I have had Christians get genuinely really furious at me for suggesting that there's a connection between traditional ecclesiastic antisemitism and the eliminationist antisemitism of the 20th century, and the fact that people can be that delusional is really disturbing. - ThreadSky

goldwagnathan.bsky.social • 98 days ago

I have had Christians get genuinely really furious at me for suggesting that there's a connection between traditional ecclesiastic antisemitism and the eliminationist antisemitism of the 20th century, and the fact that people can be that delusional is really disturbing.

Reposted from Robert Downen

I hate to crosspost, but masks are coming off and Fundamentalist Twitter is realizing that some folks who think America should be run as a Christian nation also have other thoughts that may or may not be almost verbatim Hitler quotes.

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astruckpersonn.bsky.social•98 days ago

i am proudly lutheran. and even i know. hitler took inspiration from martin luther’s antisemitic screeds

goldwagnathan.bsky.social•98 days ago

I've seen Christian intellectuals blame the Holocaust on "the death of God" and it enrages me because it's basically saying "if you hadn't tried to stop us from killing you in small numbers we wouldn't have had to kill you in large numbers".

talkaline.bsky.social•98 days ago

I’ve also seen Catholics blame clerical sexual abuse on the acceptance of gayness. Also blindingly enraging.

tznkai.bsky.social•98 days ago

I'm not furious, but I don't think antisemitism is a top-down phenomenon and so would probably draw the causal arrow differently.

tznkai.bsky.social•98 days ago

A mediocre analogy: I wouldn't blame Christian misogyny on the witch trails

goldwagnathan.bsky.social•98 days ago

I don't think it's a coincidence that the ethno-religious group that European Christianity had built its original identity around trying to separate from ended up as the continent's scapegoat.

tznkai.bsky.social•98 days ago

I would agree with that, I've been opining for a while that if you think of Christians and Jews as ~Essenes and ~Pharisees and thus the remaining sibling survivors of Second Temple Judiasm the dynamic, and to be clear, I am including all of the murders here, becomes legible.

tznkai.bsky.social•98 days ago

My objection is basically between whether pew or pulpit is to blame (both obviously, but how much) and I think pew owns a very large share of the blame here. Priests looking for scapegoats found parishioners eager for them, and they already had some in mind.

starshine.bsky.social•98 days ago

i think there can be a primer culture for it and was still nurtured top down and now it’s mutating into something they’re beholden to and must feed regardless if they’re true believers which many are

tznkai.bsky.social•98 days ago

Part of what's influencing me here is is the very deliberate post WWII effort by Christians authorities to strip antisemitism from Christian practice and theology and that was certainly a top down effort. And yet antisemitism remains rife among Christians.

goldwagnathan.bsky.social•98 days ago

I think the fact that Jews basically reverse-engineered antisemitism the second we had a state of our own shows how fundamental the urge is.

goldwagnathan.bsky.social•98 days ago

"Fault" is obviously a pretty silly construct when you're talking about 2,000 years of history, but from a Jewish perspective, it's hard not to notice certain commonalities.

rev-avocado.bsky.social•98 days ago

"They are both expressions of a bedrock caste distinction in European Christendom" feels right to me.

countessemilia.bsky.social•98 days ago

I think it was traditionally mutually reinforcing, like a positive feedback loop.

countessemilia.bsky.social•98 days ago

Nostra Aetate disrupted that feedback loop in Catholicism, but it isn't strong enough to completely destroy it.

rivertam.bsky.social•98 days ago

People like Hitler whipped up and focused an existing deep seated prejudice (with a substantial origin in medieval (clerical) antisemitism) into "eliminationist antisemitism"

plumicorns.bsky.social•98 days ago

I've seen non-trad Catholics get defensive when I've said the reason "traditional Catholicism" exists is rooted in antisemitism

nickyphorus117.bsky.social•98 days ago

I mean, they’re the same thing, just the antisemitism of the 19th and 20th century was gilded over to feel more “scientific” than the “archaic” judeophobia of the Middle Ages

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