Question by ?mama pajama?: Have there been any studies done on the phenomena of cultural and religious identity theft?
Here I am asking about formal studies of the ill effects of groups or individuals who claim the identity, symbols, culture and history of a people and pervert those things by turning them topsy turvy, most often to impose beliefs that are offensive to and violate the laws of the authentic nation people?
The impostor groups also simultaneously declare great love and loyalty to the identity they claim while they display hatred and insult to the laws, ethics, values and the actual peoples whose identity they hijack?
I am often witness to see that the many different Native American Indian nations and also the Jewish covenant nation people have many different groups who openly display bigotry and hostility to the original nation peoples while claiming to be them as they corrupt and distort.their histories, their traditions, laws, and their various spiritual beliefs.
Other common threads: Any individual or group that speaks out *against* this bigoted display of entitlement to hijack and remove the right of a people to maintain their own unadulterated history and laws, is then chastised as the bigot and condemned for their hatred at not being “tolerant”.
Sometimes the mention of love of all people or brotherhood is even brought up to deflect the misrepresentation of identity or history or belief.
Why are some groups who use these methods more “socially acceptable” than others? “Messianic Jews” who often claim believing Jews are “Satanic” as does more than one self-called “Messianic Jew” aren’t the only groups to hijack Jewish identity and project that Jews are bigoted to them to state they are not the real covenant nation, Israel. The Black Hebrew Israelites and the White Supremacist groups called “Christian Identity” do this also, but they are not nearly as socially accepted for their similar claims and methods.
The following was posted under another q recently by someone who continually denies antisemitism in YA and supports “Messianic Jews”, this example of the hijacking I refer to above is a direct copy paste of someone who actually claims to love Israel:
“Messianic Jewish evangelist/apologist Jacob Prasch wrote:
“The message [at Revelation 2:9] hearkens back to Romans 2 and to the book of Jeremiah: “He is not a Jew who is one outwardly, but he is a Jew who is circumcised of heart.” Even the Talmud admits that people who are anthropologically or genetically Jews would know their Messiah if they were true Jews, or Jews in heart. Jesus calls this Judaism that rejects its own Messiah a ‘synagogue of Satan’. When you pass a Jehovah’s Witness Kingdom Hall, it is a place of Satan; when you pass a mosque, that too is a place of Satan; when you go by a Roman Catholic Church, it is a place of Satan; when you pass a Hindu Temple, that is a place of Satan; and no less is a synagogue also a place of Satan.”
That above “quote” disrespects that it is Jewish law (Torah) that defines Jewish self- identity and tries to tie it to genetics ( something foreign to the Hebrews) Also that quote demonizes other New Testament followers and other peoples.
Lest I be bombarded with accusations I am attacking another user I will not reveal who said that in Y/A. I suppose a search can show it.
I sincerely WANT to know the answers to all my above questions and more, I just use it as a RECENT example.
I have many questions about what I see as efforts toward a goal of cultural and spiritual genocide of peoples.
The First Nations peoples of many nations..contend with people who want to replace THEM, too…this with all the “predendians” “shaman” and “New Agers”..
there is a brilliant poem by Sherman Alexie that says at the end:
“In the Great American Indian novel, when it is finally written,
all of the white people will be Indians and all of the Indians will be ghosts.”
http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/how-to-write-the-great-american-indian-novel/
What is the root SOURCE of this SENSE of ENTITLEMENT to do such things to other peoples?
What is it doing to our civilization as a whole?
What can we do about these things?
**Let it be clear that the above quotation from one who identified himself as a “Messianic Jew” is in NO way any representation of any form of Jewish religion or belief! He does not represent the Jewish people! Judaism (Torah) teaches that the righteous of all nations merit blessing. ***
I asked this question a month ago under another category and no one knew of any studies on this particular thing exactly, but one person did come up with a term used. I hoped by asking it under this category that new information may surface. I wasn’t asking for confirmation of what we know already, but if the topic and acts of cultural and religious identity theft had been formally studied. I wonder if the LACK of studies means this is something that really NEEDS to be studied and investigated so that such efforts to do away with any people are more easily recognized, not so easily undertaken and that they become unacceptable among all people valuing human rights.
Kanien..that’s some powerful stuff there and ..it really appears to fit what I see. GREAT answer as usual!
marcus, I agree.
I REALLY hope that everyone reads Kanien’s answer thoroughly..AND reads the links she provides.
Kanien is my source for the poem above, too đ
Perhaps if history and sociology includes the topic of cultural and religious identity theft, tragedies of the past may be averted from repeating themselves in new forms. The Holocaust and Trail of Tears weren’t allowed or committed *only* by insane, “evil” people, but by regular people, like your neighbor and mine who justified evil because they believed propaganda telling them it had a legitimate reason to happen. The emerging myth of the noble savage whose ways were twisted helped to justify “saving” the “dying” Indian “race” in those reservations combined with the myth of them as so savage they needed to be confined to become “civilized” ..so they looked the other way. A deeply Christian Europe looked the other way when the Jews who “rejected Jesus” were being punishedcollectively as they were told repeatedly in many speeches and edicts . The real “Jewish problem” is that the very existence of Jews threatens the validity of the claim their NT replaced the eternal law of Torah.
