Ashkenazi Jews have always been considered white in the English-speaking world. The Confederacy had a Jewish secretary of war. Alfred Deakin had a Jewish attorney general after his country had deported most of its non-white population and banned non-white immigration.
American Jews have never had a hatred for whites as a separate ethnic group. The Jewish writers on Buzzfeed were writing those articles because they considered themselves white and had white guilt because they were left-wing, so they wanted to prove themselves to be "white allies."
Ben Shapiro's still as hostile to white nationalists as he's always been. He brought Niall Ferguson on his show recently to debunk white supremacist historical claims.
>Ashkenazi Jews have always been considered white in the English-speaking world.
I'd say this was more true when the US was an overwhelmingly Anglo society; Ellis Islanders changed things. Also keep in mind Shtetl Jews were a different breed entirely from the relatively small population of affluent German Jews who already lived here.
>American Jews have never had a hatred for whites as a separate ethnic group.
"Hatred" is a very strong word.
There was 100% an unreasonable paranoia about White American ingroup sentiment in the decades following the Holocaust. But it seems to have mostly died out in younger generations. My contention is Buzzfeed writers were basically the Jewish equivalent of white trash and they did have a quasi-racialized animus rooted in their own low status / extreme mental health issues combined with the modern leftist fetish for victimhood. But financebro Jews don't give a shit.
>The Jewish writers on Buzzfeed were writing those articles because they considered themselves white and had white guilt because they were left-wing, so they wanted to prove themselves to be "white allies."
Come on Sunshine, do you really believe that?
Perhaps some of them thought of themselves as white, or even most of them. But they also saw themselves as a special Prestige Class of white who had the unique right / responsibility to be extra vigilant against white ethnocentrism. I *distinctly* remember (which means you almost certainly do as well) a ton of pieces about Jewish identity in that era that *aggressively* pushed the idea that Jews have a special moral position because of the Holocaust to aggressively fight against Trump or whatever. Hell, you even saw more established journos doing this sort of shit--read *literally anything* from Jennifer Rubin or JPod from that era. It's actually really strange to look at today. Part of it was just the bleeding edge of TDS, but there was also a very distinct Thing that happened in the mid 2010s because of the digital media bubble in NYC giving too many influential jobs to neurotic failsons who couldn't hack it at a real publication.
>Ben Shapiro's still as hostile to white nationalists as he's always been. He brought Niall Ferguson on his show recently to debunk white supremacist historical claims.
Still hostile to them, sure. As hostile as he was in 2015? No fucking way. Not even close. Back then he never would have broken bread with people who are saying overtly identitarian things like Matt Walsh and Charlie Kirk.
Anyway Shapiro is a rather cartoonish example and I only use him because he is sort of our platonic ideal of an extreme Zionist. I know you resist the idea that there's been a large shift, but in my own Lived Experience the difference feels quite massive. I remember conservative Jews AGGRESSIVELY tone policing identitarian sentiments in right wing spaces ten years ago (and doing so in a sophisticated layered way that often made it hard to get past the radar). These days I don't encounter that literally at all. Maybe my perspective is skewed living in FL where the Jews are more chill than in NYC and also being on Substack which already selects for high openness, but it really feels like something substantive has happened, esp since October 7.
>I'd say this was more true when the US was an overwhelmingly Anglo society; Ellis Islanders changed things. Also keep in mind Shtetl Jews were a different breed entirely from the relatively small population of affluent German Jews who already lived here.
Alfred Deakin was living in the early 20th century, and he consulted with American politicians on drafting the White Australia Policy. Ashkenazi Jews (including his AG) were citizens, whereas Chinese and Melanesians were deported despite having been in the country for decades because they were nonwhite.
In the US Jews wouldn't have even been able to immigrate if they weren't considered white. Naturalization--as you know--was restricted to free whites, and Jews immigrated to America en masse and were one component of the Ellis Islanders. A few racialists like Stoddard tried claiming Jews should no longer be classified as white due to their Semitic rather than Indo-European origin, but American law and ordinary Americans considered Jews white. Barry Goldwater was Jewish in terms of ancestry but was considered a generic white guy because he was raised Christian. If Jews hadn't been considered white, there wouldn't have been massive numbers of Jewish immigrants, a Jewish CSA cabinet member, or Senator Barry Goldwater.
The definition of white has been stable throughout US history, and it's a modern CRT myth that the definition has expanded over time.
>Perhaps some of them thought of themselves as white, or even most of them. But they also saw themselves as a special Prestige Class of white who had the unique right / responsibility to be extra vigilant against white ethnocentrism.
