#and this is why so many real leftists

[sarasa-cat]

Yet again I am not taking the bait on why that post about Calvinism and Leftism in America reverses cart and horse.

It is only RECENTLY (the past 16 years at most) that Calvinistic Christians have invaded modern leftism and engaged in elite capture of 20th century leftist ideas that were, for the most part, formed entirely outside of the white-Calvinistic Protestantism.

Also, keep in mind, that it is entirely possible, at least when I was in high school and college, to live inside the US and have formative experiences in which Protestants aren't just a minority, you have to look really hard even just to find them as your classmates.

I realize that this is hard to believe for people who grew up steeped in protestant american culture but, ffs, I am old enough to be the parent of some of the kids on this tumblrsite and I am STILL EDUCATING MYSELF on what calvinism teaches and what protestants in general even believe because it is all very mysterious and foreign to me.

And yes, it is true that early leftism in the US, back in the 1800s, was driven by protestant beliefs, but american leftism during the 1990s and up through the first few years of the 2000s was driven by an exceedingly diverse group of people of many other backgrounds who, at best, associate calvin with a mischievous cartoon child.

Also: talk about elite capture when ... never mind. Not taking the bait.

Anyhow, I have long argued that this new calvinistic left isn't even leftist.

[coffeelovinggayidiot]

Like all of tumblr, aparently: we 💜 love ✡️jews✡️ and we would 👊 punch nazis and we reblog five 5️⃣ different haukkah 🕎 posts a year we are like so progresive 💁✨️

Also all of tumblr, aparently: death to all jews 🚫✡️ if you're a jewish person who lives in IsNotRaEl then you're an evil 👺 bad jew and you deserve to be raped and murdered ☠️☠️ what? You fled to israel because we were murdering you by the millions??? Well you should have all died lol ☠️☠️ happy hanukkah btw 🕎

[rabbithaver]

every so often i will see a post from a leftist on this website that is so egregiously ableist that i remember that like. oh yeah the userbase of leftists on this website is violently anti-disabled people and will jump at any chance to demonize any of us for any reason. i just forget that fact because i'm extremely dedicated to curating my space

i'm paraphrasing here but i saw a post that said, "every time i see an American [disabled person] mention being scared about the election because they're afraid of losing their benefits i have to laugh. anybody who wants blood-soaked money from the US government deserves to starve" which. like. goodness that's a lot to unpack. i think we should burn the whole suitcase instead !

[redjennies]

people on this website really want to imagine non-voters as smug white leftists who just hate the system, man, and not like poor and working class people whose schedules don't allow for it, black and latino communities who are intentionally targeted for voter suppression, people who live in heavily gerrymandered areas or states where their vote straight up won't count, people whose politics don't match up with the increasingly partisan party lines, or any other reason and/or combination of aforementioned reasons.

and the reason tumblr continues tilting at these windmills of "leftists are the real problem" (even though everyone was a "leftist" in December) is that all the reasons people don't vote are systemic problems that require intentional and organized solutions. there are real and material ways to put people in poll booths (or mailing their ballots), but they require work. they require making sure polling places are more accessible to voters in ways that range from making sure the polling place is ADA compliant to better signs so drivers know where they're going and better parking so they don't leave. they require voter registration drives and helping eligible felons restore their voting rights. they require educating the community on mail-in ballots and early voting opportunities. they require getting people who maybe disillusioned with federal level candidates excited about local or state level candidates where they could make a difference because if you can get them to polls for something they do feel strongly about they might go ahead and vote for the federal candidate anyway because they're already there. they require holding the fucking democrats accountable for their actions after the election to stop fucking going out of their way to alienate their voting bases, Joseph Goddamn Biden, and not sweeping those concerns under the rug as "not that bad" to make your candidate look better.

there are so many different ways to help increase voter turn-out, but they all require reaching out to your community and finding the way you can help to the best of your personal abilities. I know this because the examples I've listed above are things I've either personally done or my friends, who have different skills than I do, have done. what does not help voter turnout in the fucking slightest is taking the easy out of whining on the internet about how leftists are a threat to democracy like a goddamn conservative because you think the anarchists you see online are annoying. it's not only internet activism at its fucking laziest, and as i've said many times before, it actively stokes reactionary sentiments among moderate liberals. you are not being the measured and nuanced voice of reason for contributing to this shit. you are being lazy in hopes to sound like the smartest voice in the room and giving credence to something that is more inherently dangerous to long-term progress than the tiktok teens joking about terrorism or whatever you've decided to froth at the mouth about because you're falling for inflammatory Fox News-level propaganda tactics.

