude. He wasn't an Arab nationalist, but a Palestinian nationalist and fervently so, driven by his people's expulsion from their homeland.
Noticing the prevalence of Jews in Marxism and communism is verboten. They have been prevalent and overrepresented in left wing progressive movements. It's interesting you chalk it up to self-interest and ignore the religion angle. People will have no problem talking about Muslim propensity to radicalism and violence driven by their religion, but don't discuss the Jewish propensity to utopianism and even secularization. God as justice and justice as God will have political consequences and its left wing activism by Jews in non-Jewish states.
The trouble with the alleged influence of Judaism is all the Jewish Marxists abandoned Judaism and some came from very secular families. Being observant is an insulation from Marxism. Perhaps there is some lingering religious influence, but it is indirect at best.
On Edward Said, it is not an ever or. One can be both a passionate nationalist and find nationalism a mechanism for equality. On the contrary it would be easy for each to reinforce the other.
I thought I invented "Hitler is the secular Satan," and was quite proud of the formulation, but apparently it was a case of cryptomnesia. Tom Holland made the connection explicitly in his great book Dominion, which I read but must have forgotten about. On the other hand, Hitler's status in secular demonology is so obvious, I wouldn't be surprised if the formulation had occurred to many people independently.
Anyway, the link attached to the article on this point just leads to an advertisement, as far as I can tell.
I hear you. Have done the same thing on occasion. And I have fixed the link, ta.
https://unherd.com/2021/04/how-hitler-killed-the-devil/
Occam's razor (or a simple introduction to social history) is sorely needed here.
Jews were not welcome in conservative parties in Middle Europe in the 19th or 20th centuries. Most, if not all, conservative parties in Germany and Austria were explicitly Protestant or Catholic. No Jews allowed. It was as simple as that. In the region secular or nonconfessional conservatism is very much a post WW2 phenomenon.
Arab nationalism first developed in the two American universities established by Yankee missionaries...Beirut and Cairo. Christians were heavily overrepresented in the student body. Also modern education at the secondary level was pioneered by the churches and these schools acted as vectors for the spread of European ideas about nationalism. Christians were the first exposed.
That’s useful further details, but it does not invalidate my argument. Christians may have been the first exposed, with American University of Beirut being founded in 1866, and of Cairo in 1919, but Arab nationalism still had obvious specific appeal to them. Nor do alumni of these institutions seem to be the only important Christian figures involved in Arab nationalism.
There is a lot of politics between conservatism and Marxism. See the case of Walter Rathenau. Cultural minorities tend not to vote for conservatives as a general pattern. But specifically Christian conservatism would indeed sharpen the appeal of an identity ostentatiously transcending religious identity.
The alternatives to Arab nationalism are political Islam (itself a modern contrivance) or traditional, tribal, politics of the kind that exists in the Gulf and, to an extent, in Iraq. in places like Iraq Christians are defined by their sect while Muslims, Shia and Sunni alike, have tribal affiliations. For those without formal tribes integration via the fabled "imagined community" of a nation is the easy way out.
Rathenau was an extraordinary figure. His assassination set Germany on the path to destruction. A very innovative thinker...very farsighted on industrial relations and social policy. A great believer in compromise and moderation. Kind of brings to mind the late Sir James Goldsmith...the best, most incisive, critic of globalisation.
The Marxist/Jewish nexus is a great paradox. The most backward looking and ultra conservative people in Europe were the pre-war rabbinate in Central and Eastern Europe. AJP Taylor correctly noted that the only monarchists left in Hapsburg empire were Polish Aristos and Jews. Reality gets lost in the online torrent of 'analysis' to say nothing of the fake scholarship of academia.
Habsburg embassies and consulates were the default diplomatic help for Jews. Metternich was close to the Rothschilds and Franz Joseph took the view that Jews were his subjects too. He refused to receive the anti-Semitic mayor of Vienna.