Buzzfeed used to have skits shitting on whites and would always include Jews as white. The Buzzfeed try-guys did a DNA test video, and they predicted the whitest one would be the one who was 100% Ashkenazi.
The feeling of a special responsibility to combat white supremacy doesn't mean they didn't think of themselves as white. It meant they thought of themselves as past victims of discrimination. See the movie Black Klansman. Denzel's son's partner is Jewish, and the former tells him to stop thinking he as a white man doesn't have a stake in combating white supremacy given that while he's white, he's also Jewish.
>I know you resist the idea that there's been a large shift, but in my own Lived Experience the difference feels quite massive. I remember conservative Jews AGGRESSIVELY tone policing identitarian sentiments in right wing spaces ten years ago (and doing so in a sophisticated layered way that often made it hard to get past the radar). These days I don't encounter that literally at all. Maybe my perspective is skewed living in FL where the Jews are more chill than in NYC and also being on Substack which already selects for high openness, but it really feels like something substantive has happened, esp since October 7.
Jews vote the exact same way they did in 2012 (in fact they actually voted slightly less Republican in 2020 and 2024 than in 2012). The average American Jew (both in 2025 and in 2010) supports the right of Israel to exist but is mostly indifferent to the country, opposes the Likud Party's war, and is liberal.
I'd say they were considered White but the ethnic difference was considered salient in the same way (perhaps slightly more bc of the religious factor) it was for Irish Italians etc. when they were still poor and trashy. But yes, the religious aspect has always made it an edge case and it would have been very weird to outgroup Ashkenazim raised as Christian. That sort of maximalist biological essentialism re: Jewishness was a weird historical aberration and the Alt Right were silly billies for taking it seriously.
>The definition of white has been stable throughout US history, and it's a modern CRT myth that the definition has expanded over time.
I think you are correct in a very reductive literal sense but there's another concept separate from "whiteness" that people are talking about when they bitch about their Irish grandpappy not being seen as white.
Speaking just for my relatives, I know my Neapolitan great-grandma was excluded from some diners in the Jim Crow South for being too swarthy and plausibly quadroon. Germans in the Midwest were largely bullied into giving up their culture, anglicizing their names etc. In the nineteenth century Irish immigrants were often treated worse than Black slaves. I'm sure Jews have their own stories.
This distinction between America's ethnic ingroup and outgroup is often conflated with white vs. nonwhite in an unhelpful way, and while I acknowledge it can be annoying when people say the Irish used to be seen as nonwhite, there is *some* fundamental truth they are getting at there.
>The feeling of a special responsibility to combat white supremacy doesn't mean they didn't think of themselves as white. It meant they thought of themselves as past victims of discrimination
You are being kind of autistic here in focusing on the letter of whiteness instead of on the spirit. Especially because the specific claim the Alt Right made during this era is that Jews "shapeshift," i.e. strategically weaponize their ostensible whiteness to attack from the inside without seeming like a hostile aggressor while using their position as an outgroup on the fringes of whiteness to claim victim status / insulate themselves and demand their own ethnostate. I have more sophisticated thought on the matter these days, but it's easy to see why someone could look at J-Pod or Jennifer Rubin (let alone a hobgoblin like Barbara Lerner Specter) and conclude this is happening.
The people who critique this sort of behavior would point to your examples as fantastic cases of shapeshifting: "I'm Jewish so making fun of white people is fine because I am white too, but I also have another identity on the side that gives me all sorts of special privileges you aren't allowed to challenge."
>Jews vote the exact same way they did in 2012 (in fact they actually voted slightly less Republican in 2020 and 2024 than in 2012). The average American Jew (both in 2025 and in 2010) supports the right of Israel to exist but is mostly indifferent to the country, opposes the Likud Party's war, and is liberal.
That isn't surprising--Romney was kind of his own aberration in lots of ways.
Anyway this sort of polling data is only one piece of the puzzle. Metapolitical / Overton Window shifts are very hard (I'd say impossible) to capture quantitatively. Sometimes it really is vibes. And I simply don't think I'd be able to get away with what I'm doing today ten years ago. Lots of things changed the equation over the past two decades and October 7 sent extant trends into hyperdrive.
>I think you are correct in a very reductive literal sense but there's another concept separate from "whiteness" that people are talking about when they bitch about their Irish grandpappy not being seen as white.
I don't think my reductionism is unwarranted. Defining racial categories in other terms obviously contradicts race realism. More specifically, the definition of whiteness you're referencing is one that critical race theorists invented on no historical basis. Irish people weren't even considered ethnic in the other English-speaking countries, and if they converted to Protestantism, they were granted equal rights in the UK. Even Ben Franklin's notorious quotation when read in full context actually affirms the whiteness of all Europeans.
