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A review by lpm100
Jews Don't Count by David Baddiel
sad
fast-paced
2.0
Book Review
Jews Don't Count
David Baddiel
2/5 stars
"Some good thinking/ turns of phrase, but this just doesn't come through for me."
*******
This book only takes a couple of hours to read through, and at 135 pages it is the length of a typical broadside.
There's not a single reference in the whole book.
David Baddiel is apparently someone of some amount of media heft in the United Kingdom (887K Twitter followers).
For US readers, he might as well be on the moon since we know almost none of the British actors or comedians.
Somehow, this rewrite doesn't come across as appropriate for US readers - - even though I know the author really tried; the references in these Twitter flame wars / popular incidents are a lot of people that I've never heard of. And what are we to say about the political struggles of British MPs? How many Americans even know what an MP is?
******
I happen to be (Orthodox) Jewish in the religious sense, but not the genetic sense.
And black in the "I-don't-have-a-choice" sense.
That said, I'll express my knock-on thoughts about a lot of these questions brought up in the book with..... Other Questions. (So much for *that* stereotype.)
******
QUESTION: In the American context (where there are arguably more Jews even than in Israel), why does nobody say anything about anti-semitism?
Many reasons.
1. Jewish people themselves will not bring up progressive anti-semitism as an issue because they refuse to see it as such; Here in the U.S., they consistently vote for Democrats in numbers greater than 80%.
The red-green-black axis (Communists/Muslims/ blacks) in the Democratic Party is well attested; The vicious anti-semites Rashida Talib and Ilan Omar are Democrats.
The worst anti-semites in the United States are heavily disproportionately black (Alice Walker and Hebrew Israelites are totally different things except for their Jew hatred),
If you would vote for people that despise you, how can you expect other people to make a case on your behalf?
Jewish people are wordsmiths, par excellence, but there are very few of them who are willing to use it in service of their own defense.
2. Several phrases that I do read on a regular basis in Jewish publications are: "right wing extremism"/ "Christian nationalism" or any number of other phases that create imaginary enemies on the right. (This, in spite of the fact that Republicans and evangelicals are the most consistent supporters of Israel.)
Even the largest racial realist / White nationalist publication (Jared Taylor of "American Renaissance"), is married to a Jewish woman.
But, the great majority of Jewish people refuse to find common cause with people that actually DO like them.
So, voting for your enemies and ignoring your friends...... That's probably not the best/most logical strategy.
3. Follow this syllogism:
MAJOR PREMISE--White people are known to like to throw stones at each other. {Examples: Polish and Irish people were the dis-favorite White group maybe 3/4 of a century ago. White people today frequently use the word "White trash" / "trailer trash"/"hicks" against each other--and are just as likely as anyone else to be flapping on about "white male power structure"/"white privilege" blah blah blah as any non-white person.}
MINOR PREMISE--Jewish people are White people. {Examples:For purposes of conversion to Orthodox Judaism, Whites are preferred candidates. "Gendered racial exclusion among White internet daters": For dating sites, Jewish ethnicity is a 100% predictor of excluding black/non white partners as dates; Rabbi Avigdor Miller, Tape #844: "After all, the Jews are a white people, you have to know. The Ethiopians are a black people. And, therefore, they're nothing but a group of Gentiles who adopted some our ways. They have no connection to us at all; not the slightest." }
CONCLUSION-- If white people are throwing stones at Jewish people, then they are doing it in the same way that they would to any other subset of white people.
*******
QUESTION: Could it be that there is no issue here?
1. Ari Nagel, the famous Jewish mathematician in the United States has fathered at least 120 children (and there are probably 20 women pregnant with his child at any given moment). The reason that he can do this is because of the premium value of Jewish DNA. (I've never heard of any black man doing this.)
2. The price for Jewish egg donors is almost 10 times higher then it is for blacks and twice as high as it is for any other white people.
3. Everybody and his brother thinks that he is a Lost Tribe. (Meanwhile, black people trying to pass as white is an entire literary / cinematic genre. "Devil in a Blue Dress." Nella Larsen's "Passing." James Weldon Johnson's "Autobiography of an Ex-colored Man.")
4. 70% of Jews in the United States marry people who are not Jewish, and I've never one time heard someone say that they could not accept a Jewish partner for religious reasons. (The Jewish ladies are attractive and disproportionate numbers; no man who could land one would be kicking her out of bed for any reason.)
*******
QUESTION: Could the author be conflating two things?
