case examples, & response through 'the venue maneuver'
first entry here derived from …
Zionism & Jihadism - Making Sense #422 (Sam Harris & Haviv Rettig Gur)
Jun 19, 2025 Making Sense Podcast: Episodes
Sam Harris speaks with Haviv Rettig Gur about Israel and her enemies. They discuss Israel’s war with Iran and America’s role in the conflict, Israel’s military capabilities, Iran’s nuclear program, what a ground invasion of Iran could look like, how Iranians view the regime, antisemitism, the history of Zionism, Islam and jihadism, extremism on the Israeli far right, religious fanaticism, Israeli settlements in the West Bank, Ehud Olmert, the hostages in Gaza, and other topics.
Haviv Rettig Gur is a veteran Israeli journalist who serves as the senior analyst at The Times of Israel. He has covered Israel's politics, foreign policy, and relationship with the U.S. and Jewish diaspora since 2005, reporting from over 20 countries. Since October 7, he has been touring the English-speaking world — the U.S., Canada, Australia, and the U.K. — to discuss the war in Gaza, resilience, and antisemitism. X: @havivrettiggur
If mass society turns on minorities? Need for auto-emancipation (Pinsker, pamphlet, 1881)
~49:27~50:33
actually um a veneer
49:22
overlaying a much much more real trend of of consolidation of national identities of industrialization that was that was driving people from small places villages farms into big cities and creating these new mass societies and mass identities and and radicalized political movements And all of this stuff all of these changes would turn on the Jews and turn on the minorities and we're actually not safe anymore And there's this entire sociological analysis of modernization that develops that is basically Herzelian Zionism And Pinska writes a uh a pamphlet in 1881 called autoemancipation Meaning the emancipation is a series of laws passed by these European countries in the late 19th century that that liberate the Jews from the ghettos liberate the Jews from the restrictions on university and professions and all of that And he says "What if it's all not real What if none of this emancipation ultimately will end well You have to auto emancipate yourself That's the only solution Jews need self-determination." And one of the main arguments that these early Zionists make these strategic Zionists who awaken because of this sudden turn of Europe on the Jews is the idea that a Jew cannot stand before the anti-semite and explain himself Now they thought of an anti-semite as someone who the to whom the Jew is a some kind of moral cartoon is some kind of antagonist or protagonist in some kind of you know morality play happening in their own head In other words not a human being in front of them but part of a story they need for their own definition of themselves That's an anti-semite And when you stand before that anti-semit and you say "Oh no I'm not this thing
50:56
you think I am I'm actually over here this other thing this complex three-dimensional human thing."
Inside a moral cartoon: "You cannot penetrate the fog of their morality play" & to lapse into justification is dehumanizing…
50:28~51:30
…is the idea that a Jew cannot stand before the anti-semite and explain himself. Now they thought of an anti-semite as someone who the to whom the Jew is a some kind of moral cartoon is some kind of antagonist or protagonist in some kind of you know morality play happening in their own head. In other words not a human being in front of them but part of a story they need for their own definition of themselves. That's an anti-semite And when you stand before that antisemite and you say "Oh no I'm not this thing you think I am I'm actually over here this other thing this complex three-dimensional human thing." You cannot these thinkers the Pinskers and the Herzel say you cannot penetrate the fog of their morality play. And because you cannot penetrate that fog you will stand before them and you will try to explain and you will end up trying to justify. And justifying yourself is dehumanizing. And so you are forbidden to justify yourself. That is not a thing that a Jew with dignity and hum basic human dignity is permitted to do anymore, and the Zionist movement creates a foundational culture of not justifying yourself…
thoughts
this is a theory of mediating boundaries, cell walls
this is a strategy in a domain where there's (?) a Nash equilibria (not to mention, who knows how many possible peaks to be found [how to explore that …bizarre domain?]?
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