I have noticed various Americans taking a quite sympathetic view of the Danubian monarchy. Timothy Snyder and Matt Yglesias most notably. That what followed it was worse helps this. As does the continuing problems of European order.
The King of Bahrain appointed a Jewish woman his ambassador to the US.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Houda_Nonoo
All the fundamentalisms are modern.
Rathenau’s murder was seen at the time by most Germans as a tragedy and an outrage.
The Habsburgs were pragmatists. In Spain and the Americas they crushed the Jews and part-Jews. In Central Europe they were passive-aggressive. For centuries pogroms/riots were encouraged in Vienna when the court felt it convenient. During the Counter-Reformation the prime internal enemy were the Protestants (mostly in Bohemia). It all changed with the Aufklarung which went hand in hand with the rationalisation of politics and administration. By the 19th c. the dynasty was desperate for support and discovered the virtue of toleration.
Many Americans (especially the 'trads') have a sentimental, somewhat, treacly conception of the Habsburgs. A drier, more analytic, take is called for. It is worth noting that a chap at the university of Lemberg (as it then was in Franz-Josef's day), a Weberian social scientist by the name of Gumplowicz, famously wrote an eerily prescient book on multiculturalism called Der Rassenkrieg. I understand that it is still sought out in second-hand book shops across the old Kaiserlich und Koeniglich lands.
In the Middle East monarchies are vastly more flexible, less ideologically febrile, than republics. Just compare Morocco with Algeria or the Gulf monarchies with horror-shows like Iraq or Syria. Sa'udi Arabia's present moderation would be inconceivable without the monarchy. Then again the Houthis (ultra-reactionary partisans of the local version of Shia imamate/monarchy) would constitute an obnoxious exception to this rule.
IMO modernity radicalises because it demands consistency and is impatient with contigency and singularity. It demands extremities to establish its legitimacy. Monarchies, however, renew themselves naturally via the rhythms of natality and mortality rather than purges and massacres. Gibbon's famous obiter dicta on heredity monarchy is perhaps the best ever take on the subject.
Rathenau's legacy is very timely, given the dreadful mess Germany is in. The TV series BABYLON BERLIN cautiously recovers some of the subject (Weimar era German/Soviet cooperation). Highly recommended.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ludwig_Gumplowicz
https://medium.com/@thecommonword905/gibbon-on-monarchy-69504b7949e2
Intellectual Jews may be "particularly easily seduced by intellectual systems," but intellectual systems don't escape the academy unless they come with moral commandments aimed at moral revolutions—no one is murdering each other over Berkeleyan idealism!
"And ye shall be unto me a kingdom of priests, and an holy nation. These are the words which thou shalt speak unto the children of Israel." Exodus 19:6
The Jews are a kingdom of priests, the priesthood of the Christian world—reading and interpeting (even writing) Scripture, explaining the demands of morality to the flock, defining God as Justice and Justice as God—and the thorn they keep catching on is the positing of an egalitarian universalism while remaining stubbornly particular.
From George Steiner: "Three times a demand was made for perfection and self-sacrifice; three times, that is, a utopian demand was made that collided with ordinary human capacities to respond. Three times, a Jew was at the center: Moses, Jesus, Marx."
And now comes the fourth demand, made from that potent mixture of Marxism and Protestantism called Social Justice. How dare the Jews have their own state—a state where one religion is exalted over others, where members of other tribes will be made to feel less-than? Universalism demands this be opposed and denounced.
Intellectual Jews (the priesthood) keep trying to dissolve their distinctness in a universal solvent aka the Brotherhood of Man, but keep failing because 1) many of their own people are just fine as Jews and have no need to trade their faith for abstract utopianism; and 2) many non-Jews also want to liquidate Jewishness, just in a much more unpleasant way.
Messianic utopianism may be a great way to hold a small tribe together (seems to be the glue that bonds every cult), but out in the larger world it always ends up with the utopians be forced to jump first into the cleansing fire.
