In Ukraine, Graham Urges Expanded Conscription Despite Mounting War Fatigue

In Ukraine, Graham Urges Expanded Conscription Despite Mounting War Fatigue

On his latest of far too many visits to Ukraine, Sen. Lindsey Graham on Monday urged legislators to expand the pool of citizens subject to being drafted and thrown into the country’s losing war against Russia, saying, “We need more people in the line.” 

The Ukrainian military accepts voluntary enlistments from those 18 and older. However, in stark contrast to Americans’ experience with military drafts, Ukraine exempts men under 27 from being conscripted. Since December, the country’s legislature has been considering lowering the minimum draft age to 25, to meet the military’s projected need for upwards of a half-million more soldiers. 

“I would hope that those eligible to serve in the Ukrainian military would join. I can’t believe [conscription age starts] at 27,” Graham told the press. “You’re in a fight for your life, so you should be serving — not at 25 or 27.”

Of course, Ukrainians are generally only “fighting for their lives” once they’re shipped east to fight an American-cultivated proxy war over territory that, as David Stockman puts it, “has been either a Russian vassal or appendage for centuries and where the term ‘Ukraine’ actually means ‘borderlands’ in Russian.”

On a trip to Ukraine last May, Graham gleefully crowed that “the Russians are dying” and that aid to Zelensky’s government is “the best money we ever spent.” 

For at least a decade, Graham has been a chief Senate cheerleader for military aid to Ukraine. In February, however, he made an abrupt about-face, opposing the latest White House request for outright aid and instead embracing former President Trump’s position that future help should come in the form of loans. “I talked to President Trump today and he’s dead set against this package,” Graham said on the Senate floor when announcing his momentous opposition to a $60 billion aid bill. 

In Kiev this week, Graham reiterated his advocacy of loans:  

“I was very direct with President Zelensky. You can expect me to always be in your corner, but it’s not unfair for me to ask you and other allies: Pay us back down the road, if you can. I think the loan idea is going to be pretty popular, not just among Republicans but also among Democrats.”

Graham’s “if you can” qualifier speaks volumes, signaling a coming bait-and-switch. He is advocating “no-interest, waivable” loans. The odds they’ll ever be paid back are vanishingly small. In the present, however, the structure gives some cover to politicians facing an American electorate increasingly fed up with throwing money at a war that has nothing to do with US interests. 

On a 2022 trip to Kiev, Senators Blumenthal and Graham presented Pres. Zelensky with a framed copy of the resolution they introduced to designate Russia as a state sponsor of terror (Graham’s press office)

With new aid of any kind still stalled — except for the Biden administration resorting to creative accounting maneuvers to magically scare up another $300 million last week — Graham told reporters on Monday that he was “more optimistic than I’ve ever been that something will get out of the House pretty soon.” 

At the same time, Graham told Ukrainians, “No matter what we do, you should be fighting. No matter what we do, you’re fighting for you.” In addition to having postponed elections, the purported beacon-of-freedom Ukraine forbids men between age 18 and 60 from leaving the country. 

Graham is among the most relentless and reckless of DC warmongers, as a sampling of ZeroHedge headlines from just the last year confirms:  

He isn’t quite a full-fledged chickenhawk: He served 33 years as an Air Force and USAF Reserve officer — but as a lawyer. His mobilization for the first Gulf War saw him dispatched not across the world but to a National Guard base in his home state of South Carolina where he churned out wills for service members deploying to the war zone.   

Tyler Durden
Tue, 03/19/2024 – 07:45

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BODEN & TREMP – The Memecoins We Deserve For Financializing Attention

BODEN & TREMP – The Memecoins We Deserve For Financializing Attention

Via FinTech Blueprint,

Today we highlight the following:

  1. DIGITAL ASSETS: Solana’s soaring memecoins and the echoes of King Lear’s fool

  2. CURATED UPDATES: Financial Institutions and Adoption; DeFi and Digital Assets; Blockchain Protocols; NFTs, DAOs and the Metaverse

DIGITAL ASSETS: Solana’s soaring memecoins and the echoes of King Lear’s fool

In the world of finance (DeFi included), where fortunes rise and fall, there is a parallel to be drawn from the words of King Lear and his jester, the Fool. 