1. European anti-Semitism is something that has been there for probably 20 centuries. Don't expect it to disappear all in one generation. (And it is true that part of Europe's proud sense of history/culture is bearing national grudges for centuries on end.) It's not the same thing as anti-Semitism in America - - such as it is - - because we just don't carry on like Old World Europe.
2. Racism against Jewish people has never been the same as, say, against black people. In the former case, it is fear of because of some presumed omniscient power. In the latter case it is because of contempt / pity because of powerlessness in general ineptitude. (People run away from neighborhoods very quickly when black people move there, and the presence of blacks in institutions is a tried-and-true way to turn them into a laughingstock. Not so for the presence of Jewish people: I don't expect that there will be a black chairman of the Federal reserve in my lifetime, but the last three or four have all been Jews. As well as the Secretary of the Treasury. It doesn't even need discussing the gravity of managing the money supply.)
*******
QUESTION: Could it be that anti-Semitism is a lot of guilt by association?
1. Merchants are distinctly unpopular people. (Chinese have been unpopular in Indonesia and Malaysia for a long time; Indians have been unpopular in East Africa for a long time.) And a lot of Jews are merchants.
2. Providers of financial services have been unpopular for a long time. (Interest is flatly forbidden to be charged in the Islamic world. After the GFC of 2008, there was lots of popular rage against bankers and "fat cats.") And a lot of Jews are in the financial industry.
3. In the European context, the stupid, smug self-important Old World Europeans are in the process of destroying themselves by inviting the instruments of their own destruction (i.e., Muslims) into the (EU) region by immigration policy so stupid that it can only make sense to some type of academic.
In that case, Jewish people happen to be there, but it's just coincidence. And it could be different, because the state of Israel is open to all Jews. Jews are 8 million strong in the United States, and there are ways to get there--especially if you are from an EU country.
No reason you could not move either of those places and let the Arabs and Europeans (who so richly deserve each other) have at each other.
4. Slumlords are also very unpopular. And a lot of Jews are slumlords.
*******
I wonder what does this author really want?
Does he want Jewish people to have a seat at the identity politics table in the United states? Why go out actively seeking banality? Isn't life short enough?
If you go through a lot of trouble over some number of decades to prove that you are Mighty White like everybody else, why are you surprised when this happens? (See earlier syllogism.)
*****
Verdict: I would pay no more than $5 for this book if I had to buy it again
Vocabulary:
Law of Schrodinger's Whites (p.52)
Godwin's Law
Jews Don't Count
David Baddiel
2/5 stars
"Some good thinking/ turns of phrase, but this just doesn't come through for me."
*******
This book only takes a couple of hours to read through, and at 135 pages it is the length of a typical broadside.
There's not a single reference in the whole book.
David Baddiel is apparently someone of some amount of media heft in the United Kingdom (887K Twitter followers).
For US readers, he might as well be on the moon since we know almost none of the British actors or comedians.
Somehow, this rewrite doesn't come across as appropriate for US readers - - even though I know the author really tried; the references in these Twitter flame wars / popular incidents are a lot of people that I've never heard of. And what are we to say about the political struggles of British MPs? How many Americans even know what an MP is?
******
I happen to be (Orthodox) Jewish in the religious sense, but not the genetic sense.
And black in the "I-don't-have-a-choice" sense.
That said, I'll express my knock-on thoughts about a lot of these questions brought up in the book with..... Other Questions. (So much for *that* stereotype.)
******
QUESTION: In the American context (where there are arguably more Jews even than in Israel), why does nobody say anything about anti-semitism?
Many reasons.
1. Jewish people themselves will not bring up progressive anti-semitism as an issue because they refuse to see it as such; Here in the U.S., they consistently vote for Democrats in numbers greater than 80%.
The red-green-black axis (Communists/Muslims/ blacks) in the Democratic Party is well attested; The vicious anti-semites Rashida Talib and Ilan Omar are Democrats.
The worst anti-semites in the United States are heavily disproportionately black (Alice Walker and Hebrew Israelites are totally different things except for their Jew hatred),
If you would vote for people that despise you, how can you expect other people to make a case on your behalf?
Jewish people are wordsmiths, par excellence, but there are very few of them who are willing to use it in service of their own defense.
2. Several phrases that I do read on a regular basis in Jewish publications are: "right wing extremism"/ "Christian nationalism" or any number of other phases that create imaginary enemies on the right. (This, in spite of the fact that Republicans and evangelicals are the most consistent supporters of Israel.)
Even the largest racial realist / White nationalist publication (Jared Taylor of "American Renaissance"), is married to a Jewish woman.
But, the great majority of Jewish people refuse to find common cause with people that actually DO like them.
