What happens when a wave of antisemitism floods over the Western world?

 Well, the Guardian publishes an article about how antisemitic Orban is, of course.

 At this point this is as pathetic as predictable. Orban is doing his usual "Brussels and Soros is evil" routine (which is quite pathetic in its own right by the way), while The Guardian is trying to frame it as some sort of antisemitism -never mind that Orban and Bibi are the greatest of pals, the fact that Bibi also is pointing at Soros as some evil conspirator (I guess he is also an anti-semite), and finally forgetting that Jews are much safer in Hungary than in most of Western Europe. I dare not even mention the fact that the constant specter of Russian/Chinese bots, influencers deciding our elections is apparently not antisemitic, even though it is evoking the very same image of the evil outsider meddling with your internal affairs. (I am relieved that criticizing Weinstein is not anti-semitic, although this logic could also apply to him, too.)

Idiocy, double standards and willful blindness, while in Europe -and elsewhere- people are demonstrating "for" Hamas, chant "gas the Jews", "from river to the sea", and other idiocy, where the BBC and Corbyn is refusing to call Hamas a terrorist organization. But sure. It is Orban that we have an issue with when it comes to antisemitism. Can you be more stupid than this?

Bradley Cooper and his nose

 Every single time there is a gender or race swap of a white male character (fictional or not), there are several responses.

1. It is just a fictional character, race/sex should not matter, shut up racist. (I am not sure they would like a white Spawn or Blade but that is a different matter.)

2. OK, it is a historical character but back then they had no concept of race as we do, so shut up racist. (I guess Egyptians, Romans, Europeans in the Middle Ages, etc. did not recognize people from Sub-Saharan Africa or from South East Asia as somehow different. Maybe their eyesight was impacted somehow. I wonder what the first person who recognized African features thought. He must have believed he was going insane.)

3. We picked the best person for the role, regardless of gender or race. (Which is in itself interesting -I would like to ask how they think a black woman is the best person to play a white man's role -I am looking at you, Lucien- , but whatever.), so shut up racist.

4. We need to have more representation of historically oppressed minorities, so shut up racist.

And then, we have The opposing idiocy -coming from the same people- who suddenly find it problematic when a non-Jewish person plays a Jewish person on screen, a somewhat overweight person playing a morbidly obese person, or when a straight person plays a gay person on screen. The latest example: Bradley Cooper's fake nose. Maybe he was the best person for the role, who knows? And are we seriously going to argue that Jews are underrepresented in Hollywood? I mean if you take this line of thought to the logical conclusion, only the given person could play the given person on screen, and we do not possess enough knowledge in necromancy to do something about it when it comes to dead people. Plus the whole thing goes directly against the above detailed arguments for race and gender swaps.

This post has one purpose: to highlight the contradiction, and ask for a line of reasoning from anyone and everyone that can explain it away. I am very open to a logical argument.

Antisemitism in Hungary

 When you read about antisemitism in Europe, Hungary always comes up in online conversations: the accepted wisdom (for whatever reason...) is that Hungary is a very antisemitic country. The fact that there are hardly any incidents (-and none of them were violent, compared to the "non-antisemitic" UK), does not really matter.

Interestingly, certain rabbis have a very opposing view to this narrative. Perhaps we should listen to them.

The Satanic George Soros

Since I wrote a little tongue-in-cheek post about why it is not antisemitic to criticize Soros, I feel I should clarify a few things.

I don't like Orban. I don't even like Soros. To be honest I do not know either of these people personally. I do support a lot of what Soros is doing- the CEU, promoting free speech, etc., but I also dislike a lot of what he's doing. I do not agree with him on mass migration, I think there's a good argument that some of the NGOs he is founding are, in fact, taking part in human trafficking- or at least enabling it-, and I do not believe that national identity is an outdated concept. I think the Hungarian government's hysteric anti-Soros rhetoric is equally hilarious and embarrassing; especially comparing him to Satan.

However -and this is the important part. Bringing accusations of antisemitism, nazism into this argument completely invalidates the "progressive" side of the debate. There is no need to imagine some sort of hidden and vile antisemitic attacks, like how the WP and other papers do. There is enough ammunition there against Orban that would last until the end of times. This -also- hysterical flurry of accusations are only accomplishing two things: it polarizes the field into two sides with no room for subtleties, and it absolutely discredits the critics of Orban.

So stop it already. You don't have to make shit up; he has given you a lot (corruption, rolling back on checks and balances, state propaganda) you can genuinely criticise. You don't have to make him into a Nazi or a necrophiliac as well. It just makes you look stupid.