Fool: If thou wert my fool, nuncle, I’ld have thee beaten for being old before thy time.

King Lear: How’s that?

Fool: Thou shouldst not have been old till thou hadst been wise.

King Lear: O, let me not be mad, not mad, sweet heaven / Keep me in temper: I would not be mad!

The Fool may appear silly, weak, and powerless, but is in fact the truth-teller in a world of corruption and chaos. Stand-up comedians dare say that which would otherwise offend and divide. To joke and laugh is to explore the uncomfortable, and make our peace with it.

In a similar vein, Solana, has witnessed a surge of new memecoin launches boasting returns of up to 10,000%, and one wonders — what kind of animal spirits are in the air right now? Memecoins are the pure attention virus of the Internet, the distillation of ideas rendered in the minds of the online hive. They are the spear by which digital trolling penetrates mainstream culture.

A bit more context: Solana-based memecoins Bonk and dogwifhat experienced a stratospheric rise in value, with $BONK up 170% and $WIF (dogwifhat’s token) up 630% in the past month. The dogwifhat community even managed to rally and self-fund $690,000 in four days to showcase their token on the exterior of the new Las Vegas Sphere. Franklin Templeton is writing equity research on the topic.

$WIF is up 630%

Source

Most recently, 4chan quality politically-inspired memecoins like jeo bodendoland trempelizabath whoren, have reached market caps in the tens of millions. $whoren is up 300% since yesterday. If you are a “serious finance person”, you still have to look at this and understand it. This is the natural conclusion of the Gamestop saga, memes taking over not how we trade, but the underlying financial asset as well.

Source: Coinbase makes auto-websites based on coins, and this one is unfortunate

Source

In the midst of all this, a wide range of opinions has emerged. One idea connects these political memecoins to Friend.tech, a platform that primarily focuses on trading personal tokens, with social networking as a secondary priority. The argument suggests that even though tokens like tremp and boden may seem quite different from Friend.tech, they actually represent a second iteration of a similar concept. But in our view, this is more of a trading of celebrity rather than self-tokenization. 

Source

And note that friend.tech is not a new idea. Do you remember BitClout? Probably not, given the transience of the memecoin landscape. And when we take a closer look at the assets that drove trading volumes in prior cycles, memecoin rallies — like Dogecoin or Shiba — were part of the story. There are hundreds, if not thousands, of similar case studies. 

Number of unique contract deployers

Travis King, the Founder and CIO of Ikigai Asset Management, sheds light on this recurring theme by linking it to the rise of Financial Nihilism — an ideological standpoint that questions the value and legitimacy of financial systems, markets, and even the very concept of money. It is a useful perspective to consider when memecoins skyrocket by 10,000% and reach multi-billion dollar market caps in a matter of days. What’s the point of saving 5% in a bank account for years when an Internet troll can make that in a day.

The rise of financial nihilism can be attributed to (1) the lack of upward mobility makes the American Dream feel like a thing of the past for many, and (2) the perceived irresponsibility of the US government and Federal Reserve. As a result, people have to take bigger risks to achieve financial stability — gambling on the future is the only way to get there. 

“You take bigger risks. You feel driven to take bigger risks to try and leapfrog from your current financial position (mostly paycheck to paycheck; buying a home feels nearly impossible; saddled with student loans; salary increases not keeping up expense increases) to something more tenable. More comfortable. More baller.

So you gamble. You. F**king. Gamble. You look anywhere, for anything, that can give you a 5:1, 10:1, 50:1 type of payout. Naturally, you look to literal gambling, which is growing at a breakneck pace-” – Travis King

Source

In a way, those who embrace financial nihilism are directly responding to, and mirroring, the monetary and fiscal policies of the Federal Reserve and the US government. According to Travis, this embrace has a significant impact on the price movements of crypto assets, and its influence seems to be growing even more pronounced. Just look at the national debt.

