I feel like this piece misses the Occam's Razor answer to the question, which is that a new narrative about "globalists" who want to meddle in every nation's politics and is decoupled from previous anti-Semitic canards has become extremely popular in the wake of COVID?
Maybe we're just obsessively looking at all arguments as at the end of some chain of transmission, like a Sufi barakah, where the argument can never be severed from its origins - but people adapt arguments and ideas to new circumstances, and sometimes the arguments and ideas become something new and different. The idea of "states' rights" was used to defend the institution of slavery in the 1800s, but then it was used to defend the idea of marriage equality and legal cannabis in the 1990s and 2000s. I think smart people have a tendency to assume that everyone knows everything about the arguments they're using, but arguments are tools, like fire or knives, their use is in their utility, not where they came from. You don't need to know the history of guns to shoot one.
To make a long comment short - maybe Modi and the Hindi Nationalists don't like Soros because as you quoted, he said that Modi "isn't a democrat" and that he "expects a democratic revival." That's a pretty clear threat to Modi and his supporters, and they are reacting the way any in-group would to a foreigner with immense wealth and influence suggesting that their in-group is bad, or that he knows their country better than they do.
That is a good point and precisely what this article, it seems to me, was trying to analyze. I think the key is the "kinds" of conspiracy theories that are being deployed. These are not just any conspiracy theories, these are very specific kinds that have always been associated with Jews.
"The reason that Soros conspiracy theories are so powerful and popular in the first place—so much so that they have traveled all the way to New Delhi—is in no small part because antisemitic tropes allow them to work as a kind of shorthand. They are potent precisely because antisemitic tropes are potent. The very use of these conspiracy theories, then, cannot be separated from antisemitism, which is partly why the theories are being trotted out in the first place. They would work nearly not as well if they were lobbed against a new or unfamiliar group or if they weren’t of a kind always used against the particular group."
I think these tropes don't work by virtue of their anti-Semitic, I think that the trope of "outsider influence" in the mode of anti-Semitism is the most legible and available in the English speaking world because of its most terrible and memorable incarnation in the Nazi ideology and the Holocaust, and the fact that everyone learns the negative stereotypes the Nazis associated with Jewish people. We probably don't know about many well fleshed out "outsider influence" tropes because they're not in English, and I think there is probably a whole world of conspiratorial thinking regarding all kinds of groups we wouldn't expect out there in the world.
As you said, it's a category of worldview that seems to be universal, whether it's applied to Jewish people, "witches", Roma, etc. Where there are people, there are people who believe some secretive outgroup is doing them harm (if the outgroup is low SES) or controlling their lives (if the outgroup is high SES), or maybe both. That universality makes me think that comparing any instantiation of the category to anti-Semitism (with all the historical connotations that has) makes it harder to contend with and ultimately disarm these bad ideas.
We just lived through a 3 year era where people were labelled "conspiracy theorists" that ended up being RIGHT ABOUT NEARLY EVERY POINT THEY WERE MOCKED ABOUT.
The Government DID censor public discussion.
The Government DID push false information.
The Government DID suppress true information.
The Government DID lie about the safety and efficacy of Covid-19 vaccines.
The Government DID strike down or aid Social Media in deplatforming / demonetizing people who were speaking truths against the Government / mainstream narrative.
The true conspiracy theorists were the government, the mainstream media and everyone that backed them.
So I'd stop using the phrase "conspiracy theorist" since the largest "conspiracy theory" the world has ever seen was an ACTUAL CONSPIRACY. Full stop.
In regards to Randolph Carter's first paragraph, there is beyond a question or shadow of doubt that Globalists around the world, Soros included, are dictating policy around the world in an undemocratic manner and the tension is rising.
You want to make the Democratic party (or Liberals) look credible again? They need to own up to their lies and deceptions.
The Liberal party is no longer a party for the people. They are a party for the wealthy and everyone is starting to see through it.
You want to save the party? Time for some honesty, some tough questions and some humility rather than plodding on with righteous indignation.
Plenty of lies and deception to go around. Both sides are running a protection racket, playing on fear: "They'll be coming for you next!" Meanwhile, the oligarchs keep laughing all the way to the bank.
The Ogilarchs are laughing because the people are complacent, ignorant and prefer to stay that way. But it stands as a clear truth that while BOTH sides have their skeletons in the closet, the last 3 years saw the Liberals / Democrats around the world launch the more restrictive, destructive censorship campaign the world has EVER seen. And THAT is not OK. It needs to be stopped and corrected or it will happen again.