[official-saul-goodman]

Oh my god not you people calling the landlady awful things because she said 'art that's traced isn't art' in passing....

[chronicbitchsyndrome]

i have been in community with profoundly developmentally disabled peers and peers with brain damage my whole life, bc i had a childhood diagnosis. i have also been leftist my whole life; my mother was a marxist and raised me that way, and while their politics were absolute dogshit, they were lefty dogshit.

my entire life, i have seen leftist educators throw mentally disabled people away as "lost causes" because they couldn't engage with the material the way it was being presented. leftist outreach and education does, genuinely, have a massive lack of accessible material. to be blunt, people are not interested in retrofitting their leftist outreach to be accessible to people who learn best through episodes of sesame street.

as in, i have repeatedly faced outright laughter and cruelty over the idea that this could be a priority. or even something that we consider doing at all.

"people who are that mentally disabled don't need to know about these things," the kindest interpretation goes. ("people who are that mentally disabled don't interact with the world, anyway, they're all in institutions or monitored 24/7 by their parents," the uncharitable underlying assumptions go. "they wouldn't be a worker who needs a union. or a library attendee. or a member of the community garden. or a volunteer at the food bank. or or or")

the people i have seen this hurt the worst, over and over again, are profoundly mentally disabled people of color whose lack of access to accessible antiracist education is causing real danger in their lives. institutionalized disabled people of color who have learned racist ideology and behaviors from white authority, whether they were adopted by white families or incarcerated in care institutions run by white staff. who are treated lower than garbage by leftist educators, who view them as "lost causes," as unworthy of time and effort and attention, as deserving of their abuses because they... what... internalized the abuses that make up every aspect of their lives since birth?

i see people saying things in this conversation like "disability isn't an excuse for racism or transphobia or whatever, people have the obligation to improve themselves." oh, believe me, i have seen again and again how many privileged disabled people utilize their disabilities to punch down on others, try to escape accountability for their punching down by citing disability. but individual weaponization of identity is just that: weaponization of identity.

the power structures at play are what they are. it is a noble and admirable goal to want leftist outreach and education to be more accessible to all. if that is truly your goal, you must eventually reckon with the existence of people who do, actually, really need it presented in a picture book. or an episode of bluey. or a conversation where you only use examples of people they know in real life, using things that happened to them personally. the existence of people who cannot grasp forms of abstract reasoning, who need information presented as rules, or as guidelines, or as categories. the idea that yes, fully grown adults who need daniel tiger to explain racism to them are human beings who not only deserve access to that very thing, but who also deserve to be a part of leftist spaces and benefit from leftist organizing. are people for whom it might be INTEGRAL they get to be a part of leftism. are victims of racism themselves and suffering without access to antiracist spaces and community and support.

and you will need to reckon with the abject cruelty of your peers who laugh and mock the very idea of this. you need to reckon with the fact that a lot of people you respect, a lot of leftists doing genuinely good work, will respond to this by making fun of the people you're serving, even outright telling you their violent fantasies about these people. that is the experience of organizing in leftist spaces for profoundly disabled people. that is why so many of us burn out so fast. there IS a structural problem with mentally disabled people being seen as disposable and not a part of community. and it is EXTREMELY present in leftist organizing and outreach efforts.

[sunbeamedskies]

The left SUCKS at recruiting people. And so many of you are part of the problem.

The talk about centrists and moderates being the literal devil I see constantly in online leftist spaces is one great example of the left's failure. Yes, it sucks when the people don't see how horrible the right is. But centrists are some of the most open people to discussion- and some already lean left!!

You can't demonize moderates to such an extent that you close yourself off to them and then wonder why you're losing swing states.

Centrists aren't even always people with all the privileges- you will find plenty of people who are part of marginalized groups who are concerned about politicians on all sides.