The closest contemporary analogue is probably blackness. People know Somali immigrants and their descendants are different from American blacks, but they're still considered black. Similarly, non-Anglo-Celtic Europeans (including Jews) were always classified as white even though they were distinct from old stock Americans.
>This distinction between America's ethnic ingroup and outgroup is often conflated with white vs. nonwhite in an unhelpful way, and while I acknowledge it can be annoying when people say the Irish used to be seen as nonwhite, there is *some* fundamental truth they are getting at there.
It doesn't make sense then to say Irish or whoever weren't considered white if you just mean in-group vs out-group since various groups were considered subaltern and white simultaneously. A tourist from Europe who visits America is obviously not going to be considered part of the American in-group despite being white.
>Speaking just for my relatives, I know my Neapolitan great-grandma was excluded from some diners in the Jim Crow South for being too swarthy and plausibly quadroon. Germans in the Midwest were largely bullied into giving up their culture, anglicizing their names etc. In the nineteenth century Irish immigrants were often treated worse than Black slaves. I'm sure Jews have their own stories
While there are some anecdotes along these lines, such cases were aberrations from the norm. Italians in the south in the overwhelming majority of cases used white facilities. "Colored" literally just meant non-black, so even foreign dignitaries from India and the Far East were able to use white facilities under Jim Crow. Germans gave up their culture because of WWI, not because they weren't considered white. German culture and language flourished in America before then. The stories about Irish immigrants are vastly exaggerated, and there's not really anything comparable to the horrors that were afflicted upon black people.
>I don't think my reductionism is unwarranted. Defining racial categories in other terms obviously contradicts race realism. More specifically, the definition of whiteness you're referencing is one that critical race theorists invented on no historical basis. Irish people weren't even considered ethnic in the other English-speaking countries, and if they converted to Protestantism, they were granted equal rights in the UK. Even Ben Franklin's notorious quotation when read in full context actually affirms the whiteness of all Europeans.
The closest contemporary analogue is probably blackness. People know Somali immigrants and their descendants are different from American blacks, but they're still considered black. Similarly, non-Anglo-Celtic Europeans (including Jews) were always classified as white even though they were distinct from old stock Americans.
Ehhh. In Canada, it was because there was always a large Catholic population (French-Canadians?). Australia and New Zealand, because Ireland was still a part of the UKGBI when they first formed.
The USA declared independence 25 years before Ireland and Great Britain merged together.
Obviously, due to African-Americans being descended from Bantus and their European ancestry being mostly English, Scottish, and/or Irish.
And remember, Old Stock Americans weren't all Anglo-Celtic. Recall how the Dutch and the Swedes/Finns settled the Mid-Atlantic. That said, most of the Scandinavians who settled there were absorbed into the Dutch and Anglo populations.
>While there are some anecdotes along these lines, such cases were aberrations from the norm. Italians in the south in the overwhelming majority of cases used white facilities. "Colored" literally just meant non-black, so even foreign dignitaries from India and the Far East were able to use white facilities under Jim Crow. Germans gave up their culture because of WWI, not because they weren't considered white. German culture and language flourished in America before then. The stories about Irish immigrants are vastly exaggerated, and there's not really anything comparable to the horrors that were afflicted upon black people.
I know some Italians settled in Virginia, and also in New France/Louisiana (P.G.T. Beauregard was part Italian and so was William Booth Taliaferro).
There was a lot of anti-German sentiment in the U.S. in the 1840s and in the lead up to the War Between the States. The American Party was strongly Anti-Catholic, Anti-German and Anti-Irish, but also very philosemitic. Recall that Walt's podcast with the Australian blokes on how Protestants were basically Jews with nose jobs.
I know the U.S. almost adopted a monarch after the War of Independence too, but seeing that it would have been a German prince, it was shelved. Remember, King George the III's paternal grandparents were from what eventually became Germany.
Anti-German sentiment had come in multiple waves before the so-called "First World War".
Don't know about that. Northern immigrants were rarely fed, and didn't get paid much, if at all. Not to mention, the compulsory schooling system formed in part in an attempt to assimilate them. The War Between the States also broke out in part due to resistance to immigration and to compulsory schooling too. Not to mention, there were many Black slaveowners too. And African-Americans were treated just as badly in the North, if not even worse, Pre-Antebellum. Obviously, many Northerners had slaves too!
>Ehhh. In Canada, it was because there was always a large Catholic population (French-Canadians?). Australia and New Zealand, because Ireland was still a part of the UKGBI when they first formed.
The USA declared independence 25 years before Ireland and Great Britain merged together.
Obviously, due to African-Americans being descended from Bantus and their European ancestry being mostly English, Scottish, and/or Irish.
