Stop chasing AI - here’s where to invest right now
Article excerpt
As artificial intelligence stocks have soared, investment strategists are warning that chasing the hottest sector has historically backfired for retail investors. The article examines which market segments offer better value than the AI bubble, a sobering message for those who've poured money into Nvidia, Tesla, and other AI darlings. Several advisors recommend diversifying into overlooked sectors with stronger fundamentals and lower valuations. The piece walks through specific alternative investment categories and explains why their modest growth prospects may actually provide safer long-term returns than betting on another technology boom destined to cool.
When Rep. Thomas Massie (R-KY) lost his primary election to Ed Gallrein, he began his concession speech by remarking, “I had to call my opponent and concede, and it took a while to find Ed Gallrein in Tel Aviv.”
The comment capped off a series of persistent attacks upon Israel and Jews that saw Massie repeating antisemitic conspiracy theories about Jewish influence in the United States. He isn’t the only figure on the Right to go in such a direction. Tucker Carlson and Candace Owens nowadays sound a lot like the antisemite Nick Fuentes. The former brought Fuentes on his show to talk about “organized Jewry,” and the latter thinks the Jews killed Charlie Kirk.
People understandably wonder how antisemitism has managed to surge on the Right in recent years. Part of the answer may lie in the rise of conspiratorial thinking over the last decade. The two often go hand in hand, and elements of the former could facilitate the latter.
Modern conspiracism’s foe has usually been a vague, amorphous “deep state” that can seemingly include anyone, provided you try hard enough. Historically, however, this has not been the case. Based on Richard Hofstadter’s essay “The Paranoid Style in American Politics,” conspiracy theories in America have always had a clear target for their ire: freemasons, Catholics, Jews (again), communists, and so on.
Antisemitism allows conspiracists to finally give a face to whom they think they have been fighting against. People eventually want something more objective and clearly defined than the abstract deep state. When that time comes, it’s not surprising how many of them go for one of history’s favorite scapegoats.
This leaves us with the question of why Jews are such a popular target for conspiracies. In Western Christian civilization, particularly, the tendency is curious. France’s most famous wisecracker, Voltaire, wrote of “the Jews, our masters and our enemies, whom we believe in and detest.” Christianity has its roots in the Jews, yet Christians can be oddly comfortable with disdain for them.
Quillette’s Claire Lehmann summed up the reason well: “Jews were targets in particular because they lived among Christians but apart from them. They were marked by different rituals, laws, and occupations, and were viewed as the people who had known Christ, but had rejected him.” Combine this contrast with the relative success Jews have had despite opposition to them, and you have fertile ground for crafting a conspiracy theory or two (or 10).
RESTORING AMERICA: WHY THOMAS MASSIE LOST
Modern conspiracies also frequently remind one of the old antisemitic tropes, making the bridge even easier to cross. For example, historical accusations against the Jews of ritual child sacrifice are strikingly similar to modern claims of “satanic ritual abuse” popular with QAnon. I’m not the first to notice, either.
Saving the Right from antisemitism requires more than knowing why the claims of the antisemites are wrong. Resisting the tide of extremism requires understanding the ways of thinking that lead one down that road in the first place. This isn’t about whether to believe conspiracy theories as much as it is about acknowledging the temptations that come with a conspiracist worldview. Instead of impulses, as John Locke says, “Reason must be our last judge and guide in everything.”