Opting Out (@electronics)

@Rat_Girl: I have to reply to you by quote tweet, because Stanzi has me blocked. "Perhaps you’re right, perhaps you aren’t, but one thing I do know is that any isolation attempts won’t work." Good to hear. "Jews need the kindness and defense of non-Jews. This isn’t to say that we can’t fight for ourselves. But just as non-Jews hid their Jewish neighbors and joined resistance movements in the thirties and forties, we need our gentile friends to stand beside us against the rising tide of antisemitism today." Glad to give it. Wish I could say that I was completely surprised by that tide. I was a bit shocked by how quickly it rolled in around 2016, but as some of our family elders will tell you, the signs of looming danger were visible long before you or I were born. "Thank you for always doing that." You're welcome. "You are a true friend, to me and to my people." Hearing that means a lot to me. . . . . The next part of this reply is addressed, not to @Rat_Girl, but to a number of my followers. I humored some of you, for a while, because this was the only way I could manage to come up with to find answers to questions that I had been unable to answer on my own. There's somebody I know from school who has gone through life wondering what on Earth was happening, as he bounced from one moment of horror to another, until he ended up developing a case of social anxiety disorder. "Why are people acting like this," he'd wonder, as he was driven crazy trying to figure out what sort of social rules he was breaking. Social rules that never seemed to apply to those who, shall we say, looked a little more Nordic. Eg. He's sitting in the student union on another campus, one day, looking up at the clock, and notices (to his dismay) that a certain blond haired, blue eyed maiden that he had never met before today thinks that he is looking at her, because she is sitting right underneath the clock. This is the same campus where my Thai sister-in-law ended up having to drop out of a class, because some of her classmates (who looked a lot more Anglo-Saxon) thought that crudely sexually propositioning her was just good, healthy fun, and the professor supported them in this. But on this very same campus, my not-at-all Anglo Saxon-looking Jewish friend now finds himself being confronted by some "chivalrous gentlemen," simply because he looked at a clock to see what time it was, and Muffy the sorority sister thought he had made eye contact with her. In what world is he enjoying a privileged status? He'd go online, and far from finding a refuge from this sort of bullying, would find that people would clutch at straws looking for any possible excuse for a fight. This was a life that would leave anybody feeling more than a little jumpy, and it left him with questions. Questions like "where is this all coming from," "what's next" and "how can I escape this." Questions that I've been hearing from friends and family since birth, and to which I had no answer. How could I, really? Know many mathematicians or engineers? Or physicians? I grew up surrounded by rational people, in a culture that encourages self-control. Hyper-emotionalistic rages have always confused me, because they are such an alien sort of thing. But I did have one thing that I could put to use. Aryan privilege. Privilege of a sort. There are a lot of places where I can go and instantly be welcomed with open arms, just because of what I am, because there I look like the boy next door. Some of the worst people in those places will hear "Norwegian, Danish and German ancestry" and automatically assume that I'll be ready to buy what the Nazis have been selling, even though the Norwegians ended up making an exception to their "no capital punishment" rule for Vidkun Quisling (the Nazi puppet who ruled over them), the Danes were in the habit of putting on yellow badges in order to thwart the roundups during the occupation, and the German ancestors came from Baden-Württemberg. Not really Hitler's favorite land. But assumptions get made, and they can be put to productive use. Some very bad people will say things to me that they'd never dream of saying to others, and I will listen, and gain in understanding until I can answer those questions which I had been so confused by, to an adequate extent. There are things I still don't know, like "how many of the pro-Nazi women approaching me were well-intentioned but naive people taken in by the propaganda, and how many were cold-hearted manipulative people who saw that I was studying Math, assumed that I had trouble meeting women, and saw that as the means to recruit me." But do I really need to know that? The charade is over. For those of you who really were taken in by the disinformation and sincerely believed that the Nazis were nice, misunderstood guys, your lack of understanding doesn't make me hate or even scorn you, but it does leave me wishing that you had better taste in reading material. (continued in the comments)