You can be a smol radical leftist bean all you want who only talks to other smol socialist and communist beans, but you're never going to make the difference you want to in the world that way. It's the cold, hard truth. It doesn't mean you have to engage in discourse with everyone- some people have no real hope of changing and are emotionally draining- just more than your bubble.

I am tired of the left eating itself alive and deranged people like Trump winning.

[qqueenofhades]

https://www.tumblr.com/qqueenofhades/743255237060689920/the-thing-that-confuses-me-about-the-dont-vote

The “don’t vote” left’s point is basically that, if Biden gets a second term, it’ll basically signal that “They’ll vote for us as long as we’re not Republicans, why don’t we do some REAL fucked up shit, if we can get away with it?” It takes the power out of the people’s hands and places it firmly in the party’s.

I can’t completely disagree with that, my caveat is that there’s no real alternative system or party in place, because top-down change is ineffective; a third party president has to contend with a two party congress.

Except no. This whole "Biden just wants to do as much fucked up shit as possible while not being a Republican, and if you give him a second term he'll do more fucked up shit deliberately to spite you" mindset is only possible as an interpretation if you a) deliberately and comprehensively ignore everything he has done to date, and b) you approach the situation with the maximum bad faith possible. Not to mention, the ultimate outcome of this Big Important Teaching Biden A Lesson is that Trump gets back into power and makes everything orders of magnitude worse, because he does in fact want to deliberately do evil shit to everyone and says so at every opportunity. There is not some magical happy alternative that springs into existence by not voting. If you choose this as a year to Teach Biden A Lesson, you are enabling Trump. Trump will be much, much worse. If you don't care about that, I still do not care what your Great Ideology is. You are not helping anyone and you are directly and irreversibly hurting everyone.

I made a post a few days ago wherein I mentioned that I want to assess Biden fairly, taking into account both strengths and weaknesses, but the rampant bad-faith, lying, misreading, misrepresentation, and open sabotage of him (especially by the online left; the GOP sometimes only wishes they were as good at turning Biden's voter pool against him) makes it really difficult to do that. My frustration with those people makes me just want to go "BIDEN IS GREAT THE END." I know he is a flawed old man (though by literally every account of a career spent in public service, he really does care about making the world a better place and any remotely good faith reading of his accomplishments thus far can see that). It is also very likely that he goes MORE left in a second term because he won't have to face the electorate again, he has always gone more left when pushed before, and he's not actually the scheming genocidal mastermind that leftist social media paints him as. Shocking, I know.

I know there are things in the world we don't like and don't want and want to stop, and therefore we blame our own president for not making it stop. But I have zero, no, none, absolutely none whatsoever sympathy for this pseudo-populist "WE NEED TO TEACH BIDEN A LESSON BY ELECTING TRUMP AGAIN, I AM VERY MORAL MUCH ACTIVIST" mindset. There's this funny thing about America wherein it is still (for now) a democracy. If Biden wins a second term, he can't run again. I would take literally anything these people said more seriously if they focused on developing their dream progressive successor for 2028 (and also figured out how to get that person elected and in a place to make real change) rather than cynically sabotaging Biden in the most consequential election year, again, of our lifetimes. If you don't like him now, find a way to make his successor a better option. Throwing a toddler tantrum and handing the country back to a senile, deranged, fascist, revenge-riddled, theocratic Trump HELPS. NOBODY. I still don't know how many times I'm going to have to say that, but yeah.

[thebiballerina]

I mostly concur with the above reblogger, but I wanted to add one thing:

I wouldn't say that anything you do will have zero impact. There are SOME things you can do that will have an impact, if you choose to put your time and energy into this issue. (Which you are not obligated to do, to be clear, unless you have some sort of role or job which implies that sort of responsibility.)

You aren't necessarily helpless. But subscribing to OP's mindset is a really good way to make yourself helpless.

I've seen that mindset, repeatedly. I had that mindset, at one point in time. You know what changed that, more than anything else? Becoming an actual activist.

The activists who hold on to the mindset that a mental health break is selfish? The ones that can't or won't emotionally distance themselves? The ones that don't acknowledge their right to care for themselves because someone, somewhere is suffering worse than them? They don't last, and they don't help.