In our 2020 Long Take on the memetic infection of Finance, we touched upon this very topic. The analysis was largely inspired by Based Protocol, a DeFi game with a “vaporwave” aesthetic that made fun of the system. It’s like the jester in King Lear, playfully mocking itself and its participants. Based Protocol’s Twitter account was a treasure trove of surreal memes sourced from Reddit, and it boldly labeled DeFi investors as degenerates. It poked fun at both traditional finance and DeFi, suggesting that money doesn’t hold any real meaning and that it’s all just a game where we compete against each other. 

Based Protocol

Source

And while some people hope for a more rational crypto market, where valuation methodologies are based on reason, it is unlikely that these wishes will come true. The bubble will be bigger, followed by an even bigger collapse. As QwQiao puts it, “for now we enjoy the hyperbodenization.”

Source

Source

Source

If you have been in traditional finance for a while, you are familiar with animal spirits taking hold of the market. Today’s meme / momentum investors see the AI boom — they don’t have to be focused on assets with strong balance sheets or high profitability, nor are they drawn to companies based on their earnings growth potential. Instead, they get caught up in the excitement of sending non-cash flow paying assets to the moon, even as risk-free rates remain at 5.25%.

But this is not new. We saw similar exuberance in 1999 and 2007, and 1929. What might be different now is this idea of perpetual animal spirits, driven by an upwards-drifting stochastic component that keeps them increasingly volatile over time. Forget the memory of (literally) yester-year, and behold Financial Nihilism. 

*  *  *

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Tyler Durden
Tue, 03/19/2024 – 07:20

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Visualizing Major US Banks By Commercial Real Estate Exposure

Visualizing Major US Banks By Commercial Real Estate Exposure

The six largest U.S. banks saw delinquent commercial property loans nearly triple to $9.3 billion in 2023 amid high vacancy rates and increasing borrowing costs.

Today, the sector is facing greater scrutiny from regulators amid growing risks to bank stability. In fact, for almost half of all U.S. banks, commercial real estate debt is the largest loan category overall. While commercial loans are more heavily concentrated in small U.S. banks, several major financial institutions have amassed significant commercial loan portfolios.

The above graphic shows the commercial real estate exposure of the top U.S. banks, based on data from UBS as of Q3 2023.

Top 20 U.S. Banks by Assets: Commercial Property Exposure

Here are the commercial property loans across the largest U.S. banks by assets as of the third quarter of 2023:

As the above table shows, JPMorgan Chase, America’s largest bank, has 12.6% of its loan portfolio in commercial real estate.

Despite commercial property troubles, the company witnessed record stock prices in 2023, with its share price increasing 27% over the year. The bank acquired First Republic at the height of the U.S. regional banking turmoil in 2023, which helped boost performance.

Still, big banks remain cautious. Several major banks, such as Wells Fargo, are building bigger cash reserves for commercial property credit losses as a buffer for potential defaults.

Perhaps the most concerning big bank is New York Community Bancorp, which has 57% of its total loans exposed to commercial property debt. The bank reported a $2.7 billion loss in the fourth quarter of 2023, and Moody’s recently downgraded its credit rating to “junk” status. The bank brought in a $1 billion infusion of capital as a lifeline after growing concerns about the state of its commercial real estate loan portfolio.

Overall, while pockets of trouble are surfacing, major banks are more insulated from commercial property shocks compared to other banks. On average, about 11% of big banks loan portfolios are concentrated in commercial real estate compared to small banks, where average exposure falls around 21.6% of loans.

Tyler Durden
Tue, 03/19/2024 – 06:55

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US Economic Conditions Scream “Buy Gold”

US Economic Conditions Scream “Buy Gold”

Authored by Daniel Lacalle via The Epoch Times,

The manufacturing and consumer confidence weaknesses of the United States are deeply concerning, particularly considering that all those allegedly infallible Keynesian policies are being applied intensely.

