Kontextmaschine

11th September 2018

Post reblogged from The Baliocene Apocrypha with 54 notes

kontextmaschine:
alexanderrm:
kontextmaschine:
kontextmaschine:
Hey yo real question: who do poor Israeli Jews identify as the secret power behind an economic conspiracy keeping them down?
Or is settler colonialism the valve that makes sure you never get there so it’s always externalized?
(‘Merica!)
I’m sure somewhere in a world of 14-17 million Jews there’s a poor Jewish person who believes there’s an international Jewish conspiracy, but only the elites get to be in on it.
For that matter, there have probably been cases where (for the very loose and non-deliberate definition of “Jewish conspiracy”) this was true- like if all the wealthy and middle-class Jews moved out of a Jewish neighborhood when poor nonjews started moving in, leaving the people too poor to move cut off from neighborhood networking opportunities, because they were based not on deliberate religious discrimination but just helping out the people you know.
Yeah based on the replies I might have framed it wrong, I’m not looking for like, the Jewish version of big overarching theories, but like who’s the poor Israeli version of “the guys who own the apartment building and always raise rent, own the corner store and only hire their cousins not us, who generally keep us down”, cause it can’t be “the Jews”. “The Russians”? “The Galicians”?
For non-Ashkenazi Jews it’s “the Ashkenazis,” but that’s obviously just kicking the can a little bit.
…I’ve never actually known any Jews to go for “we are kept down by the evil elite minority” thinking. “We are kept down by the prejudices of the local majority” is much more popular, for obvious reasons.
No real idea how this plays out in Israel, to address your actual question. My best guess is “it doesn’t.” That particular bit of ethnocultural myth isn’t universal, even if it’s popular.

@tropylium > > I don’t think this specific thing has to be a societal universal really

Yeah, it really might not be! Bcuz (see first reblog) settler colonialism! Like America! Cause you can’t be hopelessly stuck in a no-way-out pit if you always have the option of socially approved adventure homesteading! And the real mudsill hewer-of-wood-and-drawer-of-water poor aren’t Israeli poor anyway.

Who does the average poor member of the Israeli economy blame? The Jews! Because the average poor member of the Israeli economy is Palestinian!