The good ending for that road is to burn out, and then not be able to help anymore. The bad ending is to fall heavily into compassion fatigue, and then be so desensitized and unable to care that you cause real harm. Or there's the other bad ending, which is that you neglect yourself so thoroughly that you end up hurt, sick, or dead (and maybe hurt others while you are at it). You might even manage to do all three of these things.

If you want to make a real impact on more than a minuscule scale, you not only need to allow yourself mental health breaks (which, yes, sometimes include disengaging completely), you need to accept that they aren't selfish at all. They are sometimes the only way you'll be able to preserve your ability to help. Feeling personally affected by an issue is valid, and sometimes unavoidable, but it doesn't correlate to how much of a difference you make.

Hurting yourself doesn't automatically help others. Many of us have heard metaphor which references the airplane safety instruction to put on your oxygen mask before helping others do so. It's a good metaphor. A suffocating person isn't going to thank you for the valiant gesture of suffocating yourself alongside them, when you had the option to save the both of you.

I believe in sacrifice, in some cases. I believe in acknowledging my privilege. But sacrifice generally implies that you are giving something up to help someone else. If you are just giving something up… it's more suffering in the world, not less.

Do you want to actually help? I bet you there are activism campaigns that would love to have you, in a variety of forms and levels of commitment. Including entirely remote efforts, if you aren't in a position or location to engage in in-person efforts. That goes for any cause, not just this one.

And you'll make a lot more difference in that sphere if you prioritize your impact, instead of your devotion to the issue.

i think anyone who is genuinely worried about their mental health bc of the situation in gaza probably needs to reformat their way of thinking about it. the answer is not to take a “mental health break” where you pretend whats happening in gaza doesnt exist and stop being vocal and refuse to hear people around you who are vocal. the way to do that “mental health break” much more effectively and not selfishly would be to remove yourself from constant streams of idiotic and/or murderously evil people. stop watching tiktok debates. stop reading genocidal reddit comments and news articles from sources you KNOW want palestine dead. stop putting the focus on the murderers and keep your attention on sympathy and love for the murdered, on hope and optimism (even if naive) and activism to do your part in making things better. dont get me wrong the murderers still need to be dealt with but if you as an individual feel like you’re getting too overwhelmed with despair to be helpful, the answer is to shift your focus away from those causing the despair, not to ignore and abandon those who have to actually live through it.

[weirdmageddon]

i was thinking about this since i posted earlier about us needing to address the trend of gen z men being pulled into alt-right pipelines might have contributed to the outcome of this election.

i think contrapoints is really smart, and from what i’ve seen, has been way more effective at getting people out of harmful ideological pipelines than i’ve seen from the majority of leftists online who instead berate and drive a greater wedge of antipathy (though i understand why! and it can be very hard to have empathy for the people who see you as a threat). that antipathy makes the right more radicalized because they don’t feel like they can talk about anything without the “crazy lefties” who won’t even engage with them. where did these issues come from?

what i’ve noticed, and i’m even guilty of this, is that people don’t interact with groups of people whom they refuse talk to, which makes realities more hypothetical in the minds of their opponent since they aren’t open to seeing reality from their perspective. this is true on both sides. from what i’ve observed, it seems to originate from hypothetical perception of the opponent, but when people treat those perceptions as though they are real, it becomes real with their actions, which then makes the antipathy justified to someone. again, on both sides.

what makes contrapoints so successful at breaking this down is that is that she creates these socratic dialogue skits that represent real people and ideologies, has a sense of humor, isn’t afraid to discuss these things, reframes how we see these things by introducing nuance to both sides. she’s a leftist, but she also knows how to engage without ripening division, of meeting someone halfway and being completely humble about it. she is able to soften extremes.

she is able to get into the mind of people who aren’t aligned with her views, understand the nuance and rationales from a realistic perspective, breaking down a big block of “this is all bad” into “ok, some of this makes sense…”, what this does is create a space for self-reflection that doesn’t feel ham-fisted (which could otherwise cause people to double down on their beliefs instead of opening up to other perspectives outside of their bubble). while also being entertaining and well-produced on top of it.

what she is doing is creating these scenarios and socratic discussions that SHOULD be happening in real life but aren’t in this polarized social climate.

i graduated from new college of florida this spring, the small liberal arts college that was in headlines across the country for ron desantis’s board of trustees hostile takeover and exodus of professors.

