Tuesday, November 07, 2017

Jews did not invent modernity

Jeffrey Goldberg wrote a 2011 post in The Atlantic:
It's become clear to me that the Fox commentator Glenn Beck has something of a Jewish problem. Actually, he has something of a modernity problem, and people with modernity problems tend to have problems with Jews, who more or less invented modernity (Einstein, Marx, Freud, Franz Boas, etc.)

... This is a post about Beck's recent naming of nine people -- eight of them Jews -- as enemies of America and humanity. ...

It is fair to ask if Beck knows that these people are Jewish (It is not widely-known that Rendell is Jewish, I think).
Really? Jews invented modernity? Notably Einstein, Marx, Freud, Boas?

Einstein is famous for inventing relativity, refusing to accept quantum mechanics, and being a commie fellow traveler. He did not really invent relativity, as I have detailed elsewhere. Relativity was invented by Maxwell, Lorentz, Poincare, and Minkowski.

Marx is famous for inspiring Communism, Freud for the symbolic interpretation of dreams and other bogus pseudoscience, and Boas for cultural relativism.

Wikipedia defines:
Modernity is a term of art used in the humanities and social sciences to designate both a historical period (the modern era), as well as the ensemble of particular socio-cultural norms, attitudes and practices that arose in post-medieval Europe and have developed since, in various ways and at various times, around the world. While it includes a wide range of interrelated historical processes and cultural phenomena (from fashion to modern warfare), it can also refer to the subjective or existential experience of the conditions they produce, and their ongoing impact on human culture, institutions, and politics (Berman 2010, 15–36).

As a historical category, modernity refers to a period marked by a questioning or rejection of tradition; the prioritization of individualism, freedom and formal equality; faith in inevitable social, scientific and technological progress and human perfectibility; rationalization and professionalization; a movement from feudalism (or agrarianism) toward capitalism and the market economy; industrialization, urbanization and secularization; the development of the nation-state and its constituent institutions (e.g. representative democracy, public education, modern bureaucracy) and forms of surveillance (Foucault 1995, 170–77).
The article does mention Marx and Freud, but says very little of Jews.

There are many Jews with great accomplishments, but Goldberg holds out the charlatans for praise.

Here is a reference to Einstein on the recent SNL TV show:
After a long grimace, Mr. David said, “I don’t like it when Jews are in the headlines for notorious reasons. I want, ‘Einstein Discovers the Theory of Relativity.’ ‘Salk Cures Polio.’ What I don’t want? ‘Weinstein Took It Out.’”
Those names look as if they rhyme, but they are usually pronounced Ine-stine and Wine-steen. Apparently Jews really need to believe that Einstein discovered relativity.

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