Is it about Jews having their own state which exalts Judaism or about Jews demanding universalism everywhere except in Israel? Every single town in my area has a Happy Hanukkah sign next to the creche or a Merry Christmas sign in the local town hall, despite having few Jews. All children learn about dreidels and menorahs and the 8 days of Hanukkah in daycare, public schools and even Catholic schools. Christianity no longer has the pride of place in America. Judaism has been given equal status.
Christian Palestinians are not permitted the right of return and Christians are not permitted to immigrate to Israel. Can you imagine Portugal prohibiting Jewish immigration because it allows only Catholics to immigrate there?
"Christian Palestinians are not permitted the right of return..."
I think we all know that "right of return" is a loaded term that is not just about regaining lost property, but is another way that people have tried to undermine the Jewish state. I think it's helpful to widen our historical lens a bit and realize that the Palestinians were not the only people who were displaced after the collapse of the Ottoman, British and French empires, which all unraveled bw 1914-1948 or so. There was the Partition of India, the Turks and Arabs evicting all non-Muslims (and massacring Armenians), then the Iron Curtain came down across Eastern Europe. Millions of people lost and/or were chased away from their homes (or worse), yet this one dispute has become a global fetish for over 50 years now. I have friends whose families had homes in both pre-Revolutionary Russia and pre-Revolutionary Cuba, but we all know they're never getting any "right of return" nor do they expect any—sometimes History just has winners and losers.
"Christians are not permitted to immigrate to Israel." I'm not an expert here, but our good friend Wikipedia says: Non-Jewish foreigners may naturalize after living there for at least three years while holding permanent residency and demonstrating proficiency in the Hebrew language. Naturalizing non-Jews are additionally required to renounce their previous nationalities..."
"Jews demanding universalism everywhere except in Israel..." I'm not sure that asking for a Chanukah display next to a Christmas tree is "demanding universalism" as much as it's demanding recognition or equal rights, in our country without an established state faith.
And if "Christianity no longer has the pride of place in America", I don't think it has anything to do with Jews, Israel or Chanukah but the collapse of religion that's spread throughout the West.
Palestinians are the world’s only hereditary refugees and are effectively paid by UNRWA not to make peace with Israel, as then they stop being refugees and the money stops.
The Palestinians have been very ill-served and victimized by their own leaders, who have rented out their cause to other actors and their needs—the Soviets and their obsessive Jew hatred and florid denunciations of "capitalist imperialism", which was pretty rich coming from a country that occupied all of Eastern Europe; the various dictators and theocrats of the Muslim world, who gin up Jew hate as a way to keep the hate flowing anywhere but in their direction; and the many apparatchiks of the UN, who need a stead supply of helpless victims so they can play White Savior, the priest/martyr role of our age—and people like Arafat did this so the graft could keep flowing and they could get rich spilling blood while playing the role of revolutionary "freedom fighter", which is much easier than the challenge of building and running a state.
Making peace means giving up claims to your land. That is a hard pill to swallow for a people still tied to a land and their ancestry. This is a hard thing for moderns to understand as the connection between a people and their land has been severed.
My point was about Christian Palestinians and how the world has overlooked their plight and suffering, lumping them in with the Muslims and Christians (like American Christian Zionists) putting Jewish interests over Christian ones. All the talk about Palestine and Israel completely overlooks Christians, focusing on Jews v. Muslims/Arabs.
So Jews can return to Israel even though that undermined a Palestinian state but Christian Palestinians cannot return because that would undermine a Jewish state. Double standard.
I also think you blithely dismiss the importance of symbols and Christianity being dethroned as the primary and superior religion of the US. It's largely due to Christianity failing to assert itself and its cultural superiority but other factors include other religions demanding the pride of place. Not just Judaism of course, but they were the first.