And remember, Old Stock Americans weren't all Anglo-Celtic. Recall how the Dutch and the Swedes/Finns settled the Mid-Atlantic. That said, most of the Scandinavians who settled there were absorbed into the Dutch and Anglo populations.
None of that contradicts my thesis. As I said, Irish people weren't considered ethnic in New Zealand or Australia, and they were only considered ethnic in America and Britain insofar as they remained Roman Catholic. Ethnic status notwithstanding, they were always classified as white, which is why no map by anthropologists of the era painted Ireland as a "colored nation." The Dutch and Huguenots were assimilated into the Anglo-Celtic population and weren't considered ethnic, as Martin van Buren's election shows.
>There was a lot of anti-German sentiment in the U.S. in the 1840s and in the lead up to the War Between the States. The American Party was strongly Anti-Catholic, Anti-German and Anti-Irish, but also very philosemitic. Recall that Walt's podcast with the Australian blokes on how Protestants were basically Jews with nose jobs.
I know the U.S. almost adopted a monarch after the War of Independence too, but seeing that it would have been a German prince, it was shelved. Remember, King George the III's paternal grandparents were from what eventually became Germany.
Anti-German sentiment had come in multiple waves before the so-called "First World War".
Anti-German sentiment was never so intense prior to WWI that it led to total repudiation of German Americans' heritage. Anti-German sentiment before WWI was sort of like bigotry against Hispanics today; it exists, but it's not like it makes everyday life a struggle.
>Don't know about that. Northern immigrants were rarely fed, and didn't get paid much, if at all. Not to mention, the compulsory schooling system formed in part in an attempt to assimilate them. The War Between the States also broke out in part due to resistance to immigration and to compulsory schooling too. Not to mention, there were many Black slaveowners too. And African-Americans were treated just as badly in the North, if not even worse, Pre-Antebellum. Obviously, many Northerners had slaves too!
Assimilation is good, and it's good that immigrants to the north had to experience the process.
Black people in the south, on the other hand, were subjected to barbarous treatment by the state. Vermont outlawed slavery in 1777, and other northern states did so in subsequent decades. The northern states discriminated against black people in the post-Civil War years through zoning laws et al, but black people could at least exercise their voting rights and go to integrated spaces, unlike in the south.
>In the US Jews wouldn't have even been able to immigrate if they weren't considered white. Naturalization--as you know--was restricted to free whites, and Jews immigrated to America en masse and were one component of the Ellis Islanders. A few racialists like Stoddard tried claiming Jews should no longer be classified as white due to their Semitic rather than Indo-European origin, but American law and ordinary Americans considered Jews white. Barry Goldwater was Jewish in terms of ancestry but was considered a generic white guy because he was raised Christian. If Jews hadn't been considered white, there wouldn't have been massive numbers of Jewish immigrants, a Jewish CSA cabinet member, or Senator Barry Goldwater.
There was already an influential Jewish population in the U.S. at the time of Independence, and not to mention, Puritans also wanted Christianity to be more closer to it's Jewish roots. Judah P. Benjamin and many other Jews predate Ellis Island.
Ironically, Stoddard himself was opposed to Hitler. Don't think he would have excluded Finns though, since they obviously belong to a different linguistic group from Indo-Europeans but are Nordic.
Yes, Barry Goldwater had Jewish ancestry, but through his Father.
And the CSA and Antebellum had complicated racial heuristics.
I'd never thought of Orthodox Judaism as life-denying, but I can see how someone who was raised in the meaningless libertinism of secular American culture might look at a tradition that imposes some boundaries on human behavior and wonder why anyone would want to voluntarily put on a straitjacket.
To borrow a contemporary term, the lived experience of observing a traditional Jewish lifestyle is impossible to express in propositional terms. It's sort of like Marmite - looks and sounds kind of gross to outsiders, but it's been around forever, and it has a small and dedicated fan club who are well aware that they're not going to convince anyone that it's worth a taste so they don't even try. Non-proselytizing ethnoreligions are sort of by definition unappealing to outsiders.
Also, single American Jewish women move to Israel all the time. I've met plenty of them. I've dated some of them. Most of them are basket cases trying desperately to escape themselves only to realize that they brought their luggage with them before spending all their savings and moving back.
Ashkenazi Jews have always been considered white in the English-speaking world. The Confederacy had a Jewish secretary of war. Alfred Deakin had a Jewish attorney general after his country had deported most of its non-white population and banned non-white immigration.
American Jews have never had a hatred for whites as a separate ethnic group. The Jewish writers on Buzzfeed were writing those articles because they considered themselves white and had white guilt because they were left-wing, so they wanted to prove themselves to be "white allies."