new students and student athletes from conservative walks of life were being basically incentivized to go there who were taught to fear the lgbt boogeyman growing up in their conservative communities. but once they actually interacted with lgbt students there, many of them they felt like they understood them, and they weren’t as bad as they were told they would be. new college of florida was also famous for getting derek black (child of the man who created stormfront, and godchild of the kkk grand wizard david duke) out of white nationalism. their peers at NCF called them out but also interacted with them, invited them to dinner. black wrote a book about it.

now of course some people are too far gone and you shouldn’t waste your time with them, like derek’s family for example. but i also think a lot of people who voted for trump are not informed, are operating off of emotion and knee-jerk mentality because it’s easier than thinking, and they are not seeing the discussions that need to be had to change their mind because fuckin…nobody is doing them.

and we feel this visceral disgust to people of the opposing party because of its associations. i just want to know how it happened and how we got to be like this. i think social media is partly to blame and also the algorithms that take people down dangerous pipelines and sharpen them, insulate them.

i myself understand the vitriol you might have for anyone that voted for trump. i feel so disappointed that half the people of this country voted against our collective benefit. and i’ve seen a lot of sentiment from the left today saying “every single person who voted for trump is dead to me. i disowned you”.

you can see the reality of trump’s demagoguery, and it’s so obvious, but what i want to know is: what do they see? why did they vote for him? emotion and entertainment travel faster and have more reach than reason. and it’s that’s why i think contrapoints’s videos are exemplary at tackling this ideological divide. this is something i’ve been thinking about for months before today and i thought now was a better time than ever to give my two cents on it.

[catboybiologist]

Yay I'm going to get all Political and angry again.

So pretty much every trans American is probably aware of the Sarah McBride situation at this point, but here's the bullet point summary if needed for anyone else:

Sarah McBride gets elected to the House as the first transgender member of Congress in US history.

Republicans predictably flip their shit. They pass internal rules of conduct that prohibit trans people from using bathrooms of their gender and stating that bathroom use is defined by AGAB. It obviously singles out McBride, but I believe there are trans staffers that are also affected.

McBride issues a statement that she will abide by these rules, and pretty much only use the bathroom directly associated with her physical office. She issues a statement saying she "wasn't elected for bathrooms" and will instead fight in issues that matter, with a milquetoast criticism of Republicans for wasting time on this.

Many trans Americans are predictably scared and disappointed by this, especially because this internal house rule is being used as a blueprint for more extensive laws, including a likely ban on trans people in gendered bathrooms in all federal land and buildings (including, notably for me, national parks. Which breaks my heart, but that's a different rant.)

There's been a lot of disappointment and criticism of McBride over this. The general leftist reaction has been criticism. There's lots of people that have expressed disappointment or rage, including Erin Reed, and also more "personality" type people like Vaush and Jessie Gender.

Now.

I'm disappointed too.

But. And please keep reading before chewing me out for being an apologist.

I think we can all understand that McBride is in an impossible situation. If she fights this too hard, then it vindicates the Republican rhetoric that Dems are crazy trans obsessed leftists. But there's a fear that this will only lead to more infringements of rights for trans people. McBride is completely stuck, and is a junior, freshly elected member of Congress who is trying to figure out how to make her voice the most effective.

I am so, so fucking tired of rights being ceded one by one. So I'm disappointed. But yeah, I understand McBride's statement.

But there's just one tiny. Eeny weeny. Minor. Itty Bitty question having over all of this. Just one little concern.

Where.

The fuck.

Are the rest of the Democrats?!?!?!?

There is a PAINFULLY fucking easy solution to all of this. McBride needs backing, solidarity, and other people to speak for her. If she's worried about her voice being effective, and being branded as the crazy trans representative, then step the fucking up, you spineless liberal slimebags.

AOC is the only one that I know of that has expressed any real opposition or anger. Her statements are getting aaallll the airtime.

But the real story is McBride's sentiment being echoed amongst the entire party. This is absolutely some kind of official platform. The fucking grumbling, milquetoast finger waving and "well I don't like this, but there's nothing to be done! Anyways"

Of fucking course minorites are abandoning the left. The message they're sending is "we'll abandon you with the most pathetic of excuses. We don't give a shit." Trimming groups out of their support one by one.