Considering the insanity of deficit spending driven by entitlement programs, the decline in the headline University of Michigan consumer sentiment index in March—from 76.9 to 76.5—is even worse than expected. Let us remember that this index was at 101 in 2019 and has not recovered the brief bounce shown by the reopening effect in March 2021. Consumer confidence is still incredibly low, and a decline in the expectations index fully explains the most recent decline. Persistent inflation, high gas prices, and declining real wages may explain the poor expectations of the average citizen. Furthermore, this poor consumer confidence reading comes after poor control group retail sales last month.

No, this is not a strong economy. The consumer confidence index, labor participation, and unemployment-to-population ratios, as well as real wage growth, remain significantly below the pre-pandemic level, and this after $6.3 trillion in new public debt that will likely reach $8 trillion by the end of 2024.

The manufacturing weakness of the United States is also a problem because this should be a period of high growth, considering the opportunities generated all over the world. Industrial output bounced 0.8 percent in February, but the January figure was revised to a larger 1.1 percent slump. If we factor in the decline in the Empire State survey, to -20.9 in March, it looks like the manufacturing decline will persist.

The shape of the U.S. economy also reflects the impossibility of the soft-landing narrative. Inflation remains well above target, and bond yields are reflecting the reality of persistent inflation. Furthermore, money supply growth stopped declining months ago.

If the money supply rises and government spending continues to rise, the Federal Reserve will be unable to cut interest rates, and the impoverishment of citizens by a loss of purchasing power will continue.

This is the result of an insane fiscal policy that increases spending and taxes. Weak growth, manufacturing decline, and worsening consumer confidence.

Demand-side policies and Keynesian experiments are leaving a once-strong economy on the same path as the eurozone: stagflation. A warning sign should be the fact that the increase in public debt completely justifies the gross domestic product recovery.

This is the problem of extraordinary monetary and fiscal experiments. Governments embrace massive spending and debt monetization under the premise that they will implement control policies if the warning signs appear, but when they do, they never stop spending. Economists close to the government said that the administration would reconsider and adjust its budget if inflation rose, and alarm bells rang. Now we have heard all the alarm bells, and the administration continues as if nothing happened. The Inflation Reduction Act became the Inflation Perpetuation Act; the rise in government borrowing is now evident in the 10- and 30-year curve; and the private sector is in an obvious contraction.

Trusting governments to moderate spending after an expenditure binge is simply an extremely dangerous bet that always ends with worse conditions for citizens. Once they start, they cannot stop, and the inevitable end is higher taxes, weaker growth, lower real wages, and a decline in the purchasing power of the dollar. All the figures in the U.S. economy scream “buy gold” because the government will always prefer to destroy the currency than to moderate the budget deficit and government size in the economy.

Tyler Durden
Tue, 03/19/2024 – 06:30

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Did The Used Rolex Watch Market Finally Bottom?

Did The Used Rolex Watch Market Finally Bottom?

In December, we asked if the secondary market for pre-owned Rolex and Patek Philippe watches was finally bottoming after a vicious bear market.

After four months of stabilization, the Bloomberg Subdial Watch Index, which tracks prices for the 50 most-traded watches by value on the secondary market, appears to have found at least a temporary floor between $33,800 and $33,600. The index has crashed 42% since reaching a high of $58,570 in March 2022 (during the Covid mania). 

Demand for luxury used watches has cooled over the last two years. Luxury has plunged into turmoil because of soaring borrowing rates hammering demand for watches, purses, and jewelry. But ever since the Federal Reserve pivoted in the interest rate hiking cycle in December, prices of used Rolex Daytona, Patek Philippe Nautilus, and Audemars Piguet Royal Oak watches have been possibly bottoming: 

Rolex Submariner

Patek Philippe Nautilus Stainless Steel Moonphase

Audemars Piguet Royal Oak Jumbo Ultra Thin

Rolex Daytona

Rolex GMT-Master II Pepsi 

The only issue for those attempting to bottom fish is if the Fed’s policy shift was premature… 

Tyler Durden
Tue, 03/19/2024 – 05:45

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Council Orders London Fish & Chip Shop Owner To Remove British Flag Mural

Council Orders London Fish & Chip Shop Owner To Remove British Flag Mural

Authored by Steve Watson via Modernity.news,

A fish and chip shop owner in London has been ordered by the local council to remove a mural featuring a Union Jack flag and the words “A Great British meal” from the side of his building after some locals complained it is “not appropriate for the area.”

