I liked Vox's post yesterday and found how he characterized my summary of the Amalek comment controversy very funny... primarily because he claims that he initially understood the comment as rhetorical exaggeration but claimed not to understand my recap also as rhetorical exaggeration... intended to set up the closing joke... please don't feel threatened when I say "attack."
So, I fully concede the point that Vox did not really think that the Amelek comment was a credible and realistic threat of violence. I just found it amusing to assure Vox of my non-violent intent every time I say something that could be vaguely misinterpreted as a threat. It makes me laugh and so I will probably repeat the joke. Following this theme, the title of his post also made me smile. [Insert Top Gun Quote Here]
I will also note that Vox's continued the strategy of overwhelming me with charges to respond to continued in his post today. He seems to recognize a pattern that he calls the fighting withdrawal, where a commenter will simply declare him wrong and decide not to respond. Vox should take a moment to think about this. If this is a consistent pattern, then perhaps the problem is his debate style. I must admit that I had a moment of ... is this really worth it? ...before I posted yesterday. Basically, Vox has given me a To Do list of between 4 and 7 posts to adequately respond to him. I think that it is fine (and frankly fair given the nature of what I wrote) and because the topic of each is relevant to the theme of my blog I think it appropriate to continue.
Vox did say something very interesting in reminding me that he lives in Europe where there are more virulent strains of anti-Semitism than the US. I actually find this to be a very credible defense. I suppose that in Europe, where negative comments toward Jews are much more common place, his comments about Jews could be considered very generous.
I am glad that Vox pointed this out as there appears to be a correlation between this European attitude toward Jews and actual violence in their direction. I wrote a post last month about why it was so difficult to get American Jews to care about anti-Semitism, while for Jews in Europe it is a much more immediate concern. I took a study of major anti-Semitic incidents by country in 2011 and crossed it with the size of the Jewish populations in each country. The methodology is not perfect, but good enough for this purpose and the results were remarkable.
Of course, while Vox may live in Europe, he generally writes for an American audience. Given the greater incidence of anti-Jewish violence in Europe and the historical pattern that anti-Semitic speech often precedes actual violence against Jews, I am sure that Vox will concede that when hearing someone speak in a European style about Jews to an American audience... the shift in language is unusual and it is reasonable to consider the change dangerous... which is why I labeled it so in my original post.
It is also interesting to me that Vox has never objected to the label alt-right. I wonder if he considers his blog to be an example of the alt-right as I have asserted? The reason I applied that label is because I became aware of the alt-right, primarily through links from his blogs.
Finally, I do want to talk more about the anti-African riot in Tel Aviv and will write a post on it. Obviously, I am not in favor of riots and the reaction from the Jewish community in America and Israel has been to condemn the rioters. That is my instinct as well. There are some other things he said in his post, but I will get to them as I go down the list.
