Archie wrote: ↑Sat Jan 11, 2025 7:25 pm Lol, more whining from you that we won't let the ADL run the site.
You have rather obvious contempt for Jewish people. To say that colors your ability to view matters of Jewish history objectively is an understatement.
Unlike Jews who are totally objective. Suuuuure.
My criticisms of Jews are very well-supported and, if anything, rather mild.
Archie wrote: ↑Sat Jan 11, 2025 7:25 pm
To hear Jews tell it, Jewish history is Jews suffering through a series of unprovoked outrages at the hands of the goyim. My contrary view is that the standard Jewish narrative tends to be highly biased (just as you'd expect) and that the grievances against Jews are often based on very real and understandable conflicts of interest.
I’d suggest to you that if you’d read actual Jewish historians writing Jewish history — rather than bloviating Goebbels wannabes like Joyce — you’d see Jewish history is written in a manner in which you’d expect it to be. Historians of the Jewish people understand the complex dynamics that shaped Jewish history. They’re just reluctant — for good reason — to normalize antisemitism or to treat stories of Jews murdering Christian children to drink their blood the same way as they would the story of economic competition between demographic groups in the aftermath of the abolition of serfdom — a major driver of anti-Jewish violence post-Alexander II, particularly in multiethnic regions of the Russian Empire.
Jewish historians lying about their own history, such as Dinnerstein or Cesarani, has nothing to do with "understanding the complex dynamics that shaped Jewish history". Defining yourself and your entire history as a diaspora people as an innocent, victimized outgroup being murdered and pogromed at the hands of White Europeans for centuries, for no other reason than Europeans being hateful, bigoted, irrational, religiously zealous and evil, is not a serious scholarly position. These issues have deep-seated roots in Jewish culture and religious thought.
curioussoul wrote: ↑Sat Jan 11, 2025 11:59 pm
Defining yourself and your entire history as a diaspora people as an innocent, victimized outgroup being murdered and pogromed at the hands of White Europeans for centuries, for no other reason than Europeans being hateful, bigoted, irrational, religiously zealous and evil, is not a serious scholarly position. These issues have deep-seated roots in Jewish culture and religious thought.
Well, let’s discuss specifics then.
What, in your assessment, was the primary reason for hostility toward Jews on the part of European populations before 1492?
curioussoul wrote: ↑Sat Jan 11, 2025 11:59 pm
Defining yourself and your entire history as a diaspora people as an innocent, victimized outgroup being murdered and pogromed at the hands of White Europeans for centuries, for no other reason than Europeans being hateful, bigoted, irrational, religiously zealous and evil, is not a serious scholarly position. These issues have deep-seated roots in Jewish culture and religious thought.
Well, let’s discuss specifics then.
What, in your assessment, was the primary reason for hostility toward Jews on the part of European populations before 1492?
Before 1492? For starters, Jews in Europe were generally engaged in exploitative financial practices from the very get-go. They entered the continent with substantial wealth and centuries of experience with financial instruments completely unknown to the average European. For all practical purposes, they came for the sole purpose of lending money out at exorbitant interest, and came to exploit very simple peoples while enjoying the protection of the monarchy. What shaped European attitudes towards Jews was Jewish behavior, and there's little evidence to suggest, as many Jewish historians have attempted, to attribute European attitudes towards Jews to irrationality, religious zealotry or superstition. Actual historiography on European-Jewish relations lay bare the fact that concrete on-the-ground realities were what sparked anti-Jewish attitudes, as opposed to antisemitic superstitution, religious zealotry or irrational "hate".
Numar Patru wrote: ↑Sun Jan 12, 2025 2:03 am
So do you have any sources for that or am I just supposed to trust you?
The literature on that subject alone is quite extensive, but historian B. Lionel Abrahams wrote in his 1896 study "The Expulsion of the Jews from England in 1290" that when the Jews first settled in England:
[...] they brought with them money, but no skill in any occupation except lending it out at interest.
Similarly, historian J. M. Rigg wrote in 1902 that it would be wrong:
[...] to suppose that the English Jews of this period got their living in any considerable numbers in any other art or craft. [...] It is therefore probable that the capital with which the community started in the country was very considerable.
