A penitent who is loud

Every time I see people describe Janet Mills as a centrist I realize there is an imaginary Janet Mills that exists in people's brains that they've invented out of whole cloth in order to justify supporting Platner, and then when Platner was exposed as a Nazi they just refused to update their priors.

The purpose is probably both to get leftists sneering at antisemitism accusations and assuming a presumption of falsehood, and to drive Jews insane with rage and into the arms of the right

It's Almost Like Turning Israel Into the Bogeyman Was A Bad Idea

It wasn't seriously one, but that said, Trump has expressed outright his belief that economic crashes are a time to make a killing picking up the pieces at a steal.

What would Trump be doing differently if his explicit goal was to destroy the world and especially American economy and world order?

Obviously. But there is pretty clearly a certain public interest in the perception of comeuppance.

It's not an especially nice one but "there will be very personal comeuppance for reactionary leaders" is not a *non-existent* argument.

To perhaps excessively steelman this, there is a certain brutish argument for "if you spend your career formenting hatred and leading a regime that targets Jews and spreads reactionary politics, you're going to die" from the perspective of pure deterrence.

The objective in this genre of Lefty Poast (not quoted poster) is to convince their comrades to operate from a presumption of falsehood when it comes to antisemitism.

They want to train their comrades to assume Jews calling out antisemitism are lying until proven otherwise.

They are succeeding.

literally cannot say antisemitism is bad without a slew of weirdos showing up to defend any hypothetical antisemitism as *actually* anti-Zionism, and you're a Zionist for attacking them about it

The growing hatred of Jewish ppl is one of the most awful of things. Especially since it's clearly a propaganda fomented on the internet. Jewish ppl in the US voted 71% for Madam Vice President, who wld have given a ceasefire two state solution, which wld have ended significant horrors.

Like they just didn't really calibrate it to an assumed Jewish PoV, they celebrated it to Americans to tell them about American dirty laundry and willingness to collaborate with actual factual Nazis.

All of this is arguably downstream of the core cause though, which is basically "look this is a game made by predominantly Gentiles about American right wing politics as much as about the Nazis, which is why your allies of color lecture one of the last Jews on the planet about how easy he has it."

Have to admit I didn't feel that bad when his stupidity and overconfidence get him unceremoniously murdered.

I mean there's definitely also the "why the fuck would mystic Jews, a tradition all about the restoration of the world, NOT USE their devotional super tech?"

Let's not forget one of your Gentile allies telling BJ to his face he's wrong about Jews making it and aliens made it!

Ooh let's not forget that due to the way the game works the mostly armor health bar of the explicitly Jewish super exoskeleton is in literally every way inferior to the mere flesh of the supersoldier body!

Which seems in conflict with the game's thesis elsewhere the Nazi stuff is all shitty.

Even something as simple as "you can be mauled by Nazi dogs in first person" was just a "no. Oh God no."

Like I said. Good intentions. Nothing against the devs. But. Uh. Hmmm

The first half of that game was as close as I have ever gotten to having any game trigger inherited cultural Jewish distress.

Then the second is this lurching pulp carnival of kinda puerile ultraviolence.

Including a deeply cruel sequence where he finally fights back after 10-15 minutes of cutscenes of demeaning and debasing torment only to reveal it as a dream.

Then once transferred to a mighty Gentile body he becomes an unstoppable killing machine, and also somehow like three times more Texan.

Oh that was completely secondary, I mean the part where the 1st half is a grim degrading death march as one of the last Jews on the planet being insulted and demeaned by your new allies between desperately cowering from Nazi bullets culminating in the literal death of the lead's Jewish body.

Ooh ooh which parts?

I respect what the devs were trying to do but, uh, parts of that game Did Not Sit Well.

I mean Wolfenstein 2 deserves imo MORE discourse, albeit gentle discourse.

Oh I saw a fair bit of it but my point is just that increasingly it wasn't really even very passionate because the argument ended up being almost entirely about the meta conversation rather than the conversation

Like the entire thing was devoured by "is this good politics? Is this bad politics?" & left very little oxygen for "is this decent artistic potential? Is it doing a thing that is good?"

Especially since it came with the side problem of "so this is also the era of maximally safe Extruded Product"

It doesn't help that it got Culture War'd into oblivion for any independent creative potential.

Anyways obviously the ADL's tolerance for Republicans is hypocritical and nakedly mercenary, it's "we think that when we have to pick sides we'll side with power."

But "we're annoyed with Mamdani for embracing Khalil" is less non-representative for American Jews than folks might think.

The problem is that what the average American perceives as significant & what the average mainstream (especially more centrist) Jew focuses on are very different things; the latter is constantly looking for dogwhistles and infiltration and ethnic nationalist rhetoric in the guide of social justice.

And again like this is not necessarily a great representation of the sentiments of your avetage advocate for Palestine. It is in fact almost certainly a weird fringe opinion in many respects - most Americans simply see a one sided war & cruel occupation, & go "war bad, stop war."

Yeahhhhhhhh....