Current Events > There are 15 million Jews in the world.

(+) Yeah! (+)

I had no idea the number was so small.

The holocaust was fucked up but even more so when you come to the realisation that it ended the life of more than a third of the worlds Jewish population at the time (6 million out of the total 17 million in the 1930s).

Same kind of shit that happens over and over throughout history. Pick a small minority, vilify and blame them for everything, then carry out some kind of atrocity against them.

"There's so many more of us than them and we're letting them run the world!" Now we're seeing that rhetoric used against LGBTQ people.

Represent

hockeybub89 posted...

Same kind of shit that happens over and over throughout history. Pick a small minority, vilify and blame them for everything, then carry out some kind of atrocity against them.

"There's so many more of us than them and we're letting them run the world!" Now we're seeing that rhetoric used against LGBTQ people.

Ironically I was thinking about whether there were more trans people in the world or Jews and realising there are probably people who support Jews and are against any sort of anti semitism who probably would have no issues dehumanising transgender people. Imagine if the world took anti-trans rhetoric as seriously as they took anti-semitism rhetoric.

trickMms posted...

Represent

Yo. Do you ever deal with people making the fact you are a Jew your in defining feature? My Jewish friend etc?

SHRlKE posted...

Ironically I was thinking about whether there were more trans people in the world or Jews and realising there are probably people who support Jews and are against any sort of anti semitism who probably would have no issues dehumanising transgender people. Imagine if the world took anti-trans rhetoric as seriously as they took anti-semitism rhetoric.

People trip over themselves to argue how discriminating against someone's skin color or religion is bad and totally different than discriminating against their orientation or gender identity.

The Armenian people suffered equally catastrophic population losses, proportionally speaking, during the genocide of 1915-16. Out of a global population estimated very roughly at 3.9 million in 1896, of whom perhaps 1.5 million were living in the Ottoman Empire by 1915, only around 400,000 were left alive in the Empire by 1922. That's a demographic loss of more than a third of the entire people.

Is that Turkey? Im aware of it loosely but didnt realise the numbers were so large. Jesus.

SHRlKE posted...

Is that Turkey?

Well, the Ottoman Empire, which covered a much wider territory than today's Republic of Turkey, but yes.

90% of indigenous people in the americas died because of the diseases europeans brought over like smallpox

saspa posted...

90% of indigenous people in the americas died because of the diseases europeans brought over like smallpox

I always found it weird that a reverse didn't happen to Europeans exposed to new world diseases.

The Black Death caused so many deaths that, even today, genetic diversity is lower in the UK than it was in the 11th century.

Most of them are in the US and Israel

Crimsoness posted...

I always found it weird that a reverse didn't happen to Europeans exposed to new world diseases.

Is it because they traveled more and had higher standards of medical care?

Crimsoness posted...

I always found it weird that a reverse didn't happen to Europeans exposed to new world diseases.

Not sure if true, but I've heard it suggested that the culture of the new world was less friendly to the created of powerful virulent diseases because there were fewer big cities and those that were were less densely populated, less squalid and in general there was less close contact with animals from which viruses could jump.

Crimsoness posted...

I always found it weird that a reverse didn't happen to Europeans exposed to new world diseases.

Most of the "terrible" diseases are zoonotic in nature, or began as such.
Europeans kept animals in very, very close proximity to themselves, often building towns and villages around them, whereas the new world did not.

SHRlKE posted...

Yo. Do you ever deal with people making the fact you are a Jew your in defining feature? My Jewish friend etc?

Kinda, but I market myself as the Jewish friend who doesn't actually know or care much about Judaism, so if anything, it's self-inflicted (in a good way - I like having a defining characteristic instead of just being another generic straight white guy)

If someone wanted to play the whole "I have a Jewish friend" card and refer to me, I would laugh and/or be honored. But for those who are bothered when people refer to them that way, I can sorta understand where they're coming from. Wouldn't fault anyone for taking offense to being the token friend. It just doesn't even remotely bother me personally.

So I guess when you say "deal with," the answer is technically yes, but I certainly don't mean "deal with" in the bad way that phrase usually denotes.