Ben Shapiro's still as hostile to white nationalists as he's always been. He brought Niall Ferguson on his show recently to debunk white supremacist historical claims.
>Ashkenazi Jews have always been considered white in the English-speaking world.
I'd say this was more true when the US was an overwhelmingly Anglo society; Ellis Islanders changed things. Also keep in mind Shtetl Jews were a different breed entirely from the relatively small population of affluent German Jews who already lived here.
>American Jews have never had a hatred for whites as a separate ethnic group.
"Hatred" is a very strong word.
There was 100% an unreasonable paranoia about White American ingroup sentiment in the decades following the Holocaust. But it seems to have mostly died out in younger generations. My contention is Buzzfeed writers were basically the Jewish equivalent of white trash and they did have a quasi-racialized animus rooted in their own low status / extreme mental health issues combined with the modern leftist fetish for victimhood. But financebro Jews don't give a shit.
>The Jewish writers on Buzzfeed were writing those articles because they considered themselves white and had white guilt because they were left-wing, so they wanted to prove themselves to be "white allies."
Come on Sunshine, do you really believe that?
Perhaps some of them thought of themselves as white, or even most of them. But they also saw themselves as a special Prestige Class of white who had the unique right / responsibility to be extra vigilant against white ethnocentrism. I *distinctly* remember (which means you almost certainly do as well) a ton of pieces about Jewish identity in that era that *aggressively* pushed the idea that Jews have a special moral position because of the Holocaust to aggressively fight against Trump or whatever. Hell, you even saw more established journos doing this sort of shit--read *literally anything* from Jennifer Rubin or JPod from that era. It's actually really strange to look at today. Part of it was just the bleeding edge of TDS, but there was also a very distinct Thing that happened in the mid 2010s because of the digital media bubble in NYC giving too many influential jobs to neurotic failsons who couldn't hack it at a real publication.
>Ben Shapiro's still as hostile to white nationalists as he's always been. He brought Niall Ferguson on his show recently to debunk white supremacist historical claims.
Still hostile to them, sure. As hostile as he was in 2015? No fucking way. Not even close. Back then he never would have broken bread with people who are saying overtly identitarian things like Matt Walsh and Charlie Kirk.
Anyway Shapiro is a rather cartoonish example and I only use him because he is sort of our platonic ideal of an extreme Zionist. I know you resist the idea that there's been a large shift, but in my own Lived Experience the difference feels quite massive. I remember conservative Jews AGGRESSIVELY tone policing identitarian sentiments in right wing spaces ten years ago (and doing so in a sophisticated layered way that often made it hard to get past the radar). These days I don't encounter that literally at all. Maybe my perspective is skewed living in FL where the Jews are more chill than in NYC and also being on Substack which already selects for high openness, but it really feels like something substantive has happened, esp since October 7.
>I'd say this was more true when the US was an overwhelmingly Anglo society; Ellis Islanders changed things. Also keep in mind Shtetl Jews were a different breed entirely from the relatively small population of affluent German Jews who already lived here.
Alfred Deakin was living in the early 20th century, and he consulted with American politicians on drafting the White Australia Policy. Ashkenazi Jews (including his AG) were citizens, whereas Chinese and Melanesians were deported despite having been in the country for decades because they were nonwhite.
In the US Jews wouldn't have even been able to immigrate if they weren't considered white. Naturalization--as you know--was restricted to free whites, and Jews immigrated to America en masse and were one component of the Ellis Islanders. A few racialists like Stoddard tried claiming Jews should no longer be classified as white due to their Semitic rather than Indo-European origin, but American law and ordinary Americans considered Jews white. Barry Goldwater was Jewish in terms of ancestry but was considered a generic white guy because he was raised Christian. If Jews hadn't been considered white, there wouldn't have been massive numbers of Jewish immigrants, a Jewish CSA cabinet member, or Senator Barry Goldwater.
The definition of white has been stable throughout US history, and it's a modern CRT myth that the definition has expanded over time.
>Perhaps some of them thought of themselves as white, or even most of them. But they also saw themselves as a special Prestige Class of white who had the unique right / responsibility to be extra vigilant against white ethnocentrism.
Buzzfeed used to have skits shitting on whites and would always include Jews as white. The Buzzfeed try-guys did a DNA test video, and they predicted the whitest one would be the one who was 100% Ashkenazi.
The feeling of a special responsibility to combat white supremacy doesn't mean they didn't think of themselves as white. It meant they thought of themselves as past victims of discrimination. See the movie Black Klansman. Denzel's son's partner is Jewish, and the former tells him to stop thinking he as a white man doesn't have a stake in combating white supremacy given that while he's white, he's also Jewish.