The Daily Mail reports that the award-winning Golden Chippy in Greenwich received the removal order from the council after a “number of complaints about the mural” and the council deciding it constitutes an “unauthorised advert” in a “preservation area.”

Shop owner Chris Kanizi, who is from Cyprus, commented “It’s just something to put a smile on people’s faces. But the council said ‘this is a preservation area – you can’t have that and you’ve got to paint over it.’”

“They also said people had been complaining, but I don’t believe that. Everyone who has talked to me say they love it,” Kanizi added.

Local residents who were asked about it expressed support for the mural.

The council also previously forced Kanizi to remove a similar sign above the shop for the same reasons in 2016.

The owner has Kanizi has provided the council with pictures dating back to the 1940s, when the premises was a cafe, and included numerous large trade signs attached to the building.

Kanizi told reporters “I’m going to stick it out for as long as I can. They haven’t given me a date to paint over it yet, but they will.”

“I’ve got so many international customers. They all like taking a photo with the mural in the background,” he added.

Mark Simpson of the Reform Party visited the shop to express support.

Of course, it’s highly likely that some of the complaints are regarding the display of the British Union flag, which is now considered by many who live in the country to be some form of racist symbol.

Your support is crucial in helping us defeat mass censorship. Please consider donating via Locals or check out our unique merch. Follow us on X @ModernityNews.

Tyler Durden
Tue, 03/19/2024 – 05:00

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More Than Half Of Migrant Deaths Are From Drowning

More Than Half Of Migrant Deaths Are From Drowning

At least 8,565 people died on international migration routes in 2023, according to data from the Missing Migrants Project of the International Organization for Migration (IOM). This marks the deadliest year on record, up 20 percent from one year before.

“These frightening figures collected by the Missing Migrants Project are also a reminder that we must take increased action to ensure safe migration for all, so that in ten years no people will be leaving their lives in search of a better one”, said Ugochi Daniels, IOM Deputy Director General.

As Statista’s Anna Fleck shows in the following chart, the Mediterranean is by far the deadliest route for migrants, having claimed the lives of at least 3,129 victims in 2023 alone. Last year, thousands of migrants also died in Africa (1,866), largely in the Sahara Desert and on the sea route to the Canary Islands, as well as in Asia (2,138), where hundreds of Afghans and Rohingya died after fleeing their homes.

Infographic: More Than Half of Migrant Deaths Are From Drowning | Statista

You will find more infographics at Statista

More than half of the dead or missing are presumed to have drowned. 13 percent of the recorded deaths were linked to vehicle accidents or hazardous transport and ten percent were victims of violence.

The IOM writes that actual figures are likely far higher due to data collection challenges, citing remote locations such as Panama’s Darien National Park as an example as well as maritime routes, where “invisible” shipwrecks occur.

Tyler Durden
Tue, 03/19/2024 – 04:15

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UK Tells Ukraine To Focus On Targeting Crimea

UK Tells Ukraine To Focus On Targeting Crimea

Authored by Dave DeCamp via AntiWar.com,

British military officials advised that Ukraine should focus on defense in its ground fight against Russia in the east while focusing on targeted strikes against Crimea and Russia’s Black Sea Fleet, The Sunday Times reported.

The advice was given when British Defense Secretary Grant Shapps and UK Army Chief Antony Radakin visited Ukraine last week. The British officials said rather than attacking, Ukrainian forces should hold the line and pull back to more favorable ground if necessary.