So, voting for your enemies and ignoring your friends...... That's probably not the best/most logical strategy.
3. Follow this syllogism:
MAJOR PREMISE--White people are known to like to throw stones at each other. {Examples: Polish and Irish people were the dis-favorite White group maybe 3/4 of a century ago. White people today frequently use the word "White trash" / "trailer trash"/"hicks" against each other--and are just as likely as anyone else to be flapping on about "white male power structure"/"white privilege" blah blah blah as any non-white person.}
MINOR PREMISE--Jewish people are White people. {Examples:For purposes of conversion to Orthodox Judaism, Whites are preferred candidates. "Gendered racial exclusion among White internet daters": For dating sites, Jewish ethnicity is a 100% predictor of excluding black/non white partners as dates; Rabbi Avigdor Miller, Tape #844: "After all, the Jews are a white people, you have to know. The Ethiopians are a black people. And, therefore, they're nothing but a group of Gentiles who adopted some our ways. They have no connection to us at all; not the slightest." }
CONCLUSION-- If white people are throwing stones at Jewish people, then they are doing it in the same way that they would to any other subset of white people.
*******
QUESTION: Could it be that there is no issue here?
1. Ari Nagel, the famous Jewish mathematician in the United States has fathered at least 120 children (and there are probably 20 women pregnant with his child at any given moment). The reason that he can do this is because of the premium value of Jewish DNA. (I've never heard of any black man doing this.)
2. The price for Jewish egg donors is almost 10 times higher then it is for blacks and twice as high as it is for any other white people.
3. Everybody and his brother thinks that he is a Lost Tribe. (Meanwhile, black people trying to pass as white is an entire literary / cinematic genre. "Devil in a Blue Dress." Nella Larsen's "Passing." James Weldon Johnson's "Autobiography of an Ex-colored Man.")
4. 70% of Jews in the United States marry people who are not Jewish, and I've never one time heard someone say that they could not accept a Jewish partner for religious reasons. (The Jewish ladies are attractive and disproportionate numbers; no man who could land one would be kicking her out of bed for any reason.)
*******
QUESTION: Could the author be conflating two things?
1. European anti-Semitism is something that has been there for probably 20 centuries. Don't expect it to disappear all in one generation. (And it is true that part of Europe's proud sense of history/culture is bearing national grudges for centuries on end.) It's not the same thing as anti-Semitism in America - - such as it is - - because we just don't carry on like Old World Europe.
2. Racism against Jewish people has never been the same as, say, against black people. In the former case, it is fear of because of some presumed omniscient power. In the latter case it is because of contempt / pity because of powerlessness in general ineptitude. (People run away from neighborhoods very quickly when black people move there, and the presence of blacks in institutions is a tried-and-true way to turn them into a laughingstock. Not so for the presence of Jewish people: I don't expect that there will be a black chairman of the Federal reserve in my lifetime, but the last three or four have all been Jews. As well as the Secretary of the Treasury. It doesn't even need discussing the gravity of managing the money supply.)
*******
QUESTION: Could it be that anti-Semitism is a lot of guilt by association?
1. Merchants are distinctly unpopular people. (Chinese have been unpopular in Indonesia and Malaysia for a long time; Indians have been unpopular in East Africa for a long time.) And a lot of Jews are merchants.
2. Providers of financial services have been unpopular for a long time. (Interest is flatly forbidden to be charged in the Islamic world. After the GFC of 2008, there was lots of popular rage against bankers and "fat cats.") And a lot of Jews are in the financial industry.
3. In the European context, the stupid, smug self-important Old World Europeans are in the process of destroying themselves by inviting the instruments of their own destruction (i.e., Muslims) into the (EU) region by immigration policy so stupid that it can only make sense to some type of academic.
In that case, Jewish people happen to be there, but it's just coincidence. And it could be different, because the state of Israel is open to all Jews. Jews are 8 million strong in the United States, and there are ways to get there--especially if you are from an EU country.
No reason you could not move either of those places and let the Arabs and Europeans (who so richly deserve each other) have at each other.
4. Slumlords are also very unpopular. And a lot of Jews are slumlords.
*******
I wonder what does this author really want?
Does he want Jewish people to have a seat at the identity politics table in the United states? Why go out actively seeking banality? Isn't life short enough?
If you go through a lot of trouble over some number of decades to prove that you are Mighty White like everybody else, why are you surprised when this happens? (See earlier syllogism.)
*****
Verdict: I would pay no more than $5 for this book if I had to buy it again
Vocabulary:
Law of Schrodinger's Whites (p.52)
Godwin's Law