[quote=“Bert_Difig, post:135, topic:100214”]
I think assimilation is preferable to the previous current and historical reference of “Ghettos” where each sub-group lives separately. A lot of the anti-Jewish sentiment was driven by this lack of assimilation, moreso than any other single factor.
[/quote]OK, I’ve weighed how to respond to this in a way that’s remotely acceptable socially and might not violate message board rules. Because my initial intended response … wasn’t, and would.
What you said there? It’s not just wrong. It’s multiple levels of wrong, and some of those levels are a “gee, this commenter might be a Nazi” type of wrong. Blaming the Jews and their refusal to assimilate For. The. Fncking. Holocaust. is a good way to, at best, start rumors behind your back that you’re at least an appalling dipsh!t and at worst a big fan of Adolf Hitler. In less polite or more intoxicated society saying something like that is a good way to get beaten up. It’s not just that your line is stunningly ignorant and ahistorical - the Jews of Germany were the most assimilated Jewish community in the world, and Jews who did live in Ghettos and Shtetls didn’t do so by choice - it’s that it’s appallingly amoral. And then you double down on it, saying that “more than any other factor” anti-Jewish sentiment was driven by a lack of assimilation, which would have been fncking news to a LOT of victims of European antisemitism, some of whom were so assimilated they’d been living as Christians for two generations; some weren’t even aware of the Jewish heritage their parents and grandparents had assimilated away.
I recommend you to read a book. Read a bunch of books. Talk to people. Take them aside quietly and ask whether they think there’s anything you can do in order to be less offensive and less of an smugly ignorant apparent bigot. Aim in particular to do this with people who aren’t like you, and are educated. Jews in particular, obviously, but I suspect there’s a lot of subjects on which you’re equally likely to portray yourself as an assho|e.