>I know you resist the idea that there's been a large shift, but in my own Lived Experience the difference feels quite massive. I remember conservative Jews AGGRESSIVELY tone policing identitarian sentiments in right wing spaces ten years ago (and doing so in a sophisticated layered way that often made it hard to get past the radar). These days I don't encounter that literally at all. Maybe my perspective is skewed living in FL where the Jews are more chill than in NYC and also being on Substack which already selects for high openness, but it really feels like something substantive has happened, esp since October 7.
Jews vote the exact same way they did in 2012 (in fact they actually voted slightly less Republican in 2020 and 2024 than in 2012). The average American Jew (both in 2025 and in 2010) supports the right of Israel to exist but is mostly indifferent to the country, opposes the Likud Party's war, and is liberal.
I'd say they were considered White but the ethnic difference was considered salient in the same way (perhaps slightly more bc of the religious factor) it was for Irish Italians etc. when they were still poor and trashy. But yes, the religious aspect has always made it an edge case and it would have been very weird to outgroup Ashkenazim raised as Christian. That sort of maximalist biological essentialism re: Jewishness was a weird historical aberration and the Alt Right were silly billies for taking it seriously.
>The definition of white has been stable throughout US history, and it's a modern CRT myth that the definition has expanded over time.
I think you are correct in a very reductive literal sense but there's another concept separate from "whiteness" that people are talking about when they bitch about their Irish grandpappy not being seen as white.
Speaking just for my relatives, I know my Neapolitan great-grandma was excluded from some diners in the Jim Crow South for being too swarthy and plausibly quadroon. Germans in the Midwest were largely bullied into giving up their culture, anglicizing their names etc. In the nineteenth century Irish immigrants were often treated worse than Black slaves. I'm sure Jews have their own stories.
This distinction between America's ethnic ingroup and outgroup is often conflated with white vs. nonwhite in an unhelpful way, and while I acknowledge it can be annoying when people say the Irish used to be seen as nonwhite, there is *some* fundamental truth they are getting at there.
>The feeling of a special responsibility to combat white supremacy doesn't mean they didn't think of themselves as white. It meant they thought of themselves as past victims of discrimination
You are being kind of autistic here in focusing on the letter of whiteness instead of on the spirit. Especially because the specific claim the Alt Right made during this era is that Jews "shapeshift," i.e. strategically weaponize their ostensible whiteness to attack from the inside without seeming like a hostile aggressor while using their position as an outgroup on the fringes of whiteness to claim victim status / insulate themselves and demand their own ethnostate. I have more sophisticated thought on the matter these days, but it's easy to see why someone could look at J-Pod or Jennifer Rubin (let alone a hobgoblin like Barbara Lerner Specter) and conclude this is happening.
The people who critique this sort of behavior would point to your examples as fantastic cases of shapeshifting: "I'm Jewish so making fun of white people is fine because I am white too, but I also have another identity on the side that gives me all sorts of special privileges you aren't allowed to challenge."
>Jews vote the exact same way they did in 2012 (in fact they actually voted slightly less Republican in 2020 and 2024 than in 2012). The average American Jew (both in 2025 and in 2010) supports the right of Israel to exist but is mostly indifferent to the country, opposes the Likud Party's war, and is liberal.
That isn't surprising--Romney was kind of his own aberration in lots of ways.
Anyway this sort of polling data is only one piece of the puzzle. Metapolitical / Overton Window shifts are very hard (I'd say impossible) to capture quantitatively. Sometimes it really is vibes. And I simply don't think I'd be able to get away with what I'm doing today ten years ago. Lots of things changed the equation over the past two decades and October 7 sent extant trends into hyperdrive.
>I think you are correct in a very reductive literal sense but there's another concept separate from "whiteness" that people are talking about when they bitch about their Irish grandpappy not being seen as white.
I don't think my reductionism is unwarranted. Defining racial categories in other terms obviously contradicts race realism. More specifically, the definition of whiteness you're referencing is one that critical race theorists invented on no historical basis. Irish people weren't even considered ethnic in the other English-speaking countries, and if they converted to Protestantism, they were granted equal rights in the UK. Even Ben Franklin's notorious quotation when read in full context actually affirms the whiteness of all Europeans.
The closest contemporary analogue is probably blackness. People know Somali immigrants and their descendants are different from American blacks, but they're still considered black. Similarly, non-Anglo-Celtic Europeans (including Jews) were always classified as white even though they were distinct from old stock Americans.
>This distinction between America's ethnic ingroup and outgroup is often conflated with white vs. nonwhite in an unhelpful way, and while I acknowledge it can be annoying when people say the Irish used to be seen as nonwhite, there is *some* fundamental truth they are getting at there.