"Censorship"? Have you noticed what DeSantis has been up to? Or the fear-mongering, the book-banning, etc.? Or how the right tries to excuse such an approach -- its own version of "cancel culture" -- as it mimics the dodgiest tactics of the left? Two wrongs don't make a right!
Indeed! An analogous political predicament is also currently roiling Israeli society. This is a worldwide civil war (perhaps an Apocalypse), and what what some partisans might see (or seek to characterize) as antisemitism is merely the tip of the iceberg.
While Liberals are censoring the planet you're worried about Florida. Sounds about right. I'm not into partisan politics. I'm into logic and reason. LMK when you can meet on that playing field.
Speaking of globalism vs "national conservatism" (i.e., populist, ethnocratic nationalism with religious overtones)...
Modi (and the BJP) has much in common with Netanyahu (and his right-wing allies) -- and in that regard, neither is congenial toward Soros-style cosmopolitanism. How different, after all, is Zionism ("Jewish nationalism") from Hindutva, relative to their respective cultures?
Among Jews, this fight has been going on since the days of the Maccabees vs the Hellenists. This very day (with similar class compositions and external alliances), it continues to rage on the streets of Tel Aviv.
In that regard, Soros' detractors are, first and foremost, ideologically opposed to a certain kind of person -- thus (consequently) only to a CERTAIN KIND of Jew.
I'd be interested to see a comparison between the antisemetic tropes discussed here and the tropes around, say, anti-Muslim narratives in post-Yuan China, or the anti-Buddhist narratives that preceded those. It seems like these groups fit into a social slot similar to that occupied by Jews in post-Roman Europe - perpetual outsiders who can serve the ruling class as a lightning rod for discontent in the populace, and a reliable target for thefts that much of the populace will enthusiastically help with rather than objecting to, but who have external connections that make it valuable to protect them between outbursts of violence, as opposed to fully integrating or expelling the group.
I feel like this piece misses the Occam's Razor answer to the question, which is that a new narrative about "globalists" who want to meddle in every nation's politics and is decoupled from previous anti-Semitic canards has become extremely popular in the wake of COVID?
Maybe we're just obsessively looking at all arguments as at the end of some chain of transmission, like a Sufi barakah, where the argument can never be severed from its origins - but people adapt arguments and ideas to new circumstances, and sometimes the arguments and ideas become something new and different. The idea of "states' rights" was used to defend the institution of slavery in the 1800s, but then it was used to defend the idea of marriage equality and legal cannabis in the 1990s and 2000s. I think smart people have a tendency to assume that everyone knows everything about the arguments they're using, but arguments are tools, like fire or knives, their use is in their utility, not where they came from. You don't need to know the history of guns to shoot one.
To make a long comment short - maybe Modi and the Hindi Nationalists don't like Soros because as you quoted, he said that Modi "isn't a democrat" and that he "expects a democratic revival." That's a pretty clear threat to Modi and his supporters, and they are reacting the way any in-group would to a foreigner with immense wealth and influence suggesting that their in-group is bad, or that he knows their country better than they do.
That is a good point and precisely what this article, it seems to me, was trying to analyze. I think the key is the "kinds" of conspiracy theories that are being deployed. These are not just any conspiracy theories, these are very specific kinds that have always been associated with Jews.
This paragraph was what made me pause:
"The reason that Soros conspiracy theories are so powerful and popular in the first place—so much so that they have traveled all the way to New Delhi—is in no small part because antisemitic tropes allow them to work as a kind of shorthand. They are potent precisely because antisemitic tropes are potent. The very use of these conspiracy theories, then, cannot be separated from antisemitism, which is partly why the theories are being trotted out in the first place. They would work nearly not as well if they were lobbed against a new or unfamiliar group or if they weren’t of a kind always used against the particular group."
I think these tropes don't work by virtue of their anti-Semitic, I think that the trope of "outsider influence" in the mode of anti-Semitism is the most legible and available in the English speaking world because of its most terrible and memorable incarnation in the Nazi ideology and the Holocaust, and the fact that everyone learns the negative stereotypes the Nazis associated with Jewish people. We probably don't know about many well fleshed out "outsider influence" tropes because they're not in English, and I think there is probably a whole world of conspiratorial thinking regarding all kinds of groups we wouldn't expect out there in the world.
