Thread by @Delafina777

Yes.

Because the alt-right has increasingly made it acceptable to be a blatant antisemite and continue to spout misinformation even after factual correction.

If you've been wondering why I'm especially pissed at aggressive internet atheists, let's talk about some history. 1/x

https://twitter.com/Dominic4532/status/1187233123530137601

A lot of Internet Atheists are very, very mad at Christianity.

That in itself isn't a problem. So am I. So are a lot of people in the US who aren't Christian. Christianity is probably at its most toxic in the US right now, and evangelicalism is awful for living things.

But there are a lot of atheists who are pissed at Jews, too, under the heading of "all religions are awful" (by which they mean: function like Christianity).

Underlying this is Judaism's status as America's most familiar religion after Christianity...

...which means that your average American is both confident that they understand Judaism and actually conceptualizes it as basically Christianity with different holidays and no Jesus.

They also conceptualize Jewishness as religious, which gets into a lack of Christian (religious or cultural) understanding of how Jewish peoplehood works, but that's a different thread.

They're mad at Christians and Christianity, so they're also mad at Jews (and other members of minority religions, but in America, again, Judaism is the next most familiar religion after Christianity) for being, in their minds, basically Christians because Jewish = religious.

So, okay, fine. They're factually wrong, but so are plenty of people on the internet, which doesn't necessarily make them genocidal.

But there's another component here, which is angry white men/4chan/alt-right/etc.

There's a toxic stew there of perceived intellectual superiority, entitlement, a sense that something they're entitled to is being taken away from them by a malicious Other.

Women, "SJWs", liberals, minorities... if you're an Internet Atheist, "religious people."

And a big part of this corner of the internet is conspiracy theories.

And the vast majority of conspiracy theories end up with The Jews Are Responsible. Sometimes we're also lizard people, or aliens, or whatever, but we almost always end up playing the villain in these stories.

But wait! I hear you saying, hypothetical reader.

Internet Atheists are still PRIMARILY angry at Christians, so what's the problem?

Well, the problem, dear reader, is historically whether it's Christians angry at us or people angry at Christians, we still get killed.

So, as unpleasant as it is, let's talk about Hitler.

Hitler started out by selling himself to the public as a Christian, but a BETTER, more enlightened Christian than following traditional Christianity made most people.

Hitler started off by promoting "Positive Christianity." This was supposedly a more enlightened form of Christianity. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Positive_…

The way Hitler conceived of Proper German Christianity was:

Jesus was an Aryan dude who was fighting against the institutional power of corrupt, materialistic, selfish Pharisees.

And unfortunately, if you take out "Aryan" (but not really, because Blond American Jesus), "Jesus was a guy like us fighting against the corrupt, materialistic, hypocritical Pharisees" is actually a baseline assumption of American Christianity.

Do a Twitter search on "Pharisee" and look at how it's used in conversation, if you don't believe me.

Most Americans don't necessarily parse that as being antisemitic, but there's an underlying, not necessarily thought-through assumption that Judaism was the problem Jesus came to solve.

And that problem isn't necessarily blatantly coded as "Jewish" as opposed to "the religious authorities of the time" or "organized religion," or "the institution."

But that connection is right there, waiting to be made.

And when Jews talk about most American atheists being Christian atheists, we're talking about how this stuff is in the water in America, and if you don't do a lot of work to understand and move past these assumptions, they're still part of your cultural background.

And just saying "I don't believe in God anymore" doesn't untangle all this stuff from your worldview.

But anyway, back to Hitler.

So publicly, he's promoting "Positive Christianity," a Christianity washed clean of its Semitic roots, in which Jesus came to save the world from the Jews.

It's pretty clear that that was a political move, however. The Nazis weren't confident that they could just eliminate Christianity from the German consciousness, so they tried to make it a tool of the state.

What did Hitler actually believe, though?

That one's a lot harder, obviously, since it's probably impossible to determine what someone believes in the privacy of their own heart.

As Kershaw points out in his biography of Hitler, he privately denigrated Christianity to those close to him.

Overy (in The Dictators) records a bunch of different remarks about how Christianity was primitive superstition and would eventually collapse as Nazi science progressed.

But ultimately, for the Nazis, there were two main problems with Christianity:

1) it was a rival power that could undermine loyalty to them
2) it had Jewish roots

(Virulent hatred makes people bonkers, which is how you get the Nazis eventually deciding that *the very concept of peace* is a Jewish invention designed to weaken the rest of the world by undermining survival of the fittest, for example.)

But the point is:

Angry white man raised in a Christian environment that posits Judaism as the problem Jesus came to solve decides the Jews have conquered the world through Christianity.

It's not that large of a leap, honestly.

And any movement made up of predominantly angry white men pissed at Christianity whose understanding of who Jews are is shaped by a Christian background are likely to end up with a view of Jews as puppetmasters responsible for it.

It's doubly scary when it shares significant overlap with an internet subculture that's white supremacist, conspiracy-obsessed, etc. and has painted believing in conspiracy theories as a sign of superior intelligence and insight.

So, essentially, we're screwed from both sides.

And that's why it's pretty scary when atheists who are very, very angry at Christianity view Judaism as just another form of Christianity.

It's not, we're already vulnerable to violence, and it very quickly becomes "The Jews are RESPONSIBLE for Christianity."

And historically, angry white men who are pissed at Christianity have still been willing to make common cause with Christians to get rid of the Jews.