Being an ethnostate means your ethnicity has claims others don’t. Lebanon was supposed to be the Christian state in the Middle East, but Christian identity did not work the same way internationally and the local Lebanese Christians did not see the need to welcome Christians from elsewhere in the Middle East.
Except being Jewish isn't an ethnicity. It's a religion. If it were an ethnicity, then Hebrews who converted would be able to return to Israel and non-Hebrew Jews wouldn't be able to use the right of return (when their ancestors were never there). See Ivanka Trump for example. Yes, I know she isn't immigrating to Israel but she could yet Richard Hannania's family wouldn't be able to return if they wanted to. Again, I'm fine with states preferring their own group, however they define that, but note that this isn't allowed in the West but defended elsewhere. I believe the US should limit non-WASP immigration and demand assimilation, despite being 180 degrees from a WASP but imagine the outcry if the US said we want to remain a white, Protestant nation and will change our immigration laws accordingly?
Was Lebanon founded as an independent state as a haven for Christians in the Middle East or was it seen as a Christian state by virtue of its Maronite Christian population? The reality is that pan-Arabism, even for Christians, was a political dream. The reality is we lump Arabs all together, even Christian ones, and they see themselves as different. I expect Chaldean Catholics would strongly prefer to live peacefully in Iraq, their ancient homeland, rather than in Lebanon, if they had their way. The same for the Jews of Persia. Unfortunately, this isn't the way things worked out.
Judaism is a religion. You don’t stop being a Jew just because you stop believing in Judaism. There are some odd legal wrinkles since religious Parties have been swing votes in the Knesset. Zionism was not a religious project.
Lebanon as the Christian country was not as explicit as Israel as the Jewish country.
But it is precisely Israel as ethnostate that is the reason why it generates such rage. The ethnic origins of western societies has to be deconstructed.
That graph regarding percent of the population scientist/masdrassa affiliated since the first madrassa is god awful. Two axis, measuring the same thing, but with different intercepts and scale ratios? Glancing at it is looks like the lines intersect at ~40 years instead of closer to 90. How the hell does something like that get into a paper?
I have a few other thoughts about the essay, but goddamn, that graph :D (Not that it is Lorenzo's fault, mind you.)
The central idea — science goes down, religion goes up — is conveyed but, well Could Do Better, Should Do Better indeed.
Would this be somewhat of an explanation for George Soros?
Now, there’s a thought. Though he literally has god fantasies …
A brilliant insight which explains a low-level intellectual pea under the mattress which has niggled me for years
Christians remained upper class in Middle East since due to religious tax many of poor people converted to Islam.
As Timur Kuran points out in The Long Divergence, they also disproportionately benefited from the expanding commercial ties and treaties with Europe.
Only a person unfamiliar with Edward Said and his work could describe him as driven by a desire to escape dhimmitude. He wasn't an Arab nationalist, but a Palestinian nationalist and fervently so, driven by his people's expulsion from their homeland.
Noticing the prevalence of Jews in Marxism and communism is verboten. They have been prevalent and overrepresented in left wing progressive movements. It's interesting you chalk it up to self-interest and ignore the religion angle. People will have no problem talking about Muslim propensity to radicalism and violence driven by their religion, but don't discuss the Jewish propensity to utopianism and even secularization. God as justice and justice as God will have political consequences and its left wing activism by Jews in non-Jewish states.
The trouble with the alleged influence of Judaism is all the Jewish Marxists abandoned Judaism and some came from very secular families. Being observant is an insulation from Marxism. Perhaps there is some lingering religious influence, but it is indirect at best.
On Edward Said, it is not an ever or. One can be both a passionate nationalist and find nationalism a mechanism for equality. On the contrary it would be easy for each to reinforce the other.
On Judaeo-Christian, yes. Hence the notion that Western intellectual history is an interaction between Athens and Jerusalem.
And this is a post about intellectuals and activists, who are unrepresentative of their wider communities in so many ways.