Other scholars such as Iris Ritzmann and Cordelia Hess have concluded that anti-Jewish violence had very little to do with superstitution or religious persecution but rather concrete socio-economic realities, coming short of outright blaming Jewish economic exploitation and behavior for worsening Jewish-European relations and subsequent conflicts/violence.
So are you just gonna crib the whole thing from Andrew Joyce, you fraud, or are you going to make an original argument based on things you’ve actually read?
Numar Patru wrote: ↑Sun Jan 12, 2025 2:48 am
So are you just gonna crib the whole thing from Andrew Joyce, you fraud, or are you going to make an original argument based on things you’ve actually read?
Let's cut to the chase. Are you claiming that the stereotype of the Jewish moneylender is largely a myth?
Oh, I’m sorry, is this what happens when one of you gets caught cheating? The moderator steps in?
Do I deny Jews were involved in money lending? No. But when some moron says, “Jews in Europe were generally engaged in exploitative financial practices from the very get-go,” I want some responsible sourcing or an admission that one is making unfounded generalizations.
Numar Patru wrote: ↑Sun Jan 12, 2025 3:00 am
Oh, I’m sorry, is this what happens when one of you gets caught cheating? The moderator steps in?
Do I deny Jews were involved in money lending? No. But when some moron says, “Jews in Europe were generally engaged in exploitative financial practices from the very get-go,” I want some responsible sourcing or an admission that one is making unfounded generalizations.
You don't see how things like selling peasants liquor on credit could be seen as exploitative?
Mark Twain describing Jewish practices in the south after the Civil War,
In the cotton States, after the war, the simple and ignorant negroes made the crops for the white planter on shares. The Jew came down in force, set up shop on the plantation, supplied all the negro’s wants on credit, and at the end of the season was proprietor of the negro’s share of the present crop and of part of his share of the next one. Before long, the whites detested the Jew, and it is doubtful if the negro loved him.
Of course I can see these things as exploitive. That’s not the point.
I object to the idea that Jews came into Europe 2,000 years ago intending to fleece the whole “white” population. Certainly by the Middle Ages, money lending was part of Jewish life. My questions are when it became this way and why.
If your answer or the answer of curioussoul is that it’s in Jews’ nature to do these things, then you should say so. Otherwise, there is a conversation to be had.
Numar Patru wrote: ↑Sun Jan 12, 2025 2:48 am
So are you just gonna crib the whole thing from Andrew Joyce, you fraud, or are you going to make an original argument based on things you’ve actually read?
Of course, it's a thread about the JQ and Andrew Joyce's scholarship and arguments on the topic. I've already noted that Jews came to the European continent and engaged with European peoples for the primary purpose of making a living doing what they'd done for centuries as a diaspora people, which was to ally themselves with local rulers and use their considerable wealth and experience in financial instruments to make money lending it out at interest, among other things. All that being said, Jews distinguish themselves from other diaspora peoples in that they do not fit the mold of a regular middleman minority.
Numar Patru wrote: ↑Sun Jan 12, 2025 3:00 amBut when some moron says, “Jews in Europe were generally engaged in exploitative financial practices from the very get-go,” I want some responsible sourcing or an admission that one is making unfounded generalizations.
Watch your language. I sourced my claim and you became very upset. Either engage with the argument or get out.
For starters, Jews in Europe were generally engaged in exploitative financial practices from the very get-go. They entered the continent with substantial wealth and centuries of experience with financial instruments completely unknown to the average European. For all practical purposes, they came for the sole purpose of lending money out at exorbitant interest, and came to exploit very simple peoples while enjoying the protection of the monarchy. What shaped European attitudes towards Jews was Jewish behavior, and there's little evidence to suggest, as many Jewish historians have attempted, to attribute European attitudes towards Jews to irrationality, religious zealotry or superstition. Actual historiography on European-Jewish relations lay bare the fact that concrete on-the-ground realities were what sparked anti-Jewish attitudes, as opposed to antisemitic superstitution, religious zealotry or irrational "hate".