UK Defense Secretary Grant Shapps. Image: UK Ministry of Defence

“This will allow the Ukrainians to focus their efforts on the Black Sea and Crimea, where their forces, with the help of Western long-range missiles, have landed significant blows over the past six months,” the report said.

A recording of a conversation between German military officers that was recently published by Russian media revealed that the UK has soldiers “on the ground” in Ukraine helping Ukrainian forces use Storm Shadow missiles, which have a range of 155 miles, making them capable of hitting targets throughout Crimea.

Attacks on Crimea have always been considered a red line for Russian President Vladimir Putin. But the risk of escalation hasn’t stopped Ukraine’s Western backers from assisting with such strikes, as Storm Shadows have been reported to be used in multiple Ukrainian attacks on Crimea.

The UK has also helped Ukraine strike Russian ships in the Black Sea. Another recent report from the Times credited Radakin with helping “the Ukrainians with the strategy to destroy Russian ships and open up the Black Sea.”

Ukrainian attacks on Crimea and territory inside the Russian mainland have increased since it’s become clear Ukraine has no chance of winning on the battlefield.

Poland’s foreign minister earlier this month: NATO troops are already in Ukraine.

Since Russia captured the strategic Donetsk city of Avdiivka last month, Russian forces have been making steady gains in the east, and Ukraine is suffering from serious manpower and weapons shortages.

Tyler Durden
Tue, 03/19/2024 – 03:30

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These Will Be The Jobs Most Impacted By AI

These Will Be The Jobs Most Impacted By AI

Large language models (LLMs) and other generative AI tools haven’t been around for very long, but they’re expected to have far-reaching impacts on the way people do their jobs. With this in mind, researchers have already begun studying the potential impacts of this transformative technology.

In this graphic, Visual Capitalist’s Marcus Lu visualized the results of a World Economic Forum report, which estimated how different job departments will be exposed to AI disruption.

Data and Methodology

To identify the job departments most impacted by AI, researchers assessed over 19,000 occupational tasks (e.g. reading documents) to determine if they relied on language. If a task was deemed language-based, it was then determined how much human involvement was needed to complete that task.

With this analysis, researchers were then able to estimate how AI would impact different occupational groups.

In our graphic, large impact refers to tasks that will be fully automated or significantly altered by AI technologies. Small impact refers to tasks that have a lesser potential for disruption.

Where AI will make the biggest impact

Jobs in information technology (IT) and finance have the highest share of tasks expected to be largely impacted by AI.

Within IT, tasks that are expected to be automated include software quality assurance and customer support. On the finance side, researchers believe that AI could be significantly useful for bookkeeping, accounting, and auditing.

Still interested in AI? Check out this graphic which ranked the most commonly used AI tools in 2023.

Tyler Durden
Tue, 03/19/2024 – 02:45

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Anti-Semitism As The Harbinger Of Global Chaos

Anti-Semitism As The Harbinger Of Global Chaos

Authored by Stephen Soukup via American Greatness,

On the off chance you hadn’t noticed, the world appears to be at an especially precarious moment presently. Obviously, war continues to rage in Ukraine and Gaza, with no end in sight to either conflict. Great Britain and Japan are currently in recession. Canada’s economy is an absolute disaster, with almost no hope of near-term recovery. Much of continental Europe and China are struggling economically, if not officially contracting. Some experts believe that the global economy more generally is sliding, slowly but surely, into recession. The only economic bright spot in the world is the United States, and even here we have our problems with consumer spending and sentiment, massive credit concerns, and inarguably sticky inflation.

Meanwhile, China is investing in and winning friends, and influencing people in the Global South. U.S.-backed Kurdish leaders are warning that ISIS is resurgent in Syria and Iraq. The Marine general in charge of U.S. Africa Command is warning of Russia’s increasing influence on that continent. Sudan remains mired in civil war. Nigeria is plagued by Islamist terrorism and mass kidnappings. Mexico is in the midst of a full-blown war with the drug cartels, who continue to grow bolder and more militarily sophisticated.

Everywhere one looks, chaos reigns—or, at the very least, bubbles just below the surface.