Best answer:
Answer by God answers all questions
i do not no
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Definitely the Messianic Jews, not to mention the Nazis’ theft of the swastika symbol of the Indians.
Tsk, tsk, tsk.
Just to clarify for those who are not sure on this:
There is NO ‘messianic’ sect IN Judaism.
None.
Messianics are *literally* not Jewish – just as Hindus or Catholics are literally not Jewish. The entire Messianic Cult was founded by evangelical Christians. Messianics pose as “messianic jews” – but they are not Jews by birth, by conversion, by belief, or by any other criteria.
And as far back as 1977, Christian, Jewish and Muslim leaders were condemning Messianics for their lies:
At the 1977 Washington D.C. Interfaith Conference, Protestant, Roman-Catholic, Muslim and Jewish leaders ***all*** issued an official statement (published in “Interfaith Connector” Vol. 8, No. 2) stating:
âWe condemn proselytizing efforts which involve deception. Such practices are common among Christian groups calling themselves ‘Hebrew Christianity’, ***’Messianic judaism’***, or ‘jews for Jesus’.
“These groups specifically target Jews for conversion to Christianity, claiming that in accepting Jesus as the savior/messiah, a Jews ‘fulfills’ his/her faith.’
“By celebrating Jewish festivals, worshipping on the Jewish Shabbat, appropriating Jewish symbols, rituals and prayers in their Churches, and, sometimes, even calling their leaders ‘Rabbi’, they seek to win over, often by deception, many Jews.
“They target vulnerable groups – residents of hospitals and old aged homes, confused youth, college students away from home. These deceitful techniques are tantamount to coerced conversions and should be condemned.”
And in the USA, the founder of one of the largest Messianic groups has been exposed admitting his deceit. Read here what Martin Meyer, founder of ‘jews4jesus’, has said:
In the document âWhat Evangelical Christians should know about Messianic âjewsâ , Martin Meyer, founder of ‘jews’ FOR JESUS: reveals:
âWe are an arm of the local **Church**. We are Evangelists. We are accountable to the Church. As we win and ***convert*** Jewish people, we urge them to take their place in a local Evangelical **Church**, or establish a congregation. Our duty is to aid the **Church** at large and to gather in the Lost Sheep of the House of Israel.â
– from âHoly Terrorâ by Conway and Seigelman
Martin Meyer is an ordained ***Baptist*** Minister. His group is nothing to do with Judaism.
Read more at http://ajewwithaview.wordpress.com
This definitely needs to be studied by an unbiased, reputable academician. Perhaps if the open dishonesty of “messianic Jews” were examined, documented, and exposed by a prominent university professor (of sociology I suppose), more people would speak out against their blasphemy. As it stands now, many Christians feel there is nothing wrong with their fellow Christians pretending to be Jews!
i found something else. not a formal study but certainly a lot of insight:
“Aramnado Prats writes, and this could also include the characters of Little Big Man, Dances with Wolves, Jeremiah Johnson and even Billy Jack, âHe embracesâand becomesâall that is Indianâall of it, without exception or condition; yet somehow he must never be the nativeâs own authenticity. He must disclaim his whiteness, but he must never quite abrogate it.â
For no matter how âIndianâ the white man becomes, he can never be fully Native American. No matter how much âIndian knowledgeâ he proclaims, it will never erase what has happened to Native peoples. Yet, so many are willing to trade off their heritage to be noticed as a willing participant in the âIndian Experienceâ and being such Experts of Indian-ness, this has led to a collective distrust for Native Americans to tell their own stories.
Itâs as if the taking of a Native Identity serves two endsâthe first, to exonerate the white man for the actions of his race, and secondly to assert a form of expertise about Native Americans which can only be attained from taking their identity In the end neither serves no purpose for Natives and serves, once again, to de-power their voice and attempts at self-representation. ”
http://www.nativevue.org/blog/?p=368
when you look at the instances of cultural appropriation throughout history, you find that in every case, the ones doing the appropriating end up destroying the other culture. in fact, most times that is the whole purpose. i believe that the above reasons may be the unconscious reasons behind the appropriation of native identity. guilt for being of a race that destroyed so many native people and then the idea that one can BE and replace the native. the arrogance of thinking one can be the improved version of the indigenous people. i’m thinking the reasons for jewish identity theft is for similar reasons. the ones who approprate another’s culture, do not do so out of admiration, they do so to destroy the others culture and replace it with the “new” version. this is beginning to make sense.
“”At its most powerful,” Seamus Deane writes, “colonialism is a process of radical dispossession.” While many in the academy attend to theories of postcolonialism, the colonial process of which Deane speaks relentlessly maneuvers itself onward.
In regard to American Indian cultures and histories, the implications of the adjective “radical,” when attached to “dispossession,” are being felt in ever-expanding ways in the late twentieth century; so much so that it is difficult for a Native American critic to lay hold of a word such as “postcolonialism.”
Deane goes on to say, “A colonized people is without a specific history and even, as in Ireland and other cases, without a specific language.” I believe him, or at least believe that the attempt to destroy a people’s history and language figures centrally in destroying or subduing that people, in replacing one worldview with another.”
http://www.questia.com/PM.qst?a=o&d=76961328
i’m sure there has been a study of the psychology of cultural appropriation its just tedious to wade through everything. it will be found eventually. i’ll keep looking.