McBride is doing the impossible calculus of trying to be the most effective on the house floor. It's an insane task for a trans woman. And yeah, she got it wrong this time. But where the fuck is the anger for her cis colleagues? Why the fuck aren't people angry and terrified for everyone that let this shit happen?

As much as people love the narrative of the line wolf resistor, resistance takes coordination, effort, and solidarity. Without that, what would McBride raising opposition even be? One representative against the hundreds of others.

And yeah, of course I didn't expect any better from the Democratic party. But you should be disappointed and mad at your representative, not just McBride.

[tanadrin]

I would love to hear the rant about social media doomerism and conspiracy

I’m on my phone right now but the summary version is something like:

Humans are bad at integrating information into their worldview accurately bc of various cognitive biases

Social media incentivizes us seeking out content that excites fear or anger or irritation

Social media thus causes us to form negative impressions of the world bc it mediates so much information consumption and discourse these days

This general negative affective impression is subject to high confirmation bias and ppl in general are really bad at divorcing an affective impression of a thing from their dispassionate reasoning abt a thing

(Bc one of the functions of an affective impression is to “cache” our conclusions about a topic to save time and effort later)

(In general if you are a cynic and pessimist you can fall prey to these biases w/o social media but I think social media makes more ppl susceptible to them)

People don’t want to be dupes so they seek refuge in cynicism. We treat cynicism as wise or worldly when in fact cynicism makes you a dupe and an easy mark for grifters. Cynicism and low trust foster conspiracism, paranoia, and antisocial politics

(This is why so many congenitally contrarian folks seem to flit effortlessly between the far left and far right; it’s not horseshoe theory, they’ve just cooked their brains on this stuff)

This is a world where populist anti-social politicians like Trump and the AfD thrive, bc they will lie about how everything is terrible and people will nod along, bc it explains why their social media is full of awful stories of, like, immigrants eating pets and shit

But it doesn’t just have to be insane lies only a moron could believe. It can be any impression about a fact in the world that it is difficult to personally check and which is vulnerable to being swayed by anecdote

This is how we get a word where people think crime rates are higher than they’ve ever been when in fact crime is falling

Or child predators lurk around every corner when in fact children are safer than ever

Or the American economy is in a recession when in fact it’s doing historically well by just about every available metric (now with full employment AND low inflation!)

Because in a big world even where things are in general good and getting better you can always produce infinite individual examples of shitty things and pipe those in a steady stream into people’s eyeballs, and then point to that and leverage people’s low trust attitudes and their cynicism which tells them they are smarter than the experts and go “statistics is just a fancy way to lie! The world is secretly terrible! Every bad thing is even worse than you thought and every good thing is a lie!”

(Nevermind the whole phenomenon where anything that is complicated or that someone does not themselves understand gets treated like it’s actually secret and a conspiracy.)

And here I know I have to include some disclaimer about how this is not to discount individual cases of suffering or struggle, which are real, or that there are indeed some really awful things happening in the world right now, which there are, but you know what?

I’m tired of doing that. People with reading comprehension operating in good faith ought to be able to deduce that general statements do not obviate particular exceptions, and people who cling to their doomerism as a kind of emotional life raft do not generally argue with me in good faith.

Sometimes doomerism is a load-bearing pillar of their politics, which I think is dumb—I think you can be a leftist or a progressive without being a doomer! In fact I think doomerism is antithetical to useful politics!

Sometimes they are just depressed and treatment-resistant. Sometimes they are just angry misanthropes who want to feel justified in their misanthropy. Some doomers are themselves in bad circumstances and feeling hopeless about that—to them I am enormously sympathetic. Though a lot of doomers will admit they personally are doing OK—this does not seem to be most doomers.

But I think in general cynicism and doomerism and a worldview dominated by a general nebulous air of Everything Is Awful and by abstract nouns with threatening auras is not conducive to wisdom or understanding or useful politics or leading a happy and fulfilling life.

[sentimental-darkness]

Oh but they all know what it is, they're just so out of touch with reality that their 'academic' definition sounds like they're aliens and they're also hypocrites so it doesn't matter what they understand because they're going to act like fascists themselves and it's all ok as long as you do it to stop fascists, then it's not fascism.