As you said, it's a category of worldview that seems to be universal, whether it's applied to Jewish people, "witches", Roma, etc. Where there are people, there are people who believe some secretive outgroup is doing them harm (if the outgroup is low SES) or controlling their lives (if the outgroup is high SES), or maybe both. That universality makes me think that comparing any instantiation of the category to anti-Semitism (with all the historical connotations that has) makes it harder to contend with and ultimately disarm these bad ideas.
We just lived through a 3 year era where people were labelled "conspiracy theorists" that ended up being RIGHT ABOUT NEARLY EVERY POINT THEY WERE MOCKED ABOUT.
The Government DID censor public discussion.
The Government DID push false information.
The Government DID suppress true information.
The Government DID lie about the safety and efficacy of Covid-19 vaccines.
The Government DID strike down or aid Social Media in deplatforming / demonetizing people who were speaking truths against the Government / mainstream narrative.
The true conspiracy theorists were the government, the mainstream media and everyone that backed them.
So I'd stop using the phrase "conspiracy theorist" since the largest "conspiracy theory" the world has ever seen was an ACTUAL CONSPIRACY. Full stop.
In regards to Randolph Carter's first paragraph, there is beyond a question or shadow of doubt that Globalists around the world, Soros included, are dictating policy around the world in an undemocratic manner and the tension is rising.
You want to make the Democratic party (or Liberals) look credible again? They need to own up to their lies and deceptions.
The Liberal party is no longer a party for the people. They are a party for the wealthy and everyone is starting to see through it.
You want to save the party? Time for some honesty, some tough questions and some humility rather than plodding on with righteous indignation.
Plenty of lies and deception to go around. Both sides are running a protection racket, playing on fear: "They'll be coming for you next!" Meanwhile, the oligarchs keep laughing all the way to the bank.
The Ogilarchs are laughing because the people are complacent, ignorant and prefer to stay that way. But it stands as a clear truth that while BOTH sides have their skeletons in the closet, the last 3 years saw the Liberals / Democrats around the world launch the more restrictive, destructive censorship campaign the world has EVER seen. And THAT is not OK. It needs to be stopped and corrected or it will happen again.
"Censorship"? Have you noticed what DeSantis has been up to? Or the fear-mongering, the book-banning, etc.? Or how the right tries to excuse such an approach -- its own version of "cancel culture" -- as it mimics the dodgiest tactics of the left? Two wrongs don't make a right!
Indeed! An analogous political predicament is also currently roiling Israeli society. This is a worldwide civil war (perhaps an Apocalypse), and what what some partisans might see (or seek to characterize) as antisemitism is merely the tip of the iceberg.
While Liberals are censoring the planet you're worried about Florida. Sounds about right. I'm not into partisan politics. I'm into logic and reason. LMK when you can meet on that playing field.
Speaking of globalism vs "national conservatism" (i.e., populist, ethnocratic nationalism with religious overtones)...
Modi (and the BJP) has much in common with Netanyahu (and his right-wing allies) -- and in that regard, neither is congenial toward Soros-style cosmopolitanism. How different, after all, is Zionism ("Jewish nationalism") from Hindutva, relative to their respective cultures?
Among Jews, this fight has been going on since the days of the Maccabees vs the Hellenists. This very day (with similar class compositions and external alliances), it continues to rage on the streets of Tel Aviv.
In that regard, Soros' detractors are, first and foremost, ideologically opposed to a certain kind of person -- thus (consequently) only to a CERTAIN KIND of Jew.
I'd be interested to see a comparison between the antisemetic tropes discussed here and the tropes around, say, anti-Muslim narratives in post-Yuan China, or the anti-Buddhist narratives that preceded those. It seems like these groups fit into a social slot similar to that occupied by Jews in post-Roman Europe - perpetual outsiders who can serve the ruling class as a lightning rod for discontent in the populace, and a reliable target for thefts that much of the populace will enthusiastically help with rather than objecting to, but who have external connections that make it valuable to protect them between outbursts of violence, as opposed to fully integrating or expelling the group.
One does not need to be even lightly anti-Semitic to shrug at György Soros' globe-trotting activities with disdain.
Most billionaires made/make something; Soros. Just. Made. Money.
In the US, his largesse helps to elect zeroes who then proceed to ignore the laws.