Episode 16 : The Jewish Perspective with Mordechai Ben-Emet

On today’s episode of Walt Right Perspectives I speak with Mordechai Ben-Emet, a big-brained college freshman of Ashkenazi lineage with wonkish centrist politics and a keen interest in artificial intelligence.

Putting this behind a paywall so any ADL interns listening to this have to give me $5.

Topics include:

• Mordechai’s upbringing as a Conservative Jew

• Mordechai’s experience of Alt Right memes as a 10 year old Jewish boy

• Hebrew, Yiddish, and the Alt Right’s adoption of Jewish American slang

• Different types of anti-Semitism

• Political polarization internal to the Jewish community

• Are Jews white?

• Philo-Semitism and Anti-Semitism come from the same place

• The Alt Right implicitly respected Jews

• Jewish attitudes towards Israel and the Gaza War

• Cultural vs. religious Judaism

• Jewish life on campus and polarization over Israel

• Mordechai’s anti-Zionism and support for the Palestinian people

• Is the One State Solution tenable?

• Only Jews can effectively advocate for Palestinians

• The mental / social / sexual health of young Zoomers

• Progress of gender discourse over the past decade

• Humanity is becoming a longer-lived creature

• Mordechai’s interest in AI policy

• AI as a force to democratize art and threat to mediocre artists / technicians

• Walt’s addiction to limitless novelty of artificial intelligence

• The impact of dopamine traps on Zoomer attention span

• How COVID ruined Mordechai’s high school experience

• Gerontocracy as a force screwing over Zoomers

• Political strength of old people

• Mordechai’s stance on foreign policy

• Would Zoomers fight if they’re drafted? Could America handle a war with China?

• Ancient Jewish history and Dovahhatty’s videos about the Jewish-Roman wars

• Walt’s nostalgia for the Alt Right

• Did the Alt Right normalize talking about HBD and white identity?

• Walt’s new philosophy of Intersectional Identitarianism

• Mordechai’s stance that Jews aren’t an oppressed group in America

• White interest groups in South Africa vs. America

• Mordechai’s ideological volatility as a teen and current wonkish centrism

• Campus social pressure to be very progressive

• Is being culturally Jewish important to Mordechai?

• It’s fun to embrace stereotypes

• Is Gen Alpha retarded?

• Dopamine traps are lowering people’s IQs

• Technological sophistication increases value of exponential life strategies

• WALL-E is the most likely dystopia

• Do people have the right to be beautiful?

• Kaczynski’s “Power Process”

• Job stacking and the inefficiency of climbing the ladder

• Did the anti-work movement fail or succeed?

• Walt offends Mordechai by talking about sleeping with female coworkers

• Walt gives Mordechai game advice for picking up nerdy girls

• Women aren’t as ideological and more focused on status

• Does Mordechai feel like an adult?

• Smart and agentic people can “skip the line”

• Walt advises Mordechai to drop out of college and form a startup

• Walt is a friend of the Jews

• Mordechai says Walt looks like he could be Jewish

• Walt wants a more banal identity politics

• Jews self-identify as white more when anti-Semitism is less prevalent

• Mordechai’s personal experience with anti-Semitism

• How Jews think about converting to Christianity

• How and why Walt turned from anti-Semitism to philo-Semitism

• The Great Replacement and Kevin MacDonald’s Culture of Critique

• Walt has lost old friends because he is a friend of the Jews

• The Alt Right played a role in dispelling hypocrisy over Israel vs. white identity

• Neo-Conservativism and mid-2000s GOP philo-Semitism

• It’s impossible to disambiguate ethnic nepotism from meritocracy

• You need to destigmatize and allow conversation about overrepresentation to adequately fight anti-Semitism

• Zionists need flyover country chuds to defend Israeli interests

• Evangelical love of Jews

• It feels really good when black people agree with you

• Black guy reaction videos and the “Based Black Guy”

• Mordechai’s thoughts on how to deal with black nationalism

• Walt’s attitude that ethnic kinship between southrons and blacks should be a basis for racial reconciliation

• Standardized testing as a crucial aspect of American meritocracy

• Zoomer takes on affirmative action

• Walt tries to convince Mordechai to embrace HBD

• Why are liberals averse to discussions about race and IQ?

• Very few people change their mind because of good arguments or facts

• The Bar Mitzvah and psychological utility of formal coming of age rituals