It doesn't make sense then to say Irish or whoever weren't considered white if you just mean in-group vs out-group since various groups were considered subaltern and white simultaneously. A tourist from Europe who visits America is obviously not going to be considered part of the American in-group despite being white.
>Speaking just for my relatives, I know my Neapolitan great-grandma was excluded from some diners in the Jim Crow South for being too swarthy and plausibly quadroon. Germans in the Midwest were largely bullied into giving up their culture, anglicizing their names etc. In the nineteenth century Irish immigrants were often treated worse than Black slaves. I'm sure Jews have their own stories
While there are some anecdotes along these lines, such cases were aberrations from the norm. Italians in the south in the overwhelming majority of cases used white facilities. "Colored" literally just meant non-black, so even foreign dignitaries from India and the Far East were able to use white facilities under Jim Crow. Germans gave up their culture because of WWI, not because they weren't considered white. German culture and language flourished in America before then. The stories about Irish immigrants are vastly exaggerated, and there's not really anything comparable to the horrors that were afflicted upon black people.
>I don't think my reductionism is unwarranted. Defining racial categories in other terms obviously contradicts race realism. More specifically, the definition of whiteness you're referencing is one that critical race theorists invented on no historical basis. Irish people weren't even considered ethnic in the other English-speaking countries, and if they converted to Protestantism, they were granted equal rights in the UK. Even Ben Franklin's notorious quotation when read in full context actually affirms the whiteness of all Europeans.
The closest contemporary analogue is probably blackness. People know Somali immigrants and their descendants are different from American blacks, but they're still considered black. Similarly, non-Anglo-Celtic Europeans (including Jews) were always classified as white even though they were distinct from old stock Americans.
Ehhh. In Canada, it was because there was always a large Catholic population (French-Canadians?). Australia and New Zealand, because Ireland was still a part of the UKGBI when they first formed.
The USA declared independence 25 years before Ireland and Great Britain merged together.
Obviously, due to African-Americans being descended from Bantus and their European ancestry being mostly English, Scottish, and/or Irish.
And remember, Old Stock Americans weren't all Anglo-Celtic. Recall how the Dutch and the Swedes/Finns settled the Mid-Atlantic. That said, most of the Scandinavians who settled there were absorbed into the Dutch and Anglo populations.
>While there are some anecdotes along these lines, such cases were aberrations from the norm. Italians in the south in the overwhelming majority of cases used white facilities. "Colored" literally just meant non-black, so even foreign dignitaries from India and the Far East were able to use white facilities under Jim Crow. Germans gave up their culture because of WWI, not because they weren't considered white. German culture and language flourished in America before then. The stories about Irish immigrants are vastly exaggerated, and there's not really anything comparable to the horrors that were afflicted upon black people.
I know some Italians settled in Virginia, and also in New France/Louisiana (P.G.T. Beauregard was part Italian and so was William Booth Taliaferro).
There was a lot of anti-German sentiment in the U.S. in the 1840s and in the lead up to the War Between the States. The American Party was strongly Anti-Catholic, Anti-German and Anti-Irish, but also very philosemitic. Recall that Walt's podcast with the Australian blokes on how Protestants were basically Jews with nose jobs.
I know the U.S. almost adopted a monarch after the War of Independence too, but seeing that it would have been a German prince, it was shelved. Remember, King George the III's paternal grandparents were from what eventually became Germany.
Anti-German sentiment had come in multiple waves before the so-called "First World War".
Don't know about that. Northern immigrants were rarely fed, and didn't get paid much, if at all. Not to mention, the compulsory schooling system formed in part in an attempt to assimilate them. The War Between the States also broke out in part due to resistance to immigration and to compulsory schooling too. Not to mention, there were many Black slaveowners too. And African-Americans were treated just as badly in the North, if not even worse, Pre-Antebellum. Obviously, many Northerners had slaves too!
>Ehhh. In Canada, it was because there was always a large Catholic population (French-Canadians?). Australia and New Zealand, because Ireland was still a part of the UKGBI when they first formed.
The USA declared independence 25 years before Ireland and Great Britain merged together.
Obviously, due to African-Americans being descended from Bantus and their European ancestry being mostly English, Scottish, and/or Irish.
And remember, Old Stock Americans weren't all Anglo-Celtic. Recall how the Dutch and the Swedes/Finns settled the Mid-Atlantic. That said, most of the Scandinavians who settled there were absorbed into the Dutch and Anglo populations.