They should really stop telling people everything good is white supremacy and facism, it's starting to look like pro-fascist propaganda

[slyandthefamilybook]

so this is something that's been on my mind for a while. I wish I could make a big magnum opus post on it but I don't have the energy

I've noticed in my travels that antisemitism seems to be one of the only forms of bigotry that's not self-evidently wrong. People may think they think it is, but I don't think they do. Every time antisemitism comes up as a topic, I see Jews sharing posts with twin explanations: one on why something is antisemitic, and one on why that's a bad thing

I've seen this a lot, and have fallen into it myself, although recently I've been trying to stop. On a post about Bibi changing his last name to "sound more indigenous": "Imagine if someone said this about Black people". On a post blaming Jews for what Israel does: "Imagine if someone said this about Chinese people". On a post accusing Jews of owning too many industries: "Imagine if someone said this about Asian people".

There was a post that went around claiming the IDF harvested the organs of Palestinians with very little evidence. (There are some great posts debunking that but that's not what this post is about.) I remember looking through the comments and one of them stuck out to me. I can't remember the wording exactly, but it went something like: "Israel heard about blood libel and thought why don't we just do that?". Ignoring the fact that blood libel is about the accuser, not the accused, this comment played over and over in my head. I thought about it as I went to sleep that night. Here was a person admitting that the thing they were saying has a strong resemblance to blood libel, but saying it anyway. It struck me that the underlying thought here was "it's not blood libel if it's true".

Once I realized that, I was stunned. I suddenly heard right-wingers in my head saying "it's not racist, it's just a fact that on average Black people have a lower I.Q.". And suddenly everything clicked into place. I know it might seem like an elementary idea, but it genuinely had never occurred to me

In the eyes of bigots, racism protects power. Antisemitism protects truth.

I've often said that all conspiracy theories eventually lead back to the Jews, and this newfound realization fit in nicely. A popular neo-Nazi slogan I've seen recently is "the goyim know". This idea that Jews have something to hide has saturated the political spectrum

Antisemitism is itself a conspiracy theory.

I realize that makes it sound like I don't think antisemitism is real. That's not what I'm saying, it absolutely is. But the way people talk about it is unlike how they talk about any other form of racism. The Jews are a shadowy cabal, who meet in secret to deplatform people who dare speak out against them. This is something we see on the right and the left, from Kanye accusing the Jews of destroying his career, to leftists accusing the "Zionists" of controlling social media.

Spouting antisemitism now becomes a moral good, a political necessity. It's the most important thing in the fight for truth

I understood then, why people on the left are so comfortable calling out accusations of antisemitism as "frivolous", "unserious", "over-used". How they think people are using antisemitism to silence them. You can't just say something is antisemitic and walk away. It won't stick. You also have to sit there on your computer for the next 2 hours, looking up sources to debunk their claims. You have to appeal to the truth. With any other form of bigotry, it's understood by leftists that whatever the facts may be, they don't excuse racism. The number of Black Americans who commit crimes doesn't justify saying Black people are all criminals. The number of First Nations people who own casinos doesn't justify playing off that stereotype. But when it comes to the Jews, it's open season. You can say anything you like about the Jews, as long as you think it's true. Being told that it's antisemitic isn't enough.

This is a great example of just that. "Yes it's antisemitic, but it's also true." The accusation of antisemitism becomes an accusation against the truth. So when it comes to people who really believe in what they're saying, it all just bounces off. This is why people never seem to learn. They hop from conspiracy theory to conspiracy theory. As long as someone assures them it's all true, the bigotry doesn't really factor. They apologize not when confronted with their own racism, but when confronted with the facts.

In this way, antisemitism has become baked into society, especially Christian societies. Because why wouldn't it? Yes, the Jew is greedy, yes the Jew is sneaky, yes the Jew is bloodthirsty. But the Jew is above all a liar. They lie about their names, their culture, their history, their victories, their defeats

I wish I knew how to end this post. Some sort of call to action, some idea of how to fix this going forward. But I have no idea. I suspect if I did, we might not all be quite where we are right now

[elder-millennial-of-zion]

I miss the days, way back when before October 7, when I felt like I was part of leftist circles. I miss feeling energised by leftist slogans because I thought they included me, instead of targeted me.

