Thread by @KrisAtLarge

I'm going to talk about something very painful now, but it must be discussed. it's a specific antisemitic trope. let these words serve as a content warning for the material I'm about to discuss:

the Jewish Problem™. @mtaibbi and @elonmusk and @joerogan know what I mean.

(1/x)

I won't discuss this painful subject in too much detail—if you want to learn about the origins of the antisemitic trope of the Jewish Problem™ in Western culture, read up on the NSDAP and the Third Reich—but take care that you read *good* books about the Third Reich.

(2/x)

that's the problem, isn't it? people like @NateSilver538 and @mtaibbi don't read the *good* books about the Third Reich, but you can be pretty certain they've read a lot of bad ones. that's especially likely if they're the sort of people who think "history" means battles.

(3/x)

the marvellous thing about bigotry (from the standpoint of the bigot, like @MattWalshBlog or @DavidAFrench) is it's so *generic*. the Jewish Problem™ can become _any_ Problem™, in one's head—the Trans Problem™, the Queer Problem™, the Marxist Problem™, any Problem™.

(4/x)

that's the important thing about the [Whatever] Problem™ racist trope: the important thing, the most salient "fact" in the moral universe of bigots like @MattWalshBlog and @elonmusk, is that there's a Problem™. they consider that "science" or an "objective truth".

(5/x)

Judaism still exists and it's a Problem™. queer and trans people still exist and it's a Problem™. Black and Indigenous and other marginalized peoples still suffer, so they're a Problem™—they ought to have shut up and learned gratitude by now, but they haven't. etc.

(6/x)

this by the way is how @MattWalshBlog and other bigots do their *parenting*: their kids are the ones who are "objectively inferior" in that case, and therefore they ought to shut up and be grateful that Matt Walsh squirted his superior genes into them. it's *that bad*.

(7/x)

that's where the term *paternalism* comes from, by the way—maybe you've seen that word from leftist theory. maybe you've seen @jordanbpeterson or @mtaibbi or some other bigot laugh at the idea of "paternalism", but it's real enough: it means treating people like children.

(8/x)

or, more specifically, it means treating people like *abused* children. the "paternalist" leader (@JoeBiden say, or @elonmusk) is like an abusive father, telling his kids that their pains aren't real and that they should keep their traps shut and be obedient, etc.

(9/x)

to be *paternalist* is to be *patronizing*—the words are cognate, as you can probably tell. bigots are champion patronizers. @jordanbpeterson's entire personality is bigoted patronizing.

anyway, that's the nature of this [Whatever] Problem™ discourse: it's abuse.

(10/x)

it's the excuse of the abuser, who latches onto a victim and keeps telling them, "you have a Problem™"—like a cop deciding that they don't like the look of someone and bullying them. (if you're @mtaibbi or @MrAndyNgo, you think of @PortlandPolice bullying as "justice".)

(11/x)

cops are bigots and so they love thinking of entire categories of human being as Problems™. it fits the bigoted assumptions of policing, i.e. the belief that people are "intrinsically" criminal, the way that @NateSilver538 and @charlesmurray are "intrinsically" geniuses.

(12/x)

China is "intrinsically" a Problem™ in the same way. it's such a handy thing, this Problem™.

because it's *Christian* bigots who run Western society, it's one particular Problem™ they always blame all the other Problems™ on. @HogwartsLegacy is a whole game about it.

(13/x)

#JKRowling / @RGalbraith wrote a whole *fantasy* series that was chiefly a vehicle for stereotypes about this same Problem™. funny, that! have I mentioned that @HJoyceGender copied antisemitic conspiracy stuff from Jennifer Bilek?

~Chara of Pnictogen