None of that contradicts my thesis. As I said, Irish people weren't considered ethnic in New Zealand or Australia, and they were only considered ethnic in America and Britain insofar as they remained Roman Catholic. Ethnic status notwithstanding, they were always classified as white, which is why no map by anthropologists of the era painted Ireland as a "colored nation." The Dutch and Huguenots were assimilated into the Anglo-Celtic population and weren't considered ethnic, as Martin van Buren's election shows.
>There was a lot of anti-German sentiment in the U.S. in the 1840s and in the lead up to the War Between the States. The American Party was strongly Anti-Catholic, Anti-German and Anti-Irish, but also very philosemitic. Recall that Walt's podcast with the Australian blokes on how Protestants were basically Jews with nose jobs.
I know the U.S. almost adopted a monarch after the War of Independence too, but seeing that it would have been a German prince, it was shelved. Remember, King George the III's paternal grandparents were from what eventually became Germany.
Anti-German sentiment had come in multiple waves before the so-called "First World War".
Anti-German sentiment was never so intense prior to WWI that it led to total repudiation of German Americans' heritage. Anti-German sentiment before WWI was sort of like bigotry against Hispanics today; it exists, but it's not like it makes everyday life a struggle.
>Don't know about that. Northern immigrants were rarely fed, and didn't get paid much, if at all. Not to mention, the compulsory schooling system formed in part in an attempt to assimilate them. The War Between the States also broke out in part due to resistance to immigration and to compulsory schooling too. Not to mention, there were many Black slaveowners too. And African-Americans were treated just as badly in the North, if not even worse, Pre-Antebellum. Obviously, many Northerners had slaves too!
Assimilation is good, and it's good that immigrants to the north had to experience the process.
Black people in the south, on the other hand, were subjected to barbarous treatment by the state. Vermont outlawed slavery in 1777, and other northern states did so in subsequent decades. The northern states discriminated against black people in the post-Civil War years through zoning laws et al, but black people could at least exercise their voting rights and go to integrated spaces, unlike in the south.
>In the US Jews wouldn't have even been able to immigrate if they weren't considered white. Naturalization--as you know--was restricted to free whites, and Jews immigrated to America en masse and were one component of the Ellis Islanders. A few racialists like Stoddard tried claiming Jews should no longer be classified as white due to their Semitic rather than Indo-European origin, but American law and ordinary Americans considered Jews white. Barry Goldwater was Jewish in terms of ancestry but was considered a generic white guy because he was raised Christian. If Jews hadn't been considered white, there wouldn't have been massive numbers of Jewish immigrants, a Jewish CSA cabinet member, or Senator Barry Goldwater.
There was already an influential Jewish population in the U.S. at the time of Independence, and not to mention, Puritans also wanted Christianity to be more closer to it's Jewish roots. Judah P. Benjamin and many other Jews predate Ellis Island.
Ironically, Stoddard himself was opposed to Hitler. Don't think he would have excluded Finns though, since they obviously belong to a different linguistic group from Indo-Europeans but are Nordic.
Yes, Barry Goldwater had Jewish ancestry, but through his Father.
And the CSA and Antebellum had complicated racial heuristics.
the hipster art ho to reactionary tradwife pipeline is real
some might say a little too real!
Haters are fans too
so is the hippy to hillbilly pipeline
Orthodox Jew marries a Protestant and they both become Catholic? Wild trajectory.
May I remind you that Walt's podcast with the Aussies had Tradcaths being outed as Protestants LARPing as Catholics.
I did not listen to that podcast but that is funny. The Eternal Protestant strikes again.
I remember her. She was nice. Certainly one of the more sane personalities from that era.
I'd never thought of Orthodox Judaism as life-denying, but I can see how someone who was raised in the meaningless libertinism of secular American culture might look at a tradition that imposes some boundaries on human behavior and wonder why anyone would want to voluntarily put on a straitjacket.
To borrow a contemporary term, the lived experience of observing a traditional Jewish lifestyle is impossible to express in propositional terms. It's sort of like Marmite - looks and sounds kind of gross to outsiders, but it's been around forever, and it has a small and dedicated fan club who are well aware that they're not going to convince anyone that it's worth a taste so they don't even try. Non-proselytizing ethnoreligions are sort of by definition unappealing to outsiders.
Also, single American Jewish women move to Israel all the time. I've met plenty of them. I've dated some of them. Most of them are basket cases trying desperately to escape themselves only to realize that they brought their luggage with them before spending all their savings and moving back.
I loved her! We talked a lot. So happy you brought her back.
Lauren Southern’s husband was an AFP officer. Some dude in the Friedman conference backtraced him based on details.
She’s a Jewish subverter.
I remember her joint podcasts with Luke Ford circa 2015-16. Nice to see she’s still around.
"Tell us a bit about yourself?"
"I'm jewish AND a woman"