I miss hearing “eat the rich” and not hearing it as a dog whistle for “kill the Jews.” I miss feeling inspired by phrases like “our struggles for liberation are all connected,” instead of hearing its real meaning, “the Jews are the evil puppet masters behind everything and the world must unite against them.” I miss believing that when leftists talked about punching up at their oppressors, it wasn’t just an excuse to punch down at more vulnerable minorities that they decided were their oppressors despite all evidence to the contrary.

I miss the days when the left poured into the streets to protest cops and corporations instead of protesting Jews. I miss updating myself on those protests so I could join them, instead of to know which areas to avoid because they’ll be Judenrein for the day.

I don’t wish my eyes hadn’t been opened. I’d much rather see the truth no matter how painful and disillusioning it is, because the alternative isn’t actually “bliss.” It’s having a perpetual nagging feeling that something’s off but I can’t put my finger on it, or if I can then I must be overreacting or imagining it’s worse than it is.

But that pain and disillusionment is very real. That loss is very real. It was a community I thought I belonged to, a community I put a lot of work and energy into for many years, and there is grief at the loss of it. Grief that it’s gone, grief that it never was what it claimed to be in the first place. I guess I’m grieving the loss of that part of my identity. And grieving the loss of how people I thought were my friends and allies perceive my identity. Grieving the illusion that they were ever my allies at all, that they ever would be my allies if I needed. Because I haven’t really changed, but the way my former circles look at me completely changed. People who thought I was a good person and a good ally on October 6 decided I was the devil incarnate very literally overnight.

The person who privately reached out to me a few years ago to thank me for a Facebook post I made defending sex workers, because as a former sex worker they appreciated it. Now they’ve been posting antisemitic blood libel, the kind of rhetoric that’s already gotten Jews killed, for six months straight. I tried to tell them how much pain it causes me as a Jew to see their posts, and they only doubled down. It truly is their loss. I was a good friend and a good ally, and they threw me away because I’m a Jew. But it’s totally not because I’m a Jew, it’s because I’m the evil kind of Jew, the kind that just so happens to be the profile of ninety percent of the Jewish population.

I’m grateful I have such a strong sense of Jewish identity, because otherwise the loss of identity in this other way would be far more destabilising. I get why so many people cling to their political identities no matter how much cognitive dissonance they have to wave away; why they insist their ideology is righteous no matter how much evidence to the contrary. Without any other solid identity they would feel too adrift. But that doesn’t excuse their behavior. It’s not ok to jump on a bandwagon to persecute and kill Jews because you want to belong to something that badly, because you can’t handle your sense of self evolving with all the growing pains that come with it.

So many progressive Jews like myself have described ourselves as “politically homeless.” (Specifically in the diaspora; I know the political framework in Israel is completely different.) We can let ourselves sit in that grief. Being homeless is painful and uncomfortable, but it’s better than staying in an abusive home.

[spaghettioverdose]

there are no bigger babies in this world than punks. for a genre of music (and it is a genre of music, not any kind of coherent political movement, let's be real for a moment) where the fans style themselves to be tough and aggressive, you guys sure love to throw shit fits whenever anyone insults you even slightly. maybe if you were even a little bit anti-capitalist (as many of you claim) in any meaningful way, you wouldn't base your entire identity on consumption of music and you wouldn't feel so mad when someone insults punk or points out that fascists aren't that uncommon among your ranks. then again, the main reason why people are even talking shit about you in the first place is because you're annoying dipshits who base your identity on aesthetics and then huff your own farts about how radical you are, while having politics that amount to an incoherent tantrum.

maybe if you learned how to read political theory, you wouldn't say stupid shit like "punk is inherently leftist/antifascist/progressive", especially when you can do one google search to see how often nazis keep getting into the punk scene. I hope one day you grow the fuck up out of your edgy teenage phase and either learn some actual communist politics or shut up about how radical you are. keep your tastes in music as tastes in music. even though on tumblr half the people who call themselves punks don't even listen to punk.

anyways, if you listen to punk or whatever, I don't care. if you make it your whole identity and try to claim your politics are punk, I urge you to either unfollow me or be very fucking quiet about it. if I catch you saying that shit in my notes I'm blocking your ass.