Perhaps most telling among the signs of disarray is the unnerving rise of antisemitism in the United States, Europe, and throughout the world. Antisemitism, in general, has been intensifying, slowly but surely, over the last decade or so. Over the last few months, however, it has emerged fully into the open, undaunted and unembarrassed. What was once considered shameful and disconcerting is now warmly welcomed as a “rational” response to American foreign policy, Israeli war practices, “colonialism,” and “white privilege.”

All of this is troubling, to put it mildly, both in and of itself and as a harbinger of greater and more deadly global unrest.

Hatred of and anger toward Jews is not the same as other forms of bigotry.  

In many ways, the history of Western anti-Jewish hatred mirrors the history of Western political chaos and collapse.  Or, to put it another way, historically, Jews are not only the perennial scapegoats during periods of social upheaval and displacement, but resurgent anti-Semitism serves as the proverbial canary in the coal mine for the rise of revolutionary movements.

In his classic, The Pursuit of the Millennium, the British historian Norman Cohn argues that the Jewish diaspora generally fit comfortably, if tentatively into European society for most of the first thousand years or so A.D., and only became a hated and perpetually persecuted minority with the rise of utopian Millenarianism that accompanied and then outlived the Crusades.  Beginning then and continuing for the next nearly a thousand years, Europeans came to associate Jews with the antichrist and thus to associate hatred and persecution of Jews with preparing the battlespace for the Second Coming.  Many historians, including Hannah Arendt, believed that the anti-Semitism that was such an integral part of the West’s 20th-century collapse into totalitarianism was relatively new and, in any case, distinct from medieval anti-Semitism.  Cohn’s history suggests otherwise, connecting the religious eschatology of medieval Europe to the quasi-religious eschatology of post-Enlightenment Europe, thereby connecting the persistence of Western anti-Semitism as well.

Cohn tells us that millenarian moments and the millenarian movements that capitalize on those moments all share a common group of characteristics. They all appear under certain social and economic conditions. They all appeal to a certain segment of the population at large, who then present themselves as economic, spiritual, and political leaders. They all utilize scapegoats, meaning that they all identify a different, usually much smaller segment of the population on whom they can blame all the world’s ills and then set about to cure those ills through the elimination of the scapegoat. And more often than not, that scapegoat tends to be Jewish.

In the conclusion to the second edition of Pursuit of the Millennium, Cohn notes that the millenarian fervor of the middle ages may have changed, but it never really died, and it maintained its common characteristics even as it became secular or “quasi-religious.” He wrote:

The story told in Pursuit of the Millennium ended some four centuries ago but is not without relevance to our own times. [I have] shown in another work [Warrant for Genocide: The Myth of the Jewish World Conspiracy and the Protocols of the Elders of Zion] how closely the Nazi phantasy of a world-wide Jewish conspiracy of destruction is related to the phantasies that inspired Emico of Leningrad and the Master of Hungary; and how mass disorientation and insecurity have fostered the demonization of the Jew in this as in much earlier centuries. The parallels and indeed the continuity are incontestable.

The parallels between the rise of Nazism and the current global unrest and demonization of the Jewish people are also largely incontestable. The election that brought Hitler to power didn’t happen in a vacuum, after all. It happened in the midst of global chaos, namely the Great Depression. It also followed the decadence and distortion of the Weimer Era. As the New York Fed has shown, even a global pandemic—the 1919 Spanish Flu outbreak—contributed to the sense of discomfort and disconnect among the German population, prompting increased support for Hitler and his Nazis.

The present global chaos doesn’t have to end the same way the chaos of a century ago did. It doesn’t have to result in the ascension of millenarian ideologies and their totalitarian defenders. History has shown that extremism can be short-circuited and radical ideologies undone. The first step in doing so, however, must be to bring an end to the rationalization of the persecution of the world’s Jews. The second step is to end the persecution itself.

Antisemitism is ugly and shameful, and it must be treated as such. For their sake and ours.

Tyler Durden
Tue, 03/19/2024 – 02:00

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