Come walk around the streets of my town. You’ll see quickly how silly this all sounds.

You need to trust someone and have a close relationship in order to discover their beliefs and values. For most social interactions, judgement is made based on identity before anything else. And others will do that to you far more than you do it to them.

And what a silly thing to say, “no Jewish ideology”. Of course there is. Would you say there is also no Christian ideology, or no Muslim ideology? Of course not, it would be absurd. Religion is meaningful and powerful and forms the basis for shared culture.

You almost sound like a gender activist who would say “a woman is whatever you want it to be!” Being Jewish does not mean nothing. Just because you don’t understand the underlying ideology of Jewish faith doesn’t mean that it isn’t a real thing.

And you don’t get to choose who you associate with, not really anyway. Not in a dense society with public spaces.

Countries used to be boundaries of cultural association, but that has been destroyed in most European societies.

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You sound like a woke liberal telling me I can never understand the “lived experience" of a black lesbian midget! It’s just identity politics of another stripe.

There is no “Christian ideology!” There are 100 different factions of Christians who killed each other for centuries over these differences. Then there are millions of Christians who have Christian parents, but don’t even practice at all. You cannot speak generally about Jewish or Muslim or Christian ideology and apply it even to a majority of any of those groups.

I don’t agree with Chris on everything but he’s completely right on this one. When you blanket whole groups together under a perceived stereotype, you negate the individual.

That’s correct. All I’m saying is that for all of our high minded thought about absolute individual liberty and everyone being able to coexist, other people in the world don’t see it that way.

And if you don’t acknowledge that reality and don’t spend any time learning about what shapes culture, and the type of culture you want to live in, you will be at a huge disadvantage.

I agree it's naive to think you can let in millions of people unvetted from a totally different culture and expect things not to fall apart catstrophically. The kumbaya bullshit of the left does not play in real life.

But the reactive identity politics of the right is also a mistake IMO, and you see it cropping up a lot now.

I’m open minded. If reactive identity politics is a mistake, what angle would you take to address the modern cultural problems facing European countries?

I would prosecute criminals with no excuse or dispensation made for identity politics. I would shut the borders and vet properly based on adherence to Western values. I would appeal to people’s self-interest in having a prosperous country. I’m not saying it would work, only that identity politics is IMO the road to hell because it’s premised on collectivism.

Based and I wish you well.

My take is that collectivism is a dark art. It is incredibly powerful and dangerous, but it also is undeniable and part of the nature of most humans. Very few have reached levels of wealth or intelligence to truly be separate from collective thought or identity, and there’s an argument that it’s an impossible task.

This dark art of collectivism has been harnessed against the individual in most countries over the course of history. The reason the right is so infatuated with collective identity now is because the dark art of collectivism is the most effective way to reach our ideological goals.

If you find that immoral or dangerous I would completely agree with you, but I’m in a mind frame where I’d be willing to try anything to improve the state of my community (it’s gotten bad here).

I agree with this too — in an emergency, people sometimes do what they think they have to, even at the expense of principles.

But ultimately, a problem that arises from a certain level of consciousness (leftist, collectivist identity politics causing catastrophic results) must be solved from a higher level of consciousness. You won’t solve it by creating a collectivist society that’s “good” vs one that’s “bad.”

Collectivism is the road to hell IMO. All enlightenment is due to the individual, whether you see that as surrendering to God or Jesus or creating profound works of art. The collective has nothing to do with that, in fact IMO will always interfere with it.

Appreciate your open-mindedness too.

The existence of sub-factions does not disprove the existence of a shared, overarching ideology. Those Christians who fought each other, how many of them didn’t believe in core stories like genesis, the crucifixion, or the resurrection?

If anything, the fact that even people with shared ideologies will fight to the death over smaller differences should tell you how dangerous a multicultural world will become.

I can tell you what a Christian, Muslim, and Jew generally believes. Your denial that these religious identities have meaning and define culture will not serve you well.

People will kill each other over disparate beliefs, that is not in doubt. But it’s not the way, only a last resort when someone else forces their beliefs on you with violence.

And the Jews and Christians I know personally (don’t know many Muslims) have wildly different views from each other — I mean the Christians do not all think alike, nor do the Jews. If by what a Christian, Muslim and Jew, generally believe, you are talking about avowed, devout, practicing, proselytizing ones, okay fine. But I’m talking about people I know.

In this case, I’m talking about the small handful of people who get to shape our culture. The people in media, Hollywood, politics, etc.

You are correct that everyone should have a right to peacefully practice their own religion and their own culture without threat of violence from others.

The issue I have is with the people who have subversively influenced our western culture and turned it into the slag that it currently is. And yes, many of them were and are Jewish, and their culture and alliance to a foreign nation is a huge issue for America.